Chapter 7
INSTRUMENTS
Most of what has been said about ethnomusicological theory and method
in the past several chapters applies to all music, vocal and instrumental.
Since the majority of the world's music is vocal, the methods of
ethnomusicology are most frequently directed toward vocal music, and examples
of analysis are songs. Instruments – and perhaps even more so, instrumental
music – are frequently neglected. It is indeed true that singing is much more common
than instrumental music. There are cultures which have no instruments, and
there are others which have only instruments which provide rhythmic
accompaniment to singing and are never used without song. While the Western
urban man tends to think of music as primarily an instrumental undertaking, the
student of folk and non – Western music sometimes forgets that non-Western
peoples also play. And curiously, ethnomusicologists have paid much more
attention to the structure and distribution of instruments themselves than to
instrumental music. Of course it is often easier to collect vocal rather than instrumental
music even in those cultures where instruments abound. Most individuals can sing
and know some songs, but not everyone can play, and instruments are not always available.
In recent decades, the individuals who could make native instruments have decreased
in number. And of course it may not be easy to find the required players for an
ensemble. Also, once instrumental music is collected it is, as a rule, much
more difficult to transcribe than is song. A knowledge of the structure of the
instrument and of the technique of the player is required, and this information
may not be available from the notes accompanying a recording. This explains why
instrumental music is not frequently transcribed or analyzed in the
ethnomusicological literature. Instruments themselves, on the other hand, are
frequently available for description even if their condition is such that they
cannot be played, and even if no player is at hand. Thus descriptions of
instruments are found in the ethnomusicological literature as well as in
studies of other branches of culture.
Instruments are, indeed, of much more than ethnomusicological interest,
and any student of culture should make himself competent to deal with them even
if he must neglect other aspects of musical life. In the first place,
instruments are one of our few clues to the history of traditional musical
cultures. While recordings are almost entirely more or less contemporary,
instruments or their pictorial representations are frequently found in archeological
sites and may be excellent indications of musical life in bygone days.
In the world's cultures themselves, instruments usually have
significance beyond the strictly musical. Thus, as indicated in many
publications, especially by Sachs (1962: 94 – 99), they frequently function as
sex symbols – especially the flute and the drum for male an?
female respectively. Thus, Sachs states that "masculinity, in
unimpaired purity, is the trumpet," and that "the flute seems to be a
love charm everywhere." String instruments are considered by him to be
feminine, as are drums, while some instruments have "conflicting characteristics
of either sex." An example of the latter is a "trumpet made by
cutting off the apex of a conch shell," which is masculine because of its
"aggressive, frightening sound; but as it derives from a water animal and
in its slit and lips reminds of a woman's sex organs, it is feminine as
well" (p. 96).The obvious similarities between flutes, drumsticks, and
male sex organs may lead the investigator to give more weight than is necessary
to the symbolic connection. If we adopt a psychoanalytic view of the symbols,
we would be in a position to say that the symbols exist in the minds of the
peoples whether they acknowledge them or not. If the investigator confronts an
informant with a symbolic interpretation of the instruments, he may find that
the informant corroborates his theory. The question which is frequently
neglected is whether the sexual symbolism of the instruments plays an important
part in musical life, whether it is something to which informants give lip service,
or whether it is more substantial. Thus, the fact that drums, played in pairs,
may be called "female" and "male" may or may not indicate
that these are sexual symbols, e.g., that they make the player or listener
think of the appropriate sex or sexual activity when they are played. Terms
such as "male" and "female" for two drums may be used
simply for the sake of convenience. The way these terms are used, however, may
give us insight into some of the values of a culture. Thus, as Sachs points
out, Western culture would probably call the larger of two drums
"male," and the smaller, "female." Some non – Western
cultures reverse this, however, possibly because the higher tone of the smaller
drum sounds aggressive, or because a matrilineal culture may consider women, as
the carriers of descent more closely associated with the large things in life,
or finally, perhaps, because drums – if they have a feminine connotation –
should be classified according to the degree of femininity jn them.
Thus a large drum is "more of a woman" than a small one
which, being "less of a woman," must be "more of a man."
While there may certainly be some justification for assuming that some
instrument symbols are world – wide or at least widespread, others are limited
to individual culture areas or tribes.
