Music-Archaeological Research on Pre-Columbian Music Cultures 1880–1920
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MUSIC-ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH ON PRE-COLUMBIAN MUSIC CULTURES 1880–1920 ARND ADJE BOTH In this paper the objectives, methods, and achievements of early researchers on pre-Columbian music are discussed, including distinguished scholars who played an essential role in the development of music-archaeological research in the Americas. Between 1880 and 1920, many important questions on music in the pre-Columbian societies were raised and even answered, but seldom reflected in later periods of research. The first prolific phase of scientific research on the music cultures of the pre-Columbian Americas is characterized by a series of studies published between 1880 and 1920. In this period, Europe and North America experienced great scientific and technological advancement, while the world was extensively explored in the light of High Imperialism. This brought westerners not only to hitherto unknown remains of the so called high civilizations, but also in contact with the so called primitives, and their living cultures, including music. In the early phase of research, scientific analysis replaced general assumptions about the music of pre-Columbian societies, assumptions which were strongly influenced by ethnohistorical accounts from early Colonial times (sixteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth century) and subsequent historian’s views. In the light of today’s pluridisciplinarity, it is not surprising that the first steps to be undertaken in this field are characterized by diverse approaches, which were derived from, or were at least 77 78 ARND ADJE BOTH influenced by, various schools of the cultural and natural sciences. Whilst some disciplines were yet to be established in this period, most were in the process of rapid development. The first researchers who published studies on pre-Columbian music cultures followed basically two directions without much interchange, although there was a constant flow of communication within the scientific communities, converging in the International Congress of Americanists, which held its first meeting in 1875 in Nancy, France. Historians, philologists, and linguists with a strong interest in music interpreted the written sources from early Colonial times, and wrote about the role of music and musical instruments in indigenous societies. Cultural anthropologists, namely archaeologists and early ethnographers with a strong interest in musicological problems, approached the topic from another angle. These researchers classified and described collections of pre-Columbian sound artefacts, which increasingly entered the art market and museums. Some scholars included acoustic analysis, and discussed the nature of pre-Columbian music. In this context, scale was one of the most important keywords. Not surprisingly, much of this research was strongly influenced by current worldviews and the state of knowledge of the time. In some studies, diffusionism and Social Darwinism played a role, but many researchers in all fields of research largely avoided West-centric positions, and they undertook analytical and descriptive studies without emphasizing pejorative cultural values. These researchers, who were mostly unheard of in later times, deserve our special attention. ECHOES FROM THE DISTANT PAST: PERCEPTIONS AND MISCONCEPTIONS OF INDIGENOUS MUSIC One of the first records on ancient musical instruments and indigenous music traditions from the Americas was published in 1877 by the diplomat and archaeologist George E. Squier (1821– 1888), in a work entitled Peru: Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas, which was also translated into other languages, including German (1883). Squier, who was in Peru as United States Commissioner from 1862–1867, mentioned some musical finds, including a stone panpipe and a whistling vessel, and he stated that MUSIC-ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH 79 these objects might serve as a means of research on pre-Columbian music (Squier 1883, 218–222). When reporting on a syncretistic feast from the Aymara region of the Bolivian highlands near Tiahuanaco (Fig. 1), Squier concluded that the “inharmonic noisy,” “strange” and “wild” music performed nowadays must be a “true repetition of the ceremonies and customs” of ancient times (Squier 1883, 379). His description clearly represents a West-centric position, which had a strong and continuous tradition dating back to early Colonial times. In Squier’s view, this indigenous music lacked melodious structures, which were replaced by the noise of “hollow” frame drums and “shrill” panflutes, whilst cow horns (possibly wakrapukus) were blown by “dilettantish” musicians among the spectators. As proof for his conclusions on the nature of pre-Columbian music, he quoted the account of the