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101
ETZKORN
University of Nevada
ABSTRACT
Simmel's first published study is examined for its current relevance to the sociological
study of music. It is found to be rich in suggestions for research while it does not present a
coherent theoretical scheme or program for the sociology of music. Simmel's empirical examples, however, suggest that key areas for this discipline are (1) the social meanings which
are represented and expressed in music, and (2) the position and function of music in society.
Implications for a theory of taste groups on the basis of. differential socializationi are suggested.
A
inel 1858-1918:A Collectionof Essays, with Translations and a Bibliography (Columbus: The Ohio
State University Press, 1959), xv, 396 pp.
fuir Vo3kerpsychologie.3
This study
Simmel, Philosophische
Kufltur (Leipzig:
Klink-
hardt, 1911).
3Vol. 13 (1882), pp. 261-305.
4 Alexander J. Ellis, "On the Musical Scales of
Various Nations," Journal of the Society for Arts,
33 (1885).
5 Curt Sachs, Our Mlusical Heritage (New York:
Prentice Hall, 1955), p. 12. Bruno Nettl, Music in
Primnitive Culture (Cambrdige: Harvard University Press, 1956), p. 28.
102
SOCIAL FORCES
ON
MUSIC
103
104
SOCIAL FORCES
activities or other functions which are rlhythmically patterned, such as tribal preparationls for
warfare. His designation of European military music as Ldrm und BlasmusikI9 may suggest that he conceives of military activities as
primitive, especially since he stresses that wind
instruments are more characteristic of primitive society than string instruments. Instrumental music thus represents to Simmel a more
elaborated mode of expressing human emotions
than can be gained through vocal music alone.
Onice instrumental music has been developed
in the history of mankind, it can be divorced
from its accompanying function for vocal music
and come to stand by itself. To Simmel, vocal
music expresses referential emotions in their
natural state, while instrumental music can
more easily approach objectivity-which is for
Simmel "the ideal of art." In instrumental
music "feelings
do not disappear,
. . . they still
IN
SIMMEL
S SOCIOLOGY
20
21
24Ibid., p. 43.
105
25 See for example Simmel's books on Goethe trinsic" and "extrinsic" modes of analysis raises
analogous methodological problemnsin the sociol(1913) and Rembrandt (1916).
26 For this distinction see chapter I of Leonard ogy of knowledge. "Ideologischeund soziologische
Interpretation der geistigen Gebilde," in Salomon,
B. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning of Music (Chied., Jahrbuch fur Soziologie (Karlsruhe: Braun,
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1956).
27 Karl Mannheim's distinction between "in- 1926), Vol. II, pp. 424-440.
106
SOCIAL FORCES
Simmel's foremost contribution to the sociology of music as contained, in his early study
consists, we would think, inl having shown that
107