Ethnomusicology

Ethnomusicology, and Ethnomusicology, formerly comparative musicology, is within musicology a neighboring discipline of historical musicology and at the same time a portion of Ethnology. It examines sonic, cultural and social aspects of music and dance.

The English term was ethnomusicology 1950 programmatically introduced by Jaap Kunst to move in until then comparative musicology ( "Comparative Musicology " ) called discipline to focus on a comparative analysis of musical structures and styles towards a greater consideration of the cultural contexts in the study area.

Research approaches

Ethnomusicology deals with the musical practice and the structures of the music performed music as social interaction and as a globally circulating symbol of identity of social groups. In their approaches to the discipline of historical musicology, whose center is the Opus Music of Western art music and the note text hermeneutics occidental European music theory is different. For the historical musicology is the importance of music as an art form which the field -limiting condition, while the ethnomusicology explores the different conceptions of music itself and makes the question of the importance of music to the topic. Therefore, the American ethnomusicologist Jeff Todd Titon ethnomusicology certain simply as the study of people making music. With the popular music research, music sociology and psychology of music the ethnomusicology shares numerous questions and methods.

Until the 1950s, ethnomusicological research area was focused excessively on the außeuropäischen traditional music. Since then, ethnomusicology is considered comprehensive. The research area includes traditional music ( folk music ) and außeuropäische art music; Furthermore, the popular music including Jazz, Music of subcultures, regional musical cultures and new, hybrid forms of music that arose from the transported through migration and travel interplay between musicians from different musical cultures ( transculturation ). Today ethnomusicological methods are also applied to Western art music.

General have increasing cultural exchange and digital distribution possibilities of music extended the approach and methods of ethnomusicology, which is now partially influence the music pedagogy.

Historical Development

The collection and analytical description of non-European music was in the German-speaking area at the beginning of ethnomusicological research. As the world's practiced music for the most part has been passed on orally and had ethnomusicologist at the beginning of their research activity in the last third of the 19th century methodological difficulties with the documentation of music. 1877 Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph. Wherein sound recordings could be made in order to analyze the structures of the music later.

At the beginning of non-European music was considered against the normative background of western music and arranged in conjunction with the world-view of sociocultural evolution evolutionarily at a certain stage. Within this framework, put the Austrians Guido Adler from 1885 set the goals for a historical musicology first in Prague, then in Vienna. During this time, Hugo Riemann postulated in his music theory, a natural law founded scale and harmony that have to be universally valid, but different non-European music systems are not able to describe.

Ethnomusicology in German-speaking

The requirements for an ethnomusicology were created in Berlin by Carl Stumpf ( 1848-1936 ). His 1893 based Institute of Psychology at the Friedrich -Wilhelms -Universität zu Berlin allowed the research and teaching of psychological problems in the field of non-European music. Of musical instruments from the former Siam extensive pitch measurements were taken. Stump instructed his assistants, the ethnomusicologist Erich von Hornbostel (1877-1935) and the psychologist Otto Abraham (1872-1926) with the construction of a musicological collection, amassed audio and studies. 1905 received this documentation with the underlying concept of comparative musicology as Berlin Phonogram Archive in the Department of Psychology an organizational framework. First and foremost was evaluated here, which other researchers had collected in the field. Until 1914 this field research took place in the German colonies mainly.

From Hornbostel influenced in Berlin between 1900 and the Nazi seizure of power, a number of musicologists. These include Curt Sachs (1881-1959), Robert Lachmann (1892-1939), Mieczyslaw Kolinski (1901-1981), Kurt Huber (1893-1943) and Abraham Zvi Idelsohn ( 1882-1938 ). Almost all were Jews and had to leave the country no later than 1933. Richard Wallaschek (1860-1917) developed in London a theory to psychological perception of music. Erich Stockmann's focus was generally in addition to the European folk music the mediation of non-European music. Together with Oskár Elschek (* 1931), he developed a novel classification of musical instruments from the bottom up. In Switzerland coined Hans Oesch (1926-1992) the ethnomusicology.

