On the History of Ethnomusicology through Leading Ethnomusicologists

I seek to answer the question how is the history of ethnomusicology revealed through the progression of famous leading ethnomusicologists. The history of ethnomusicology is problematic because writers on the subject have come from many different places and studied a wide variety of musics and cultures.

The answer to the question of how the history of ethnomusicology is revealed through leading ethnomusicologists is found by looking at changes in the works published by them. This article will use texts published from the beginning of ethnomusicology up to the present.

It is the author of the book Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology, Nettl, on whose shoulders I build my case. The texts specifically to be cited are;

Verschmetzung, tonal fusion, and consonance: Carl Stumpf revisited by Schneider A et al, The Wellsprings of Music by Curt Sachs, Readings in Ethnomusicology, Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology by Bruno Nettl, John Blacking by Suzel Ana Reily et al, Folklorist Alan Lomax's Trove Goes to Library by Linton Weeks, Charles Seeger: a life in American music by Ann M. Pescatello, America's Popular Music Traditions as "Canon-Fodder by Sammie Ann Wicks, Scholarly Authority by Jacqueline Cogdell DjeDje, and Sound Archive Newsletter by Isobel Clouter.
Ethnomusicologists can be categorized as being early, middle or late.

Early:
A.J. Ellis promulgated the idea of cents and considered to be a founder of ethnomusicology. He looked at the relationship between pitch to speech and song.

Stumpf 1 created the idea of Verschmelzung which is related to but not identical with modern views of tonal fusion. Stumpf also created criteria for integral hearing. Stumpf also held the idea that roughness and dissonance can be conceptualized separately.

The most important early ethnomusicologist, Hornbostel, only wrote a series of publications never attempting to compile everything into one source. Many of his publications were co-authored, most often with Otto Abraham. He wrote studies on the music of Japan, Turkey, India, North America, New Guinea, Sumatra, Africa, Tierra del Fuego and more. He also coauthored a classification of musical instruments that is still used.

Curt Sachs created a few items giving overviews and were important because they were in English and understandable to the average reader as well. He expounds an evolutionary orientation early in his career but later that tendency is somewhat mitigated.

Also, early in his career he held the idea that people’s racial attributes are reflected in their music. He created an encyclopedic list of instruments and worked with Hornbostel on a classification of musical instruments in 1914. Concerning his evolutionary orientation even as late as 1962 he writes, 2 "The prehistorian works in a vertical way:
he excavates the tombs and fireplaces of ages long past-the deeper they lie the older they are. By and large they divide the older parts of pre-history into three Stone Ages. The Older Stone Age or Paleolithic and the Newer Stone Age or Neolithic Era, with a connecting Middle Stone Age or Mesolithic Era."

Concerning his idea of radial attributes, he had this to say in 1962 as well, "Most suspicious are we of the slippery and often criminally exploited concept of 'race,' in which biologically transmitted genes are all the time confused with environmental culture...

All these concepts will be rarely found in this book-not from want of daring on the author's part, but from a hard-won insight into the unbelievably complicated and treacherous web of ever-changing cultures, tribal nomadism, and unidentifiable mergers of patterns. Besides, musicologists, as spokesmen of a small, however significant component of culture, can at best be expert witnesses in this lingering lawsuit but hardly judges or jurors."

Bose's works deal with vocal technique, melody, scale and style. He theorizes about the difference between instrumental and vocal style and the connection between a culture's music theory, if it has one, with purely instrumental styles of music, the connection between music and language and what the determining factors are in establishing the existence of a unique style.

Robert Lachman studied the high cultures of the Orient through the observation that they all contained melodic skeletons.

Haydon wrote an introduction to musicology in 1941, a portion of which looks at methods, weaknesses and discrepancies between the different parts of musicology.

Marius Schneider views the creation of world music as a unitary development. He deals with both the function of music within a society's cultural expression and with a musics form.

Danckt of the German Kulturkreis school within anthropology compiled information on European folk songs based on national boundaries.

Herzog wrote an important short overview of European and American folk music. One can see his concern for the American Indian music when he writes, 3 "An inquiry into the relation and stability of musical form and function finds in the Ghost Dance songs of the Plains Indians an excellent example for study."

Middle:
Nettl initially engaged the field by writing about melody, rhythm and form and focused on North America and Africa but also delved in other geographical regions. For example, Nettle says about the scales and melodies of Persia, 4
"The music is organized in twelve modes, called dastgahs (conceptually similar to the Indian raga), each of which is subdivided into sections, or gushehs." He also states of Persian rhythm, “Thus, the increased importance of instrumental metric pieces results not only from the importance of meter in Western music, but also from the convenience of metric structure in the performance of music by ensembles.

" Finally he relates this sentence concerning aspects of form in Persian music, "Dynamics are fairly static, virtuoso technique is restricted, emotion is veiled."

Alan Merriam is known for pushing the study of music from the point of view of anthropology, specifically music within culture broken up into concepts about music, musical behaviors, and the sound of music itself. Later, he changed his idea to music "as" culture opposing the notions of Mantle Hood.

