Bruno Nettl (7)

Chapter 6

The Nature and Description of Style: Some Theories and Methods

This chapter presents problems but, on the whole, eschews solutions. For practical purposes it is frequently impossible to describe a body of music or a style of music except under the handicaps and disadvantages which are discussed. The ideal description of style may be a completely unattainable goal, in view of the many questions and problems which must be solved in the course of such work. Ethnomusicologists must continue to work under these handicaps; to do otherwise would mean to abandon their work. But they should constantly be aware of the conditions under which they are working, and of the limitations which these conditions place on their conclusions; thus they can at least evaluate these conclusions and place them in their proper scholarly context.

There is no adequate survey of world music in ethnomusicological literature. There are a few works which indicate some of the kinds of things found, and which divide the world into broad, general areas of style. Nettl (1956) and Bose (1953) indicate some of the tremendous variety, and Leydi (1961) goes even into somewhat greater detail. All of these try to show that all music can be described in the same general terms, that the music of any culture can be recognized as music by any Western student.

On the other hand, List (1963) indicates several phenomena which may or may not be music, showing that even the broadest methods of musical description may not be adequate for all musical phenomena.

The ultimate purpose of description of musical style in ethnomusicology is comparison. It may be easy for a scholar to grasp the style of an individual composition by inspection, without having the elements of music which he sees or hears analyzed in writing; and it may not be too difficult for him to distill the essence of a homogeneous group of compositions. But in comparing one body of music with another he must have some tools at his command so that he will be enabled to state verbally the similarities and the differences. And since he will wish to deal with any and perhaps all of the world's music, it is necessary for him to have a system of musical description available which can be used for all kinds of music.

We do not yet know the limits of the world's musical styles. To be sure, they are constantly changing, and certainly in Western civilization, the advent of the so – called electronic music and mu8ique concrete heralds the need for radically new approaches to musical analysis. But we also don't know what the music of all of the world's other peoples is like. Descriptions of musical styles applying to whole cultures, tribes, or nations are still the exception. We have some idea of the kinds of phenomena which we may expect to find in the non – Western world, but we cannot be sure that completely unexpected things will not also be found. It is therefore necessary that the systems of musical description used contain as few as possible of the kinds of features which will lead to statements based on only one kind of music. Concepts such as tonality, meter, and specific kinds of form should be used with care so that they will facilitate rather than obscure the perception of musical styles in which similar but genetically unrelated phenomena are found.

One area of musical description in ethnomusicology is the particular province of the speciallst in Oriental cultivated music. This is the analysis and description of the theoretical systems of 167

Oriental music, which may actually differ considerably from the music itself. The distinction between the statements of the musical theorist and the work of the composer and performer in Western civilization is quite evident. Whether such great distinctions exist in Oriental cultures cannot be said, but this possibility must certainly be faced. Thus, we read of tone systems which contain microtones – 22 intervals (srutI8) to the octave in the classical music of India. According to Bake (1957: 206) these are important in Indian musical theory, but they do not occur in actual practice except in ornamentation, that is, two tones separated by one sruti do not occur successively. This difference between a theoretical system and a practical one in the same culture also points up the difference between a musical system as found in the whole corpus of compositions and as manifested in the single composition. For example, the various scales and modes found in a group of compositions, when superimposed on each other, may yield a heptatonic scale, in spite of the fact that no single composition uses all seven tones. In the study of musical instruments of prehistoric cultures, false conclusions could be drawn if it were assumed that an instrument capable of producing, say, a diatonic scale (such as certain kinds of flutes) must actually have been used to perform melodies with diatonic scales.

We have discussed in detail the problems of describing individual pieces of music, or perhaps more precisely, single renditions of individual pieces of music Such description, we have pointed out, is of use mainly in the compilation of a description of a body of these individual compositions. We have not even touched on the problems which result from the differences between the various renditions – by one or by several performers, between different stanzas sung successively and renditions given years apart – of the same piece, although the consideration of variants of one song would yield important information on what is significant and what is incidental. But description of musical style is most important when a group of musical compositions which have something in common are examined.

Musical Style and Musical Content

In musical terminology, distinction is sometimes made between content and style. Although these two aspects of music are logically inseparable, there are examples taken from observations of cultural dynamics which indicate that each may have a kind of life of its own, that each is capable of undergoing change by itself. By content we mean, of course, the individual musical idea – in Western terminology we might call it the theme – as manifested in the specific composition. By style we mean the aggregate of characteristics which a composition has, and which it shares with others in its cultural complex. When speaking of an individual culture or a single, unified corpus of music, we may have no particular occasion to distinguish between the composition and the style as a whole. Of course, a musical composition cannot exist without having certain characteristics of scale, melody, rhythm, and form. And these characteristics, again, are only abstractions which must ride, as it were, on the backs of the concrete musical items, of the musical content. It is when we study the musical relationship between two or more cultural groups that the distinction given here is especially useful, because it is possible for musical ideas to move from one culture to another and in so doing to change their character, and it is also possible for characteristics of a musical style to move without being accompanied by specific compositions or themes. Thus we may distinguish, in music, between content, the composition or its theme, and the stylistic superstructure, the non thematic characteristics or traits. And the fact that this distinction is possible is of considerable value not only to the student of music but also to the student of culture at large. Let us examine the implications of this distinction in some cases  involving acculturation.

The greatest problem in the study of the geographic movement and distribution of compositions and themes is the identification of genetic relationships among compositions and their variants. The study of such movement must usually, after all, be retroactive. Since we can rarely trace the family tree of a group of variants, we must begin by collecting musical items which we suspect of being related, that is, of coming from the same original form, and then demonstrating or disproving this relationship. And only when we have variants which can safely be considered related can we try to ascertain the effects of acculturation Finding genetic relationships in the vocal music of a single Western folk culture, i.e., the British, is relatively easy, for here there is a tendency for the verbal text to accompany the tune in its travels, and when text and tune types coincide in a geographic distribution, genetic relationship seems certain. But when a tune moves &om one culture to another, as from a group speaking one language to another speaking a different language, there is rarely a similar transfer of verbal content.

A clarification of the term "genetic relationship" is necessary. After all, a man may take a song he knows or has heard and change it, creating what is usually called a variant. This presumably occurs when the style – not the content – is changed. Eventually, variants may become very, very different from their original or parent form. But a man may also make up a brand new song by copying, as it were, the stylistic traits – the superstructure, as I've called it – of songs he already knows. Now the two processes are obviously different: in one, the basic musical content remains constant and the stylistic traits change; in the other, the musical content is new but the style remains more or less the same. Yet when we find similar musical forms whose relationship is not clear, we can't tell whether this relationship is truly genetic or whether the forms are similar because of an identity of style. Mere similarity cannot be automatically taken as evidence of genetic relationship.

