Music(s), Musicology and Science: Towards an Interscience Network: The Example of the Deaf Musical Experience

Abstract

This contribution traces the history of musicology in order to set its object. The history of the discipline is clear: born as historical musicology, it flourished as an interdisciplinary discipline over the second half of the 20th century, with the development of new musicology and critical musicology. Defining the scope of musicology, however, is challenging, since it encompasses various aspects of music: music as sound, as a historical fact, as text. Music, therefore, oscillates between natural sciences, humanities, philosophy, and aesthetics, shifting of identity, between a quantifiable sound, the meaningful object of miscellaneous debates, and the purpose of boundless interpretations. These observations induce contemporary musicologists to elaborate an intersciences project which is exposed in the present paper. To concretize our remarks, we will take as an interscientific musicological object a specific situation: the Deaf musical experience.