John Blacking 5 came up with the idea of the cultural analysis of music where he attempted to reveal that musical structures are reflected in the societal structures where they come from, as well as the innate musical abilities possessed by people.

Alan Lomax developed a theory that looked at a cultures style of work, the surrounding environment and the amount of sexual and social freedoms in attempting to show how different kinds of folk singing sprout in certain places. 6 Lomax came up with the theory of Canto metrics that attempted to compartmentalize qualities such as tones, beats, and phrases, a concept he also used on dance and storytelling.

Charles Seeger 7 was known for saying that an ethnomusicologist should consider the context of the music integrally with the music itself, regardless of what music it is but that this should be the definition of general musicology and why he considers himself a musicologist.

He is also known for anticipating the anthropological and folklorical approaches regarding music especially folk music and himself espousing functionalism over structuralism.
Late:

David McAllester is known for saying that 8 "Almost any line of human behavior is crossed at some point by music, [and] a discussion of music ... can move ... to almost any other area of cultural investigation" after which ethnomusicologists began to focus on the context of the music as much as its structure.

Leonard B. Meyer proposed that there was a relationship between Game theory and music composition.
Kwabena Nketia changed from duple meter to 6/8 when transcribing African music because the former was inaccurate. His concepts and assessment of tactus and rhythm are revolutionary. He also put forth 9 "The claim of superior scholarship or scholarly authority made in the early days by some of my colleagues and the assumption that greater objectivity resides in the outsider who studies the musical cultures of other people did not always impress me..."

Laurence Picken developed a theory that 10 "relates to Gagaku music in Japan, which he believed was a direct descendent of the music of the Tang court taught to Japanese musicians visiting the court during the Tang period.
This music was then performed to the Japanese court and over time it developed into a unique form now known as gagaku. "In the course of centuries, the real Tang tunes have become inaudible. In present Togaku they are played 8 to 16 times more slowly than in the original performances."

Willard Rhodes 8 "one of ethnomusicology's founding scholars, wrote in 1956 that ethnomusicology should focus on the 'music of the world's peoples ... whose language, music, and customs [are] different from those of our own.'"
Among the most important ethnomusicologists there are mainstream but opposed tendencies within the field of which 6 primary schools are assumed. The first is that enough understanding exists to justify making theorhetical generalizations. The second is that enough understanding does not exist.

The third is that ethnomusicology needs to be and can be defined. The fourth is that it can't be defined. The fifth is that analysis leads to understanding and the sixth is that music can only be understood on its own terms.

World Music Tunings and Western Compatibility

Western Compatibility:

The microtonal inflections used in Persian and Indian music aren't necessarily incompatible with western harmony. Right now, the case is that many musicians in Persia improvise in 24 or 48 equal on microtone capable instruments over 12 equal harmonies played on western instruments like the guitar and piano.

Expanded Tonal Palette:

Some people who are more heavily involved in the modern avant-garde microtonal movement are saying that 24 and 48 equal just highlight the limitations of 12 equal and many are calling for an expanded palette such as that based on 31 equal which more or less includes the usually preferred “just” intonations of western and Persian scales without overburdening the performer or composer with divisions that are too large and unweildy like 104 divisions of the octave for example! However, instruments with moveable frets, no frets, sliding mechanisms or easily inflected wind instruments like bassoon have many advantages in that they're not locked into anything really and can be asked to play whatever the composer wants or made to actualize whatever the player wants.

Minor keys and chords handle dissonances well, so scale options like Afshari/Esfahan which go C D Eb F G A1/2b Bb will easily work in C aeolian or C dorian with careful attention to the chords whose fifths and roots have the sixth "A" in them

It's other mode starting on the Bb results in a dominant scale that has a 1/2 tone flat 7th. The dominant chord handles dissonances better than anything, even allowing for sharp and flat fifths so this is very doable with consciousness given to chords that have the b7th as their root or fifth.

Suznak C D E1/2b F G Ab B is basically a "harmonic" minor scale with a slightly raised minor third. This is probably a very useful scale over classical western harmonies in a non-modal minor "key" while watching out for the b3rd in the chords.

Rast is basically the same scale as Afshari except it also has a 1/2 flat second. Not really a problem in a minor key. Attention being payed to the chords as stated previously.

Another scale is Hijaz which is the same as the dominant mode of Afshari except with an added nonmicrotonally flat second.

A possibility allowing for "weird" scales is to limit the accompaniment to the notes from the scale that are not microtonal. This would not be a chordal accompaniment per se but provide harmonious elements. This is an aspect of the kind of modified harmonic theory we are in need of today.

The dominant scale of Afshari that goes C D E F G A B1/2b would work well over an accompaniment built on the Chinese form of the pentatonic scale C D F G A since it doesn't have any kind of "B", microtonal or otherwise.

We could also adopt the Chinese concept of using notes outside of the pentatonic scale, which occur in the melody, as passing tones or neighbor tones.

