Bruno Nettl - Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology 1 Bruno Nettl Theory and method in ethnomusicology SCHIRMER BOOKS A Division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. NEW YORK COLLIER MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS LONDON Copyright @ 1964 by The Free Press of Glencoe A Division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photo-copying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, Whithout permission in writing from the Publisher. SCHIRMER BOOKS A Division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. 866 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 64-16970 Printed in the United States of America printing number 6 7 8 9 10 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication For Becky Bruno Nettl - Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology 2 PREFACE The field of ethnomusicology has undergone tremendous growth and expansion since World War II. Many American institutions of higher learning have begun to offer courses in this discipline and its various aspects and subdivisions. Many publications devoted entirely to ethnomusicology have appeared; most of these are devoted to the music of non-Western and folk cultures, individually or in groups, which is the basic subject matter of ethnomusicology, but there have been few attempts .to bring together the methods which ethnomusicologists use and the theories on which their work has been based. There is a need, I believe, for the specialist in African music, in Finnish folk song, and in pre-Colombian instruments to have some common backgrolmd of method and of theoretical orientation. The purpose of the present attempt is to show what ethnomusicologists try to do and what they are actually doing, and to provide some theoretical background for the beginning ethnomusicologist, whatever area of the world is to be his specialty. (As a result there is little information, except by way of illustration, about the music of non-Western and folk cultures per se in this book, or about the cultural context of this music). Several uses are envisioned for the volume at hand. It could serve as a basic text for a general course in ethnomusicology and its various aspects at the senior college and graduate level, and as a supplementary text for courses devoted to folk music, to the music of particular cultures or areas, to folklore, and to general musicology. It could be of use to majors: in music, anthropology, sociology, folklore, and linguistics, and, also to students with a minor interest in one of these fields. Also, it is designed to serve as a handbook for the scholar in a related discipline such as anthropology, vii folklore, sociology, linguistics, psychology, and, of course, general musicology who desires some acquaintance with the purposes, activities, methods, and theories of ethnomusicology without wishing to study the details of the musical cultures themselves. Folk singers and folk song enthusiasts as well as academic laymen with an interest in recent developments in the humanities will also find the subject relevant. I have approached the task of presenting a compendium of theory and method as a historian who describes the works of past (sometimes very recent past) scholarship and as a teacher who wishes in a practical sense to help a student to learn about some of the activities involved in ethnomusicological study. The order of the book follows, very roughly, the order of events in ethnomusicological research. Sometimes, of course, it has not been possible to establish such a sequence; and surely it is unnecessary to point out that all research projects cannot follow the same outline and procedure. Nevertheless, after an introductory chapter on the nature and aims of the field, it seems logical first to acquaint the student with the bibliographic resources of ethnomusicology and with its most important scholars and publications. This is followed by Chapter 3, devoted to field work, in which a number of techniques and procedures are given in detail. Having collected and absorbed material in the field, the ethnomusicologist is faced with the problem of transcribing ( Chapter 4) and with analyzing and describing first the style of individual compositions ( Chapter 5) and then of groups or entire repertories of music ( Chapter 6) .The study of musical instruments, which is also discussed in Chapters 3 to 6, is given some special attention in Chapter 7, while the role which music plays in human culture -touched upon, of course, in the chapter on field work - is our final subject. It may seem that a concern with this large topic should come earlier in the work of the scholar, but a broad view of music as an aspect of behavior seems to me most appropriate after discussion of the more technical and specialized details of field work, transcription, and analysis. Thus Chapter 8 is concerned with some historical and geographic approaches to the viii Bruno Nettl - Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology 3 study of music in culture at large, while Chapter 9 touches upon the role of music in the individual culture and in the life of the individual person, and upon the function of music in relation to some other forms of communication. In each chapter I have attempted to give some of the theories under which ethnomusicologists have operated, to survey the most important accomplishments relevant to the topic, and, where feasible, to propose some techniques and procedures which the student or novice may use. Suggested readings are listed in the chapter bibliographies and marked with asterisks. The Appendix lists some suggested projects to help the student or the layman in acquainting himself with some of these techniques in his home or school environment. These are, of course, not really ethnomusicological projects, but rather exercises preliminary to work in the discipline itself. It has been necessary to discuss-sometimes critically-the works of many scholars, and it has also been necessary to omit mention of many works which might have been included. I will not attempt to justify inclusions and omissions here, but by way of apology I should like to say that as I worked on this project I became increasingly impressed by the tremendous variety of approaches and the large amount of theoretical writing which the field has produced. A true compendium of all theory and method in ethnomusicology would require a multivolume set. We have here attempted to provide only an introduction. Many colleagues, ethnomusicologists and others, have, through their knowledge and wisdom imparted in conversation and discussion, helped in the writing of this book; I should like to express my thanks to them. I am especially indebted to Donald L. Leavitt (Library of Congress), to Roy T. Will (Boston University), and to my colleagues at Wayne State University, Professors Arnold Salop and Richard A. Waterman, for reading parts of the manuscript and for making pertinent comments and suggestions. I am indebted also for permission to quote material which appeared in a number of publications. The List of Figures gives the sources of the illustrations, and I am grateful to the authors, editors, and publishers of these sources for allowing me to reprint ix them. I am also grateful to the following for permission to quote materials in the body of the text: to Dr. Joseph O. Brew, Director of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, for permission to quote the questionnaire from David P. McAllester's Enemy Way Music (Chapter 3) ; to Roxane McCollester for permission to quote from her "Transcription Technique Used by Zygmunt Estreicher," in Ethnomusicology 4:130,1960 (Chapter 4); to the editors of Musical Quarterly for permission to quote from Charles Seeger's "Prescriptive and Descriptive Music Writing," in MQ 44: 184, 1958 (Chapter 4); to Anthony Baines, editor of the Galpin Society Journal, for permission to quote from "Classification of Musical Instruments" by Curt Sachs and E. M. von Hombostel, translated by Anthony Baines and K. P. Wachsmann, Galpin Society Journal 14: 21, 1961 (Chapter 7). Chapter 8 contains large sections, revised, which appeared previously in three papers of mine published in American Anthropologist (1958), Southwestern Journal of Anthropology (1960) and Acta Musicologica (1958); I am grateful to the editors of these three publications for permission to reprint portions of these articles. Finally, I wish to express my thanks to my wife for helping with much of the mechanical work involved in writing this book, and for keeping her patience while my typewriter clicked on inexorably through the peaceful early morning hours. B.N. Detroit, Michigan May, 1963 x Bruno Nettl - Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology 4 CONTENTS Preface vii List of Figures xii CHAPTER 1.What is Ethnomusicology? 1 2. Bibliographic Resorces of Ethnomusicology 27 3. Field Work 62 4. Transcription 98 5. Description of Musical Compositions 131 6. The Nature and Description of Style: Some Theories and Methods 166 7. Instruments 204 8. Music in Culture-Historical and Geographical Approaches 224 9. Music in Culture-Context and Communication 269 APPENDIX. Some Preliminary and Preparatory Exercises and Problems 295 Index 300 xi FIGURES 1 Supplementary symbols frequently used in transcription. Quoted, with additions, from Bruno Nettl, An Introduction to Folk Music in the United States, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1960, pp. 81-82. 107 2 (a) Kunst Monochord for determining frequencies. 114 (b) Nomogramm for converting frequencies to cents. From Fritz Hose, "Ein Hilfsmittel zur Bestimmung der Scbrittgrosse beliebiger Intervalle," Musikforschung 5 (1952) p.207. 115 3 (a) Nootka Song, transcribed by Frances Densmore. From Densmore, Nootka and Quileute Music, Washington: Smith.01 sonian Institution (Bulletin 124 of the Bureau of American-Ethnology) , 1939, p. 228. 118 (b) Nootka Song, transcribed by Bruno Nettl.