There seems to be greater variety in European folk music than in the music of a North American Indian cultural and musical area, such as the Great Plains. I say "seems" because this greater variety may be due to an objectively greater number of different phenomena in European folk music or it may be because I – a typical Western listener, perhaps – am more sensitive to distinctions in Western than in Indian music. In either case, the study of genetic relationships in the songs of an Indian tribe is more difficult than in a Western folk style because a large proportion of the repertory may exhibit similar or identical features, so that we would have to assume genetic relationship among all of these songs; we would have to assume that all of them stem from one original. Or we would have to explain the matter by assuming a practice of composition which Is extremely imitative. There is no doubt, however, that both style and content are exchanged in North American Indian music. Willard Rhodes (1958) has shown the diffusion of a specific Peyote song among a group of tribes. George Herzog (1936), on the other hand, has indicated the acculturation of style elements in the geographic movement of the Ghost Dance religion. Here a type of form, which he calls the paired – phrase pattern, has by itself moved from its home, the Great Basin, into an area with a wholly different style, the Great Plains.

The style of the Peyote songs is also different from that of the other songs in the repertories of the various tribes which use Peyote (McAllester 1949).Most Peyote songs have some characteristics similar to those of the songs of the Apache, and it is presumed that the Peyote cult came to the Plains from the south Western United States. But in the Great Plains, the Peyote songs have also taken on certain specific traits of many older Plains songs: they have the cascading melodic contour, the strophic form of which two long, similar descending sections form the basis. Nevertheless, they have the rhythm of Apache music. We may speculate about the reasons for the retention of certain Apache traits as against others which have given way to their Plains counterparts. The theory of syncretism, which Waterman derives from his belief that African musical features were retained by N egroes in the Americas because the Western musical styles which they encountered had certain similar features, does not seem to explain the Peyote situation. Is it possible that there are certain laws in the structure of the music itself according to which certain traits, by their own nature, tend to be more capable of being retained than others? Is there some element of cohesion or integrity in certain elements of musical style which enables them to remain intact under the strains of acculturation? s it possible that the greater homogeneity of form and contour on the Plains made it necessary for the Peyote songs to take on Plains form and contour before they could be accepted on the Plains? And could it be that the smaller degree of homogeneity in rhythm on the Plains made possible the retention of Apache – like rhythm in the Peyote songs? In other words, could it be that the Plains Indians simply cared more about retaining their form and melodic contour than their rhythmic structure?

When a composition passes from one culture to another, and changes in the process, it must retain some characteristic, some spark or idea or motif which enables us to identify it and which testifies to its identity. No doubt various elements may be involved here. Sirvart Poladian (1942) believes that melodic contour, the over-all direction of the melody, remains constant more generally than other elements. Mode and scale, over – all form, and the presence of specific but minor earmarks such as a particular interval at a characteristic point, or a particular sequence of phrase endings – which Bartók considered the most reliable of constants – all of these could be the constant features around which revolve the changes which allow a composition to be greatly altered and yet to retain its identity. Among Peyote songs the rhythmic structure, which is related to the peculiar meaningless words of Peyote songs, is sometimes the key factor.

Moving to another side of our general topic, the matter of compatibility, described in publications by Waterman (1952) and Alan P. Merriam (1955), enters into our consideration.

In order for acculturation to take place between two musical cultures, the musical corpora must in some way be stylistically compatible. Here the implication is that certain common features in the stylistic aspect of music must be present in both cultures before an exchange of material can take place. Presumably, then, once the stylistic and other cultural conditions warrant it, there will be a movement of musical content, i.e., songs, from one group to another. Following this speculation further, we should then observe greater approximation in style between the two groups. Thus we may find that musical acculturation may be an alternation of movement of style and content until the two cultures share a single musical culture. Needless to say, this hypothesis must be tested by observation.

We may ask, then, whether a law governing the existence or absence of acculturation in music could perhaps be discovered, or formulated, through quantitative approaches. We have stated that while a song can move from one culture to another and in the process take on characteristics of the second culture, it must retain some of its original characteristics. Would it be possible to break down a song into a number of traits – scale, melodic contour, mode, intervals, meter, etc. – and make a statement regarding the number of these characteristics which remain, and the number which are changed, when a song passes from one culture to another? Is it necessary, for example, to have a certain number of traits remain constant in order for a piece of music to retain its identity? Are certain aspects of music more likely to be these constants than others? Is there a hierarchy, as Poladian and Bartók imply? For example, let us imagine a song which moves from culture A to culture B; in making this move, it changes in a fundamental way its rhythm, scale contour, etc., but retains the over – all form. Is it stiII the same song, or must it retain also a more specialized aspect of its style, such as a scale, in order to retain its identity?

A similarly quantitative approach could be followed in viewing the acculturation of stylistic features. It has been pointed out, for example, that certain features, such as the paired – phrase forms of the Great Basin area, have been adopted by the Plains tribes, whose music is generally quite different. Theoretically, it is possible for a stylistic feature to be passed from one cultural group to another without the simultaneous movement of specific compositions. Practically, this would seem highly unlikely in a culture without a written musical tradition. In the case of the Ghost Dance style, which is what the Great Basin style is called when found in the Plains, we know that certain songs were taught to the Plains Indians and that the Plains Indians then composed new songs in that style and adapted some of their old songs, especially those which already tended in the direction of the Ghost Dance style, to the paired – phrase form. Could we find out how much actual musical material must be passed from one culture to another before the second culture will begin producing its own material in the style of the first culture? I believe these are questions worthy of further study. Answers to them might help us to understand some of the specific musical phenomena which have resulted from acculturation.

Delimitation and Sampling

A body of music may be described at various levels. In the literature on the subject, the bodies of music are often not well defined, and the word "style" is frequently used to indicate a body of music which is described as having some homogeneity, without indications of exactly how this style is culturally delimited. In practice, descriptions of music strive toward statements of homogeneity, and the student taking upon himself the task of describing a body of music usually tries in advance to delimit it in such a way as to make possible an analysis which will yield a homogeneous picture. Frequently enough, a body of music as delimited by general cultural criteria exhibits a homogeneous musical style. But on the other hand, musicologists have occasionally picked, from a collection, those musical items which seemed to them to satisfy some ideas of musical style, and have neglected others. Such a procedure has, needless to say, limited value. A less reprehensible, but also limited, approach to describing a body of music is to accept a field collection as a unit, without questioning the degree to which it is representative of the cultural unit of which it is a sample. Of course it is often impossible to work with units other than the samples comprising field collections, but these should be taken as samples of cultural units, not as independent bodies of music with a validity of their own.

What kinds of bodies of music, then, are acceptable as units for musical description? There are many, and we can only give examples. Perhaps we can again make use of an analogy with language, which distinguishes between a language, a dialect-dialects of one language can be understood by speakers of the other dialects of that language – and an idiolect (the special character of the language as spoken by one person).Then linguists recognize the special characteristics of language as used for specific activities (e.g., scientific Russian is not very intelligible to ordinary Russians), of the language of individuals who are bilingual and whose manner of speech of each language is influenced by the other, and so on.