The regular form of Afshari that goes C D Eb F G A1/2b Bb would work well over the more American form of the pentatonic scale C Eb F G Bb.

Hijaz would work over a pentatonic made of C E F G Bb, Suznak over C D F G Ab or C D F G B, Afshari/ Esfahan would also work over C D F G B among others.

There is an important connection between timbre and tuning. An instrument that has the prominent overtones that correspond to the microtonally flat intervals of a "weird" tuning doesn't sound particularly out of tune anymore. This has important implications for composers, synthesists and instrument builders. For practicality, tunings up to 41 equal divisions of the octave are about as many divisions that can be made, heard and played reasonably.

It has been suggested that tactile frets be added to the fingerboards of violins and cellos so performers unfamiliar with the tunings could approximate them on western style instruments. Another suggestion is to have a wavy fingerboard that will approximate different tunings by high and low crests on the fingerboard.

Some "weird" tunings are more consonant than others by western standards. The less consonant ones can be made more consonant by choosing the correct instrumental timbre to play it. The sitar has the jiwari bridge that creates the buzzing which brings out more prominently many of the upper partials. I suspect this allows them to play 1/8 or 1/2 flat intervals which don't sound so weird to us in that context. Maybe a classical flute might be particularly inappropriate for unconventional tunings because of its almost pure sine wave.

Lately I've been thinking about why the gamelans have instrument pairs tuned about a 1/4 step apart and how the Setar is tuned to C and C1/4 sharp.

In Persian music, it's often the case that the scales have tones which are only 1/4 flat instead of real quarter tones/1/2 flat intervals except in Turkey. This does not produce the visual symmetry as I said before. They must be sacrificing the perfect visual symmetry because some other element of the music is affecting it or is more important. I was pondering this when I came to the insight that if there is a B1/2 #, its tone might easily be confused with C or C1/2b. The same with F1/2b and E or E1/2 sharp. Diatonic scales probably favor less flattedness or sharpedness to maintain the distinctions between notes. Gamelan music is pentatonic without half-steps so the paired notes can be seriously sharp or flat even when played simultaneously without losing their identity to another scale degree.

Another related phenomenon is the binaural beats of gamelan and Persian music. Why do two systems of music in non-western tunings use simultaneously sounding 1/4 steps? Is there a connection to the tuning? Probably.

Indian Ragas

Indian Ragas:

Styles of Traditional Indian Music are based on the raga which is a composed scale that traditional says may have different ascending and descending forms similar to the western melodic minor scale. However, ragam are not scales or modes. Ragam have characteristic phrases called pakad if there is only one or swarup if there are several. Indians choose contrasting ragas for the next piece in a performance unlike Turkish musicians who usually say the next mode should be a direct development or Arabian music where frequent modulations should go unnoticed.

The introduction in Indian music is a long, long improvisation without a set meter. The composed section is in a particular rhythmic cycle. It has improvisational elements similar to jazz. The final movement uses speed picking. The first part of the fixed composition is confined to the lower and middle octaves. The second part extends from the middle to the upper octaves. A good musician should be able to play for more than one hour and not repeat the same phrase twice. Indian music does not allow multi-layered compositions. They say it would be rude to speak while someone else is speaking.

The most popular Indian Thaats/scales are;

Bilawal C D E F G A B1/4sharp. Its basically a major scale with a very sharp leading tone. ,

Bhairav C Db E F G A B1/8sharp. It has only a slightly raised leading tone.

Khamaj C D E F G A1/8sharp Bb1/8sharp. This is India's mixolydian.

Todi C Db Eb F# G Ab B1/8sharp.

Kalyan C D E F# G A1/4# B1/4#. This is India's Lydian mode.

Kafi CDEbF# G A1/4b B1/4#.

The indications for sharpedness and flatedness are only approximate.

Ragas often have two notes that are emphasized, usually a fifth apart, each appearing in a separate tetrachord. Both Persian and Indian music may have changing tones like the two versions of the melodic minor scale but Indian music never modulates. (There may be some recent exceptions).

Ornaments of Classical Indian Music:

The primary ornaments in Indian music which are some of the more beautiful available to the modern composer are portamento, a short grace not of low intensity, encirclement by microtones sometimes played in a series, fast oscillation but slight pitch variation and a lesser frequency oscillation but greater amplitude of vibration, three repeated notes and Andola and Murahan which have no western equivalent.

Indian Improvisation:

Classical Indian improvisation involves using the common motifs for a particular raga and standard ornaments. Motifs are turned into variations by rhythmic augmentation, diminution, retrograde, inversion and an unusual technique of adding notes such as playing the first not of a motif then playing the first and second, then playing the first, second and third etc…until the whole thing is revealed. This is also done in reverse order and backwards. Motifs are also sequenced through rhythmic displacement and note order permutations such as 1234, 1243, 1324 etc…

The moods created by music are carefully controlled. Indian musicians say that some sentiments are appropriate for music and others aren’t. Sadness and joy are proper but humor is not. Humor is o.k. in the theater however.

Thats the end of this discussion on Styles of Traditional Indian Music.