British Forum for Ethnomusicology

Review: [untitled]
Author(s): Henry Stobart
Reviewed work(s):
Hearing the Past: Essays in Historical Ethnomusicology and the Archaeology of Sound by
Ann Buckley
Source: British Journal of Ethnomusicology, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2000), pp. 152-155
Published by: British Forum for Ethnomusicology
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3060652
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152 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.9/1i 2000 152 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.9/1i 2000
301-14. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Brinner, Benjamin (1995) Knowing
music, making
music.
Chicago:
University
of
Chicago
Press.
Bruner, Edward
(1986) "Experience
and
its
expressions."
In V. Turner and E.
Bruner
(eds)
The
anthropology
of
experience, pp.
3-10. Urbana and
Chicago: University
of Illinois Press.
Rice, Timothy (1997)
"Toward a
mediation of field methods and field
experience
in
ethnomusicology."
In
Greg
Barz and
Timothy Cooley (eds)
Shadows in the
field:
new
perspectives
for fieldwork
in
ethnomusicology.
New York: Oxford
University
Press.
MARIA MENDON(A
St David's
Hall, Cardiff
meml @nildram.co.uk
301-14. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Brinner, Benjamin (1995) Knowing
music, making
music.
Chicago:
University
of
Chicago
Press.
Bruner, Edward
(1986) "Experience
and
its
expressions."
In V. Turner and E.
Bruner
(eds)
The
anthropology
of
experience, pp.
3-10. Urbana and
Chicago: University
of Illinois Press.
Rice, Timothy (1997)
"Toward a
mediation of field methods and field
experience
in
ethnomusicology."
In
Greg
Barz and
Timothy Cooley (eds)
Shadows in the
field:
new
perspectives
for fieldwork
in
ethnomusicology.
New York: Oxford
University
Press.
MARIA MENDON(A
St David's
Hall, Cardiff
meml @nildram.co.uk
ANN BUCKLEY
(ed.) Hearing
the
past:
essays
in historical
ethnomusicology
and the
archaeology of
sound. E.R.A.U.L.
86 (Etudes et Recherches
Archeologiques
de l'Universit6 de
Liege)
1988.
251pp, illustrations,
plates,
musical
transcriptions.
Depot legal:
D/1998/0480/25
"The
people
that come
together
at
conferences to discuss
early
music
cultures are a
pretty motley group,"
observes Kenneth DeWoskin in his
chapter
about
interpreting early
Chinese
instruments from this volume. This is
reminiscent of
meetings
of
ethnomusicologists,
where the
participants
tend to hail from a
variety
of
different
backgrounds
and
disciplines
and
to
approach
their areas of
study
with
varying degrees
of adventurousness
-
some
scarcely peeking
outside their
immediate areas of studies and others
using
their material as launch
pads
to
ponder
broader or even universal
ANN BUCKLEY
(ed.) Hearing
the
past:
essays
in historical
ethnomusicology
and the
archaeology of
sound. E.R.A.U.L.
86 (Etudes et Recherches
Archeologiques
de l'Universit6 de
Liege)
1988.
251pp, illustrations,
plates,
musical
transcriptions.
Depot legal:
D/1998/0480/25
"The
people
that come
together
at
conferences to discuss
early
music
cultures are a
pretty motley group,"
observes Kenneth DeWoskin in his
chapter
about
interpreting early
Chinese
instruments from this volume. This is
reminiscent of
meetings
of
ethnomusicologists,
where the
participants
tend to hail from a
variety
of
different
backgrounds
and
disciplines
and
to
approach
their areas of
study
with
varying degrees
of adventurousness
-
some
scarcely peeking
outside their
immediate areas of studies and others
using
their material as launch
pads
to
ponder
broader or even universal
questions.
As with
many
volumes of
collected
essays
that result from
conferences, there is little sense of
coherence in the
approaches
of the
contributors to
Hearing
the
past.