Analogously, in music there is the over – all style, then regional substyles, village or tribal, – styles, and individual personal styles. Then there are styles used for special kinds of music, specific ceremonies, instruments, etc., and also styles which have developed under outside influences.

In contrast to language, which is most easily delimited at the highest level – Linguists have an easier time distinguishing one language from another than one dialect from another – the greatest difficulty in musicology is deciding what is "a music." It is accepted that music is a form of communication, but unlike language, the listener does not know as readily whether he is or is not understanding a foreign music; thus the upper limits of it musical style are usually defined arbitrarily so as to coincide with the boundaries of language, culture, or politics. Of these, language is perhaps the most reliable, since so much of musical performance includes, in vocal texts, linguistic performance as well.

In deciding, then, what is "a music," ethnomusicologists have most frequently used the music whose provenience is the same as that of a language as the unit of musical culture.

This is essentially what the anthropologists have done in defining "a culture". These linguistic units in non-literate cultures are often exactly equivalent to tribes which have a certain political organization – although the concept of tribe is a complex one, and although some so-called tribes consist of several very diverse units such as bands or villages. In the folk music of high cultures, the national boundary usually coincides with the unit of musical style, or at least it is assumed to do so. Ordinarily, then, the broadest musical style units in non-literate cultures are smaller in area and population than are the analogous units in the folk music of a literate culture. Thus, consideration of the music of high cultures frequently appears in units larger than the linguistic ones. Descriptions of the oriental cultivated styles are usually in terms of national musics, but descriptions of Western cultivated styles usually take Western European culture as a unit despite its many nations and languages. Evidently musicologists tend to believe that "a music" at the simpler cultural levels is the music used by speakers of one language, and at more complex levels, the music used by a culture area.

The problem at the root of the difficulty in deciding what constitutes a unit of musical homogeneity is the absence of good measuring devices of musical homogeneity. We can tell whether two pieces of music are similar, whether they exhibit similar musical style, but we can only in very general terms indicate whether two pieces are more similar to each other than two other pieces. The tendency, in making such decisions, has been to use what was in Chapter 5 called the intuitive approach to description of music; certain striking features are weighed more heavily than others. Thus, Nettl (1956:141 – 2) divides the world into three main musical areas, largely on the basis of scales and polyphony, and without consideration of rhythm. The Orient and the Americas, because of their use of large intervals, are one area; the Near East, India, and Indonesia, because of the use of small intervals, are another. And Western Europe and Africa, because of their development of polyphony, constitute a third large area. This is an example of using special features of music to determine musical homogeneity without consideration of other features.

An alternative to using linguistic units as the upper levels of musical style description is the use of a concept called, after its general cultural model, the music area. Described in Chapter 8, it is more likely the result of musical description than the basis of it. Other units, similar to tribes and nations but smaller sub-divisions of these, are villages, families, regions within a tribal area, bands. All of these bodies of music presumably give an indication of the general style of music in a culture; that is, a good sampling from each would indicate a style common to the entire population of the group involved.

Bodies of music exhibiting specialized styles may also be found. Styles of individual informants, for example, may not reflect the general style of a culture. This is also true of the styles of individual musical functions: ceremonies, work songs, love songs, ballads, etc. Music associated with individual instruments may also exhibit divergent styles, as may the music of professional musicians if contrasted to the music used by an unspecialized part of the population. Description of any of these specialized bodies of music is, of course, highly relevant to an understanding of the total musical culture. But frequently, music of a specialized nature has been erroneously believed (because other data was unavailable) to represent the total musical picture of a culture.

There was a time when it was assumed that members of non-literate or folk cultures were unable to learn more than one kind of music. This has been disproved, especially through recognition of the fact that members of these cultures take part, in a creative sense, in the acculturation which many so – called under-developed nations have been undergoing.

The fact that Plains Indians could learn, besides their own older musical style, also the styles of the Ghost Dance songs and of Peyote music and carry them on simultaneously, indicates that the learning ability of all peoples is about the same. The assumption that one can find out a great deal about the general style of the music of an ethnic group from one piece of music is obviously false. On the other hand, there is no doubt that all of the music used by one people must fall stylistically into one, or a few, groups, and that each of these groups of compositions has some homogeneity. There is no doubt that each song tells us something about a large group of songs in its culture. How many songs, then, do we need to describe the style of the whole group reliably? And what degree of homogeneity is required for us to classify a body of songs as belonging to one group? In other words, how can we proceed with the description of a body of music?

The statistical approach is the one most frequently encountered. Assuming that the musical compositions in question have some kind of common ground, be it that they are used by one group of people, or for one ceremony, or are played by one kind of instrument, it is possible to approximate a description of the whole body by describing a representative sample. How large should this sample be? Statistical theory has formulae by which the reliability of results based on a sample of the whole are measured. Stated simply, if the random sample is homogeneous, it will be reliable even though it comprises only a small proportion of the whole body; if it displays diversity, its chances of being representative are not as great, and a larger sample is required for reliability. In the study of traditional musics, the size of the total body is never known and, indeed, changes constantly; thus the relative size of the sample cannot be accurately estimated. In practice, ethnomusicologists should, and usually do, examine all of the material in a body of music which is available. Since they cannot know how much material was unavailable, they must evaluate the sample on the basis of its absolute, not relative, size. In practice, an analysis of about 100 compositions 1 in a homogeneous style would usually be considered sufficiently large. If the sample turns out to be heterogeneous, a much larger sample should be found. This writer once analyzed over 1,000 songs from one culture and found that the description based on these was not really correct in the light of additional material found later.

But why should we even be concerned with the size of samples? Is it not enough to describe 100 songs without questioning the size of the body of music from which they are taken? The reason for these considerations, of course, is that we wish to know "how these or those people sing," or "what the music of that tribe is like." W e wish to know the different musical types found in their repertory, and we assume that the information we gain from a description of their music will tell us something about other aspects of their culture. The orientation of the ethnomusicologist has almost always been directed toward a group of people, not toward musical compositions.

Thus it is of relatively little interest to have the description of 50 songs unless we know just what, in cultural terms, these songs represent. This attitude is markedly different from that of some historians of Western music who have frequently used the description of music as an end in itself, and who sometimes analyze only in order to describe the aesthetic effect of a composition.

The ethnomusicologist usually works with elements of music, one by one, or with types of composition within one body of music. Both approaches are needed. Working with individual elements of music makes it possible to go into great detail, but it does not show the interrelationship of these elements. Typological study favors the striking, obvious musical features over the rest. The approach to a corpus of music by musical elements is essentially the same as that followed in the systematic description of an individual composition. The study of types of composition in one repertory is related to what we labeled as the intuitive approach, for the student proceeds by a cursory aural or visual examination of the material, dividing it intuitively into groups, and then checking his results by using a systematic approach within these groups.

