Bonnie Raitt

I'm sure I would have been considered a more significant artist if I was a singer-songwriter. It's just not the way I roll. I love being a curator and a musicologist. People write me letters and thank me for turning them on to Fred McDowell and Sippie Wallace, and that's partly my job this time around.

American Musician

Robert Christgau

There's a musicologist named Peter van der Merwe whose theory is that the blues generates tune families, and that their similarity to each other is in fact part of the pleasure you take in them - rather than the differentiation in which Jerome Kern and George Gershwin indulged to great effect.

American Journalist

Wendy Carlos

I'm really a very weak musicologist. Wish it weren't so, but there's only so much you can dig deeply into in one lifetime, as if you hadn't noticed.

Pete Seeger

My mother was a very good violinist; my father was a musicologist and spent most of his life in academia.

Nina Blackwood

I grew up in Ohio, and I was a musicologist since I was little; it is all that I would ever read.

American Celebrity

Thomas Beecham

A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.

English Composer

Musicologists often publish their work in journals or books.

Academic Focus

Musicologists use specialized vocabulary that may be unfamiliar to non-experts.

Technical Language

Musicologists may focus on how music has changed over time.

Historical Perspective

Understanding music theory is often essential for a musicologist.

Theory Critical

Musicologists may incorporate knowledge from physics or psychology.

Interdisciplinary Approach

Analysis may include empirical methods, like statistical data analysis.

Scientific Methods

Musicologists consider the cultural context in which music is created and experienced.

Cultural Sensitivity

Their study includes social and political influences on music development.