But it is not only the non-literate cultures which participate in this
kind of symbolism. In contemporary American culture, for exarr1ple, the
possession of a spinet piano indicates a moderate degree of intellectual
refinement, while the possession of bongo drums identifies the owner as a
nonconformist, and a dulcimer hanging on the wall symbolizes the avantgarde
intellectual. Possession of a Hammond organ, on the other hand, identifies the
well – to – do business man who wishes to show a slight – but not too great – interest
in "culture." Instruments (as well as vocal music) can be used to
study cultural value systems and symbolism. In some cases, as perhaps in the
example of the Hammond organ, the people who own and play the instruments are
not aware of the symbolism. But in some cultures, the instruments are
recognized and identified as symbols of things supernatural, natural, or
cultural.
Especially in the world's simpler cultures, instruments are among man's
most complex achievements of technology. We know that music occupies a position
of high value in most cultures, especially in the simpler ones; thus it is not
surprising to find that a high degree of
technical and creative energy is lavished on their structure. To a great
extent, this complexity does not involve only those features of the instruments
which produce sound, for artistic work which has nothing to do with music is
frequently included and may play a role in the instrument's symbolism. In
Western civilization, of course, instruments as works of art or pieces of
furniture have design and ornaments which go far beyond musical function. For
this reason, study and description of instruments is important to the student
of visual art, of material culture and technology, and again because
instruments are sometimes preserved in archeological sites, to the historian of
culture at large.
The fact that instruments are relatively so complex makes it possible
to use them as indicators of cultural contact between peoples. If identical
forms of instruments are found in separated areas, and if these forms are
fairly complex, there is a strong possibility that they were brought from one
area to the other, or to both from a third area. The simpler the instrument,
the greater the chance that it was invented separately in each area. A famous attempt
to connect two areas in this way was made by Hornbostel (1910), who found that
the tuning of some panpipes in northwest Brazil and in Polynesia was identical,
thus strengthening the theory of contact between Polynesia and South America.
In linguistics, too, instruments can play an important role. Since
names of instruments are frequently diffused and borrowed along with the
instruments themselves, studies of these names may be useful to the researcher
in linguistic borrowing. And since the terminology of musical instruments,
their parts, and their making is one of the rare instances of technical terminology
in non-literate societies, it offers the linguist an opportunity to explore
this side of speech behavior. An example of research into musical instrument
names and terms in one language is a study by Hause (1948), in which all words
relating to instruments in the Haussa language are analyzed and their
derivations explored. Curt Sachs, history's greatest expert on instruments,
made much use of instrument names as historical evidence; thus the benefits are
reciprocal: the student of instruments makes use of linguistic knowledge to
learn about the origin and history of instruments; the linguist makes use of
instrument names and techniques to study a particular side of language
development. But while the instrument of pre-historical times are of tremendous
use to scholars in several fields, their importance to ethnomusicologists in
finding out about the musical styles of the past should not be overstressed.
The sounds – perhaps we should say scales – which can be produced on instruments
indicate the limits within which a tonal structure must have been founded, but
it is by no means certain that the owners of the instruments actually
approached these limits.
Thus, Mead (1924) gives detailed measurements of the pitches which can
be produced by a number of flutes and reed pipes of the Inca, and includes
several which have chromatic scales, but this, of course, does not prove that
the pieces played on them used chromatic progressions. It must be remembered
that instruments, since they are in many cultures important as pieces of visual
art, may be constructed with visual designs in mind, and not necessarily in
order to produce a particular kind of scale. For example, Wead (1902) has indicated
that the distances between the finger – holes on flutes is frequently not
determined so much by the pitches of the tones which they produced or by the
need to accommodate the structure of the human hand, as by the visual effect of
the spacing.
Instruments occupy a somewhat special place among the concerns of
ethnomusicology. The various theories of the origin of music, and the
motivations of musical behavior, such as the logogenic – pathogenic theory of
Sachs in which music is the result of either speech or emotion, tend to stress
vocal music. Sachs himself (1962:ll0) and also Bose (1953) stated the belief
that instrumental music is of a different origin than vocal music, and that the
instrumental music of a culture always differs greatly from its vocal music;
moreover, that instrumental music throughout the world has certain common
features. Instrumental music is believed to originate in magic and in the need
for special objects of ritual which emit sounds.
