A Review of Public Musicology

A colleague of mine once asked if I considered myself a public musicologist, but prior to that moment, I had never really thought about myself in that way. The truth is, I fell, headfirst, into public musicology, and in some ways, it hurt. During my eight years as an adjunct faculty member, I struggled to think of what I could do with my PhD when I finally (and, so I thought, inevitably) called it quits from academia. During that time, public musicology came onto my radar when I was asked to appear on podcasts, write blogs, and even record DVD commentaries. But I had no clue what I was doing and I didn’t even realize that what I was doing had a name. Soon, I was invited to talk about my work at fan conventions, give pre-concert talks, write program notes, and was consulted on web series episodes and in newspaper articles for major media outlets. I learned a lot, both good and bad, and I made many mistakes. It took me a while, but I now consider myself a public musicologist and have recently started a certificate program in public musicology at my university.

The public musicology certificate at Columbus State University is comprised of four courses that can be taken in any order and offered in 2-year cycles; students can enroll at any point in the rotation. I refer to the gateway course for this certificate, “Introduction to Public Musicology,” as the training wheels class, where students are encouraged to make mistakes as they learn about the field and try new things in a low stakes environment. “Writing about Music” teaches students about different types of music writing while “Music and Identity” focuses on underrepresented composers. Finally, “Music Encoding” teaches students how to code music notation. All of the classes feature public-facing work with community partners, helping to build their skills and their resumes. As of spring 2024, the program has 39 students enrolled—both graduate and undergraduate and music majors, music minors, and those with extensive music experience but not in the major or minor—and, since its inception in fall 2022, has graduated 7 students.

As I stress to these students and others, public musicology, to my mind, requires one to activate one’s knowledge of music history and culture in order to communicate information about music effectively, whether to novices or experts. But there is more to public musicology than just providing information: it is also about how to engage the public in your work. In his 2012 article, “Becoming Public: Public Pedagogy, Citizenship, and the Public Sphere,” Gert Biesta identifies three types of public engagement: “a pedagogy for the public, a pedagogy of the public, and a pedagogy that enacts a concern for ‘publicness,’ respectively.” These distinctions are especially important for public musicology, as there is no one-size-fits-all way to do it. How a public musicologist chooses to frame their work is matter of choice and purpose.

Examples of public musicology

Before I provide some examples of public musicology, I want to note that my list is not exhaustive. I likely have omitted many wonderful public musicology projects and entire media from my overview. The purpose of this review is to show what kind of work is being frequently done in public musicology, what is emerging, and what makes them good examples.

Podcasting may be the first thing that comes to mind when discussing public musicology. To avoid rehashing what has already been said, I would like to point the reader to Emily Ruth Allen’s “A Review of Podcasting: Time for A Musicology Podcasting Revolution?” published in an earlier issue of this journal. Along with podcasts, various social media sites foster public musicology communities. Public musicology through social media became more active with the late Linda Shaver-Gleason (@lindahyphen) who started the public musicology blog, Not Another Music History Cliché. Social media public musicology encompasses work for, from, and with audiences in different ways that illustrate timely events concerning musical works, composer biographies, historiography, and performance. On X (formerly Twitter), for instance, there are some people who post about public musicology. Jon Silpayamanant (@Silpayamanant), Sarah Fritz (@sarahfritzwritr), and Hannah Chan-Hartley (@hanchanhartley) all discuss different aspects of public musicology, from history of notation and non-Western music, women and music, and music criticism and program note writing. Some scholars link to their work outside of social media, such as Silpayamanant’s music notation timeline and work on “slave” orchestras,¹ and Chan-Hartley’s Visual Listening Guides, which are also now available in augmented reality editions.²

Probably the most familiar type of public musicology is found in blogs. The American Musicological Society’s public musicology blog, Musicology Now, features articles on different aspects of musicology written in an accessible way for the public.³ Under the Musicology Now umbrella is their “Quick Takes,” short blog posts—sometimes in a series—about music in popular culture including musicals, films, albums, songs, video games, and television series. But newspapers, magazines, and other news outlets have begun to feature examples of public musicology. Articles like Imani Danielle Mosley’s, “What to Expect at Queen Elizabeth II’s Funeral,” Gabrielle Cornish’s, “When Ukranian Music Wasn’t Under Threat, It Thrived,” Simon Morrison’s, “The Fact and Fiction Behind Shostakovich’s ‘Lady Macbeth,” Micaela Baranello’s, “Welcoming a Black Female Composer into the Canon,” Samantha Ege and Douglas W. Shadle’s, “As Florence Price’s Music is Reconsidered, She Turns 135. Again,” Shadle’s, “Let’s Make the Future that The ‘New World Symphony Predicted,” Frank Lehman’s, “Indiana Jones, John Williams, and the Art of Music You Can Barely Hear,” and William Robin’s, “The 1918 Pandemic’s Impact on Music? Surprisingly Little,” all in the New York Times, Tina Tallon’s article titled “A Century of ‘Shrill’: How Bias in Technology Has Hurt Women’s Voices” in The New Yorker, A. Kori Hill’s article titled “It’s Pioneering Black Composer Florence Price’s Day in the Sun” in Playbill, and Tammy Kernodle’s “A Woman’s Place: The Importance of Mary Lou Williams’s Apartment” on NPR, all illustrate the possibilities of writing about music not just related to contemporary or timely current events, but also about things that might be off the beaten path or are of public interest. Each of these pieces focuses on work for the public or a concern for publicness.

