Musique et Humanité est à mon avis surtout un sujet philosophique. N'étant pas philosophe moi-même, le langage philosophique ne m'est pas familier et je n'ai jamais été intéressé à ces jeux de la dialectique qui, par un habile maniement des paroles, nous démontrent la vérité ou son contraire. Je ne suis pas théoricien non plus. D'ailleurs, l'invitation qui m'a convoqué avec tant de gentillesse à cette conférence et de laquelle je tiens à remercier de tout mon coeur le Comité, n'a pas été adressée à un penseur éventuel, mais plutôt a un musicien et à un homme.

Les deux substantifs du thème que l'on m'a proposé, méritent un commentaire. Musique: la transformation et le développement de la musique ayant été si rapides dès le début de notre siècle, personne de nos jours pourrait être tout à fait d'accord avec l'idéal musical exprimé par Mozart dans la fameuse lettre à son père, datée du 26 Septembre 1781, où il dit à peu près ceci: que tout comme les passions, violentes ou non, ne devaient jamais être exprimées jusqu'au dégout, ainsi la musique, même dans ses moments les plus terribles, ne devait pas déplaire à l'oreille, mais donner de la jouissance et “tester toujours musique”.

Nous vivons dans un âge qui se flatte d'extrême spécialisation. Chaque science tend à devenir une science en soi, indépendante des autres sciences, ce qui fait que les divers aspects de notre pensée, de nos efforts, de nos intérêts sont facilement divergents et sans coordination. Les arts comme les sciences deviennent une recherche abstraite. lis veulent se developper à l'état pur, en vase clos, en dehors de toute convention et souvent de tout contexte psychologique ou humain.

La musique joue-t-elle dans notre vie un rôle moral et spirituel? Annoblit-elle notre vie et nos sentiments ? embellit-elle notre existence ? Ces conceptions utilitaires nous surprennent un peu et nous font rire. Elles semblent refléter une mentalité d'un autre âge. Elles font penser aux preoccupations des magiciens, à l'art des guérisseurs.

I feel privileged to have been invited to open this session here in Jerusalem this afternoon. You, my friends and colleagues gathered from many parts of the world, may at this moment be feeling as I do, that we live in a very remarkable time: remarkable especially for the opportunities it gives us of meeting people from different civilizations. Today, indeed, our musical traditions, so different in their origins, form and content, are in growing communication; and, on the face of it, there would seem to be unprecedented opportunities for preserving and renewing regional music in its traditional forms. These traditional forms are those of folk music, liturgical music and learned music, but exclude the popular and individualistic repertoire. Before speaking of preservation and renewal, however, we must first recognize the existence of powerful forces which are working only for music's confusion and destruction. For the advances in technology and communications made by Western industrial society have been used for very different ends.

The recent rapid development of the means of communication and the concomitant pervading influence of Western technology upon non-Western cultures has produced musical as well as economic and social change. The world's societies are now in flux and their musical traditions cannot but be affected.

In this paper no attempt will be made to discuss in any depth the acculturative process as exhibited by any one culture. It is rather my purpose to survey the scope of the changes occurring and to suggest a loose classification of the forms the changes are assuming.

Il est hors de doute que pendant les 25 à 30 dernières années les études ethnomusicologiques ont subi un développement systématique. En particulier, les spéacialistes se sont penchés toujours davantage sur les racines communes qui relient l'ethnomusicologie aux autres sciences historiques et sociales. Peu à peu ils se sont libérés de l'infiuence mythologique à l'égard du folklore, découlant de sa popularisation, de l'autarchie ethnique, de l'hédonisme, etc. Ils ont essayé d'observer surtout quels ont été ou sont la fonction et l'occasion d'un document musical à un certain niveau social, en abandonnant l'ideé d'un folklore se suffisant à lui-même, enfermé dans un compartiment étanche, tout aussi mythique que faux. Des recherches entreprises dans cet esprit permettent une approche historique plus précise des documents, dans une perspective d'histoire et d'archéologie musicales, aidée par des connaissances philologiques bien fondées.