• Birgit Abels, since March 2011 Professor of Cultural Musicology / Ethnomusicology at the Musicology Department of the Georg -August- University Göttingen, research priorities Southeast Asia and the Pacific
• Regine Allgayer - businessman ( b. 1950 ), Professor of Comparative Musicology at the University of Vienna, Research in Brazil
• Raymond Ammann, Swiss, lectureships at the Leopold- Franzens- University of Innsbruck and the University of Basel, research in the South Pacific, including at the Kanak and in Vanuatu
• Max Peter Baumann ( born 1944 )
• Wolfgang Bender ( b. 1946 ), founded at the University of Mainz, the archive of African music, an ethnologist several times in Africa
• Rudolf Maria Brandl ( b. 1943 ), ethnological and musicological studies in Vienna, 1982-2008 Professor at the Georg-August -Universität Göttingen. Focus Southeast Europe, China
• Helmut Brenner ( born 1957 ), focus on Latin America, folk song in Austria
• Klaus- Peter Brenner (born 1958 ), Georg -August- University Göttingen, focal points in Africa and Turkey
• Dieter Christensen ( born 1932 ), professor and director of the Center for Ethnomusikology at Columbia University. Field research in Turkey, Mexico and Oman, publications to the music of the Kurds, the Balkans, New Guinea and Music of Tuvalu
• Veit Erlmann, Professor of Music History at the University of Texas at Austin. Research Focus on Africa, particularly Cameroon, Niger and South Africa
• Franz Födermayr ( born 1933), 1973-1999 Chair of Comparative Musicology at the University of Vienna
• Gerd Grupe ( b. 1955 ), Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, specializing in music of sub-Saharan Africa, African-American music and Gamelan
• Gerlinde Haid (1943-2012), former professor at the University of Music in Vienna, focusing Alpine folk music
• Gerhard Kubik ( b. 1934 ), African and African American music, most comprehensive collection of traditional African music, stored in the Phonogram Archive Vienna
• Josef Kuckertz (1930-1996), formerly professor at the Institute of Musicology at the University of Cologne, field research in India and Iran. Habilitation thesis on South Indian Music
• Wolfgang Laade ( born 1925 ), professor emeritus of the University of Zurich, his extensive collection of musical instruments, sound recordings and print media will be archived at the Center for World Music at the University of Hildesheim.
• Robert Lach (1874-1958), professor of comparative musicology at the University of Vienna
• Ernst light Hahn ( born 1934 ), professor emeritus of the University of Neuchâtel and Zurich University, field research in West Africa
• Tiago de Oliveira Pinto, a professor at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the Universidade de São Paulo, since 2006 at the University of Hamburg, since 2009 at the Institute of Musicology Weimar -Jena, field research in Brazil, Southeast Asia and Africa
• Kurt Reinhard ( 1914-1979 ). Head of the Berlin Phonogram Archive, 1957-1977 Professor of Comparative Musicology at the Free University of Berlin. Focus: Turkish and Chinese music
• Rüdiger Schumacher (1953-2007), formerly a professor at the Institute of Musicology at the University of Cologne, field research in Java and Bali. Other priorities: Theory of ethnomusicology and Church Music
• Marius Schneider (1903-1982), from 1933 head of the Berlin Phonogram Archive. Cultural-historical theories
• Tilman sea bass ( b. 1939 ), professor emeritus at the Institute for Musicology Innsbruck, emphasis Indonesia
• Artur Simon (* 1938), 1972-2003 Head of Ethnomusicology at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, Berlin Phonogram Archive collection. Research priorities Sudan, Sumatra, and the music of New Guinea
• Marcello Sorce Keller ( * 1947 ), focus on music sociology
• Erich Stockmann (1926-2003), Research interests: Music instruments, East European Music
• Wolfgang Suppan ( born 1933), Research focus: Austrian folk music
• Raimund Vogels, Professor at the Institute for Music Education Research at the Academy of Music in Hannover. Since April 2011, Director of the Center for World Music at the University of Hildesheim

Other European countries

From Hornbostel also the Dutch ethnomusicologist Jaap Kunst (1891-1960) was suggested for the collection of non-European music. Art was with his theoretical works and field recordings for leading authority Indonesian gamelan music. Today's French ethnomusicology goes back to André Schaeffner (1895-1980), who established the field in 1928 at the Musée de l' Homme in Paris. Unlike many German colleagues, he undertook extensive own field research that led him to the French colonies in West Africa.

While the Western European musicologists is mainly related to non-European music in its early days, it was in Hungary and Romania composers such as Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály and Constantin Brailoiu that began after 1900 to collect their own national folk music and recorded systematically. So they created the basis of a general ethnomusicology. The recorded on wax cylinders in the villages, traditional music has influenced her work as a composer and partially preserved in the archives for posterity.

The English psychologist Charles Samuel Myers (1873-1946) adopted in 1898 the ethnographic Cambridge expedition to the Torres Straits and Sarawak in part, from where he brought the first musical recordings. Charles Russell Days work on South Indian Music The Music and Musical Instruments of Southern India and the Deccan was first published in 1891, Arthur Fox Strangways described in The Music of Hindostan, 1914, the North Indian music. The Irish music historian Henry George Farmer (1882-1965) focused on the Arab music history and describe their impact on the European music.

