LibGuides: Music: Introduction: Institutions & People

Music and Cultural context

Susan McClary, Professor of Musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles, makes a forceful case for the importance of understanding the context in which a piece of music was written, as a prerequisite for understanding the music itself. She uses as an example Beethovens Ninth Symphony, and its slow evolution in Western culture as an un-performable mess to one of the greatest works of all time.

Institutions

A number of universities, research institutes and Non-Governmental organizations have played an important role in the field of music. It is worth examining their websites for further information on the work they do and what their empahsis and specialisation is.

University of Manchester
The University of Manchester Music department has been ranked top in the 2014 Sunday Times University Guide and the Complete University Guide.
Oxford University Music Department
The Oxford University Music Faculty is one of the largest and liveliest music departments in the UK. Our undergraduate and graduate curricula are strong in traditional musicological and musical skills – for musicologists, performers and composers – but are also notably wide-ranging and imaginative. They reflect the spectrum of contemporary developments in music and musicology: from the 13th-century motet to global hip-hop; from ethnomusicology to music psychology; from historically informed performance practice to electroacoustic composition.
University of Cambridge
As a highly rated research centre, our areas of special expertise include medieval and renaissance music, nineteenth-century music, opera, performance studies, popular music and scientific approaches to music: research students, postdoctoral fellows, college lecturers and distinguished international visitors work on a dizzying variety of topics.
Harvard Music Department
The Harvard University Department of Music is devoted to the study and practice of music, and exists to provide a first-rate musical education that gives students advanced skills in music as well as knowledge of music history and repertory.
Juilliard School of Music
The Juilliard School has maintained a commitment to providing the highest caliber of artistic and educational experience to exceptionally talented young performing artists from around the world.
Conservatory of Music - Oberlin
The Conservatory of Music offers majors in performance, composition, music education, music theory, electronic and computer music, jazz studies, music history, and a double major in piano performance and vocal accompanying.
Eastman School of Music
At Eastman, our passion is music. We believe that music enriches the heart, nourishes the mind, and heals the soul. We believe in the power of music to transform lives.

Who's Who

The field of music counts a number of famous musicians and composers. In the books, journal articles, videos, blogs and podcasts you should have encountered the following people:

Susan McClary is one of a number of people responsible for the 'new' musicology, that is, musicology that looks at music from the point of view of gender, class and race. Musicology was one of the last bastions of the pre-'progressive' approach to the humanities and I suspect there are still some corners of musicology that are relatively free of this kind of approach.

Gary Tomlinson is a musicologist and cultural theorist known for his interdisciplinary breadth. His teaching, lecturing, and scholarship have ranged across a diverse set of interests, including the history of opera, early-modern European musical thought and practice, the musical cultures of indigenous American societies, jazz and popular music, and the philosophy of history and critical theory. His latest project concerns the evolutionary emergence of human musical capacities; his Wort Lectures at the University of Cambridge in 2009, outlining this project, were entitled "1,000,000 Years of Music."

Famous Musicians & Composers in History

Famous Composers
Top 10 Most Famous Classical Music Composers
Famous musicians
Here is a list of notable music composers and performers throughout the ages including Rock ‘N Roll era, the music of the 1980’s, 1990’s pop music, house, club, trans and many others. The list includes classical musicians, guitarists, drummers, and disk jockeys.