While we need not accept this theory as applying to all cultures, we
must agree that the instrumental and vocal styles of a people often differ
greatly.
One reason, of course, is the structure of the instruments. The kinds
of things which the human hands can do with an instrument, the kinds of things
which random play will emit, may shape the style to a large extent. Bose
(1953:215), however, considers a further reason, namely, that instruments
travel from culture to culture more easily than vocal pieces, and that the
instruments tend to carry with them, as it were, their musical styles. Thus, he
cites the Tukano Indians of northwest Brazil, who use flutes and panpipes which
probably originated with some of the more advanced South American Indian
cultures such as the Chibcha; the Polynesians who use mouth organs which
originated in East Asia; and the Africans whose presumably typical marimbas and
xylophones came to them a few centuries ago from the East. In each case, Bose
says, the instrumental styles differ greatly from the vocal styles because the
instruments are not native to the cultures mentioned. He believes that these
cultures have kept vocal styles of much greater antiquity but that they learned
from the bearers of the instruments the music played on these instruments.
The essential unity of the world of instruments is emphasized by Sachs
(1929).The similarity of forms, especially of those parts which are not essential
to sound production, and the similarity of certain cultic functions of
instruments the world over, led Sachs to believe that there were two main
centers in which instruments originated and from which they diHused: the
ancient Near East (Mesopotamia and Egypt) and China. In turn, these may have
received their stimulus from an archaic central Asiatic source.
Related to the theory that instrumental music has a development
separate from vocal music throughout the world is another view, stated by Sachs
(1962:91 – 99), that instruments fulfill roughly the same functions in all of
the world's cultures. The sexual symbolism of instruments is stressed by him
and is assigned world – wide significance.
Classification
Among the theoretical preoccupations of ethnomusicologists has been the
classification of musical instruments. Putting things in categories is perhaps
a vice characteristic of most fields of research, but in the case of
instruments there are some practical reasons for classification. Comparative
work in organology depends on simple, accurate descriptions of instruments, for
each culture has its own terminology, sometimes borrowed from other cultures,
and frequently there is confusion in the native terminologies so that a
particular name applies to one instrument here and to another one there. Thus,
the one – stringed fiddle of the southern Slavs, the gusle, is only remotely
related to the Russian gusli, a kind of psaltery. And the African marimba is
not too similar to the North American one. Again, in Western culture, the jew's
harp is not a harp at all, and the fiddle – like hurdy – gurdy is not like that
hurdy – gurdy which is similar to a barrel organ. Moreover, instruments in non
– Western and folk cultures do not have the degree of standardization which is
found in the machine – made instruments of Western civilization, and indeed,
the European instruments before ca. 1850 also exhibit a bewildering degree of
variety. Thus it is not uncommon to find in museums instruments which have no
proper designation, except perhaps the native name.
A typical instrument of Negro Africa is called, in the literature and
on museum labels, mbira, sansa, zanza, kallmba, finger xylophone, thumb piano,
kaffir harp, etc. Lutes, mandolins, and guitars are confused, as are drums, log-drums
without membranes, rattles, and scrapers.
Classifications of instruments are found in the early literature of
China and India (see Kunst 1959:55 – 56). The Chinese classified the
instruments according to the material of which they were made. The Indian
system distinguished four groups: cymbals and rattles, drums and tambourines,
stringed instruments, and wind instruments. Western European classifications
are based on the musical style which is produced by an instrument, or on the way
in which sound is produced on the instrument. The latter type of classification
is like the Indian one, and curiously, the classification system which was
finally accepted as standard is remarkably similar to that of ancient India.
Classifying instruments in accordance with their musical style cannot,
of course, yield a system of universal validity. Grouping Western instruments
as strings, wood – winds, brasses, and percussion reflects only the roles which
these instruments played in orchestral music of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. But such classifications are of considerable value for understanding
the cultural context of music Nor should we disregard classifying instruments
according to the way in which they are played. Sachs and Hornbostel (1961: 8) question
the propriety of this, saying that a violin remains a violin whether it is
plucked, bowed, or struck, and a dulcimer remains one whether it is beaten or
plucked. But future classifiers of instruments should consider this aspect of
instruments along with the structure and sound – producing mechanisms.
