Society for Ethnomusicology

Review: [untitled]
Author(s): Albrecht Schneider
Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 43, No. 3 (Autumn, 1999), pp. 545-547
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology
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VOL.43, NO. 3 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY FALL
1999

Book Reviews

Vom t6nenden Wirbel menschlichen Tuns. Erich M. von Hornbos-

tel als Gestaltpsychologe, Archivar und Musikwissenschaftler.
SebastianKlotz, editor. 1998. Berlin/Milow:Schibri-Verlag.
265 pp.,
photos, Englishsummaries,bibliographies,index.
This volume contains a dozen essays and technical papers, some of
which were presented as lectures at a symposium held in 1995 at Berlin's
Humboldt University to commemorate the sixtieth anniversaryof Hornbos-
tel's death. Erich Moritz von Hornbostel (1877-1935), who had received
formal academic training as a chemist in Heidelberg and Vienna (Ph.D. in
1899), went in 1900 to Berlin, where he met Carl Stumpf, the eminent
philosopher, psychologist, and musicologist. Hombostel became one of his
research assistants at the Psychologisches Institut of the Friedrich-Wilhelm
Universitit (now Humboldt Universitat), a stronghold of comparative and
systematic musicology, and specialized in what was then labelled as "exot-
ic music."
From 1905 until the time of his emigration in 1933, Hornbostel was in
charge of the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv, one of the early sound archives
devoted to the collection and study of non-western musics. Carl Stumpf
himself (with the assistance of Otto Abraham, a medical doctor who was
one of Stumpf's collaborators) had started recording "exotic"music in 1900
when a Siamese (Thai) ensemble visited Berlin. Subsequent recordings of
Japanese, Indian and African music led to the foundation of the sound ar-
chive that Stumpf wanted to use, most of all, in research directed to issues
in perception and cognition of music. As is outlined in detail in one of the
essays contained in the volume at hand (Susanne Ziegler, "ErichM. von
Hornbostel und das Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv,"pp. 146-168), Hornbos-
tel enthusiastically engaged in expanding the archive as well as in transcrip-
tion and analysis of music that had been recorded by anthropologists, lin-
guists, and others all over the world. By 1906, the archive alreadycontained
a thousand Edison wax cylinders, and by 1914, the collection had expand-
ed to about 9000 original recordings. In 1906, Hombostel travelled to the

? 1999 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

545
546 Ethnomusicology, Fall 1999

United States and made a field trip (together with the linguist George A.
Dorsey) to Oklahoma,where he obtained recordings of the Pawnee and was
introduced to some of their sacred ceremonies. This was the major field
experience of Hornbostel's life (he suffered from ill health); however, he
also observed non-western music in its traditional context when he took
part in the Arabian Music Congress held in Cairo in March, 1932.
Though the Phonogramm-Archivcan be viewed as the center of Horn-
bostel's untiring work, it was by no means his sole academic engagement.
While he strived for increasing the collection of sound documents and
steadily published transcriptions of considerable portions of the recorded
music, he also taught comparative and systematic musicology at the uni-
versity beginning in 1923. George Herzog and Mieczyslaw Kolinski were
among his students. Hornbostel, whose mother was Jewish, was removed
from office at the Phonogramm-Archivon June 30, 1933, and was deprived
of his venia legendi at the university in September, 1933. By this time,
however, Hombostel had alreadyleft Berlin. After a short stay in New York,
he settled in England and died at Cambridge in November, 1935.
The unique achievements attributed to Hombostel as an archivist are
justified, though it is said that Hornbostel, always eager to know more "ex-
otic" music, at times didn't wait for copies to be made from newly arrived
wax cylinders, and repeatedly listened to the originals, which were easily
worn out.
Some of the essays (notably those contributed by Wolfgang Ernst and
by the editor of the volume, Sebastian Klotz) attempt to put Hornbostel's
ideas and actual work into a framework that addresses, among other as-
pects, issues in media theory and documentation. Hornbostel's understand-
ing of one of the important goals of sound archives, namely, to preserve
cultural diversity as found in various musical areas and styles endangered
by the impact of "Western"civilization, is also treated. In the aim to pre-
serve culturalheritage as well as to stress diversity, Hornbostel perhaps took
a stand similar to that of the anthropologist FranzBoas. Boas, who had crit-
icized models of unilineal evolutionism, opting instead for "culturalpartic-
ularism,"is also represented in this volume. The original typescript of one
of his political essays, "Arierund Nicht-Arier"("Aryansand Non-Aryans"),
written and published in 1933 after the Nazis had assumed power in Ger-
many, is reprinted. Whether or not Boas and Hornbostel ever met in per-
son remains unknown.
The essays collected in this volume are quite diverse in content and
style. Not all of them deal with Hornbostel directly. Some are intended to
relate Hornbostel's life and work to the history of media and technology,
and to modernism in general. Hornbostel, basically a learned gentleman
 Book Reviews 547

commanding many skills, is difficult to assess as regards his world view and
conceptual thought. Engaged in a variety of tasks and hobbies ranging from
serious work as an archivist, musicologist, and psychologist, to his predi-
lections for jazz, numbers, and games, Hornbostel achieved much as a schol-
ar yet also engendered criticism because of speculative elements that un-
fortunately are found in his works devoted to "culture historical"ethnology
as well as tonometrical research (for details, see Schneider 1993). Notwith-
standing such shortcomings, Hornbostel remains an impressive figure in
comparative and systematic musicology who demonstrated incredible eru-
dition as well as the gift to address key issues not only in ethnomusicology
(e.g., his explanation of African harmony and rhythm; Hornbostel 1928),
but also in music history (e.g., his treatment of Islandic tvisongvar as re-
lated to medieval polyphony; Hornbostel 1930) and in theory of perception.

Albrecht Schneider Universitit Hamburg

References
Hornbostel,E. M.von. 1928. "AfricanNegroMusic."Africa 1:30-62.
. 1930. "Phonographierte islandischeZwiegesange."In Deutsche Islandforschung,
edited by WaltherHeinrichVogtand others,Vol. 1, 300-320. Breslau:F. Hirt.
Schneider, Albrecht. 1993. "Germanyand Austria,"In Ethnomusicology: Historical and Re-
gional Studies, edited by Helen Myers, 77-96. New York and London: The Macmillan
Press.

Fiddling for Norway. Chris Goertzen. 1997. Chicago: University of Chi-

cago Press. 347 pp., photos, tables, maps, tune anthology, performance
information, text notes, bibliography. Cloth, $54.00; paper, $22.50.
This book is an authoritative and thorough examination of an impor-
tant aspect of the folk music revival in Norway-the National Fiddle Con-
test-and the role that this particular event has played in the larger issue
of forging a distinct Norwegian identity for players and audiences alike. As
Goertzen notes, this contest, which began as a project of the National
Tourist Board in 1881, was initiated during an era when significant num-
bers of poor farmers and farmworkers immigrated to the United States,
rather than remain in the grips of a land ownership system based on pri-
mogeniture. This change in Norway's demographic profile coincided with
a marked increase in Norwegian efforts to gain complete independence
from neighboring Sweden, a process that was not complete until 1905.
From Goertzen's perspective, these paralleldevelopments created a charged
nationalistic atmosphere, which in turn provided the impetus for the re-