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Empirical Musicology: Aims, Methods, Prospects.

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Empirical Musicology: Aims, Methods, Prospects. Edited by Eric Clarke and Nicholas Cook. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. [viii, 229 p., ISBN 0-19-516749-X. $99.] Music examples, illustrations, index, bibliographies.

Statistics in Musicology. By Jan Beran. Boca Raton: Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2004. [viii, 299 p. ISBN 1-58488-219-0. $71.94.] Music examples, illustrations, index, bibliography.

Recent decades have witnessed a significant rise in scientifically-inspired music research. This expansion is apparent, for example, in the founding of several journals, including Psychomusicology (founded 1981), Empirical Studies in the Arts (1982), Music Perception (1983), Musicae Scientiae (1997), Systematic Musicology (1998), and the recently founded Empirical Musicology Review.

The dictionary definition of "empirical" is surprisingly innocuous for those of us arts students who were taught to use it as a term of derision. Empirical knowledge simply means knowledge gained through observation. Science is only one example of an empirical approach to knowledge. In fact, many of the things traditional musicologists do are empirical: deciphering manuscripts, studying letters, and listening to performances.

Historically, empiricism began as a uniquely British enthusiasm, so it is entirely proper that seven of the nine contributors to Empirical Musicology: Aims, Methods, Prospects are British. The book adopts a notably broad perspective in describing empirical research in music.

After an introductory chapter, the book begins with a contribution by ethnomusicologist Jonathan Stock, who describes the "participant-observer method" that has been the cornerstone of anthropological field research for the past half century. The chapter provides some concrete advice related to keeping a field...