Musicology in the context of "Field research"

Music theory is the study of theoretical frameworks for understanding the practices and possibilities of music. The Oxford Companion to Music describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory": The first is the "rudiments", that are needed to understand music notation (key signatures, time signatures, and rhythmic notation); the second is learning scholars' views on music from antiquity to the present; the third is a sub-topic of musicology that "seeks to define processes and general principles in music". The musicological approach to theory differs from music analysis "in that it takes as its starting-point not the individual work or performance but the fundamental materials from which it is built."

Music theory is frequently concerned with describing how musicians and composers make music, including tuning systems and composition methods among other topics. Because of the ever-expanding conception of what constitutes music, a more inclusive definition could be the consideration of any sonic phenomena, including silence. This is not an absolute guideline, however; for example, the study of "music" in the Quadrivium liberal arts university curriculum, that was common in medieval Europe, was an abstract system of proportions that was carefully studied at a distance from actual musical practice. But this medieval discipline became the basis for tuning systems in later centuries and is generally included in modern scholarship on the history of music theory.

Organology (/ˌɔːrɡəˈnɒlədʒi/; from Ancient Greek ὄργανον organon 'instrument' and λόγος logos 'the study of') is the science of musical instruments and their classifications. It embraces study of instruments' history, instruments used in different cultures, technical aspects of how instruments produce sound, and musical instrument classification. There is a degree of overlap between organology, ethnomusicology (being subsets of musicology) and the branch of the science of acoustics devoted to musical instruments.

Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" can also be applied to non-Western art musics. Classical music is often characterized by formality and complexity in its musical form and harmonic organization, particularly with the use of polyphony. Since at least the ninth century, it has been primarily a written tradition, spawning a sophisticated notational system, as well as accompanying literature in analytical, critical, historiographical, musicological and philosophical practices.

Rooted in the patronage of churches and royal courts in Europe, surviving early medieval music is chiefly religious, monophonic and vocal, with the music of ancient Greece and Rome influencing its thought and theory. The earliest extant music manuscripts date from the Carolingian Empire (800–887), around the time which Western plainchant gradually unified into what is termed Gregorian chant. Musical centers existed at the Abbey of Saint Gall, the Abbey of Saint Martial and Saint Emmeram's Abbey, while the 11th century saw the development of staff notation and increasing output from medieval music theorists. By the mid-12th century, France became the major European musical center: the religious Notre-Dame school first fully explored organized rhythms and polyphony, while secular music flourished with the troubadour and trouvère traditions led by poet-musician nobles. This culminated in the court-sponsored French ars nova and Italian Trecento, which evolved into ars subtilior, a stylistic movement of extreme rhythmic diversity. Beginning in the early 15th century, Renaissance composers of the influential Franco-Flemish School built on the harmonic principles in the English contenance angloise, bringing choral music to new standards, particularly the mass and motet. Northern Italy soon emerged as the central musical region, where the Roman School engaged in highly sophisticated methods of polyphony in genres such as the madrigal, which inspired the brief English Madrigal School.

Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century ars nova, the Trecento music was treated by musicology as a coda to medieval music and the new era dated from the rise of triadic harmony and the spread of the contenance angloise style from the British Isles to the Burgundian School. A convenient watershed for its end is the adoption of basso continuo at the beginning of the Baroque period.

The period may be roughly subdivided, with an early period corresponding to the career of Guillaume Du Fay (c. 1397–1474) and the cultivation of cantilena style, a middle dominated by Franco-Flemish School and the four-part textures favored by Johannes Ockeghem (1410s or '20s–1497) and Josquin des Prez (late 1450s–1521), and culminating during the Counter-Reformation in the florid counterpoint of Palestrina (c. 1525–1594) and the Roman School.

Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) (or Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, AHSS), also known as social studies, is a broad term that groups together the academic disciplines of humanities, arts and social sciences. It is viewed as an academic counterpart to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) in the United States, Canada, India, Australia, and other countries. HASS graduates comprise the majority of the workforce in many developed countries (e.g. 64% in Australia). However, HASS courses often receive lower governmental funding and may have lower reputations within universities. There is a measured relationship between citizens' HASS awareness with more accurate threat perceptions, high community activity, and cultural engagement at the local level. In recent years, a return to a holistic reintegration of HASS and STEM disciplines has been promoted in the U.S. by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Some of the disciplines it covers are philosophy, theology, sociology, communication sciences, social psychology, human geography, demography, anthropology, social work, linguistics, history, archaeology, politics, economics, law, pedagogy, journalism, literature, musicology, administration, accounting, commerce, music, dance, painting, sculpture, graphic design, theater, cinematography, interior design, industrial design, criticism, art history, cultural studies, tourism, gastronomy, among others.

Curt Sachs (German: [zaks]; 29 June 1881 – 5 February 1959) was a German musicologist. He was one of the founders of modern organology (the study of musical instruments). Among his contributions was the Hornbostel–Sachs system, which he created with Erich von Hornbostel.