John Vinzant (Texas State University)
Sed Non Eodem Modo: The Origins of Ludomusicology Compared to Musikwissenschaft
In the past decade, an expanding body of research has been conducted on music in video games, manifest in topic-specific academic conferences and publications, all resulting in the emergent field of study known as Ludomusicology. Many prominent scholars who champion the topic do so from research posts at major universities around the world, and have worked to legitimize their work within the larger musicological community. Their efforts arguably are not unlike those carried out by many of musicological community.
Their efforts arguably are not unlike those carried out by many of musicology’s first academics such as Guido Adler and Eduard Hanslick who, according to Kevin Karnes’s Music, Criticism, and the Challenge of History (2010), sought to apply the philosophy of positivism to what had previously been a more subjective field in order to align themselves with other legitimized academic disciplines such as natural science. By comparing selected writings from nineteenth-century musicologists to twenty-first century ludomusicologists, as well as secondary sources on the significance and impact of this writing and research, I argue that several key similarities between the legitimization processes of the two fields reveal possible archetypes fore the founding of new scholarly disciplines.
In this presentation, I will review the growing history of scholarly video game music research, recount the accomplishments of some of musicology’s most prominent nineteenth-century founders, and explore illuminating connections between the two.
Source: Bardic Knowledge