Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology by Bruno NettlReview by: David MortonJournal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Autumn, 1965), pp. 421-423Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/830714 .

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REVIEWS 421

the light of Szabolcsi's studies of the verbunkos style.

The "entertainment" music of the i9th century receives a treatment more thor- ough than in any other history of music. Readers of Stendhal and Balzac will be glad to see a complete citation of "Partant pour la Syrie," and Offenbach receives 2z pages of discussion (with many more music examples) to 23 pages for Mendels- sohn; yet the Mdinnerchor movement re- ceives a political rather than a musical analysis, and Knepler could have given a more detailed description of the social dances of the time and their domestica- tion in "art" music. In keeping with his Marxist ideology, the author devotes considerable space to the revolutionary "mass songs," from "La Carmagnole" to the "Internationale." Perhaps because the subject is unfamiliar to German readers, Knepler extensively discusses English bal- lad opera and folk song.

That music is influenced by society is demonstrable, but the conditions sur- rounding music do not necessarily deter- mine every facet of the art. From a scholarly standpoint, Knepler's social his- tory of music is the most questionable portion of his book. His customary tech- nique, typical of left-wing Marxist his- torians, is to pluck a number of facts from their background and context, draw hypotheses from them which in turn are treated as facts, and to bolster these shaky structures with additional quota- tions, usually from such unimpeachable historians as Marx, Engels, or Lenin. Facts which would invalidate his con- clusions are suppressed. Two illustrations may be cited: the French Revolution (Knepler's Golden Age) provided a wonderful climate for music, yet he does not mention the executions of Edelmann and Hiillmandel by the Jacobin terror- ists. He sees Boieldieu's Jean de Paris as a "popularizing of the aristocracy" as "lov- able, merry, harmless people," whereas the libretto pokes fun at bourgeois pre- tentiousness and pompous courtiers. The author would have done better by ex- amining a genuinely social-critical work like Isouard's Jeannot et Colin.

Knepler evaluates his composers not only by their musicality but also by their understanding of the class struggle and their religious views. A few scattered citations will demonstrate his evaluations:

"[Gr&try's] understanding for the necessity of the political struggle and the revolutionary elevation of the masses could not have been very ex- tensive." (p. i8i).

"It was not a lack of talent and con- structive ability, but the naive childish belief in the ideas of the Bible, to which the weaknesses in Franck's works can in large part be ascribed." (p. 317).

"Bruckner's great heart and his cre- ative originality were limited and hin- dered by the world-picture that the dominating classes interposed before him." (p. 703). Further comment would be superflu-

ous.

Despite its lacunae, occasional super- ficiality, subjectivity, and aura of un- apologetic Marxism, Knepler's Musik- geschichte des XIX. Jahrhunderts de- serves serious examination not only by those interested in the music of the 19th century but also by those connected with musical historiography. Illumina- ting, controversial, even outrageous at times, his study contains too many meri- torious insights to warrant its dismissal as a propaganda tract.

REY M. LONGYEAR University of Kentucky

Bruno Nettl. Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology. London: The Free Press of Glencoe (Collier- Macmillan), 1964. X, 306 PP., bibliog., illus., music, tables. MANY ETHNOMUSICOLOGISTS regret the continuing division of their discipline into opposing camps: i. The study of music abstracted from the social context; and 2. the study of man with a regard for music limited to its symbolic and functional roles. Certainly these are not

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422 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

independent but interdependent consid- erations that require constant effort to seek connections between the two. It is time and past that this should be recog- nized by all of us.

Nevertheless, in this book, Nettl pre- sents an anthropological orientation: "... the individual who wishes to learn to be a competent musician in another culture must ordinarily approach his field work in a way quite different from that of the anthropological field worker ... and it is the work of the latter type of field investigator which we shall discuss .. " This dismissal of the musically-oriented student occurs on page 64, and the out- look it expresses pervades the entire work. If on the one hand Nettl hopes that ". . . the very laudable stress on the cultural context of music will not cause a substantial decrease in the tech- nical study of the music itself" (page 24), on the other hand he emphasizes that ". .. few would seriously object to Merriam's statement that the primary understanding of music depends on an understanding of the people's culture" (page io). Indeed, we may not "object" to Merriam's statement, but neither need we agree with it. Social context is im- portant, even of first importance in some music, but a piece by a gagaku ensemble, or a Western symphony orchestra, or a polyrhythmic selection on a set of tuned drums from Africa, can be treated as a closed system without reference to social factors important in a different context. Of course, such an exclusive treatment would result in as great a distortion as the exclusive consideration of social fac- tors.

