Lecture notes and summary on "Introduction to Cultural Musicology"
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Course
Introduction to Cultural Musicology (115121006Y)
Institution
Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
In this document, I have summarized and explained all the concepts that are explained in the lectures, which is all the necessary material to study for the final exam.
Lecture 1: The Berlin School of comparative musicology
What is cultural musicology?
Two Approaches to cultural musicology:
- Semasiology (meaning)
- Onomasiology (designation, established names for the discipline) : cultural musicology,
ethnomusicology, world music, musikologie, comparative musicology, anthropology of
music, transcultural music studies, musikethnologie.
BSC concerned with non-western folk music
Travelers and instruments brought by travelers, museums that exhibit instruments was the way music
spreaded around the world before the phonograph.
Phonograph - machine
Phonogramm - recording
1877 - Edison invents the phonograph
What is the year of birth of comparative musicology? (various answers)
1st possibility: 1885
- 1885 - Guido Adler - scope method and aim. First division of musicology in historical and
systematic (synchronic perspective; laws, no changing) and historical (diachronic perspective;
changing in time). Non western music was only considered systematic, not changing in time
which were attended to laws of nature.
- 1885 Alexander j. Ellis on the musical scales of various nations. The cent-system; the
position of the tone doesnt play a role.
- 1886 Carl Stumpf writes songs of bella-coola, the first article about a musical topic about a
tribe of native americans who came to Berlin to perform in exotic shows.
- 1899 - wiener phonogrammarchiv was founded
2nd possibility: 1900
- 1900 - Berliner phonogrammarchiv was founded by Carl Stumpf, this became home to the
berlin school of comparative musicology. They developed a method to produce copies of wax
cylinders.
- 1901 Tonysystem - Carl Stumpf
, Iria Oriol Rotaeche
3d possibility: 1905
- In 1905 Erich von Hornbostel developed the trinomial research design of comparative
musicology. After listening the music, first they transcripted the recordings to fix it in time
and be able to study it carefully, second step is analysis, third step is taxonomies and
classifications, the comparison of different music of the world to understand the nature and
laws of music around the world and to include music that was neglected.
Trinomial research design of comparative musicology by Eric Von Hornbostel
1. Transcription of exotic melodies by Otto Abraham und e.m.v Hornbostel (1909)
- Symbols
- Process
- Pitch measurement
- Pitch calculation - cent system
- Representation of scales
Fillmore (western representation, more familiar and more about communication) vs Gilman
(frequency based, more graphic but hard to read is more accurate) transcription.
2. Analysis
1. The Hornbostel paradigm; tone-system (the tone is the fixed pitch) that determines the
psychological structure of a selected group, the tones as construction material of all music. First, the
tone range is specified, then the number of tones per octave, from these materials you create the scale.
The distinction between the scale of tones actually used in a piece of music vs. the complete scale.
Next step you specify the intervals (whole number = consonant). Next the nucleus of melodic
movement
2. Rhythm including accentuation, meter and pulse.
3. Formal structure
4. Organology
5. Musical occasions
6. Ethnologie
3. Taxonomies and classifications
- 1914: Taxonomy of musical instruments (to describe and classify musical instruments). They
followed the classification in terms of the type of vibration
- Idiophones: The whole instrument vibrates
- Membranophones: The membrane vibrates
- Chordophones: A string vibrates
- Aerophones: A vibrating air column
- Electrophones (not yet in 1914)
- Tonesystem melody and scale
1. Scales with two or three tones within a range of a minor third are the oldest.
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