The history of ethnomusicology describes the evolution of the discipline of ethnomusicology, which integrates the cultural and social roles and influences of the people who make it. Oskar Kolberg is one of the earliest ethnomusicologists who began by collecting Polish folk songs in 1839.(Nettl 2010, 33) Comparative musicology, the primary precursor to ethnomusicology, emerged in the late 19th century and early 20th century. The International Musical Society in Berlin in 1899 acted as one of the first centers for ethnomusicology. Comparative musicology and early ethnomusicology tended to focus on non-Western music, but later, the field expanded to embrace Western music.
When ethnomusicology first emerged in Western academic circles, its focus was primarily on non-Western music. This often neglected European and Western musical traditions, creating a contrast with conventional musicology, which centered on Western art music. This approach led to criticism for imposing Western biases on non-Western music, which prompted scholars to shift from "comparative musicology" to "ethnomusicology" in the 1950s. The new term aimed to emphasize a descriptive, culture-sensitive approach that respected each musical tradition on its own terms.Nettl, Bruno. 2005. "The Harmless Drudge: Defining Ethnomusicology". The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-one issues and concepts 3-15
Over time, the scope of ethnomusicology broadened to encompass the study of music from all cultural contexts, including Western traditions. Pioneering figures like Alan Merriam and David McAllester emphasized that music should be understood as a form of human behavior and expression rather than solely as an object of analysis. Merriam, Alan P. The Anthropology of Music. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1964.McAllester, David P. Enemy Way Music: A Study of Social and Esthetic Values as Seen in Navaho Music. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum, 1954. This reflects a more human-centric approach, where music is seen as both an art form and a social and a cultural phenomenon deeply connected to identity, tradition, and daily life.Myers, Helen. 1992. "Ethnomusicology". In Ethnomusicology: An Introduction 3-18Merriam, Alan. 1960. "Ethnomusicology: A Discussion and Definition of the Field". Ethnomusicology 4(3): 107-114 This perspective rejected confined distinctions between “Western” and “non-Western” music and encouraged analysis grounded in the lived experiences of the communities studied. Later writers, including Charles Seeger and Steven Feld, extended this approach by emphasizing performance, embodiment, and the situated meanings of sound within cultural life.Seeger, Charles. “Why Suya Sing.” In Studies in Musicology, 1929–1979, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.Feld, Steven. Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics, and Song in Kaluli Expression. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
Folklorists, who began preserving and studying folklore music in Europe and the US in the 19th century, are considered the precursors of the field prior to the Second World War. Oskar Kolberg is regarded as one of the earliest European ethnomusicologists as he first began collecting Polish folk songs in 1839. The International Musical Society in Berlin in 1899 acted as one of the first centers for ethnomusicology.
Folklore
Folklore and folklorists were the precursors to the field of ethnomusicology prior to WWII. They laid a foundation of interest in the preservation and continuation of the traditional folk musics of nations and an interest in the differences between the musics of various nations. Folklorists approached folklore through comparative methods, seeking to prove that folk music was simple but reflected the lives of the lower classes.
Folklore is defined as "traditional customs, tales, sayings, dances, or art forms preserved among a people."Folklore [Def. 1]. (n.d.). In Merriam-Webster Online. Retrieved December 13, 2017, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/folklore. Bruno Nettl, an ethnomusicologist, defines folk music as "...the music in oral tradition found in those areas dominated by high cultures."Pegg, Carole, Helen Myers, Philip V. Bohlman, and Martin Stokes. 2001. "Ethnomusicology." In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 8, ed. S. Sadie, 367-403. London: Macmillan. This definition can be simplified to the traditional music of a certain people within a country or region.
Folkloric studies were partly motivated by nationalism and the search for national identities. Southern and Eastern European composers incorporated folk music into their compositions to instil sentiments of nationalism in their audiences. Examples of such composers are Leoš Janáček, Edvard Grieg, Jean Sibelius, Béla Bartók, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. As Helen Meyers puts it, "Nationalist composers throughout Europe turned to peasant song to enrich the classical musical idiom of their country."Myers, Helen. 1992. "Ethnomusicology." In Ethnomusicology: An Introduction, ed. Helen Myers, 3-18. New York: Norton. In the United States, the preservation of folk music was part of a search for a sense of national tradition in the face of striking regional diversity.
