Survey courses in world musics survive on aphorisms, and one of the favorite characteristics appended to Asian music in such studies is its great interest in improvisation. The major problem with this saying is that it is not true. While it may apply to certain forms of South Asian music and be a part of the Southeast Asian polyphonic stratification structures, it is a rare thing in the music of East Asia. Thus, when I was asked to speak on Japanese music for a symposium on improvisation held by the University of Chicago, I was genuinely hesitant, because I simply could not think of examples upon which to base such a discussion. This study is the result of my search.

There have been many new developments in the production of moving film with synchronous sound track. In this all too familiar medium, developments are usually taken for granted and are not generally noticed. Areas of technology which have combined to produce ‘sync-sound’ have at the same time offered to a field of study, which some may prefer to call ethnochoreology, others ethnomusicology, a research facility the efficacy of which has not yet, in this writer's opinion, been fully explored. Because of this, the full impact of this facility on the practice and study of folk music and dance can not yet be properly gauged.

Two-part singing, based predominantly on the drone type of polyphony, is a phenomenon which is still common in the Razlog district of Bulgaria. Ritual songs such as those for St. Lazarus’ Day, St. George's Day, and Easter, rain-begging, dance songs, and harvest songs are all well preserved though rarely performed, and are representative of what is known as the “old style” of singing. This type of singing is performed mainly by older women, recreating from the past songs which they once sang as young women and girls. Characteristic are narrow-range melodies commonly based on the following scale formations: ABC, ABCD, ABCDE, with or without the subtonic G, a major second below the tonic A, which ends all melodies in the collection (the melodies have been transposed for comparative purposes). Also characteristic are the traditional, harsh-sounding parallel majoren oinor seconds. Alongside this older style exists a “new style” of part singing which to a certain extent is limited to younger women. Melodies in the “new style” have a larger ambitus, with the range formulas 1-6, VII-6, 1-7, and VII-7. Although the younger women are relatively familiar with the older style and sometimes condescend to use it, they seem to prefer the modern style, in which the melodic range is less restricted and more consonant-sounding intervals are used.

Frequent use of supplementary syllables distinguishes the singing from the speech of many Irish folk singers. These syllables are formed in the meaningful text by recourse to various procedures which have their basis in the spoken language; but the lengthening of speech in song greatly enlarges their scope. It is true that the extra syllables are weakly stressed ones; nevertheless, their number can be so great that their presence becomes quite obtrusive. They obtruded forcefully on the ear of an Anglo-Irish poet of the nineteenth century, William Allingham, as he listened to a fair-day ballad-seller singing a long Anglo-Irish song; and he took the opportunity to amuse his Victorian public by printing one of its stanzas in mock phonetic spelling:

after which he gave the orthographical text as follows:

Among the Yoruba people of S. W. Nigeria, there are innumerable poetic genres, or manners of intonation, rigidly prescribed by ritual convention (labelled simply “chant” in the West). Some of these genres—notably Ijálá and Rárà—have already been treated by scholars at the textual and/or linguistic levels. Śangó praise-poetry has hitherto received attention only from the literary standpoint. In a recent classification of indigenous poetic genres (Olatunji), the rendering of ritual praise-poetry with a particular intonation is given the name Pípé Òrìşá: for each órìşá, or deity, Pìpè has its own characteristic intonation. Thus, a sub-genre of Pìpè Òrìşá (the religious counterpart to the aforementioned secular Rárá chanting) is here referred to as Şángó-Pìpé. Literally, pìpè (pronounced KPEE-KPAY) means “to call or summon;” the indigenous term pìpè òrìşà derives from a specific moment in a cult ceremony when the priest or priestess invokes the òrìşá.

Musical history research and ethnomusicology have hitherto usually been treated as separate fields. One of the reasons for this is doubtless the search for a way in which the material to be dealt with should be presented. Historical research has, as we know, to do with a body of musical fact which has been handed down through the medium of notation and therefore exists in a more or less concrete form. Non-European music and European folk music, on the other hand, are exclusively dependent upon oral tradition. To begin with, the latter does not, as Robert Lachmann once very aptly expressed it, exist for us at all. Materials must first be made indirectly tangible for us through special means, that is to say, they must be translated through recording and transcription out of the sphere of oral tradition into that of written notation. This is certainly one of the chief reasons why musical history research and ethnomusicology have hitherto gone different ways, each with its own independent aims, complexes of problems and methods.

Die ungarische Volkstanzforschung unserer Tage ist die organische Fortsetzung jener am Anfang des Jahrhunderts begonnenen Forschungsarbeit, deren erste bedeutende Zusammenfassung das Werk Marian Réthei Prikkels: A magyarság táncai (Die Tänze des Ungartums), Budapest, 1924, ist. Sein unvergängliches Verdienst ist die Erschliessung des äusserst bedeutsamen historischen Quellenmaterials und der Entwurf der Konturen eines umfassenden Bildes. Seine Mängel zeigen sich in erster Linie darin, dass das neuere Tanz- und Tanzmusikmaterial unerschlossen blieb. Um die Beseitigung dieser Mangelhaftigkeit machte sich Sándor Gönyey als erster verdient; er machte die ersten Schritte zur zeitgemässen Fixierung des lebendigen Volkstanzes, als er sich in seiner Sammelarbeit ab 1926 eines Kinoapparates bediente. Die Ergebnisse der Sammlungen Sándor Gönyey und die Tanz- und Tanzmusikforschungen von László Lajtha werden in ihrem gemeinsamen Aufsatz, im Tanzkapitel des IV. Bandes A magyarság Néprajza (Ungarische Ethnographie), 1937, zusammengefasst.

Die Umsiedlungen im Gefolge des Zweiten Weltkrieges haben die wichtigste Quelle für die Kenntnis des älteren deutschen Volksliedes fast zur Gänze verschüttet. Ich meine jene Melodien, die seit den achtziger Jahren des vorigen Jahrhunderts in deutschen Sprachinseln Süd- und Osteuropas aufgezeichnet werden konnten (Suppan, 1962-63). Heute sind nur noch wenige ergänzende Einzelstücke von ähnlichem Wert und Alter aufzulesen. Von einem solchen Relikt, das die beiden Freiburger Volkskundler J. Künzig und W. Werner 1961 in Süddeutschland auf Tonband festhalten konnten und in dankenswerter Weise dem Referenten zur Verfügung stellten, soll hier die Rede sein: es handelt sich um das Fragment einer siebenbürgisch-sächsischen Totenklage, die der ältesten Schicht zugehört, die bisher in diesem Raum erfasst werden konnte.