25 years of ESCOM: Achievements and challenges

Ginsborg, Jane and Sloboda, John (2018) 25 years of ESCOM: Achievements and challenges. Musicae Scientiae. pp. 1-14. ISSN 10298649

Text 1029864918764574.pdf Download (241kB)

Abstract

This reflection on the first 25 years of ESCOM’s activities is in two parts. In the first part we analyse the country and discipline spread of contributors to its journal Musicae Scientiae and its formal membership. In the second we address the choice of “cognitive sciences of music” as the initial focus of both Society and journal by comparing the topics of early meetings and publications with those that are current now. Journal contributors and members are both concentrated in a small number of countries. When corrected for population size, the countries with the highest levels of activity are, in order: Finland, Estonia, UK, Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, and Austria. This has not changed substantially over the duration of ESCOM’s existence. In contrast, there have been significant changes in the disciplinary spread of contributions, psychology becoming increasingly popular in recent years to the near exclusion of some other disciplinary approaches including ethnomusicology, computational modelling and theoretical musicology. Current topics include performance and composition, emotion, musical development, perception, music therapy and well-being, music learning, preferences, cognition, and neuropsychological approaches. An early aspiration of the Society was that the wide range of disciplines represented by the cognitive sciences of music might eventually converge, but this has proved difficult to achieve. An increasing convergence on the use of English as its normative language, however, has provided ESCOM with both new challenges and some opportunities.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	M Music and Books on Music > M Music
Depositing User:	Thomas Wise
Date Deposited:	16 Apr 2018 16:39
Last Modified:	16 Apr 2018 16:39
URI:	http://repository.rncm.ac.uk/id/eprint/47

Actions (login required)

View Item