Ethnomusicology, Its Problems and Methods

Author(s): Mieczyslaw Kolinski

Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 1, No. 10 (May, 1957), pp. 1-7
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology
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 AND METHODS*
ITSPROBLEMS
ETHNOMUSICOLOGY,
by Mieczyslaw Kolinski

THE coexistence of the terms comparative musicology and ethno-

musicology has caused some confusion among those who believe
that ethnomusicology is to be considered a recently established
branch of comparative musicology. However, ethnomusicology is
merely a new term designed to replace the traditional one, compara-
tive musicology, for the latter term has often been criticized on the
ground that our science does not compare any more than other
sciences do. As a matter of fact, a great deal of research work
accomplished in this field is descriptive rather than comparative;
thus the new name seems justified. Nevertheless, we should keep
in mind that descriptive ethnomusicological studies constitute but a
preliminary work which paves the way for a fruitful comparison of
the manifold non-European musical styles with one another and with
the various aspects of European music. No less important are those
ethnomusicological studies which deal with methodological, theoreti-
cal or other problems of a more general and systematic character.
Thus we might distinguish between descriptive, comparative and
systematic ethnomusicology. Actually, this subdivision is not
meant to be a strict classification but merely aims to stress the
various facets of ethnomusicological research.
It is generally assumed that comparative musicology (or ethno-
musicology) is the science of non-European music. Kunst's recent
publication entitled Ethno-Musicology opens with the following
statement: "To the question what is the study-object of compara-
tive musicology, the answer must be: mainly the music and the
musical instruments of all non-European peoples, including both the
so-called primitive peoples and the civilized Eastern nations"
(Kunst, 1955:9). According to this concept European music i's
dealt with only indirectly and occasionally, and a survey of ethno-
musicological literature seems to confirm the above statement.
Nevertheless, it considers the situation from an ethnocentric point
of view, for if it is true that the main subject-matter of Western
ethnomusicology is the study of non-European music, that of Hindu
* This paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethno-
musicology held in conjunction with the Fifth International Congress of
Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
September 1-9, 1956.

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ethnomusicology should be the study of non-Hindu music, that of
Japanese ethnomusicology the study of non-Japanese music, etc.
On the other hand, Chinese, Indian, Arabian or other Eastern musi-
cologists who study the musical traditions of their own countries
are equivalent to an ordinary Western musicologist, and though their
publications constitute reference material of utmost importance for
the Western ethnomusicologist, they do not represent by themselves
actual ethnomusicological research work. In fact, it is not so much
the difference in the geographical areas under analysis as the
difference in the general approach which distinguishes ethno-
musicology from ordinary musicology.
The tendency of Western ethnomusicology to deal with the
musical styles of the world's peoples without including those of the
European countries as an essential facet of the overall picture is
not justified, though historically understandable. Ethnomusi-
cology did not develop gradually from ordinary musicology but came
into being as a vigorous reaction against the current conceptions
regarding the nature of music. It is interesting to note how this
antithesis is reflected in the work of one and the same personality,
namely, the British physicist Alexander Ellis. In 1875 Ellis pub-
lished a translation of and a comment on Helmholtz's famous book
"Lehre von den Tonemplindungen" (Helmholtz, 1875). In this work
the great German physicist attempted to prove by his elaborate
overtone theory that Western music of the past few centuries with
its rigorous dualism of major and minor, and its typical chord
progressions and scale constructions is based upon unalterable
physical and physiological laws. Ten years later a treatise appeared
to which Ellis owes his reputation as the founder of ethnomusi-
cology. It is entitled "On the Musical Scales of Various Nations"
and constitutes an enlarged edition of his "Tonometrical Ob-
servations on Some Existing Non-harmonic Scales" (Ellis, 1885).
Here for the first time a great number and variety of Oriental musical
instruments was analyzed with exact physical methods and in a
spirit of comparative musicological research. Ellis determined the
intervals and scales employed by means of his own cent system
which still remains an essential contribution to ethnomusicol-
ogical methodology, and he arrived at the final conclusion that "the
musical scale is not one, not 'natural,' nor even founded nec-
essarily on the laws of the constitution of musical sound so
beautifully worked out by Helmholtz, but very diverse, very arti-
ficial and very capricious" (Ellis, 1885:516). This discovery, along
with the first results of the transcription and analysis of phono-

