Musicology is an umbrella term for the scholarly study of music. Like most other disciplines, musicology has various sub-disciplines including: historical musicology, or the study of the 'western' (classic western European tradition) musical cannon, ethnomusicology or what used to be know as comparative musicology is the study of music practices outside the 'western' cannon including subjects such as pop music, world music, and traditional music, and finally cognitive musicology which studies the physiological effects of music. Other disciples exist under this umbrella such as music philosophy, and even music theory by definition.