The standard classification which we have mentioned is, course, that
devised by Curt Sachs and E. M. von Hornbostel in 1914, based on the catalogue of
a large instrument collection compiled by the Belgian, Victor Mahillon (1893)
and translated into English (Hornbostel and Sachs 1961).The validity of this
system is attested to by the large number of works which have used it, and by
the fact that only very few attempts have been made to supplant it or to add to
it. It has the advantage of using a decimal system, similar in structure to the
Dewey decimal system used by librarians and inspired by Melvil Dewey, so that
additional subdivisions can be made without difficulty. Kunst suggests adding a
class of "electrophones" to the system.
Basically, the Sachs – Hornbostel classification divides the field into
four groups: idiophones, membranophones, chordophones, and aerophones. These
should not be considered as groupings which imply genetic relationship. Thus,
the so – called earth drum, which consists of a membrane covering a hole in the
ground, could, by the addition of a stick and a string, become a musical bow,
which is a chordophone (the drum part now functions as resonator).No
evolutionist ideas should be superimposed on the system. It is simply a descriptive
one, which attempts to place, in logical order, the instruments of the world – along
with some other instruments which have never yet been discovered but whose existence
can be postulated as earlier forms of instruments which have been found. Museum
exhibits now frequently use terms such as "aerophones," and the
scholarly literature on the subject makes great use of them. Books on
instruments usually proceed in the order used by Sachs and Hornbostel. But curiously,
their numbering system has not been generally adopted. It would be of
considerable value to have descriptions of instruments give the appropriate
numbers from the Sachs – Hornbostel table. Thus, Merriam (1957) could indicate that
the Bashi mulizi, an end – blown, open Hute with finger holes, corresponds to
number 42l.lll.l2. The tables are detailed and will not be discussed here; a
sample from that classifying chordophones is given below.
3 CHORDOPHONES
One or more strings are stretched between fixed points 31 Simple
chordophones or zithers The instrument consists solely of a string bearer, or
of a string bearer with a resonator which is not integral and can be detached
without destroying the sound – producing apparatus 311 Bal zithers The string
bearer is bar – shaped; it may be a board placed edgewise 311.1 Musical bows
The string bearer is flexible (and curved)
311.11 Idiochord musical bows The string is cut from the bark of the
cane, remaining attached at each end
311.111 Mono – idiochord musical bows The bow has one idiochord string
only New Guinea (Sepik R.), Togo
311.112 Poly – idiochord musical bows or harp-bows. The bow has several
idiochord strings which pass over a toothed stick or bridge W. Africa (Fan)
311.12 Heterochord musical bows The string is of separate material from
the bearer
311.121 Mono – heterochord musical bows The bow has one heterochord
string only
311.121.1 Without resonator NB If a separate, unattached resonator is
used, the specimen belong to 3ll.121.21. The human mouth is not to be taken
into account as a resonator
311.121.11 Without tuning noose Africa (ganza, Samuius, to)
311.121.12 With tuning noose A fibre noose is passed round the string,
dividing it into two sections South – equatorial Africa (n'kungo, uta)
31U21.2 With resonator
311.121.21 With independent resonator Bomeo (bU8Oi)
311.121.22 With resonator attached
311.121.221 Without tuning noose S. Africa (hade, thomo)
311.121.222 With tuning noose
S. Africa, Madagascar (gubo, hungo, bobre)Bruno Nettl - Theory and Method
in Ethnomusicology 125
311.122 Poly – heterochord musical bows The bow has several heterochord
strings
311.122.1 Without tuning noose Oceana (kalove)
311.122.2 With tuning noose Oceania (pagolo)
The subdivision of each of the four types is not made on the same
basis. Idiophones and membranophones are divided according to the way in which
they are played; chordophones, according to external features such as the shape
of the body; and aerophones, according to the way in which air is made to act
on the instrument. This inconsistency is based on the author’s desire to
subdivide the classes in ways which are internally meaningful, but it is
nevertheless a minor flaw in the classification. A second criticism could be
leveled at the desire to distinguish between instruments which are
"pure" and those which have undergone "contamination,"
i.e., been influenced by unrelated instrument types. If the classification is purely
descriptive, the history of an instrument should play no part in determining
its position.
