The Sound of Evolution

Abstract

This essay tracks the emergence of comparative musicology in Germany circa 1900, concentrating on the use of the phonograph by Carl Stumpf and Erich Moritz von Hornbostel, founders of the Berlin Phonogram Archive. The phonograph served as a scientific instrument for charting the evolution of music, based on recordings of "exotic melodies" performed at ethnographic exhibitions and other urban venues. Situating the discipline in the context of historical debates about evolution, colonialism, modernity, and mass culture, this essay argues that comparative musicology took shape and assumed resonance as a mode of phonographic discourse that aimed to make evolution audible.

Soundscapes of the Urban Past : Staged Sound as Mediated Cultural Heritage

“…When (outdoor) phonographic recordings were conducted, it was often for the ethnographic study of non-Western people.Cf. Stangl 2000, Ames 2007, Lange 2007 For several notable exceptions, see, Madsen 2009. For the development of documentary forms in the context of American radio, see, for instance, Loviglio 2002, as well asBluem 1965, 60-72, Barnouw 1978, 28-37, McDonald 1979, 281-325, Lichty and Bohn 1974…”

Em busca do limiar sonoro: gestos, sons e riscos na afinação das folias

“…Seu método de investigação procurava descrever os sistemas musicais e os percursos de deslocamento (no tempo e espaço) das canções e dos instrumentos, enfatizando justamente os aspectos melódicos da música (Nettl, 2005a(Nettl, [1983; Blum, 1992;Oliveira Pinto 2004). 6 O material mobilizado por Hornbostel para realizar suas investigações era fundamentalmente composto de gravações que chegavam em grande fluxo ao Arquivo por meio do envio de registros por parte de etnógrafos, missionários, comerciantes, viajantes e administradores coloniais nos quatro cantos do mundo (Ames, 2003). 7 O método e procedimento analítico de Hornbostel tiveram ampla e duradoura influência na musicologia comparada e posteriormente na etnomusicologia, que veio se desenvolver em solo norte-americano a partir da segunda metade do século XX.…”

The Gestation of Cross-Cultural Music Research and the Birth of Ethnomusicology

“…24 The Phonogramm-Archiv also became the basis for the development of a unique form of evolutionary theory focusing on music and, in particular, on pitch and intervallic organization. 25 As Eric Ames notes, Stumpf and his colleagues used recordings of non-Western music to emphasize musical evolution. However, evolutionary thought at the turn of the twentieth century took a variety of forms beyond a strict linear model, and Stumpf was able to construct an evolutionary discourse that accommodated notions of both development and geographical diffusion.…”

“…Hornbostel was an advocate of a form of evolutionism, but one which was combined with the geographical diffusion of cultural traits. 35 In fact, at certain points he seems to deny the validity of evolutionary theory for the purpose of understanding cultural phenomena. Of the idea that we might reconstruct the history of cultural phenomena, such as musical instruments, by arranging them according to differential features which would reveal their relative ages, Hornbostel writes: "Plausible as this reasoning sounds, its utility as a guide to method is doubtful, and theories of evolution, however ingenious, can contribute little to the classification of cultural phenomena in chronological order, which has always been accepted as one of the most important problems of ethnology."…”