Nettl's one-sided approach is the most obvious and serious defect in this book, but not the only defect. Nettl states in his preface that he is presenting ". . . a compendium of theory and method as a historian who describes the works of past (sometimes very recent past) schol- arship and as a teacher who wishes in a practical sense to help a student to learn about some of the activities involved in ethnomusicological study" (p. viii). He advises us, however, that "a true com-

pendium of all theory and method in ethnomusicology would require a multi- volume set" and that ". . . we have here attempted to provide only an introduc- tion" (p. ix). As the word "introduc- tion" does not appear in the title, many readers may approach the book with greater expectations than it will fulfill. There are chapters on the nature and aims of the field, its bibliographic re- sources, field work, transcription, de- scription of musical compositions, the nature and description of style, instru- ments, music in culture-historical and geographical approaches, and music in culture--context and communication. The book is much too short to cover these subjects adequately in the breadth it attempts; unfortunately, it is also super- ficial in the areas to which it gives most attention, namely, the musics of non- literate cultures.

The notable omissions create a mis- leading emphasis. The cultures of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Far East are neglected. Yet it is not only Asiatic high cultures that Nettl ignores, but high-art culture itself; that is, it isn't that he is not a specialist in Asiatic musics so much as that he is a specialist in non- literate musics, and apparently assumes that this specialized knowledge is ade- quate to the problem of high-art music. The examples and descriptions in chap- ters 4, 5, and 6, where transcription, composition and style are discussed, are drawn from the music of nonliterate cul- tures or from folk music. To represent all musics other than Western art music by an eight- or sixteen-bar folksong (pages i57 and i59) or a short chantlike piece of an Amerindian group (page 156) is hardly worthy of a book entitled Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology. How can a folksong illustrate, for ex- ample, polyphonic stratification found in the gong-chime cultures of Southeast Asia? Or are we to understand that in- strumental music-which Dr. Nettl ad- vises on page 139 that he will not discuss -is so unimportant that it need not be represented? The limited space of these chapters is devoted to an attempt to

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REVIEWS 423

show basic approaches to the analysis of music in general, but a simple folksong is a naive illustration of the process. In- strumental music poses problems of its own, solutions to which are not to be found in techniques of analysis of vocal music, especially monody.

One may also take exception to Nettl's continued use of terminology associated primarily with techniques of Western art music to describe aspects of non- Western musics. Such a term is "poly- phony," which even in Western music is ambiguous. Its essential meaning of "many-voiced" might be thought de- scriptive of the music of the gong-chime cultures of Southeast Asia. If the term is understood to imply the use of many independent voices, however, as it is often understood in Western music, it is inappropriate. The technique used in Southeast Asia is the combination of a theme with abstractions of itself, elabora- tions, and variations, as well as inde- pendent but melodically (not harmoni- cally) related lines.1 Such a phrase as a "kind of polyphony" (pages i37 and 138, for example) is fundamentally inac- curate, whether or not the author deems it "best initially to class all non-Western music in which more than one pitch is heard at a time as one type of music, which we may for convenience call po- lyphony" (page I52). By analogy it would be just as inaccurate to describe music as harmonic if two tones are sounded simultaneously.

Finally, Nettl recommends (on page 36) those sections in the New Oxford History of Music, Volume 1: Ancient and Oriental Music that deal with the Asiatic art cultures by saying that al- though "there is some variation in quality among these chapters . . . all together they form a good survey of Asian art music." There is much variation: Colin McPhee held that the section on Bali is very poor, and I can attest that the sec- tion on the area of my own research,

Thailand, is worse. Nettl's recommenda- tion contrasts with Seeger's definitive review.2 Moreover, in paraphrasing (on page 168) a section of Bake's article on the music of India in volume I of the New Oxford History of Music (page 2o6), Nettl simplifies in a very mislead- ing way.

Distorted and incomplete, Nettl's book seems to aspire not to the augmentation of the knowledge of the specialist, nor to the integration of opposing theories, but simply to the sketching of certain aspects of the field. The best parts of the book are the chapter on bibliographic resources, most of the chapter on tran- scription, and particularly the last two chapters on music in culture. Here, the author is at home in his anthropologi- cally-oriented environment, and produces expositions that, although not lengthy, are rewarding.

DAVID MORTON

University of California, Los Angeles

1 To describe this technique more precisely, the term "polyphonic stratification," which was used earlier in this review, was coined recently by Mantle Hood.

2 Ethnomusicology III, 2 (May, 1959), pp. 96-97.

E. D. Mackerness. A Social History of English Music. London: Rout- ledge and Kegan Paul; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964. X, 307 PP. THIS IS A GOOD EXAMPLE of a class of book standing at the boundary of two sub- jects: musicology and sociology. By trade, the author is a distinguished teacher of a third subject: English liter- ature. He writes very well: a strong advantage. His approach is decidedly not that of a professional musicologist, and this brings both advantages and disad- vantages.

The book makes a bad start. To write an account either of "Music" or of "So- ciety in the Middle Ages" takes a finely specialized knowledge and skill; to relate the two in one chapter takes a special sort of historical imagination which can only grow at all in long accumulated knowledge of this special kind. It was

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