Among the founders of ethnomusicology Africa in Britain, Arthur M. Jones belongs (1889-1980), who was a missionary in Zambia and worked from 1952 to 1966 professor of African music at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. The British ethnomusicologist of German descent Klaus Wachsmann (1907-1984) is regarded as a pioneer of African music research. From 1937 to 1957 he lived as a Protestant missionary in Uganda, where he also did field research and an extensive collection of African musical instruments docked. 1963-1968 he was a professor at the University of California.

Percival Kirby (1887-1970) is considered a pioneer of music research in South Africa. Most of his studies in which he focused on traditional African music and tried to exclude Western influences, dates from the 1930s. Hugh Tracey (1903-1977) put on an extensive collection of recordings from sub-Saharan Africa that have been published on over 200 LPs. John Blacking (1928-1990) arrived in 1953 as an assistant Tracey to South Africa. The only short-term stay with an ethnic group for the purpose to make sound recordings, he took soon be too limiting factor. Therefore, he separated from Tracey and operational 1956-1958 anthropological research in the Venda of their music and ritual practice, he brought extensive records. 1969 Blacking returned back to the UK and took a chair at the Queen's University of Belfast.

United States

John Comfort Fillmore (1843-1898) was a pupil of Hugo Riemann and operation in its follow one related to the European musical culture historical musicology. After studying piano and harmony, he specialized in Indian music. In 1894 after field research in India A Study of Indian Music.

Frances Densmore (1867-1957) began in 1907 with systematic recordings in North American Indians, whose music she tried to grapple with European notation. From the beginning of her field research on trying to represent the music of the different tribes in their cultural and religious context and to convey such a complex picture of the respective tribal culture.

The aligned exclusively to the application of a collection of early music activity researchers tried to give a theoretical foundation George Herzog ( 1901-1984 ). In the 1920s he studied with von Hornbostel in Berlin and then at Columbia University with Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict, who practiced as anthropologists a formative influence on ethnomusicology beginning of the 20th century. Under their influence, Duke learned to understand the music within the respective cultural context. Klanganlysen were linked to questions of daily use and the social function of music.

From 1932 to 1935 Duke held a chair at Yale University. At this time, unfolded his theories, which were based on ethnological studies and comparative studies of folk music and non-literate languages ​​, the greatest impact. The short Scripture Music in the Thinking of the American Indian ( "Music in the minds of North American Indians " ) from 1938 carries in its title the attempt to understand music from within the culture. His explanations for the non- universality of musical language have become a general consensus.

It was inspired by the Berlin Comparative musicology the Culture Area Theory, which was the setting for the 1950s as a cross-cultural anthropological research approach for the entire teacher education. Similar ideas were represented in the United States by Curt Sachs, who taught at New York University in 1937, and after 1950 just there by the Hornbostel -student Mieczyslaw Kolinski.

Africa - culture as a dynamic system

African musical styles and traditions are no longer described as static and ahistorical. By comparing the sound recordings made ​​at different times, stylistic developments can be reconstructed. The problem is the division into traditional and popular music. As a "traditional" is called an inline in a cultural and often ritual context in a particular region music that is used for identification and delineation of an ethnic group. Here, this music is "popular " in which it attracts a larger audience. Now commonly referred to as popular music styles are serving in their performance practice and understanding after talking, widespread and are thus similar to the western pop music. At the same time a once only practiced locally, traditional music was spread by migration, particularly through labor migration in a wider area.

From the middle of the 20th century came from trained in the Western tradition of research African ethnomusicologist a new way of seeing into the consideration of African music that could follow the previous unidirectional from the outside to the continent view a dialogue between Africans and European / American ethnomusicologist. Africans who undergo their living environment a scientific view, resemble, by involving oneself, outside researchers who bring their expectations and working conditions in the participating observation discussed.

Cultural dialogue takes place since the 1960s, not only on an abstract level, rather than scientific, but is actually in the personal relationship between the researchers who come from different cultures. Joseph H. Kwabena Nketia ( b. 1921 ) is a composer from Ghana and is considered the leading African musicologist. Nketias The Music of Africa from 1974 to Standardwerk.1963 he received a professorship at the University of Ghana in Accra. In the same year he was invited for a semester at the University of California (UCLA ), in return came Mantle Hood, the founder of the local ethnomusicological department for a visiting professorship to Accra.

