Practical Musicology - (21st Century Music Practices) by Simon Zagorski-Thomas (Paperback)

About the Book

"A theoretical framework for studying how music is made as opposed to what is produced"--

Book Synopsis

Practical Musicology outlines a theoretical framework for studying a broad range of current musical practices and aims to provoke discussion about key issues in the rapidly expanding area of practical musicology: the study of how music is made. The book explores various forms of practice ranging from performance and composition to listening and dancing, from historically informed performances of Bach in the USA to Indonesian Dubstep or Australian musical theatre, and from Irish traditional music played by French musicians from Toulouse to Brazilian thrash metal or K-Pop. Drawing on neuroscience, cognitive psychology, ecological approaches in anthropology, and the social construction of technology and creativity, Zagorski-Thomas uses a series of case studies and examples to investigate how practice is already being studied and to suggest a principle for how it might continue to develop, based around the assertion that musicking cannot be treated as a culturally or ideologically neutral phenomenon.

Review Quotes

"What could musicology be in the 21st century? In his book, Simon Zagorski-Thomas outlines a practical musicology that wholeheartedly embraces all contemporary forms of sound and music production between streaming audio, game sounds, EDM and engineering a record production. The future of musicology, as Zagorski-Thomas envisions it, is a musicology that provides historical and technological knowledge and critique of how music and sound are actually produced, presented, experienced and consumed: a comprehensive musicology of aesthetic practices, which is indeed urgently needed." --Holger Schulze, Professor of Musicology at the University of Copenhagen and Principal Investigator at the Sound Studies Lab, Denmark, and editor of The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Anthropology of Sound (2021)

"Practical Musicology is a brave and brilliant exploration of ways to explore and research 21st-century music practices anew. Drawing on his own exemplary research practice, Simon Zagorski-Thomas critically and eloquently advances and applies new ideas to Practical Musicology, ones which lay out a new theoretical framework, harnessing models of knowledge, capacity, power, identity, and technology anew, to illustrate, not only how 'to do' music, but also how 'to do music better'. A new and provocative Practical Musicology is put to work to explain how aesthetics emerge, develop and become embodied in practice. This is a must-read for all of us whose wanting a new 'way in' for thinking critically and differently about 21st-century music practices." --Pamela Burnard, Professor of Arts, Creativities and Educations, University of Cambridge, UK

"Practical Musicologyis just that - a practical introduction to the study of music making as a thing we do, consciously or unconsciously, separately or together, according to deeply embedded conceptual schemata that can give rise to powerful aesthetic judgments embedded in diverse and non-linguistic forms of human communication. It also provides a very sophisticated theoretical introduction to an embodied and practice-based musical epistemology: how what we do with music influences what we can think, know and say about it.

Zagorski-Thomas brings his own aesthetic sensibility as a composer, engineer, and teacher to bear, persuasively making the case that a practical musicology will concern itself not just with what musicians have done, or why - but how they can do what they do, better. As a statement of musicological purpose, this volume is thus both practical and visionary in the same breath, much like that complex, ineffable group activity we have come to call "music," wherever, whenever, and however we engage in it." --Robert Fink, Professor of Musicology and Chair of Music Industry Programs, UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, USA

About the Author

Simon Zagorski-Thomas is Professor at the London College of Music, University of West London, UK, and is Co-Chairman of the Association for the Study of the Art of Record Production. He worked for 25 years as a composer, sound engineer, and producer and is, at present, conducting research into 21st Century Musical Practice. His books include The Art of Record Production (2012), co-edited with Simon Frith, and The Musicology of Record Production (2014), winner of the 2015 IASPM Book Prize.