While videos that break down music on YouTube, such as those by Adam Neely, may be familiar, live streams may not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about public musicology. Nevertheless, live streams are becoming more prevalent and they represent good examples of public musicology. An excellent example of one of these live streams is Ludomusicology Thursday, a weekly Thursday night Twitch stream that airs at 9:00 pm Eastern time. The moderators are Karen Cook, Julianne Grasso, Dana Plank, and Ryan Thompson, all video game music specialists, and the live stream consists of them playing video games and discussing the score while playing.⁴ Each week, they illustrate how scholarship, practice, and public musicology (and public music theory) intersect. Stream viewers can interact with the streamers in real time and watch them play a game and discuss how the music works in layman’s terms.

Trade books are also effective vehicles for public musicologists as they are research based but written for non-specialists. Their tone tends to be less formal, jargon is minimal, and the focus falls more on culture and contexts than notes and rhythms. Several recent trade books that do this really well come to mind: Music for Prime Time: A History of American Television Themes and Scoring by Jon Burlingame (Oxford University Press, 2023), Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World by Leah Broad (Faber & Faber, 2023), Weird Al, Seriously by Lily E. Hirsch (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020), and Mirror in the Sky: The Life and Music of Stevie Nicks by Simon Morrison (University of California Press, 2022). Each of these books is written by a specialist (music journalist or a scholar), and synthesizes their stories in compelling and interesting ways, without distracting the reader from the kind of analysis often found in scholarly books.

At bottom, there are many platforms and formats for public musicology, and there will no doubt be new ones in the future. There are also many different ways people get involved in public musicology, from music landmarks preservation, film and documentary consulting, to forensic musicology.⁵ The beauty of public musicology is that it can manifest itself as anything, in any form, as long as it is geared toward a non-scholarly audience.

How to do public musicology

One important detail to note is that even if you do public musicology work, you do not have to automatically pigeonhole yourself as a public musicologist if you don’t want to. I can think of many people who engage in public musicology without identifying as public musicologists. So, what if you want to start doing public musicology but do not know where to begin? Public musicology, as Kristi Brown-Montesano has said, is all about storytelling which, for musicologists, is essentially what we already do in different forms.⁶ Public musicology is thinking about who we are telling a story to, why, and how; what is the purpose of our work? Are we framing it for the reader, to the reader, or as a concern for the reader? Anyone interested in working in the realm of public musicology should think about their work, its purpose, where it might fit, and in what medium the story might best be told. Think outside of the box—who would enjoy your work but might never otherwise encounter it? For example, I have public musicology blog posts on The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which is a site traditionally reserved for serious issues on nuclear proliferation and deterrence because my work on music in television related to the atomic bomb fits nicely. Pitch your idea to any venue you think might want to feature your work—I had no idea that the Bulletin would even consider my pieces, but once I pitched one article, they realized it would give their blog a unique spin. Obvious venues can also work, but think about timeliness for your first appearance. For instance, if you want to pitch a news venue, what is the potential interest in your story? Is it local? Is there an anniversary coming up? If so, those considerations can help you make the best possible case and if that venue likes your work, they might come back to you in the future (which is how I wound up writing four Bulletin blog posts).

For people who are having a hard time identifying a public spin on their work, chances are you may already be doing it in the form of writing program notes or giving pre-concert talks. If you do not do this but would like to, reach out to a local arts organization such as a community or youth ensemble that typically does not have program notes for their concerts. Some people even start their own business writing program notes. You might go to nursing homes, assisted living facilities, or libraries and give a lecture-recital, or talk about a piece of music or song in which the residents might be interested. If nothing like that exists where you are, you could propose something. For instance, my local library has a lunch-and-learn once a month where scholars from different disciplines discuss their current projects. Again, think outside of the box: I work on film and television music, and one thing that I proposed that never got off the ground was to have a monthly talk at a local retirement community about a classic film score that Turner Classic Movies would air within the next week, so that the residents could listen for things as they watched (and could watch together if they so desired). This project sadly fell through because of the pandemic, but a version of this idea could be really fun for a film scholar as well as for those in attendance.

If there is something that you would love to talk about but there is no obvious outlet or platform, make it yourself! And, if you are unsure about the style of your talk about music, you might consider something one of my public musicology certificate students argued: you become a public musicologist from the moment you pick up your instrument or begin singing.⁷ Musicians need to be able to discuss the music that they sing or play, to describe it for others, and talk about the context informing the performance.

I am happy to discuss or brainstorm via e-mail with anyone interested in getting started in public musicology in their particular context or if you are someone who would like to incorporate public musicology projects into your classes. Ultimately, public musicology is an open field and there is plenty of room for new public musicologists and innovation in the field. There is also no better way to train more public musicologists than teaching music students that public musicology is a viable means to connect with their communities and the world around them through music.

Notes

¹ Jon Silpayamanant, Mae Mai, https://silpayamanant.wordpress.com.

² Visual Listening Guides, https://www.symphonygraphique.com/.

³ American Musicological Society, Musicology Now, https://musicologynow.org/.

⁴ BardicKnowledge, Ludomusicology Thursday, Twitch, https://www.twitch.tv/bardicknowledge.

⁵ American Music Landmarks Project, https://www.musiclandmarks.org/.

⁶ Kristi Brown-Montesano, “Dr. Brown-Montesano on Public Musicology (and Beethoven),” YouTube, July 21, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2GP7NwiVPI.

⁷ To listen to this discussion with my student Samuel Vargas, listen to Vargas Foundation, In Tune with Reality, “Episode 6: ‘Every Musician is a Public Musicologist’- Dr. Reba Wissner,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADIz74VRjEQ.