Some reflections on systematic musicology as proactive science

In the volume perspectives on current trends in Systematic Musicology as well as aspects of disciplinary history are presented along with results from current research. Contributions to this volume, covering a broad range of areas, are organized into four sections: theory, methodology, and disciplinary history, musical acoustics (including modelling and signal processing) and organology, music psychology, neuromusicology, music theory and analysis, and ethnomusicology and folk music studies. In the first section, leading scholars in the field contemplate future trends in Systematic Musicology viewed as a proactive science, on the one hand, while reflecting its development (and that of Comparative Musicology, a discipline that has been close to Systematic Musicology from the beginning), on the other. The second section offers a number of articles that report results from research undertaken in musical acoustics making use of up-to-date methodology, plus some articles that are devoted to organology from an historical point of view. In the third section, contributions deal with statistical methods in music psychology, music perception and cognition as well as aspects of music theory and analysis. Section four is devoted to ethnomusicology and folk music research; while some of the articles deal with theoretical issues, others offer findings obtained from field work. This volume also contains a bio-biographical appendix.