In spite of the fact that the Sachs – Hornbostel classification was
translated without changes after both authors had died, there is reason to
believe that Sachs, especially, began to feel somewhat dissatisfied with it
after it had been in use for some decades. I have a letter from Sachs, dated
1952, in which he discourages the idea of translating the classification, saying
that a thorough revision was needed before any attempt at republication should
be attempted. Complex as the Sachs-Hornbostel tables are, they are insufficient
for certain types and areas, and have been expanded on several occasions. Thus,
Hugh Tracey, in a handbook accompanying records of the International Library of
African Music, provides additional categories for the great variety of African
mbiras or finger xylophones. The number of manuals, position of the bass notes,
and numbers of intervals in the scale are all indicated.
A system of even greater complexity was devised by Hans-Heinz Draeger (1948).Although
it does not have the practical value of the Sachs – Hornbostel system, it provides
a thorough examination of the theory of describing musical instruments, approaching
them from the viewpoint of structure, manner of playing as it involves the
player and the relationship of the parts of the instruments, as well as the
rudiments of the musical style (monophony, polyphony, harmony, etc.) and the
variety of sound types and tone colors which can be produced on it.
Draeger's system cannot be used to order instruments in a museum or a
catalog, but it provides a theoretical basis for ordering thoughts about an
instrument, its music, and its cultural context.
Types of Studies of Instruments
A brief description of the most typical kinds of studies of musical
instruments follows. Quite common is the study which attempts to describe all
of the instruments of a tribe, nation, culture area, or continent. A model of
these is Izikowitz (1936), which covers all of South American Indian culture in
the order of the Sachs – Hornbostel classification. A detailed description of
each instrument and a statement of its distribution (including its existence in
North America) are included, and references to the instrument in the ethnographicalliterature
are assembled in tabular form. Ways of playing the instruments, techniques of
construction and of tuning are described. Occasional discussion of the cultural
background is found, but the musical styles themselves are not included. Of
special interest is the fact that both archeological and ethnographic materials
are used to give a very comprehensive picture. Izikowitz's study has served as
a model for other works of the same nature, for example, Sõderberg's (1956),
which proceeds essentially along the same lines as Izikowitz's for an area with
a much richer corpus of instruments. Again, Fischer (1958) describes the
instruments of Oceania in much the same way, but stressing more the geographical
distribution and the role of the instruments in the culture. While Izikowitz
and Sõderberg use photographs, Fischer uses a large number of drawings to
indicate the structure and method of playing.
Of course the study of instruments can – and should – be integrated
with descriptions of musical culture and musical style at large. However, since
the instruments can more easily be handled by scholars not trained in
musicology than can the musical style, we find them appearing in a somewhat
separate place in the literature, and the tendency has been to write descriptions
of instruments without including their musical style while concentrating, in descriptions
of music, on vocal music alone. An important exception to this is Malm's survey
of Japanese music (1959) which is more than half devoted to musical instruments
and their styles. Thus there are chapters on biwa, shakuhachi, koto, and shamisen
music, and sections on instruments in the chapters on Noh and Gagaku. Malm approaches
the instruments as producers of musical style, not so much as objects of
material culture, and descriptions of the instruments themselves are given only
for the purpose of understanding their music.
Of course the bulk of the literature on musical instruments involves
individual forms as they are found in single or related groups of cultures. A
classic of this sort is Die Afrikanischen Trommeln (1933) by Wieschoff., which
describes and gives the distribution of African drums and of related forms in
other continents. He is more concerned than Izikowitz with geographical
distribution, for he adheres, in his theoretical approach, to the Kulturkrei8 theory,
according to which distribution of culture traits indicates not only former
cultural contacts but strata of cultural history. Wieschoff includes a number
of maps of drum distribution; these indicate only the presence or absence of
types in various tribal areas rather than function, musical style, or degree of
prominence. Rather than following the Sachs-Hornbostel system, Wieschoff.
follows his own, discussing, in order, the material and types of drum heads,
the manner of attaching them to the body of the drum, and the shape of that
body.