The classification of musical compositions within.a repertory or a body of music is related to typological description of a musical style. The presentation of large collections of transcriptions has frequently given rise to discussion of classification in order that the material can be presented in some sort of organized sequence. Thus, for example, Bartók in several of his collections uses the structure of the textual lines as the main criterion.

Classification of music itself is not a matter for discussion here. But the fact that musical criteria may be used simply as a basis for presenting material in a specific order is related to the intuitive approach of analysis iin which certain elements of music are selected above others as the basis for description.

Authenticity

The theory that a culture or, for that matter, any group of people has its own pure musical style which is subject to contamination has played an important role in ethnomusicology Authenticity is the word which designates the quality, distinguishing pure material from that which is not pure. Karpeles (1951) provides a good statement of the position. No doubt the assumption of authenticity is related to the theories which propose specific and predictable musical styles for various types of culture, or race. There are facets to this theory which make its application dangerous. The tendency on the part of the scholars interested in studying "authentic" styles is that they apply a double standard. They consider the music of an African tribe which has been influenced by another African tribe quite authentic, and the same holds true for French folk songs which have been influenced by Spanish folk songs. But they consider as unauthentic the English folk songs as sung by trained American singers, or the songs of an American Indian tribe if these are songs originally taught to the Indians by Western folk singers. This attitude seems curious in view of the fact that such a large proportion bears the unmistakable stamp of recent foreign inHuence. On the other hand, there is some value in regard for authenticity. The ethnomusicologist may be interested in musical utterances simply as events, without regard to their background, but he is more likely to be interested in music which is somehow representative of the musical culture and repertory of the singer and of the singer's cultural group. Thus, in studying the folk culture of the United States, a student will be served less by analyzing songs as they are sung by trained folk singers from American colleges than by studying those sung by Kentucky mountaineers. On the other hand, he will also perform a useful service by studying the songs sung by college folk singers. Only he should not confuse the two.

In considerations of musical style, we should mention the fact that some ethnomusicologists believe that authenticity can be detected through analysis of a musical style alone. They think that they can identify music which is authentic, and distinguish it from contaminated material without recourse to historical or cultural knowledge. Again, while it is possible that the so – called authentic styles of non – Western music share some traits, this is only a coincidence. The non-authentic material today usually bears the characteristics of Western cultivated or popular music, and thus music which shows no or few Western traits is assumed to be authentic. But to take for granted that similarity to Western music is automatically a mark of non-authenticity or contamination is to impose on ethnomusicology the very ethnocentric prejudices which it is one of our tasks to combat.

Is there a musical style and a body of music which is especially the property of each cultural group, and which can be distinguished from music which that group also knows, but which is of foreign origin? The interest in the "real" style of a people stems perhaps from the time, around 1900, when the idea of folk music was closely associated with nation and with nationalism, and when the students as well as the political directors of folk-lore were eager to cleanse their heritage of foreign elements. Another root of the interest in pure styles is the belief, formerly quite common among ethnomusicologists, that the music of a non-literate culture does not change readily, and that the student, if he can only find a people's "true" or "pure" style, is assured of having material of great age. To a degree this point of view is certainly acceptable; but ethnomusicologists have no doubt that even in a relatively isolated culture, music does change, and even groups such as the American Indians and the Polynesians definitely have a music history. But the amount of change which these musical repertories have undergone in recent decades, under the stimulus of increased communication with each other, with Western civilization, and in certain cases with Oriental high cultures, must greatly exceed the amount of change previously experienced. Thus the student of a contemporary non-literate culture may be confronted with a large amount of material which was acquired recently, and he may wish to separate this from the older material of the culture. Frequently he can do this on the basis of statements by informants, but often he must rely on his analysis of the musical style to make the distinction. Of course the thorough student of a musical culture must be interested also in the material recently acquired, and in the effect which this has had on the older music; to disregard the newer material because of its alleged "impurity" would be to make unsubstantiated judgments, and to neglect the obvious fact that the styles which now seem so ancient and pure would at one time have had the same impure character so far as an earlier investigator may have been concerned. And of course the study of musical change and of the interaction of musical styles on each other in a contemporary environment is in itself a fascinating one. Nevertheless, the description of the older styles of a culture, and to some extent the identification of older elements, is an important task. But we should, I believe, guard against an attitude which places greater value on the old, and which assumes the existence in the work of a group of pure musical styles whose change, in recent decades or centuries, is to be considered a contamination. Many collectors, especially those of Western folk music, have failed to describe some of the most interesting musical phenomena because they insisted on collecting only the old, pure songs.

Identification of the real, true musical style of a people assumes, moreover, that each culture has one main musical style, and a body of music which is basically homogeneous.

This attitude is at the root of the many statements in ethnomusicological literature which give the style of a people on the basis of a few songs.

It may be true that many non-literate cultures exhibit a relatively homogeneous musical style. The need for keeping the music simple and for having it accepted by a large proportion of the tribe rather than by only a few avant-garde musicians is partly responsible, as is the fact that such cultures usually place little importance on artistic originality. But there are some cultures which have music in several styles, and roughly in equal proportion. The Shawnee Indians, for example, have songs in the style of the Eastern United States Indians, in that of the Plains, and in that of the recently developed Peyote cult, as well as those of an archaic, simple layer present in children's songs and lullabies. It is possible, of course, to estimate the relative ages of these groups within the Shawnee repertory, but it cannot be said that any of them is more typically the property of the Shawnee than of the others, especially since n6ne of them is the result of direct Western musical intrusion.

Still there can perhaps be said to exist some inherent thread of relationship between a group and the style of its music. Perhaps there is, after all, one kind of music which is particularly the property of a cultural group, in spite of the fact that we cannot assume an inherent relationship between the physical characteristics of a people and its musical style, and in spite of the fact that a culture's economic organization does not seem to have an inevitable effect on its choice of music. The reasons why a people use a particular musical style are varied, complex, and only very partially understood; some of them are explored in Chapters 8 and 9. In a consideration of description of musical style, we should, however, emphasize the interrelationship among the musical elements of a style as stabilizing forces.

Thus the development of rhythm and responsorial performance in African music may have been responsible for the relatively lower development of melodic features and for the stability of meter, and also for the peculiarity of what Merriam (1962) calls the African idiom in music.

While no culture can lay claim to exclusive possession of a musical trait, the structure of the musical traits themselves can create configurations of musical style which, because of the interaction of the elements of music, tend to achieve a degree of stability and a unique relationship to one group of people.