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graphic material of non-European music gave the new comparative
branch of musicology the impetus to overemphasize the existing
divergencies between European and non-European music and to
underestimate or even to deny convergent trends not resulting from
ethnic relationship or cultural contact, a tendency which is still
prevalent.
One of the most prominent protagonists of this antithetic ap-
proach was Erich von Hornbostel. According to him European
music posterior to that of the Middle Ages is in many respects
diametrically opposed to non-European music. One of these op-
positions concerns the general direction of melodic movement.
European music is said to have a basically ascending, non-European
music a basically descending trend. To stress his thesis, Horn-
bostel consistently (save in his earliest publication, i.e. 1909)
represents non-European vocal (Hornbostel, 1923:440) and instru-
mental (Hornbostel, 1931:13-15) scale constructions in a descend-
ing order, contrary to the usual ascending European scale re-
presentation. This procedure has been widely followed up to the
present day (Collaer, 1956:134-35).
In order to test the validity of Hornbostel's assertions, it has
been necessary to work out a method which makes it possible to
determine the exact amount of and relation between ascending and
descending trends contained in the melodic movement of a given
musical style. These trends can be measured by average formulae
which represent the relation between initial and final melody level,
that is, between the position of the initial and final tone within
the total range. The latter is divided into one hundred degrees,
and the level formulae are expressed in hundredths of the total
range. An illustration will make this clears the level formula for
the Dahomean music is 590:260, the two values referring to the
initial and final melody level. The value of 59o for the initial level
means that in Dahomean music the melody starts in the average
59 hundredths of the total range above the lowest tone; the value
of 260 for the final level means that the melody ends in the average
26 hundredths of the total range above the lowest tone. The dif-
ference between initial and final level constitutes the level shift
which in the case of Dahomean music is 330 downward.
An application of this method to several thousand European
folksongs from various countries revealed that Hornbostel's thesis
of a basically ascending trend in the melodic movement of Euro-
pean music cannot be maintained. The average level formula for
European folksongs is 380:260, that is, the level shift is 120 down-

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ward. Several of the countries tested, such as Scotland, Hebrides,
England, Flanders, France, French Canada, Catalonia and Italy
show virtually no level shift; others, such as Portugal, Ireland,
Finland, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Yugoslavia and Rurrtania have
a downward level shift varying between 13? and 480. As for German
folksongs, those of the 18th and 19th centuries show an upward
level shift of 160, contrary to those of the 15th, 16th and 17th
centuries which have a downward level shift of 140. Some non-
European level formulae are quite similar to European ones; for in-
stance, the level formula of the Yuman Indians is almost identical
with that of the Yugoslavs. True, several Indian tribes, such as
the Menominee, Pawnee, Ute, Mandan and Hidatsa, have downward
level shifts varying between 79? and 850 but even such a pronounced
downward trend is not alien to European folk music, and we find,
although only exceptionally, a 1000 downward shift among Irish,
English, Canadian, German, Lithuanian and Russian folk songs.
Not only in the general direction but also in the actual struc-
ture of melodic movement there is no necessary polarity between
European and non-European music. For example, the melodic and
tonal construction of some European folk tunes reveals a striking
similarity to that of authentic American Indian songs (Kolinski,
1949:202-03). Comparative research concerning the melodic struc-
ture of the music of the world's peoples certainly constitutes an
important ethnomusicological objective. But a prerequisite for
fruitful studies in this field is an appropriate method based upon an
organic classification of all conceivable melodic structures.
Hornbostel distinguishes four types of melodic patterns: the Enge
Melodik, Treppen-Melodik, Fanfarenmelodik and Kanonische Nach-
ahmung, that is, narrow, stair-like, fanfare and canonic-imitative
melodies (Hornbostel 1932:55). This grouping, however, is meant
not to be so much a classification as a description of a few easily
recognizable patterns leaving out of account the bulk of melodic
constructions. I have attempted to fill the existing methodological
gap by developing a detailed method of analysis which makes it
possible to identify, classify and compare any kind of melodic
structure ranging from a simple pendular movement between two
tones to the most complex constructions (Kolinski, 1956).
One of the most widely distributed forms of tonal structure is the
halftoneless pentatonic scale, that is, a scale which corresponds to
a series of five black keys on a Western keyboard. Its frequent
occurrence in Eastern, Western and tribal music apparently contra-
dicts Hornbostel's assumption of a fundamental opposition between
4

