The New Musicology is a term applied to a wide body of musicology with increased focus upon the cultural study, analysis, and criticism of music, with influences from feminism, gender studies, gay and lesbian studies, queer theory, postcolonial studies, the work of some French structuralist and post-structuralist thinkers, and to a lesser extent the critical theory of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. However, many of the musicologists grouped ...
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The New Musicology is a term applied to a wide body of musicology with increased focus upon the cultural study, analysis, and criticism of music, with influences from feminism, gender studies, gay and lesbian studies, queer theory, postcolonial studies, the work of some French structuralist and post-structuralist thinkers, and to a lesser extent the critical theory of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin. However, many of the musicologists grouped under the term do not consider their work part of a distinctively new school or methodology.
Susan McClary defined the New Musicology in relationship to traditional musicology, which she stated:
In contrast, McClary's 'new musicology' treats music:
This may be interpreted as saying there is no absolute music, that all music has sexual, political, personal and emotional programs.
Thus, new musicology has much in common with ethnomusicology, the study of music (usually non-Western) in its culture and as a human activity. In the words of Rose...
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