Ecomusicology

Ecomusicology examines relationships among music, sound, culture, and the natural environment. It combines perspectives from musicology, sound studies, environmental humanities, and ecology.

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Musicology: The scholarly study of music, including its histories, structures, practices, and meanings. Ecomusicology extends musicological study to environmental relationships.
Soundscape: The acoustic environment as perceived or represented by people in a particular place or situation. Soundscape analysis makes environmental listening a method for studying place and change.
Soundscape Composition: A compositional practice that uses environmental recordings and listening to evoke or examine places. It turns environmental sound into a deliberate musical and ecological form.
R. Murray Schafer: A Canadian composer and writer who developed influential ideas about soundscapes and acoustic ecology. His soundscape framework helped shape ecomusicology’s attention to environmental listening.
Organicism: An approach that treats artworks or systems as unified wholes modeled on living organisms. Ecomusicology need not equate musical form with nature or treat nature as a metaphor.
Sound Studies: An interdisciplinary field studying sound, listening, and their social and material dimensions. Its attention to listening and soundscapes broadens analysis beyond composed music.
Field Recording: The capture of sound outside a studio, often in natural or everyday environments. Recordings document environmental sounds and the conditions under which they are heard.
Soundwalk: A guided or self-directed walk focused on attentive listening to an environment. Soundwalks make situated listening a practical form of environmental inquiry.
Steven Feld: An anthropologist and ethnomusicologist known for work on sound, listening, and Kaluli culture in Papua New Guinea. His concept of acoustemology links knowledge and place to culturally situated listening.
Anthropocentrism: The view that humans are central or uniquely important in understanding the world. Ecomusicology can challenge human-centered accounts by attending to nonhuman sounds and agency.