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European and non-European music; but Hornbostel's highly imagina-
tive mind found an interpretation which seemingly reconciled the
facts with his thesis. According to Hornbostel the pentatonic
patterns of African Negro or American Indian songs are, in origin
and meaning, quite opposed to European pentatonic patterns. The
Scotch five-tone scale, for instance, is composed of well profiled
intervals related to each other through a chain of quintal relation-
ships. In an African Negro song, on the contrary, two basically
different categories of intervals are to be distinguished. Two
superimposed fourths form the tonal skeleton. Either of these fourths
is bridged by an intermediate step since the large size of a fourth
makes this interval unsuitable for its use as an actual tone step.
The intermediate steps are structurally unimportant and are of
indefinite size (Hornbostel, 1928:9-10).
However, an objective analysis of African and Indian music
reveals that Hornbostel's hypothesis is untenable. To begin with,
the fourth is quite frequently used as a melodic tone step so that
the need for bridging it by an intermediate step is by no means more
urgent for a Negro or Indian singer than it is for a Scot; but above
all Hornbostel's hypothesis is in complete contradiction to the
tonal structure of thousands of Negro and Indian songs. There not
only the minor third and major second constitute essential structural
intervals but frequently the tone placed within a fourth, far from
having a mere bridging function, represents the actual tonal center.
Needless to say, the intervals employed in unaccompanied vocal
folk music, such as major seconds, minor thirds or perfect fourths,
are, as a rule, only more or less vague approximations of their
exact physical values, no matter in which part of the world they are
used. It would be a serious mistake, however, to underestimate the
significance of the simple vibration ratios characteristic of these
intervals because it is precisely the approximation to these ratios
which has mainly contributed to the shaping of the existing tonal
patterns of vocal music.
Hornbostel further attempts to prove complete opposition between
the Western and African concepts of rhythm (Hornbostel, 1928:25-6).
He argues that African rhythm is ultimately founded on drumming,
and that each single beating movement consists of the lifting and the
dropping of the hand--the lifting movement implies a straining, the
dropping movement a relaxing of the muscles; and thus the first
phase of the movement has the motor accent, the second the
acoustical accent. What really matters in African rhythm is not the
acoustical but the motor accent. Thus the essential rhythmic
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patterns are inaudible while the acoustical beats represent but an
accidental phenomenon.
There is no doubt that percussion plays a prominent part in
African rhythm and that the movements of the drummer's arms,
hands and fingers form an integral part of his performance. But
there is no reason to assume that the African drummer dissociates
these movements from the sound of the instrument; on the contrary,
he cannot but conceive music and movement as an inseparable
whole. Moreover, conceiving the downward movement in terms of
relaxation is a concept which refers to modern piano technique
rather than to that of the African drummer who raises his hand as a
preparation for the active beating of the instrument, and surely he
does not produce sounds in order to move hands but moves hands in
order to produce sounds. True, sometimes a percussion pattern
consists of a series of syncopations while each metric beat or other
metric unit starts with a rest. In such cases the drummer might,
indeed, stress the metrically important rests through accentuated
upward movements; this, however, applies to the Western or Eastern
drummer just as well, and is by no means a distinctive feature of
the African Negro percussionist. But even if the instrumental
part of Hornbostel's thesis were correct, an analogous interpre-
tation of African vocal rhythm would be unjustified because in song
the muscular impulse is always bound to coincide with the actual
sound; moreover, the structure of African vocal rhythm itself dis-
qualifies the thesis.
Regarding African music in general, the very fact of the exist-
ence of the various highly distinctive hybrid musical styles scat-
tered throughout the New World and resulting from the merging of
African and European elements of musical expression constitutes
an impressive refutation of Hornbostel's assertion that European
and African music cannot be merged into one because of the en-
tirely different principles on which they are constructed (Hornbostel,
1928: 3).
In preparing the present paper, I was faced with the alternative
of giving a more or less complete but quite summary survey of the
manifold facets of ethnomusicology, its problems and methods with
little time available for a critical discussion of some fundamental
concepts--or of discussing those viewpoints to the detriment of
the completeness of the topic. I chose the latter way because I
wanted to emphasize the importance of an awareness of the existing
links between the musical languages of the geographical populations
around the world. These links are apparently due to basic sim-

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ilarities in the psycho-physical constitution of mankind and should,
therefore, represent an essential factor in the evaluation of the
validity of ethnomusicological theories concerning cultural contacts
or racial relationships.

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