Examples of Descriptions

The following paragraphs discuss a selected group of descriptions of the style of bodies of music; while certainly not presenting a comprehensive picture of ethnomusicological procedure, the publications discussed here are a representative sample. The analyses of Indian tribal music by Frances Densmore offer an example of a statistical approach carried out in a somewhat naive and superficial manner; their very volume, and the fact that they are, in spite of their shortcomings, among the few descriptions comprising a large number of songs, justifies their discussion here. Densmore's Teton Sioux Music (1918) is the most detailed of this indefatigable worker's studies. She presents descriptions of the total Teton Dakota and Chippewa repertories as collected by her, as well as descriptions of individual song types within the Teton repertory. And she makes considerable use of graphs to aid the visual perception of the data. She classifies first the tonality of the songs (according to major, minor, and "irregular"), then the interval between the first note and the tonic of the song and between the last and the tonic. She indicates, for example, that the final tone is the lowest tone in 90 per cent of the songs. She gives statistics for the ranges of the songs, for the number of tones ("degrees.') of the scale used in a song, and for the number of songs containing accidentals, and she classifies the songs according to the kinds of intervals used in the melody, labeling them as being "melodic,'. "melodic with harmonic framework," or "harmonic" in structure. She tabulates the number of upward and downward progressions in the melody, indicating that ca. 64 per cent of the tones are approached from higher tones, and she tabulates the melodic intervals per cent are major seconds, 30 per cent minor thirds, etc.). She calculates that the mean average size of intervals in the repertory is slightly larger than a minor third. Rhythm is treated in terms of the number of songs beginning on accented and unaccented parts of the measure, the meter (duple or triple) of the first measure, and the number of songs (16 per cent) which have no change of meter. The drum accompaniments are similarly treated. The analyses of the individual Teton song groups (war songs, recent songs, etc.) and of the total Teton repertory are carried out similarly, not with graphs but with tables in which the songs tabulated are listed individually. The over-all form of the songs is not considered in Densmore's description of the style.

Evidently Densmore has done a thorough job of counting the phenomena of the songs in her collection. Nevertheless, her description of the style is in some ways meaningless, for it contains some things which need not have been done, while leaving others undone.

Among the relatively meaningless statements are those differentiating between major and minor tonalities. Here Densmore has indu1ged in a practice – which it is perhaps unnecessary to warn against at this date – of imposing the categories intended for one musical style on an unrelated one. The essential difference between major and minor, after all, is the difference between the kinds of third above the tonic note. In Western music between 1600 and 1900, composers, performers, and listeners agreed that this interval was of great importance so that it could justly serve as a criterion for classification of the tonality of an entire composition. But there is no evidence, in American Indian culture, that the distinction between major and minor thirds above the tonic is any more important than some other distinctions, for instance, that between the presence of the perfect fourth above the tonic in some songs and its absence in others.

Moreover, Densmore's classification of songs as major or minor is intuitive in the sense that she had to classify many songs which did not have full diatonic scales, and thus had to decide what the missing tones would have to be. This approach, which is reflected also in the "gapped scale" analysis of Western folk songs with pentatonic scales published by some eminent European folk song scholars, has obvious dangers. Also among the less useful pieces of information in Densmore's study (1918: 18) is a statement of the specific keys which were used – E minor, F major, etc. Again, these are concepts which mean something in Western civilization but not elsewhere. North American Indian culture does not have the concept of absolute pitch. A song ,is not to be sung beginning on a specific vibration rate. Nevertheless, Densmore might be giving us useful information if she simply stated on what tone a song begins. Studies involving pitch and vocal range, etc., could make use of this information.

Similarly, we could make use of the information which emerges from statements classifying songs as major or minor. The professional ethnomusicologist can absorb what Densmore offers without accepting what is not useful. But there is danger in presenting a description of music in terms which imply relationship to other musical cultures. Thus, even a song which actually has all of the characteristics of the major mode should not – if it is not a European song – be classed as major, for such a statement would lead the reader to assume that the concept of major – minor was present in another culture, rather than to realize that – as is probably the case – the structure of the song is only by coincidence analogous to that of another culture's musical theory. From a consideration of Densmore's descriptions of style we may, then, learn the following: 1) It is useful to make exact counts of musical phenomena, and to present the results in statistical statements; 2) it is dangerous to take concepts from one musical culture and use them as the basis of description for another culture; 3) even when statements of this sort are technically correct, they may lead to false conclusions.

Densmore's analyses of her own transcription indicate that the quality and the approach taken in transcribing have a tremendous influence on the content of the description of these transcriptions. Especially in the description of rhythm is thisBruno Nettl - Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology influence felt, for there is much less standardization in the notation of rhythmic features than there is for melodic ones. Thus the placement of bar – lines, the identification of anacruses, or the length of measures in one piece as transcribed by several scholars could vary much more than the placement of the pitches. For this reason, statistics on the number of songs in a corpus which begin on an unstressed beat, or which do not show changes of meter, may or may not indicate something significant about its style.

The approach taken by Densmore is, then, a rather undiscriminating one. It is based on the assumption that anything one can say about a body of music is significant. Many students of musical style, especially those favoring a more intuitive approach to description, will take issue with such a point of view. The main purpose of describing bodies of music is, after all, to distinguish them from each other in ways which are significant in the sense that they reflect differences in cultural and historical tradition. Another purpose is to tell the listener what makes the music sound as it does, or what makes it have the particular effect on him which it has. Now it is quite likely that two styles as widely divergent as the Teton Dakota and a European folk music style have the same kinds of intervals, the same proportion of major seconds, minor thirds, etc., without having any basic similarity. Of course any two bodies of music will differ in some element of music. But could not the two musical styles which have identical proportions of intervals differ greatly so far as the actual use of the intervals is concerned? Does not the fact that certain intervals appear in a particular order, or that certain ones are followed by certain others, really constitute one of the essentials of the musical style? Such questions must be raised if we are to see a statistical approach to the description of music in its proper perspective. We may conclude that an interval count in a body of music can be significant for differentiating musical styles. The reason for the difference between two musical styles may indeed be the presence of many perfect fifths in one and their absence in the other. But if the latter style has fourths instead of fifths, the difference may be small or due to another aspect of music.

Thus, in order to present a thorough description of a musical style with statistical means, many detailed studies of a sample must be undertaken. Densmore has made counts of a number of different elements of music in her Teton Sioux study, but there are many more which she might have undertaken; chiefly, these involve the relative positions of the musical phenomena. And a statistical description of a musical style which presents all imaginable aspects of the music has not yet been made.

Statistics in a more refined sense are used by Freeman and Merriam (1956) in a study not designed to describe musical style per se but to distinguish musical types on the basis of one feature or a group of related features. Specifically, their procedure was to tabulate the major seconds and minor thirds in the repertories of two cults in New World Negro music derived from Africa. The question posed by Freeman and Merriam (1956:466) is "whether or not certain groups of percentages in interval usage can be used as a criterion of identifying a body of song. In extension, if the measure proves valid, it should also be possible to trace musical influences which have played upon a specific group or tribe." The basic assumption of such a study is that the character of any body of music is unique, and that materials related to it or derived from it can be identified by measuring any aspect of that music if the sample is sufficiently large. This procedure is promising for differentiating and relating styles of music, but it does not tell what makes a particular style sound the way it does.