Spanish conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who characterized the Aztec music played in sacrificial rites and circular dances as wild, hollow (drums) and shrill (flutes), but also as terrifying, and diabolic (Squier 1883, 377–379; see Díaz del Castillo 1960 Vol. 1, 282, Vol. 2, 34, 39). Díaz del Castillo basically followed the musical aesthetics of the Renaissance and the religious worldview of early Colonial times, which was a means of justifying the destruction of indigenous societies in the course of the Hispanic colonization of the Americas. Squier and many subsequent observers of indigenous music traditions followed nineteenth century perceptions and cultural misconceptions, which in comparison with indigenous aesthetics, differed little from earlier views. THE QUESTION OF MUSICAL SCALE One of the first researchers on pre-Columbian music was the archaeologist and physician Hillborne T. Cresson (?–1894), whose study entitled Aztec Music was published in 1883 by the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (Cresson 1883). Cresson carefully examined five Aztec flower-flutes preserved in the Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology with the aim of reconstructing pre-Columbian manufacturing techniques and musical scales. With the help of a professional musician, Prof. J. S. Cox, who used the Boehm flute as a pitch reference, a series of individual finger combinations including cross-fingerings were recorded. Using half-stops and closing the bell with the finger, 80 ARND ADJE BOTH fundamental notes in the range of whole tones and semitones were obtained (Fig. 2). Remarkably, Cresson and his musical expert did not conclude on the employment of pentatonic scales, thus opposing a widely accepted assumption. Instead of what Cresson called a “hasty conclusion” raised by “musical authorities” (possibly referring to musicologists, who observed contemporary indigenous music in a West-centric view), he stated that on the flower-flutes the chromatic and diatonic scales can be produced within a full octave: Musical authorities seem to have arrived at the some point hasty conclusion, that the Aztec people were only possessed of a knowledge of the so-called pentatonic scale, but with all due difference to their opinion, I must beg leave differ upon this point, as it is not probable that intervals which are so easily obtained, were unknown to artisans capable of manufacturing these flageolets of terracotta, pitched in different keys, and of determining the exact distance apart of the finger-holes. […] The more I study the musical instruments of these people, the firmer becomes my conviction that they must have possessed a full knowledge of the diatonic and chromatic scales; which can be produced upon the four-holed clay flageolets by any one capable of manipulating our modern flutes […] (Cresson 1883, 91). As opposed to other scholars, who accepted the conclusions drawn from ethnohistorical accounts and descriptions of contemporaneous indigenous music traditions, Cresson focussed on material culture, including precise methods of organology and acoustics. One hundred and twenty years later, his results could be confirmed on the basis of the acoustics of a set of five flower-flutes preserved in the Ethnological Museum, Berlin (Both 2002). READING BETWEEN THE LINES Daniel G. Brinton (1837–1899), then Professor of American Archaeology and Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania (and thus located in the same city as Cresson, Philadelphia), approached pre-Columbian music cultures on the basis of written sources. Amongst his wide spectra of research, Brinton translated and interpreted sixteenth/seventeenth century texts written in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. MUSIC-ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH 81 In two volumes published in 1890, Ancient Nahuatl Poetry and Rig Veda Americanus: Sacred Songs of the Ancient Mexicans, Brinton translated texts of Aztec ceremonial chants written down by the Franciscan Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, missionary, chronicler and early ethnographer, who compiled one of the most important sixteenth century records on the Aztecs (Brinton 1890a and 1890b). In the introduction to Ancient Nahuatl Poetry, Brinton discussed the role of song and music in Aztec society. In chapter six, “The Instrumental Accompaniment,” Brinton referred to the related Aztec terminology of musical instruments, gave translations, and discussed their individual function (Brinton 1890a, 21–26). Therefore, he did not only repeat statements of earlier nineteenth century historians, but he also compiled much of the most important information given by sixteenth century missionaries and chroniclers. In doing so, he was among the first to discuss the related terminology of Aztec musical instruments, a terminology rich with information on their individual meaning and function.