Rumanian folklore is at present undergoing an intense process of transformation of its old and rich traditions. This is due to changes in the way of life, the conceptions and the culture of its creators. Some folklore has had to be abandoned as obsolete and some has become crystallised in fixed forms and is no longer productive. On the other hand, some old genres have acquired a new popularity and a large number of new songs and dances are enriching our folklore.

The renewal of tradition is characterized by changes in the function and consequently in the very structure of the folk creations. New variants appear which acquire gradually an indpendent structure. The changes in the formation and structure not only affect isolated creations but whole categories, causing important modifications in the traditional system of the folklore genres, their interrelation and their artistic form.

Le sort de la musique arabe en Israël pourrait susciter de sérieux doutes parmi les musiciens qui ne connaissent pas assez l'aspect culturel de ce pays, ou sa musique en général, ou celle de sa population arabe en particulier.

Le fait est qu'il existe ici, dans le domaine de la culture musicale arabe, des conditions bien différentes de celles des pays voisins essentiellement arabes, ce qui entraîne des conséquences pour la préservation et la rénovation de la musique arabe. Sur le plan démographique, la population arabe en Israël constitue une minorité (12 per cent environ de l'ensemble de la population), comprenant, d'une part, des musulmans, des chrétiens, et leur parents les druzes, d'autre part, des bédouins mi-nomades et des villageois—les deux groupes vivant dans un milieu plus ou moins arabe—et des citadins qui, par contre, sont mêlés à la population juive des grandes villes (employés, étudiants, commerçants, etc.).

About eighty years have passed since the renewal of Jewish settlement in Israel. Anyone who traces the metamorphoses which have occurred in the songs that accompanied the history of this period cannot but be astonished at the enormous range of modification in their spirit, content and style.

An attempt will be made here to present the essential part of a chapter from a more comprehensive study of Israeli song. This chapter concerns one particular group only, in which the composers of the songs succeeded in making an approach towards what may be called—and surely with no great risk of error—“Israeli musical folklore.”

It is known that Bartók had a high opinion of the aesthetic value of folk songs. We find the following passage in his work (Bartók, 1931): “In their small way, they are as perfect as the grandest masterpieces of musical art. They are, indeed, classical models of the way in which a musical idea can be expressed in all its freshness and shapeliness … with the simplest of means.” This was written by an artist whose compositions very rarely included melodies as rounded off as those of folk songs. Surfeited with the over-ripe melodic style and the exaggerated cult of harmonies of the romantic school, Bartók—like his contemporaries—made rhythm and tone-colour effects predominant in his works.

Until a few decades ago, the musical picture in many parts of Africa was primarily that of traditions of linguistic groups as cultural units. So there was as now Akan music, Adangme music, Yoruba music, Kalahari music, etc., each one practised by communities sharing common beliefs, common values and common ideals. Because of the way in which this music was organized and practised in the past, striking variations in levels of attainment, in the emphasis on different instrumental resources, and more particularly in the choice of singing styles have been inevitable.

Thus when we compare the singing styles of the Akan and the Anlo-Ewe of Ghana, we find that the dominant features of Akan singing style are the use of a heptatonic scale and polyphony based on the third as a consonant interval. Men and women rarely sing in octave parallels. In Ewe singing, on the other hand, the predominant features are singing in unison or in parallel octaves where men and women sing together and the use of sporadic fourths'as consonant intervals. Both hemitonic and anhemitonic pentatonic forms are used.

In general, it can be said the Oriental has a deeper sensitivity to delicate timbres than has the Occidental. In the folk and traditional music of Japan there are innumerable exquisite combinations of timbre which make it possible to achieve delicate forms of musical expression without the help of other musical elements such as melody, rhythm, harmony and counterpoint.

In Japan's primitive conception of aesthetics, music was closely related to nature. We can find many examples wherein the actual sounds of nature have been sublimated to musical expression. This is especially true in the field of theatrical music.