Among the representatives of a black African ethnomusicology is one whose pioneer from Sierra Leone, George Ballanta (1893-1961), who examined Negro spirituals. The Ghanaian composer and musicologist Ephraim Amu (1899-1995) returned to his musical studies in London in 1941 to Ghana, where he saw his role as preserver of traditional African culture. He taught in the 1960s to set up by Nketia music department at the University of Accra. In his compositions, which were a link between tradition and modernity, he joined Western harmonies with African rhythms. Then he recognized the Western notation as unsuitable for the description of this rhythm, he laid down the foundations for an appropriate notation in a theoretical study. Thomas Ekundayo Phillips (1884-1969) from Nigeria remained true to his roots connected in the African church music. He was also an organist, composer, teacher and scientist. From him comes the first, written by a local, scientific treatise on African music (Yoruba Music. African Music Society, Johannesburg 1953). In the biographies of all African musicologist - the musicians and composers were at the same time - even in the Dzifanu by Seth Cudjoe (1910-1984), a trained doctor in the vicinity of the Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah, shows a devotion to the African roots, after a time had studied long in Western countries. Your participation in the Pan-African movement was the expression of an anti-colonial political setting. The theoretical understanding of music coincided with a change of performance practice: the music standing in a particular cultural context came from a circle of spectators, participants were also the musical event, before an uninvolved the listening audience on a stage. This exemption and dissemination of music in the western model was often associated with their - and the composer - new political role within the African National movement.

To the next generation is one who was born in 1935 in Lagos Akin Euba whose works are characterized as a composer and ethnomusicologist naturally from a cross-cultural understanding. His compositions of contemporary music are aiming for a synthesis with their own Yoruba music tradition; in London and Los Angeles trained musicians examined later in his ethnomusicological dissertation, the Yoruba drum language, translatable into a poem sound recordings and their cultural context.

Born in Congo Kazadi wa Mukuna studied from 1961 at UCLA in California, where he received his doctorate in 1978. Since 1989 he is Professor of Ethnomusicology at Kent State University. In addition to research on the music of his homeland, he is primarily concerned with the influence of African music in Brazil.

New concepts

The entrainment with the English phrase - translated here as " transient " - designated research approach understands music, especially rhythm, as biologically embossed phenomenon. This results in a Biomusikologie, which explores the evolutionary aspects of human music making. People try to equalize with repetitive body movements of their environment. The rhythm in music is examined with a comparative perspective, whereby the collective music presents itself as an entrainment process: the participants unconsciously same rhythm at each other and keep this rhythm even after sudden interruptions faithful. One of the first ethnomusicologists who pointed out was Alan Lomax in the article The Cross -cultural variation of Rhythmic Style of 1982. Rhythm forms the framework for the identification with the group. It can be concluded that music is created not only as a creative art by individuals, but in the community as music in everyday life. The reasoning presupposes a corresponding concept of culture.

A comparative study of musical structures, the grammar of the language of music, is to be distinguished by means of data processing and computer analysis, among other things, the proportions of fixed rules and improvised portions of each musical style. Computer-based methods of analysis do not form a distinct research approach, but additionally applied experimentally in different countries.

Making music as a basis

The American Alan Parkhurst Merriam (1923-1980) understood in his work, The Anthropology of Music 1964 music once as part of the cultural practices ( "music in culture" ) and regardless of the sound production. Contrast, was for Mantle Hood (1918-2005), who studied with Jaap Kunst and wrote several works on Indonesian music, ethnomusicology inseparable part of the culture and simply the study of all music at every opportunity. For Hood the starting point ethnomusicological employment was the practical learning of music to be tested. The term "bi - musicality " he demanded learning at least a second musical culture to be socially integrated and to be able to understand the music in the culture from the inside out. If this approach still controversial at its publication in the 1960s, it has now been widely accepted. The participant observation closes for learning the respective musical instruments explicitly. This is, for example, the ethnologist and musicologist Gerhard Kubik in Africa and for John Baily in Afghanistan, a disciple of John Blacking, the necessary condition for theoretical research. Both occur as a musician in appearance.

That music should be studied as a culture, is undisputed. The concept of a bi- musicality, however, harbors for some ethnomusicologists is a risk that the differences are emphasized before the commonalities and thus indirectly the old distinction in the "Own " and the " stranger " is confirmed. Accepting the differences could hinder the search for a fundamental kinship of musical cultures. John Blacking already demanded that a single method of musical analysis should be sought that is suitable for any style of music. The idea of ​​a world music theory from the ethnomusicologist (focus on Indonesia), composer and musician Michael Tenzer ( born 1957 ), although considered unrealistic, occurs in his own compositions for European chamber music and gamelan for the universality of the music already in the foreground.