Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T22:38:15.276Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Rethinking Musical Instrument Classification: Towards a Modular Approach to the Hornbostel-Sachs System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2019

Stéphanie Weisser  and
Maarten Quanten
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 1914, Erich von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs created a hierarchic ordering (macrotaxonomy) of all musical instruments, even though they (and many others after them, see Kartomi 1990 and 2001) pointed out the difficulty of developing a systematic classification of all musical instruments (Hornbostel and Sachs 1961:5). This conceptual framework implies that the classifier has to walk one and only one route in the process of classifying objects. This cut-off “tracing” cannot possibly encompass all the possible features that make an instrument what it is and inevitably eliminates several other essential qualities of the object.

Type
Articles
Information
Yearbook for Traditional Music , Volume 43 , 2011 , pp. 122 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by the International Council for Traditional Music

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References Cited

Aubert, Laurent 1991 “Les outils du musicien: Typologie des instruments de musique.” In Mondes en musique, ed. Aubert, Laurent, 97–117. Genève: Musée Ethnographique.Google Scholar
Bakan, Michael B., Bryant, Wanda, Li, Guangming, Martinelli, David, and Vaughn, Kathryn 1990 “Demystifying and Classifying Electronic Music Instruments.” Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology 8:37–63.Google Scholar
Berliner, Paul F. 1993 The Soul of Mbira: Music and Traditions of the Shona People of Zimbabwe. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bertrand, Daniel 1992 Les chevalets “plats” de la lutherie de l'Inde. Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, coll. Rapports de la Recherche.Google Scholar
Brown, Howard Mayer 1984 “Idiophone.” In The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, ed. Stanley Sadie, vol. 2, 279–80. 3 vols. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Dehoux, Vincent 1986 Chants à penser Gbaya (Centrafrique). Paris: Selaf.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Félix 2009 A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans, by Brian Massumi. Rev. ed. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Fales, Cornelia, and McAdams, Stephen 1994 “The Fusion and Layering of Noise and Tone: Implications for Timbre in African Instruments.” Leonardo Music Journal 4:69–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fletcher, Neville H., and Rossing, Thomas D. 1998 The Physics of Musical Instruments. New York: Springer Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Galpin, Francis W. 1956 A Textbook of European Musical Instruments: Their Origin, History, and Character. London: Ernest Benn Ltd.Google Scholar
Grame, Theodore C. 1963 Review of “Classification of Music Instruments,” by Erich M. von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs, trans. Anthony Baines and Klaus P. Wachsmann (Galpin Society Journal 14, 1961). Ethnomusicology 7/2: 137–38.Google Scholar
Hornbostel, Erich M. von, and Sachs, Curt 1961 “Classification of Musical Instruments.” Trans. Anthony Baines and Klaus P. Wachsmann. The Galpin Society Journal 14 (March): 3–29. (Translation of: “Systematik der Musikinstrumente: Ein Versuch,” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 46 (1914): 553–90).Google Scholar
Junius, Manfred 1974 The Sitar: The Instrument and its Technique. Whilelmshaven: Heinrichshofen's Verlag.Google Scholar
Kartomi, Margaret J. 1990 On Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kartomi, Margaret J. 2001 “The Classification of Musical Instruments: Changing Trends in Research from the Late Nineteenth-Century, with Special Reference to the 1990s.” Ethnomusicology 45/2: 283–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koenig, Gottfried Michael 1992 Bilthoven 1962/63. III Dezember 1962: Musikalischer Gedanke; serielle Technik; Voraussetzungen der Instrumentalmusik; Klang. Ästhetische Praxis. Texte Zur Musik, Band 2 (1962–67), ed. Wolf Frobenius, Stefan Fricke, Sigrid Konrad, and Roger Pfau. Saarbrücken: Pfau Verlag.Google Scholar
Kubik, Gerhard 1999 “African and African-American Lamellophones.” In Turn up the Volume! A Celebration of African Music, ed. DjeDje, Jacqueline Cogdell, 20–57. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.Google Scholar
Landrieu, Walter G., and Goethals, Lucien 1973 “Electronic Programming of Electro-Acoustical Music.” Interface: Journal of New Music Research 2:71–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leipp, Emile 1989 Acoustique et musique. 4th ed. Paris: Masson.Google Scholar
McKay, Cory, and Fujinaga, Ichiro 2005 “Automatic Music Classification and the Importance of Instrument Identification.” Proceedings of the Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (CIM05), Montreal, Canada, 2005. http://www.oicrm.org/doc/2005/cim05/articles/MCKAY_C_CIM05.pdf.Google Scholar
Merriam, Alan P. 1962 “The African Idiom in Music.” Journal of American Folklore 75/296: 120–30.Google Scholar
Montagu, Jeremy 1970 “On the Reconstruction of Mediaeval Instruments of Percussion.” The Galpin Society Journal 23:104–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montagu, Jeremy 2008 “It's Time to Look at Hornbostel-Sachs Again.” Paper presented at the 24th European Seminar in Ethnomusicology (ESEM), Warsaw, Poland.Google Scholar
Montagu, Jeremy, and Burton, John 1971 “A Proposed New Classification for Musical Instruments.” Ethnomusicology 15/1: 49–70.Google Scholar
Niles, Don 1989 “Altérateurs de voix de Papouasie-Nouvelle-Guinée, ou comment la confusion des données appauvrit l'organologie.” Cahiers de musiques traditionnelles 2:75–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quanten, Maarten 2009 “Muzikale Tijd van Reeks tot Algoritme: Temporele strategieën in het werk van Karlheinz Stockhausen en Gottfried Michael Koenig (1952–1966).” PhD dissertation, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.Google Scholar
Rossing, Thomas D., Bork, Ingolf, Zhao, Huan, and Fystrom, Dell O. 1992 “Acoustics of Snare Drums.” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 92/1: 84–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sachs, Curt 1940 The History of Musical Instruments. New York: W. W. Norton and Co.Google Scholar
Tracey, Hugh 1948 Handbook for Librarians. Roodeport: African Music Society.Google Scholar
UNESCO 2005 Towards Knowledge Societies. UNESCO World Report. Paris: UNESCO Publishing, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001418/141843e.pdf.Google Scholar
Weisser, Stéphanie 2005 “Etude ethnomusicologique du bagana, lyre d'Ethiopie.” PhD dissertation, Université Libre de Bruxelles.CrossRefGoogle Scholar