Musicology went Pop: The Research of Global Musical Trends through the Prism of National Schools and Other Schoolarly Conventions

Abstract

As in the US and in Great Britain, also in the Federal Republic of Germany the first studies in popular music were sociological. Further impulses came from music education. In the framework of the German scientific organisation called Arbeitskreis Studium Populärer Musik e.V. the academic discourse on popular music was originally rooted in the systematic musicology. Later on, it opened up towards a number of related disciplines, such as sociology, ethnology, anthropology, cultural and gender studies. Herewith a new approach towards the musical phenomena unfolded, focusing on the complexity and polyvalence  of musical processes. Based on these experiences, and as regards the author, the key subject of the musicological research represents the musical life in terms of a persistently changing living organism. She supports a holistic approach towards the topic of research, interdisciplinary and methodological pluralism, the search for dialogue with related scientific disciplines and a constructive exchange between different points of view, »schools«, and theoretical positions.