A number of special devices have been used to differentiate musical styles from each other in accordance with single elements of music, in ways similar to the use of interval counts by Freeman and Merriam. Among the most interesting are those describing scales and tempo devised by Mieczyslaw Kolinski. His method for describing the tempo of a single piece has already been mentioned. Kolinski (1959) also gives a method for describing, statistically, the tempo of a body of music, or rather, the average tempo of the pieces in that corpus. He shows that the music of various areas of the world can be distinguished by their average tempi, and, moreover, that the proportion of different speeds within the repertories also differentiates these musics. Thus, he indicates that the tempo structure of Dahomean Negro and North American Indian music is very similar, as indicated in Fig. ll. In the graph, songs are classified as belonging FIGURE ll. Comparison of Dahomean and North American Indian tempo using Kolinski's method.

to different speed groups. The figures along the bottom line indicate these speed groups, no.4 representing songs with tempos of 91 – 120 notes per minute, no.5, 121 – 150 notes per minute, etc. The importance of dividing the repertory into such speed groups must be stressed, for it is conceivable that a repertory having an average tempo of 150 has all of its music into the range of 140 –160, while another repertory with the same average might have very few songs with a tempo of 150 but might instead divide its pieces between a slow 90 and a presto 200. Obviously, in statistical descriptions of musical phenomena safeguards must be found to guard against too superficial an approach. And of course it is of the utmost importance to have the units of the statistical scheme such that they do not conflict with the meaningful units of the style itself. An example of such a procedure would be to count intervals according to their Western names, lumping major and minor seconds together without accounting for the fact that the difference between a major and a minor second is as great as or greater than the difference between a major second and a minor third. In the case of tempo, a differentiation between significant and non significant distinctions is not known. Thus Kolinski’s approach is entirely "phonetic." He does not take into account the possibility that one culture may consider tempos of 150 and 120 identical, making it possible to sing one song either way, while another may feel them as radically different, one extremely slow, the other very fast.

Kolinski (1961) presents a scheme for classifying scales and tone systems. In Chapter 5 we discussed the description of scales of individual pieces. Here we are faced with a system of classifying and describing groups of scales, based on the circle of fifths. It is possible, of course, to classify single scales in this system, but its greatest use is for descriptions of entire corpora, and for comparative work. Kolinski presents each of the theoretically possible scales and then indicates, in detailed tables, which of them occur in Dahomean, Surinam, North American Indian, and British – American folk song.

The scheme proposed in Kolinski’s classification of tonal structures provides for the placement within it of music according to three criteria: How far through the cycle of fifths does one have to go to obtain an the tones in the composition? How many tones of the resulting segment of the cycle of fifths are actually present in the specimen? And which tones are they?

The scheme uses twelve basic "tint – complexes" (complete octave-equivalence is subsumed in this term), from Mono-type C to Hexa-type CGDAEB and from Hepta-type FCGDAEB to FCGDAEBF#C#G#D#A#. Within each tint – complex gamuts are classified according to the number of tints occurring, and listed systematically therein according to content. To prepare an observed scale for inclusion in the classification it is necessary that it be suitably transposed; and, at this stage, enharmonic and functional each possible tonal configuration is listed only at the earliest possible point of its occurrence in the scheme. Kolinski’s illustration (1961:38) shows two scales, E# – F# – A and F – Gb – A, which belong to the three – tint group F – F# – A of the octa-type tint – complex FCGDAEBF# (no.66 of a continuous enumeration from 0 to 348).

A fourth criterion moves away from the systematic to the analytical: "within each tint – complex several modes are to be distinguished according to the tint that constitutes the tonal center" (Kolinski 1961:42). There are several objections to Kolinski's method, among them the difficulty of identifying a tonic. Kolinski does not specify the criteria which he expects to have tised in identifying his tonal center. Moreover, his scheme is only applicable to styles which have intervals no smaller than minor seconds. Nevertheless, it is an interesting exploration of new ways of providing descriptive and comparative data on scales and modes.

In the work of Densmore and of many other scholars who worked for relatively brief times with a large body of material tabular, statistical presentation in which each song is accounted for is common. Perhaps a superior approach is that represented by the stylistic descriptions of George Herzog, who does not usually give detailed information on the features of each song but who presents a description of the kind of thing found most frequently, that which is found occasionally, and that which is rare. He almost always, like Densmore, presents a large number of transcriptions to supply evidence of his statements, and he cites some of the specific songs which contain the features which he describes, so that the reader can see them in the song itself, in addition to reading about it. Herzog's descriptions of style tend to be brief (as in Herzog 1928), and they function more as prefaces to the transcriptions than as the focal points of his publications.

In his works, Herzog stresses the aspect of music which he calls "manner of singing," and which includes descriptions of dynamics, vocal mannerisms, shouts, tempo. His descriptions of scale and tonality usually make use of the special features of the style rather than of a predetermined system used to classify he structures; the same is true of his discussions of rhythm, which are directly descriptive rather than classificatory. His discussions of form are more of a classificatory nature, for he distinguishes among progressive, iterative, and reverting forms, depending on the points at and degree to which they use material presented earlier in the song (see Herzog 1938:305). Probably his special treatment of form is due to the fact that while other elements of music could already be classified in terms of scale, contour, meter, the over – all structure of songs could not, except in so far as it corresponded to the established forms of Western cultivated music. A further feature of Herzog's descriptions of musical styles is his concern with song types. Having described the melody, rhythm, form, etc., of all of the songs in his corpus through thorough inspection, he tries to divide the material into smaller, more homogeneous groups (Herzog 1938:306).

Herzog's method of describing style is largely based on that developed by E. M. von Hornbostel and Carl Stumpf, and has been used by his own students as well as by many other scholars. Its combination of detailed inspection with distillation is responsible for an especially satisfactory kind of presentation. Quite likely it requires a greater acquaintance with the material than does the approach based on detailed counts. These can, after all, be handled mechanically and worse yet, as we have pointed out, they include the risk of neglecting the important interrelationships among the elements of the music. Herzog's approach, then, contains some aspects of the intuitive approach to musical description described in Chapter 5.

A brief look at the methods from which Herzog's technique is derived may be in order here. Essentially, Hornbostel and Abraham, in a typical study (1906), divided music into the elements used also by students of Western music. Emphasis is placed on scales and intervals, which are measured in terms of cents. Rhythm, tempo, structure, and manner of singing are

treated in a cursory way. The approach is a mixture of the statistical and the intuitive, and there certainly is an attempt to distill the essence of the style, to state what is typical, rather than to give a detailed picture. Historically speaking, this method seems to have been tremendously effective, for it has been maintained throughout the varied and the now not so brief history of ethnomusicology. As recent a work as Branders (1962), which describes a complex and varied style in relatively few pages, divides music into four main elements: melody, rhythm, polyphony and form, and singing style. While melody still plays the major role, the relatively greater emphasis on rhythm, form, and vocal technique in Brandel's work is indicative of the trend in musical description during this century.Those aspects of music involving pitch were uppermost in the early scholars' minds, but the others have now come to take their equally important place. Brandel's description of Central African music is based on many transcriptions, but except for occasional quantitative statements, statistics do not play a role; rather, she presents examples of what she considers essential to the style.

