Grove Ethnomusicology Article Flashcards
Comparative Musicology (in german)
Vergleichende Musikwissenschaft
Berlin School
- -cylinders from German ethnologists in colonial territories
- -psychologists and acousticians
- -theories on distribution of musical styles, instruments, tuning
- -1930s: reconstructions of music history
- -aka “cultural-historical school”
Carl Stumpf - Bella Coola Indians (1886)
- touring group from B.C.
- Germans say birth of ethnomusicology is scholarly discipline
- repertory of single group
- description of musical elements
- transcriptions in Western notation
- discussion in cultural context
- principle assumption: world’s musics can be divided into individual units, each with its own system and rationale
Carl Stumpf – overall
- Berlin School
- founded Berlin Institute of Psychology
- gave birth to Gestalt psychology
- Songs of Bella Coola Indians (1886) – first german ethnomusicology
Erich M. von Hornbostel
- Carl Stumpf’s assistant
- collaborated w Otto Abraham (psychology and absolute pitch)
- many articles appended to German ethnographies
- dealing w scales, tonal systems, and rhythms from cylinder collections
- assistants: Marius Schneider, Mieczyslaw KOLINSKI; CURT SACHS
Viennese scholars
- Robert Lach (Adler’s successor)
- Ricahrd Wallaschek
- Siegfried Nadel
- Walter Graf
- Albet Wellek
Aim of comparative musicology
outline historical and genetic relationships between music systems of the world
- evolutionary models and genetic classification in biology
- many trained in nat. sciences
- In britain, Ellis trained in linguistics
- progression from ‘simple’ to ‘complex’/’sophisticated’
- Eurocentric perspective, e.g. ‘primitive’ v. ‘civilized’ peoples
- drew on limited samples of cylinders
- tonal measurement and psychological testing to develop theories
When did comparative musicology end
1885, Hornbostel’s death
Training of comparative musicologists
- Hornbostel, chemsitry
- Boas, physics and geography
- Abraham, physician (psychology and absolute pitch)
diffusionist theories in comp. musicology
Hornbostel, Kunst, Sachs claimed:
- historical links between music of insular South-east Asia and of Africa
- connection b/w Madagascar and South-east Asia, based on instruments, tunings and linguistic relationships
AM Jones (1964)
correlated other cultural elements (fine arts, agriculture) with diffusionist music thinking.
‘Theory of Culture Circles’
- Fritz Graebner, Father Wilhelm Schmidt, Fatehr Wilhelm Koppers
- culture developed in ONE GEOGRAPHICAL REGION
- CENTRAL ASIA
- spread OUT in waves of migration from this center
- similarities in ‘culture traits’ (objects and forms of social organization) resulted from past migrations
- FARTHEST traits = EARLIEST
- assumed uninventiveness of humankind (monogenesis)
- Curt Sachs organology
Curt Sachs organology
- instruments historically ordered and organized
- 23 areas distribution and technological level
- scattered regions = older
- high importance despite short role in anthropology
Theory of Blown Fifths
- Hornbostel
- most sensational proposal of Berlin School
- found many eg’s of equipentatonic and equiheptatonic scales (measuring tunings of instrument collections)
- equally spaced tunings seemed widespread and thus significant
- from blowing Brazilian panpipes: H proposed
- many non-Western tunings based on intervals of 678 sents (rather than pythagorean 702 cents)
- failed to heed Ellis’s argument
- disproved by Manfred Bukofzer for lack of evidence
- hurt Berlin school’s credibility
Alexander Ellis’s warning
‘there is no practical way of arriving at the real pitch of a musical scale, when it cannot be heard as played by a native musician; and even in the latter case we only obtain that particular musician’s tuning of the scale, not the theory on which it was founded’ (1885)