La musique israélienne savante contemporaine a ceci de remarquable qu'elle se crée sans une évolution artistisque préalable. A défaut d'un passé de créations musicales marquant une continuité historique, elle se crée en se rattachant aux traditions musicales de la liturgie ou à la tradition séculaire juive orientale, elle aussi puisant aux sources liturgiques traditionelles. Ces traditions musicales sont orales, leur fixation en notation occidentale moderne et leur étude analytique et comparative ne commençant qu'au début du siècle, notamment par A. Tzvi Idelsohn. Une étude plus critique au niveau de l'ethnomusicologie contemporaine bien qu'inaugurée par le Prof. Lachmann et le Dr. Gerson Kiwi est loin d'être achevée.

The subject of this paper, “European Folk Polyphony,” is one to be approached only with the most painful scruples and not a little hesitation, and this for the following reasons:

1. (1) It seems as though, even by hearsay, nothing like all the phenomena of European folk polyphony are known. Every year brings fresh surprises to light.

2. (2) The material basis is as yet extremely narrow. Far too few transcriptions have up to now been published.

3. (3) Even when comprehensive and reliable transcriptions have been published, we still lack exact studies that penetrate the material and isolate its typical characteristics or features. As is the case with all folk music, the polyphonic variety is, as we know, dependent on oral tradition, that is to say, the folk singers follow with fine instinct definite rules. But of these rules they are “theoretically,” as we understand this term, not conscious. It is thus only possible to deduce these rules in a “mediate” way, viz. through the careful analysis of transcriptions. But for this we need suitable methods of investigation and a terminology making it possible to give an unambiguous account of the phenomena with which the researcher may find himself confronted. And despite meritorious attempts, we have as yet no such methods and terminology at our disposition.

Pendant très longtemps, les musiciens de formation scolaire sont passés à côté de la polyphonie populaire sans même l'entendre. Leurs notations n'en tiennent aucun compte, leurs descriptions en font à peine mention dans des circonstances où cependant nous sommes certains qu'elle existait. Le fameux problème de l'existence ou la non-existence d'une polyphonie dans la musique grecque antique, n'est que l'un des aspects de ce meme problème. La réaction des musicographes de l'antiquité est exactement la meme que celle de nos observateurs classiques.

En face de ce dédain, j'oserais dire de cette surdité qui s'est prolongée jusqu'à l'aube de ce siècle, notre attitude à nous est rigoureusement opposée. Il suffit presque aujourd'hui qu'un individu chante un peu faux dans un groupe pour que des missions scientifiques s'organisent, et que, appuyée de mesures rigoureuses au demicent près, une nouvelle classification de polyphonie soit proposée au prochain Congrès, sans négliger d'en offrir le modèle aux jeunes compositeurs en quête de nouvelles “élucidations bouleversantes.”

In the general re-orientation concerning the origins and the true nature of Western polyphony, the bourdon techniques of the Orient are considered as one of the basic forms of simultaneous sound combination. Though not “polyphony” in the accepted meaning of the word, the bourdon has generated a number of polyphonic devices, a kind of proto-polyphony which may perhaps be the living archetypes behind the dead letters of notated music of the Middle Ages, and of their actual performance.

Though the bourdon has already been acknowledged as one of the essential polyphonic forms of the Mediterranean countries, neither the Islamic countries nor central India were explored as to their possible contribution in the field of folk polyphony. Paradoxically, it is just the so-called “monophonic” raga and maqam techniques which are closely bound to the various bourdon styles, and which therefore are actually a polyphonic performance.

A few years ago I published a short article on a strange phenomenon, which I dared to call “polyphony.” In the meanwhile, Curt Sachs treated a very similar phenomenon in his last book and I felt encouraged to take up this problem once more. I mentioned two examples.

In a village in southern Rumania, I observed some thirty or forty women going to the churchyard; there, each woman stood in front of a tomb and sang a song. Each woman sang a different melody and there was no musical relation between one song and the other. And yet the whole formed a uniform expression in a higher, let us say, extra-musical sense.