Densmore's statistical approach, refined and sophisticated by the methods presented by Freeman and Merriam (1956), represents, then, one main type of.the description of musical style; the less rigid, more impressionistic, but possibly more empathic method, represented by Herzog (1928), is another. These two approaches dominate the serious ethnomusicological literature to the extent that its purpose is simple description of style. A third approach is represented by the work of Bartók and Kodaly.

It is perhaps motivated largely by the need for finding a system for classifying melodies in order to place them in some sensible kind of order in large collections. The most famous work by Bartók (1925) may be used here as an example. The main criterion of classification is the number of lines per stanza, and the number of syllables per line. Thus, the over – all structure of the songs receives relatively more attention than the melodic characteristics.

Within each category, Bartók describes also the rhythm and the scale of the songs involved, and a summary of each large group of songs consists of a broad characterization, in the Hornbostel – Herzog style, of presentation, melody, rhythm, ornamentation, etc. But considerably more emphasis is placed on form and rhythm than on the other aspects of music.

Some very respectable descriptions of musical style use terms and concepts which, rather than telling something about the music itself, describe it by indicating its effects on the Western listener. Thus Rose Brandel, in describing Central African melodic types, speaks of the "descending, motion – propelled octave melody" of the Watutsi (BrandeI1962a:83), and of a "quality of intensity and suspense" which "makes itself felt in a certain type of melody constructed on the tritone" (p. 80).Statements of this type actually abound in ethnomusicological literature. They have been criticized because they may cause the reader to misunderstand the author, who is – in most cases – trying to show the effect of the music on himself, and to use his own reaction as a way of communicating with his colleagues. Only the most naive scholar would assume that a type of melody which, to him, sounds "emotion – propelled" must have the same effect on persons in the culture which produced the melody.

Thus, Brandel (1962a:81) points out that chords in African music which have the structure of Western dominant – seventh chords enhance in the listener a feeling of unresolved harmony, but is quick to state that "there is danger in this kind of thinking, but it is mitigated by an awareness of the context with which we are concerned." No doubt the reader of Brandel's work, if he is sufficiently sophisticated not to confuse the author's reaction to African music with the African's own presumed reaction to his music, will get a better idea of the way the music sounds than he would from an aggregate of statistical tables. On the other hand, the trend in ethnomusicology is definitely away from such ethnocentric tools of description, for the world's music scholars are no longer exclusively Western, and there is no longer much use in sacrificing scientifically acceptable concepts and terms for easier communication.

Classification

The classification of compositions within a repertory is closely related to the problems of musical description. One purpose of classifying tunes, already stated, is to present them, in a collection, in a logical and rational order. Another is to find those musical items which are genetically related. Classification for the first purpose has been achieved in several successful ways. Bartók's classification of Hungarian folk songs according to the interrelationship of the musical lines is only one. Arrangement according to the range of the songs, or according to the kind of scale used, or according to nonmusical characteristics such as the function or age of a song, are all possible, and the characteristics of the style itself should determine which system is used. The kind of classification in question here has most frequently been applied to European folk music, for here is the area in which the largest collections have been made and published. During the first part of the twentieth century, a considerable amount of literature on this subject appeared. Herzog (1950:1048 – 49) provides a list of some of the more prominent publications.

Classification of music according to genetic relationship is much more difficult, and involves the fact that it is not really possible to present concrete proof that two tunes are actually derived from the same parent. Since music in oral tradition is easily changed, and since we usually know only contemporary versions of songs rather than their original forms, we must rely on external evidence, primarily that of simple similarity, to help us establish the genetic relationship. Here we should consider, again, the difference between the actual musical content of a piece, i.e., that part which distinguishes it from all other pieces, even if these have similar or, perhaps, identical elements of music, and the style.

Classification of composition within a repertory may itself function as a kind of stylistic description. For example, George Herzog's descriptions usually end In a division of the corpus into "types". What he is doing in establishing them is something analogous to what the music historian does in describing pieces of music simply by classing them according to certain previously described types, e.g., sonata, rondo, fugue, etc. Herzog's procedure is to develop in each repertory a classification, based on his corpus of material, and to describe the style of each group systematically (see Herzog 1938:307 – 8). Of course all of the songs in a given group do not exhibit similarity in style in all elements of music, but they are identical in certain features.

Selection of these features presupposes an intuitive approach on the part of the student. Having established his types, however, the ethnomusicologist hopes that he will be able to class future compositions in the repertory with which he is concerned within the typology. Classification, then, becomes a substitute for description.

Such a procedure is, of course, both acceptable and practical, but criticism of the classification itself is essential. Historians of Western music have sometimes fallen upon the error of overemphasizing the classification. Thus, they have classed rondos of the eighteenth century together and neglected the vast differences among individual forms of this genre.

They have established a model for the form of ~ugue, and without sufficient emphasis of the degree to which individual fugues diverge from this model, they have fruitlessly spent time t;rying to fit the fugues of various composers into their preconceived mold. Moreover, they have sometimes confused descriptive classification with the classification given to works of music by the composers of these works. And while it is, for instance, of great interest to find that certain works by Haydn and Hindemith carry the same title, Sonata," this does not absolve the scholar from analyzing these works individually, and from noting that the forms of the two sonatas" have very little in common. The lessons to the ethnomusicologist are obvious.

Lomax (1962) has devised a system which he calls cantometrics, and which, by an elaborate system of classification, attempts to describe the chief traits of bodies of music, it can also be used to describe individual pieces. By an elaborate coding system, using recordings – not transcriptions – Lomax assigns to spaces on a graph the manifestations of 37 different criteria. Out of these emerges a "profile," which he then uses to draw certain conclusions about the relationship between the musical style and the culture type of the performing group. For example, his first criterion is "organization of the vocal group"; this is rated "in terms of increasing group dominance and integration. The line asks the question: 'Is the performance a solo by a leader with a passive audience...or is the group in some way active in relation to the leader?',. If point 2 on the graph is checked, this means that the leader dominates completely. "Points 3 and 4 represent other solor singing situations.

...Points 5 and 6 denote simple unison singing....Points 10, 11, and 12 denote what we term interlocked relationship, i.e., when a part of a singing group overlaps another or performs a supportive function" (Lomax 1962:429). Intermediate numbers indicate intermediate stages in the degree of dominance of the leader. And in this manner various elements of musical performance – relation of orchestra to singer, tonal blend, melodic shape, type of polyphony and many others – are rated.