A sample study of one instrument and its musical style is Merriam's
description of the Bashi mulizi (1957); here Merriam is actually more concerned
with the music performed and with the technique used in playing than with the
distribution of the instrument. Another such study, by Camp and Nettl (1955),
discusses the musical bow in southern Africa, giving the types, distribution,
and manner of playing along with a brief analysis pf the musical style of selected
pieces, but the role of the instruments in the culture is not touched on. A
useful feature is, however, a glossary of musical bow terms in some of the
Languages spoken in southern Africa. Here again we see the importance of
understanding native terminologies for studying the inter – tribal and inter –
cultural diffusions of instruments. It would be the ideal of organologists to
have a complete glossary of musical instrument terms in all languages of the world.
Considering that there are several thousand languages spoken by man, and that
these are constantly changing, such a glossary will probably never be compiled.
But the closest thing to it is Curt Sachs' Real – Lexicon (1913), which does
give the names for instruments in many languages, to the degree to which they
were available in the literature used by Sachs.
This early work, a tremendous achievement, has never been superseded,
and was reprinted almost fifty years after its first publication. Unlike some
of the other branches of ethnomusicology, organology has always provided a link
between this field and the historical study of Western music. Nowhere is the
historic contact between Europe and other continents, also between Western folk
and urban music, more evident than in the instruments. And of course, in the
major works of Curt Sachs, both areas are treated equally.
A "new approach to organology" is explored by Grame (1962),
for here the importance of raw materials – bamboo in this case – for the
development of instruments is stressed. The fact that the material of which instruments
are made may be of great importance in the thinking of the world's peoples (as
in the Chinese classification of instruments) and the symbolism of the various
materials is well brought out.
Catalogs and Museums
Among the important publications in organology are the catalogs of
musical instrument collections. Such catalogs are basic source material for the
comparative study of instruments, for the student of this field cannot visit
all collections which contain instruments of the type he is studying. The
development of detailed catalogs of collections is, then, an important desideraturn
in ethnomusicology. Most of the catalogs now available are only moderately useful,
for they tend to be directed to the layman alone and have publicity as their
main ralson d'etre. A comprehensive catalog should arrange the instruments
according to some classification scheme – that of Hornbostel and Sachs, or
geographically – and give, for each instrument, the exact place of collection
or origin, the time it was collected, the size of the individual parts, the
materials used, the tuning, if possible, and one or more detailed photographs.
Notes on the cultural context of the instrument should be included as well.
Mahillon (1893), the work on which Hornbostel and Sachs based theirs,
is a detailed catalog which could serve as a model, as could that of the Crosby
– Brown collection (Metropolitan Museum of Art 1902 – 14). Among the catalogs
devoted to one instrument type, we should mention that of the Dayton C. Miller
Collection (Gilliam and Lichtenwanger 1961).Here the arrangement is not
classified, but a detailed index of types, trade names, and finger – hole
arrangements makes it possible to locate the various kinds of Hutes in the collection.
But in recent decades few catalogs of great usefulness have been published. A small
booklet published by the Homiman Museum (1958) is interesting in so far as it combines
the function of an introductory text on instruments and a catalog of the
museum's collection. It does not go into great detail on the individual
instruments, but it presents them in Sachs – Hornbostel order, explains their
construction and the way they are played, and gives some information, including
maps, on their distribution. Booklets of this sort could well be used by
museums to direct the lay public; they are not, however, the detailed catalogs which
the professional organologist would need. The kind of information which should
be included in a catalog should also, of course, be made available to the
viewer of a collection of instruments.
The care of instruments in a collection or a museum is a special field
which we cannot discuss here. De Borhegyi (1960) gives a useful and moderately
comprehensive bibliography of museology, including materials on the care of art
objects. The restoration of instruments is also a field of great importance,
especially since many instruments in collections are old, reach the museum in
poor condition, and were collected by individuals who could not evaluate the
condition of the instrument. Restorers of historical European musical instruments
are highly paid speciallsts, and some of the more significant instrument collections,
such as that in the Museum of Music History in Stockholm or the Musikwissenschaftliches
Institut Berlin, employ full – time restorers. Restoring non – Western instruments
has its own problems. The structure of the instruments themselves may be less complicated,
but the restoring of parts which are to be tuned is most difficult. Adding
strings to a Watutsi harp, or moving the tongues of a mbira so that the correct
scale appears, is almost impossible. There are no theoretical foundations to
guide the restorer, and all he can do is to use his intuition or copy similar
instruments in his or other collections. Of course there are collections in
which no attempt is made to keep instruments in playable condition.
