Art and music research 1

Abstract

In taxonomies of Western knowledge, ‘art’ and ‘music’ are grouped conventionally within a cluster of disciplines labeled ‘humanities’. Research on art and music, however, encompasses a wider array of disciplines and interdisciplinary fi elds. Music research also spans natural sciences (e.g. acoustics, physiology), formal sciences (mathematics, computing), and social sciences (psychology, sociology). Likewise, art research draws on the concepts, theories, and methodologies of social sciences as well as science and technology. Moreover, in both cases research spans not only historical studies of aesthetic forms and movements but also the nature of creativity, the physiology and cognition of perception, the reception of aesthetic works within particular groups and cultures, and the institutional formations of research and education. While much has been written about the universality of art and music across cultures and in general theories of the arts, the disciplines are constructed differently. In the Anglo-American academy, for example, ‘art history’ became an umbrella label for research centered initially on the history of Western art but later including other disciplines and art forms. In European practice ‘musicology’ (Musikwissenschaft) is often thought to include both humanities and sciences, whereas in North America it was more confi ned traditionally to humanities. Like all collaborators who cross knowledge boundaries to work on a common project, the co-authors of this comparative refl ection grappled with differences shaped by their academic and cultural backgrounds. One, a professor of humanities, was trained in literary studies in North America, then her research and teaching interests broadened to include interdisciplinary humanities, American cultural studies, and the theory and practice of interdisciplinarity. The other studied music, physics, and psychology in Australia, then conducted researched at the interface of music psychology, music theory, and music performance, and as a professor in Austria developed new infrastructures to encourage musicological interdisciplinarity. Even such basic terms as ‘humanities’ and ‘science’ became boundary objects

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