Introduc)on to Ethnomusicology. What is Ethnomusicology?

Transcription

1 Introduc)on to Ethnomusicology What is Ethnomusicology?

2 What is ethnomusicology? ology is the scien)fic study of something So what does ethnomusicology refer to/what does it entail? Why is it called Ethnomusicology? Who are the earliest ethnomusicologists? What contributed to the scien)fic study of ethnomusicology? How and when did it become a discipline in its own right?

3 Earliest encounters of other cultures

4 The Silk Road The Silk Road - an extensive interconnected network of trade routes across the Asian con)nent with the Mediterranean world, as well as North and Northeast Africa and Europe from around 1 st century AD It was an important paths for cultural, commercial and technological exchange Musical instruments travelled from West to the East hmp://

5 Age of discovery

6 Age of Discovery from the 16 th c. and the spread of colonial powers all over the world Trade and diploma)c convoys, religious missions were sent by Colonising powers to the conquered lands The Others were discovered by Western colonisers Westerners Vs The Others Civilised - Savages Educated - Lacks knowledge Cultured - Uncultured Superior - Inferior

7 Louis de la Loubère, a Frenchman in Louis XIV s mission to the King of Siam in 1687 wrote: Musick is not bemer understood at Siam, than Geometry and Astronomy. They make Airs by Fancy, and know not how to prick them by Notes. They have neither Cadence, nor quaver no more than the Cas)lans: but they some)mes sing like us without words, which the Cas)lians think very strange; The King of Siam, without shewing himself, heard several Airs of our Opera on the Violin, and it was told us that he did not think them of a movement grave enough: Nevertheless the Siamese have nothing very grave in their Songs; and whatever they play on their Instruments, even in their Kings march, is very brisk. (Frank Harrison Time, place and music: An anthology of ethnomusicological observa)on c to 1800.Amsterdam: Knuf, 1973: 87)

8 Systema)c Studies begin The systema)c studying of foreign cultures began with the Age of Enlightenment It was the age of reason, of humanis)c and philosophical ideals Diderot s Encylopédie was the first encyclopedia (published between ) to include entries on the arts and sciences of other cultures, Jean Jacques Rousseau s Dic)onaire de musique contained samples of Chinese music, Persian music, North American Indian music, etc.

9 James Burney (son of Charles Burney who published one of the earliest histories of Western music), who was part of the second Cooke Voyage to the Polynesian islands in the 1770s wrote an account of Polynesian music, repor)ng that Polynesian music is polyphonic. However, back in England, scholars argued against this being possible. Why? Because polyphony was a recent and European inven)on. Thus the iden)ty of Polynesian music was downplayed so as not to upset exis)ng categories - so there s more to music alone. (Vanessa Agnew Enlightenment Orpheus: The power of music in other worlds. New York: Oxford, 2008)

10 Key developments in ethnomusicology study 1. Guido Adler s 1885 ar)cle Umfang, Methode und Ziel der Musikwissenschap (Scope, method and aim of musicology) in which Adler divides the study of music into two subdisciplines: historical musicology and systema)c musicology In the lamer, he also used the term vergleichende MusikwissenschaI - compara)ve musicology

11 The musical scale is not one, not "natural," not even founded necessarily on the laws of the cons)tu)on of musical sound so beau)fully worked out by Helmholtz, but very diverse, very ar)ficial, and very capricious. Alexander J. Ellis (1885b:526) Alexander Ellis, and English phone)cian and physicist developed a system of pitch measurement whereby a semitone is divided into 100 cents, giving ethnomusicologists a method to measure pitch distance of other scales which do not follow the Western equal- tempered system

12 Further developments in ethnomusciology Development of technology the inven)on of the phonograph by Thomas Edison in 1877 Using wax cylinder, ethnographers were able to record samples of music in the field hmp:// v=g3qpt30lejm&list=plsafkp378onen7y1gtkoahstcb6u51- e_ the phonograph made it possible to playback the music recorded hmp:// At the turn of the 20 th century, Frances Densmore carried out field research on the American Indians and made some of the earliest recordings of their music hmp:// tul9f4 In 1905, Bartok, using Edison s phonograph, began recording, collec)ng and nota)ng folk songs in Rumania, Hungary

13 Armchair ethnomusicologists In the 1930s, Carl Stumpf and Erich von Hornbostel of the Berlin Phonogramm- Archiv studied hundreds of cylinders recorded by German ethnologists Stumpf and Hornbostel were effec)vely transcribing other cultures music and comparing it with Western music This was the start of compara)ve musicology The primary aim [of ethnomusicology is] the compara)ve study of all the characteris)cs, normal or otherwise, of non- European [music]. (Marius Schneider 1957:1)

14 In 1955,the term Ethnomusicology was coined by Dutch ethnologist Jaap Kunst. He defines it thus: The study- object of ethnomusicology, or as it originally was called: compara)ve musicology, is the tradi)onal music and musical instruments of all cultural strata of mankind, from the so- called primi)ve peoples to the civilized na)ons. Our science, therefore, inves)gates all tribal and folk music and every kind of non- Western art music. Besides, it studies as well the sociological aspects of music, as the phenomena of musical accultura)on, i.e. the hybridizing influence of the alien musical elements. Western art- and popular (entertainment- ) music do not belong to its field. (Jaap Kunst 1959:1)

15 Study of music as culture A study of music outside one s own society and culture (NeMl Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology 1964) Alan Merriam defined it as: the study of music in and as culture (Merriam 1968) Ethnomusicology is an approach to the study of any music, not only in terms of itself but also in rela)on to the cultural contexts (Mantle Hood The Ethnomusicologist 1982)

16 Where are we today? As Big Bill Broonzy, American blues singer, said and is quoted by Bruno NeMl: "ALL music is folk music - I ain't never heard no horse sing. Since the study of ethnomusicology is closely related to the social contexts, its methods have also con)nued to evolve as the discipline responds to different changes