Listening Through the Eyes

An Overview of Studies on Music and Pupillometry

Abstract

Starting from an expanded conception of musicology as the “science of music”, the authors argue that approaches grounded in the natural and experimental sciences (psychology, neuroscience, psychoacoustics, biometrics, psychometrics) also legitimately belong within the musicological field, alongside the long-standing historical-cultural and anthropological traditions within Brazilian universities. The article proposes a classification of musicology into four axes according to their methods and interests - historical, anthropological, analytical, and systematic - and provides a brief overview of each area. It goes on presenting the state of the art of a subfield of systematic musicology: interdisciplinary research that relates music and pupillometry - the measurement of pupil dilation as an indicator of cognitive effort, attention, emotional arousal and engagement. The text therefore aims to connect systematic musicology to biometric tools, especially eye-tracking and pupil dilation, and to present research protocols applicable to different musical contexts.