Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
The "Berlin School of Comparative Musicology" began with the research work
of Carl Stumpf, a psychologist and philosopher, and his assistant Erich M. von
Hornbostel, a twenty-four-year old student with training in philosophy and
chemistry. In a multidisciplinary constellation-that also included Otto
Abraham, Fritz Base, Marius Schneider, Mieczyslaw Kolinski, and George
Herzog-Stumpfworked to build a collection ofrecordings in the Psychological
Institute of Berlin University for research purposes, which later became the
Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv.
Comparative musicology
24
Cultural Evolutionism and Diffusionism in Comparative Musicology 25
1. Cultures evolve from simple to complex, andas they do so they move from
primitive to civilized.
Cultures and societies are always progressing. The direction of that change
moves always toward the more complex.
3. Societies are built of fairly coherent and functional systems that interre-
late to one another.
The evolutionists viewed societies as much more tightly integrated than
most diffusionists did on the whole. Nevertheless, there was a general idea
among comparative musicologists that societies possessed a degree of
coherence.
Cultural evoJutionlsm
• The theory that ali cultures are evolving to ever-higher states and sorne cultures
have reached a more developed state than others
• Supports the idea of polygenesis
26 Chapter 2
Critique
1. Grand theories of social change were constructed that were not anchored
in ethnographic details.
It is difficult to refute or support many of the claims of cultural evolutionists
because their theories were not grounded in facts but rather in conjecture.
2. Ali other cultures, according to this orientation, were judged to be less
culturally evolved than Western cultures.
There was a hegemonic tilt to the orientation that served to elevate Western
cultures above other cultures and societies. This aspect of the theory must
immediately cause us to wonder about the soundness of the structure.
l
Cultural Evolutionism and Diffusionism in Comparative Musicology 27
Diffusionism
The second orientation, diffusionism, also carne from anthropology and
described the spread of cultural practices, including music performance, from
one location to another often over long distances and the passage of time. One
of the key American scholars associated with diffusionism was Franz Boas
(1858-1942), who was born in Europe but spent a majar part of his career in
the United States. He showed a keen interest in culture traits and how they
diffuse over time from one place to another~ His version of diffusionism was
anchored in particular facts and relied on movement of a much smaller scale
than man y of the European scholars.
Diffusionism in the discipline of folklore was embodied in the historic-
geographic method and constituted the study offolktales and their spread from
one place to another over time. Research allowed one to reconstruct the point
of origin of cultural practices and artifacts.
Diffusionism: Assumptions
1. Cultural traits diffuse or move from one place to another over time.
We can find a cultural object such as the hooked drumstick in India as well
as in West Africa. Using diffusionism as an explanatory theory, we might
proceed to reconstruct the route by which the stick moved from one location
to another.
Diffusionism
• The theory that cultural traits move over time and space out from the point
of origin
• Supports the idea of monogenesis
28 Chapter 2
2. There is a single point of invention and over time the trait moves outward
from that original location.
Unlike cultural evolutionism, diffusionism does not allow for multiple
sites of independent invention. There is a single point of invention or
monogenesis. Common elements are assumed to have moved from one
point to another, and research constitutes creating the path of movement
from the place of origin to another location. Over time culture clusters or
cultural circles (Kulturkreislehre) develop, where related traits occur.
3. Societies are built ofmany traits that exhibit various origins and histories.
This situation may result in somewhat incoherent wholes because of the
varying origins of different parts of the culture. The result is a patchwork
quilt arrangement of varying components.
Nearly fifty years later, Arthur M. Janes, missionary and devoted amateur
comparative musicologist, researched material from similar regions, employing
a broader set of musical characteristics. He found that the Chopi, Malinke, and
Bakuba in Africa used a nearly identical beginning absolute pitch, just as
Cambodian and Javanese musicians did on their xylophones. He discovered the
octave was divided into equal steps of nearly identical size. The variations were
always less than half a step (Janes 1960:36-47).
I. Earliest Cultures.
1. Universal.
Strung rattles.
Bull-roarer.
Bone-flute.
Scraped idiophones.
2. Universal-sporadic in Africa.
End-blown conch trumpet.
3. Sporadic everywhere it occurs.
Percussion-rod.
w
30 Chapter 2
Later, Sachs reduced his twenty-three strata and Hornbostel's twelve groups to
three. In doing so, he specified the following assumptions that both he and
Hornbostel employed:
2. Objects preserved only in remate valleys and islands are older than those
used in open plains.
3. The more widely an object is spread over the world, the more "primitive" it
is. (Sachs 1940:62-64)
Diffusionism: Critique
1. Although diffusionism presents an order of events and relative time sense,
it does not indicate a precise or chronological sense of time.
The concern with history is not anchored in calendrical dates or absolute
time. Rather it is more a placing of one aspect befare or after another.
2. It is difficult to predict how a trait will be accepted by a group of people.
Neighbors may not take a trait, whereas people living a long distance away
will quite readily adopt it.
Diffusionism: Contribution
1. Diffusionism attempted to explain culture change over time and space.
By comparing traits, diffusionism sought to account for variation as well as
stability of traits, whether they occurred in music or folktales or religion.
2. Diffusionism attempted to identify similarities across cultures, even those
that were widely separated.
In this way, the orientation looked for connections from one group of peo-
ple another. Certain peoples, separated by great distance, possess traits that
on the surface at least appear to be similar and, therefore, merit study.
musical phenomena in the nineteenth century. But in the end, they helped dif-
ferentiate so-called high cultures from the so-called primitive cultures. They
created a hierarchy of societies and, by extension, musics. These two theories,
then, served and supported the thrust of colonialism as the Western powers
ruled over their outposts all over the world. These intellectual formulations
echoed the superiority of the West and classified the music of other parts of the
world in relation to the West.
Although the Kpelle musicians with whom 1 worked would not invoke
evolutionism, they made clear that over time they had added to the original
song in inventive ways-elaborating and enhancing this borrowed song. The
Kpelle performers of Gbeyilataa were evolving a performance in a way that
they valued and deemed aesthetically pleasing without invoking the theory of
cultural evolution and all of the accompanying assumptions.
The two examples from communities in West Africa are much more cir-
cumscribed and local than the theories of cultural evolutionism utilized by
comparative musicology. They show that we do indeed find cases of evolution-
ism that can be supported by the ethnographic fact of music performances and
music roles becoming more complex over time.
colonial powers where the center represented the purest form of a trait, which
then spread to the periphery. The colonial powers on a larger scale were the cen-
ter of force that spread to the edges.
Comparative musicologists thought globally and looked for universals.
They were ambitious and comprehensive. To their detriment, they did not
examine certain details of performance in ways that later scholars would deem
essential. But no one could accuse them of thinking small.
In many ways, the framework they offered was exciting, boldly sketched,
and a fine legacy. In other ways, the theories that dominated the period con-
tinue to haunt the work we do today. Thus a minimal understanding of the
stage as they set it is critica! to examining in sorne detail theory in ethnomusi-
cology today.
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