Abstract:
In a seminal publication on computational and comparative musicology, Nicholas
Cook argued more than a decade ago that recent developments in computational
musicology presented a significant opportunity for disciplinary renewal. Musicology,
he said, was on the brink of new phase wherein “objective representations of music”
could be rapidly and accurately compared and analysed using computers. Cook’s
largely retrospective conspectus of what I and others now call digital musicology—
following the vogue of digital humanities—might seem prophetical, yet in other
ways it cannot be faulted for missing its mark when it came to developments in the
following decade. While Cook laid the blame for its delayed advent on the cultural
turn in musicology, digital musicology today—which is more a way of enhancing
musicological research than a particular approach in its own right—is on the brink
of another revolution of sorts that promises to bring diverse disciplinary branches
closer together. In addition to the extension of types of computer-assisted analysis
already familiar to Cook, new generic models of data capable of linking music, image
(including digitisations of music notation), sound and documentation are poised to
leverage musicology into the age of the semantic World Wide Web. At the same
time, advanced forms of computer modelling are being developed that simulate
historical modes of listening and improvisation, thereby beginning to address
research questions relevant to current debates in music cognition, music psychology
and cultural studies, and musical creativity in the Middle Ages, Renaissance and
beyond.