This is true of some of the ethnographical museums, such as the
American Museum of Natural History in New York. Here instruments – especially
of the North American Indians – are preserved in large numbers, but they are
usually left in whatever condition they are brought. Such collections are, of
course, still very useful, and there is no doubt that a collection which
contains thousands of instruments would not be able to find the resources to restore
all of them. Collections which keep instruments in playable condition are
usually small; the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam, which has a beautiful
Javanese gamelan orchestra in excellent condition, is of this nature. But for
the student of comparative forms, large collections are essential, and if these
can be built only at the expense of keeping the instruments in playable
condition, so be it.
Of course, the collector of instruments can play an important role in
providing specimens which are in good condition and representative. No doubt
many collectors have bought inferior or toy instruments from natives, and surely
there are cases in which collectors have had their legs pulled. A. M. Veenstra
of Johannesburg tells of an instrument in the British Museum which was labeled
a flute but which, on closer examination, turned out to be a tobacco pipe. The
admonitions given to collectors in Chapter 3 for music in general are
applicable, of course, to instruments. The collector should get exhaustive
information, he should find out not only what the informants tell him about an
instrument, but he should, if possible, observe one being made, and make films
of the techniques of playing. Instruments played in groups should, if possible,
be acquired in groups. And once an instrument is acquired by a collector, he
should play the notes which it produces onto a tape – especially if strings are
involved. Then he should take care of the instrument, keep it in cool, dry
places, if possible, and refrain from applying any wax, lanolin, or other
preservatives unless he is well acquainted with their effects.
In addition to the collections of instruments in ethnographical, art,
and musicological museums we should mention a unique way of preserving
instruments and their culture, the so-called folk or outdoor museum. Such a
museum consists of artifacts which illustrate the folk culture of a nation, and
it usually has the structure of a village in which various kinds of buildings –
farms, shops, dwellings, etc. – are displayed. In most of the buildings, crafts
and methods of work are displayed through exhibits and by individuals who have
learned, either through family tradition or from scholars, to do such work as
pottery, weaving, basketry, and sometimes also instrument – making and playing,
and who demonstrate these skills to the public. Although these museums are not
primarily of musical interest, some of them do contain exhibits and
demonstrations of instruments. The Scandinavian countries have pioneered in
this field, and the museum at Skansen, outside Stockholm, and at Copenhagen are
the most representative. In the United States, Greenfield Village and the Edison
Institute in Dearbom, Michigan, are worth seeing, among others.
It would hardly be possible to list and evaluate all of the collections
which contain instruments of non-Western cultures and of folk music. Lists of
such collections can be found in the large German encyclopedia Die Musik in
Geschichte und Gegenwart, under "Instrument ensammlungen," and in
Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th edition, under
"Instruments, Collections of." Most nations of the world have
collections which serve, primarily, to illustrate the native instruments of the
region. General collections tend to concentrate on European instruments, and
only incidentally to include others.
Among the collections worth seeing, the following are a selection: In
the United States, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (world – wide
collection including many oriental specimens); American Museum of Natural
History, New York (best on North American Indian); Museum of Music, Scarsdale,
New York (besides instruments, includes various artifacts relating to music,
such as recording devices); National Museum, Washington, D. C. (huge Collection
of ethnographical material); University of California Museum, Berkeley; Commercial
Museum, Philadelphia; Institute of Ethnomusicology, University of California,
Los Angeles (oriental, particularly Indonesian) ; Chicago Museum of Natural History;
Steams Collection, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
In other nations: Musikhistoriska museet, Stockholm;
Musikwissenschaftliches Institut, Berlin; Musikhistorisk museum, Copenhagen;
Musée de l'homme, Paris; Homiman Museum, London; Gemeentemuseum, The Hague. And
of course there are dozens of others. In conclusion, we may say that the work
of collecting instruments has been well done. One task still before
ethnomusicologists is the cataloging, photographing, and description of these instruments,
and the publication of reliable information about them. Even more pressing is information
on instrumental music and on the methods of playing, learning, and teaching the
techniques used in performance.
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