The main criticism leveled at Lomax’s cantometrics is the subjectivity of the rating procedure, and this no doubt will prevent its general acceptance. The advantages of the system are that it can be used by individuals with little technical training in music, and that it stresses aspects of musical performance which do not usually emerge from transcriptions.

But there is a question – since the judgments are admittedly "qualitative" (Lomax 1962:427) – whether the graphs tell us the same things which have in the past been expressed in prose, and whether they are a better form of communication.

Determinants of Musical Style

Perhaps the most fundamental questions which ethnomusicologists have tried to answer are "What makes the musical style of a people the way it is? Why do certain peoples sing in one style, others in a different style, etc.?" These are questions which involve not only description and study of the musical styles themselves, but also – and perhaps primarily – study of the cultural background and context of the music. Some of the theories which attempt to answer these questions rely primarily on the characteristics of musical style itself, and it is these which we should consider here.

One kind of theory is evolutionistic in orientation, assuming that all musical cultures pass, inevitably, through certain stages. The differences among the world's musical styles, according to this theory, are due to the fact that various cultures are found at various levels of evolution, but that all of these, if left alone and uninfluenced by each other, would pass through the same stages, including even the kinds of styles found in Western civilization. Few ethnomusicologists would claim adherence to this theory at its most blatant level, but traces of it are found in many studies. Even so distinguished a scholar as Curt Sachs, in his various works (e.g., Sachs 1962) seems to believe that different levels of culture produce different kinds of music, and that each musical style is bound to change into the next one. His division of music into earliest, later, and latest styles, mainly on the basis of the number of tones in the scales, indicates this.

There are, no doubt, many cultures whose music history reflects an evolutionary scale. After all, the evolutionary schemes postulated usually assign the earliest spot to the least complex material and move on, from simple to complex; and no doubt the musical development of many cultures has moved in this direction. The objection to evolutionist theories is simply that there is no evidence that all cultures inevitably pass through a predetermined series of stages, and that the style of a music is determined by its position in the evolutionary scale. Moreover, there are instances of cultures moving from more to less complex music, for example, the change from complex counterpoint to homophony in eighteenth – century Europe. Also, we must not forget that our measuring devices for degrees of complexity in music are very poorly developed. Nevertheless, the idea that a people's musical style is determined by its level of development has had a tremendous impact on ethnomusicological research and writing.

Somewhat related is the type of theory according to which the kind of culture which a group possesses determines the style of its music. Surely there is much to be said for this theory, for the relationship between the musical experience and other aspects of life is so close that we must take for granted the possibility of such determination. Some of these theories, of course, go further, stating that all groups which have one type of culture will inevitably have one kind of musical style.

For example, some anthropologists (mainly of the early twentieth century) have divided the world's non-literate cultures into three types, according to the bases of their economies hunters, herders, and cultivators. Schneider (1957: 13) gives a corresponding musical classification, saying that “among the hunters, musical performance is interspersed with much shouting”, that among the cultivators, “an arioso style of performance prevails”, while the pastoral peoples occupy a kind of middle ground between these two. Evolutionist overtones are found here as well, for the inevitable historical development, according to this theory, is from gathering to hunting and on to herding and farming, and so on to high urban civilization. The problem encountered by those who wish to make use of this theory is that it is on the one hand difficult to classify cultures and on the other hand difficult to classify the musical styles. And while many examples may show the kind of correlation shown by Schneider, there is still no proof that this correlation is inevitable.

A similar theory of Curt Sachs' has also played a prominent role in ethnomusicological literature. According to him, cultures are divided into matriarchal and patriarchal, according to the relative positions of men and women. Those cultures which are matriarchal, that is, in which women occupy a position of greater importance, have quieter singing styles, and use smaller intervals in melody and smaller steps in dancing, than do the patriarchal cultures. Again, this theory, while of great interest, does not seem to be borne out by a sufficient number of examples. Related to this approach is another viewpoint of Marius Schneider's (1957: 13), according to which men play a greater role in hunting cultures while women play more of a part in agricultural groups. Correlated is the predominance of meter and of counterpoint among hunters (men), as opposed to the importance of melody and chordal harmony among cultivators (women).This theory cannot be properly evaluated without considerably more accurate descriptions of musical styles than are now available. But the difficulty of deciding whether a culture is mainly a hunting one, or whether men are actually more important, is exceeded only by the difficulty of deciding, in a piece of music, whether meter predominates over melody, and whether the harmonic or the contrapuntal aspects in a polyphonic piece are more important. Nevertheless, we cannot abandon the notion that the type of culture will give us some indication as to the type of music. Most ethnomusicologists, for example, accept a very general correlation between complexity of culture at large and complexity of musical style. But they also take for granted the many exceptions to this correlation.

The relationship of musical style and race is one of the earliest theories in ethnomusicology. The idea that members of one racial group will inevitably sing in a certain way is not generally credited any more, and it is taken for granted that members of any race are able, if exposed to it, to learn any musical style. But the idea that each race has a musical style which is most natural to it is still accepted by some scholars. Thus, Schneider (1957:13) says, "race shows itself by timbre, by the general rhythm of movement, and by types of melody," and "racial characteristics in music are easily detected when one actually hears a singer, but they cannot be described in words." The similarity of music exhibited by cultures which share racial characteristics is usually explained by the geographical and cultural proximity of these groups. But since there are, indeed, physical characteristics which set off one racial group from another, we cannot reject the possibility that differences in musical style can come about through racial differences alone.

Little conclusive research has been done because it is so difficult to remove cultural factors. Bose (1952) attempts to show that there are differences between the singing of Negroes and whites even when these are members of the same cultural group; but these differences are found in voice quality, not in the style of the music itself. Metfessel (1928), an early attempt to transcribe music photographically, is similarly inconclusive. Therefore we cannot, for the time being, accept the theory that race determines musical style.

Clearly we are not in a position to decide why musical styles have developed in certain directions and what makes them the way they are. We can identify a number of factors, but we can only speculate about laws and we certainly cannot predict musical behavior. Some of the attempts to formulate laws as the basis for such prediction are discussed in Chapter 8.

We should mention here, however, the idea that musical factors themselves, in relationship to certain universals in the psychology of music, may determine the direction in which a style develops. For example, in cultures whose musical material must be passed on through oral tradition alone, it may be necessary for certain unifying devices to be maintained in order to serve as mnemonic aids.

Music in such cultures can perhaps become complex in one or two of its elements, but not simultaneously in all of them, for complexity at too many levels might make it impossible for this material to live in the memories of people who cannot use notation as an aid to memory. This theory, however, like all of those involving the determinants of musical style, remains to be tested against the hard facts. We must conclude that ethnomusicology, so far as its understanding of the nature of musical style and its ability to describe style beyond that of the individual composition are concerned, is only scratching the surface of its ultimate task.

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