"The collecting projects of southern and eastern Europeans of the second half of the 19th century were largely contributions to folkloric studies. These collectors feared that entire repertories were on the point of extinction, repertories that were thought a proper base for nationalist styles of art music. Early collectors were motivated by musical nationalism, theories of self-determination, and by hope for a musical rationale for a pan-Slavic identity...eastern Europeans explored their own linguistic setting, amassing large collections, thousands of song texts and, later, tunes, which they sought to classify and compare." The most well-known eastern European collectors were Béla Bartók (Hungary), Constantin Brăiloiu (Romania), Klement Kvitka (Ukraine), Adolf Chybinski (Poland), and Vasil Stoin (Bulgaria).
In 1931, Béla Bartók published an essay detailing his study of what he refers to as "Peasant music" which "...connotes...all the tunes which endure among the peasant class of any nation, in a more or less wide area and for a more or less long period, and constitute a spontaneous expression of the musical feeling of that class."Bartok, Bela. 1931. Hungarian Folk Music. London: Oxford University Press. Pp. 1-11. Bartok takes a comparative approach in his investigation of Hungarian folk music and believes that peasant music is primitive when compared to the music of the educated class.
In North America, state folklore societies were founded in the early 20th century and were dedicated to the collection and preservation of Old World folksong, i.e. music that came from Europe, Africa, or places outside of the U.S. during the settlement of the U.S. by colonizers; Native American music was also included in these societies. "In 1914 the US Department of Education instigated a rescue mission for ballads and folksongs, stimulating an era of collecting by local enthusiasts and academics that lasted through the Great Depression until World War II."
Cecil Sharp, a lawyer turned musician, greatly contributed to the collection and preservation of British folk songs found in Appalachia. His interest in folk music began in 1903, when he discovered that a large amount of native folk song survived in England and published Folk Songs from Somerset (1904–1909). After he studied traditional English folk song in England, he traveled to the Appalachia region with his collaborator Maud Karpeles of the United States of America three times between the years 1916 and 1918 and discovered around 1,600 English tunes and variants.
In 1909 Olive Dame Campbell traveled to the Appalachia region of the U.S. from Massachusetts and discovered that the ballads sung by the residents had strong ties to English and Scots-Irish folk songs. This region of the United States preserved these old folk songs because it was isolated from the city centers of the original thirteen colonies. She collected ballads by having people sing them to her while she recorded them on a phonograph and transcribed them. She worked with Cecil Sharp and published the ballads that she had collected in English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians.
A controversy in the field of musicology arose surrounding Negro Spirituals. A musical spiritual is defined as "a religious song usually of a deeply emotional character that was developed especially among blacks in the southern U.S."Spiritual [Entry 2 Def. 2]. (n.d.). In Merriam-Webster Online. Retrieved December 13, 2017, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spiritual. The controversy revolved around whether the spirituals originated solely from Africa or if they were influenced by European music. Richard Wallaschek claimed that Negro Spirituals were merely imitations of European song, starting the debate on the subject.Wallaschek, Richard, tr. Robin Legge: Primitive Music: An Enquiry into the Origin and Development of Music, Songs, Instruments, Dances and Pantomimes of Savage Races (1893) Erich von Hornbostel concluded that African and European musics were constructed on different principles and therefore could not be combined. The white origin theory argued that black music had been influenced by Anglo-American song and constituted an integral part of the British tradition. Melville J. Herskovits and his student Richard A. Waterman discovered that "European and African forms had blended to produce new genres bearing features of both parent musics. European and African music...have many features in common, among them diatonic scales and polyphony. When these two musics met, during the slave era, it was natural for them to blend..." Negro Spirituals were the first black musical genre comprehensively studied by scholars.
The interest in folklore did not end with the folklorists before World War II. After World War II, the International Folk Music Council was founded and was later renamed the International Council for Traditional Music. In 1978, Alan Lomax sought to classify and compare the music of world cultures through a system he named Cantometrics.Lomax, Alan. 1978 . Folk Song Style and Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. This goal began with his idea that singing is a universal characteristic and therefore all musics of the world should have some comparable characteristics. Lomax believed that human migration could be tracked through songs; when a certain culture's song or style is heard in another geographical region, it signifies that the two cultures interacted at some point. Lomax thought that all folk song styles vary with, and can be compared using, several categories, which include: productive range, political level, level of stratification of class, severity of sexual mores, balance of dominance between male and female, and the level of social cohesiveness. He compared vocal performances through a set of characteristics, some of which are 'raspiness', the use of meaningful words, and the use of meaningful syllables.
Comparative Musicology