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| What do instruments allow us to do that the voice does not? How are instruments different from the human voice? Why categorize instruments? How do we categorize instruments? What do instruments say about the cultures that create them? What is organology? What do categorization methods say about the cultures that create and use them? What does the ancient Chinese pa-yin (or bayin) approach tell us? The ancient Indian vadya approach? What is the relationship between the problems encountered by Mahillon and other museologists in classifying instruments and European culture in the 16th-20th centuries? How are our problems similar and different? |
Purpose
To develop skills for categorizing and thinking about instruments. |
Goal
To develop an understanding of how culture shapes our thinking about musical instruments. |
Essay Tasks
Describe an instrument or group of instruments using the bayin/pa-yin system.
Describe the same instrument(s) using the Sachs-Hornbostel system.
Compare how the two systems describe the instruments.
Compare the advantages of each system.
Compare the disadvantages of each system.
What is the role of cultural context? |
Class Presentation
Choose an instrument, bring it to class, and describe it using Sachs-Hornbostel and the bayin systems. |
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| Sources |
| Dournon, Geneviève. Organology.
In Ethnomusicology: An Introduction (edited by Helen Myers): 245-300. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1992. |
| Hornbostel, Erich M. and Curt Sachs. Classification of Musical Instruments. [Originally
published 1914.] In Ethnomusicology: An Introduction (edited by Helen Myers): 444-461. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1992. |
| Kartomi, Margaret. On Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1991. |
Links
Erich
von Hornbostel, Curt
Sachs, Hornbostel-Sachs, Wesleyan
Virtual Instrument Museum, Rod Knight's Website |
