What is "public musicology"?

Let's face it, academics at times can be long-winded and unintelligible. The goal of public musicology is to engage general audiences in intellectually-oriented considerations of music, and to do so in a way that is approachable and understandable by non-specialists. Such an approach is by no means new, but it has become an ever important outcome of the academic activities of music scholars in recent years.

 

Past conferences on the subject of public musicology have thoughtfully engaged with ways that such work can be carried out. With the Billy Joel Conference, we take such approaches and apply them to a single subject with strong public appeal. We have included scholars from musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, history, comparative literature, and related fields to reassess and reconsider the music and lyrics of Billy Joel. And we invite an intellectually curious audience from Colorado College, the greater Colorado Springs and Front Range community, and further afield.

 

For more on the conference via the official blog of the American Musicological Society, please see A Billy Joel Conference This Fall.

 

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