However, there is much food for
thought
for
ethnomusicologists,
not least in terms
of
helping
us reflect on the status and
objectives
of our
discipline,
and
sometimes to feel fortunate that we can
hear, see and interact with
living
musicians
-
even then still
struggling
to
understand what on earth is
going
on!
Issues of status and
objectives
of the
discipline
are
initially brought
out in a
short
paper
entitled "What is
wrong
with
music
archaeology?" by Cajsa Lund,
who
identifies the low value ascribed to the
work of music
archaeologists by
mainstream Scandinavian
archaeology.
She concludes that a "broader social
perspective"
should be
applied
to the
study
of sound tools
(though sadly
without
giving any practical examples
herself).
The focus of some branches of
music
archaeology
often seems to
concern
questions
of whether or not an
archaeological
find is a
potential
sound
tool,
and
thereby
whether it
may
be
appropriated
to
specifically
musical
concerns, from which other
archaeologists
-
as
non-specialists
-
are
tacitly
excluded. A somewhat
analogous
relationship
has sometimes
emerged
between
ethnomusicologists
and
anthropologists,
where
specialization
in
"music" has led to a sense of
exclusiveness with the
consequence
that
ethnomusicological insights
have
frequently
failed to feed into broader
anthropological
discourse. It is no
coincidence that some of the most
respected figures
in
ethnomusicology
refuse to be dubbed with the title
"ethnomusicologist", asserting
instead
that
they
are
anthropologists. Similarly
a
number of the other contributors to this
volume
present
music as a
privileged
questions.
As with
many
volumes of
collected
essays
that result from
conferences, there is little sense of
coherence in the
approaches
of the
contributors to
Hearing
the
past.
However, there is much food for
thought
for
ethnomusicologists,
not least in terms
of
helping
us reflect on the status and
objectives
of our
discipline,
and
sometimes to feel fortunate that we can
hear, see and interact with
living
musicians
-
even then still
struggling
to
understand what on earth is
going
on!
Issues of status and
objectives
of the
discipline
are
initially brought
out in a
short
paper
entitled "What is
wrong
with
music
archaeology?" by Cajsa Lund,
who
identifies the low value ascribed to the
work of music
archaeologists by
mainstream Scandinavian
archaeology.
She concludes that a "broader social
perspective"
should be
applied
to the
study
of sound tools
(though sadly
without
giving any practical examples
herself).
The focus of some branches of
music
archaeology
often seems to
concern
questions
of whether or not an
archaeological
find is a
potential
sound
tool,
and
thereby
whether it
may
be
appropriated
to
specifically
musical
concerns, from which other
archaeologists
-
as
non-specialists
-
are
tacitly
excluded. A somewhat
analogous
relationship
has sometimes
emerged
between
ethnomusicologists
and
anthropologists,
where
specialization
in
"music" has led to a sense of
exclusiveness with the
consequence
that
ethnomusicological insights
have
frequently
failed to feed into broader
anthropological
discourse. It is no
coincidence that some of the most
respected figures
in
ethnomusicology
refuse to be dubbed with the title
"ethnomusicologist", asserting
instead
that
they
are
anthropologists. Similarly
a
number of the other contributors to this
volume
present
music as a
privileged
BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.91ii 2000
source of
knowledge
about
past
cultures.
Rather than
taking
the view that the
archeological study
of musical
instruments is a
dry
and
dusty
side-show
that is
largely
irrelevant to the main
business of
archaeology,
Kenneth
DeWoskin asserts that musical
objects
and
representations
recovered from
early
Chinese
graves
"have voices which tell
about themselves in
ways
that other ritual
objects
cannot". For DeWoskin, music is
the realm of human behaviour in which
significance
is most
fully
encoded in
structural
relationships, handily linking
the
conceptual
and
empirical. Through it,
the
purely
abstract can be rendered
concrete
(visibly
and
audibly),
as for
example
in the number of
strings
or
pipes
of instruments. While one has to be
careful not to over
interpret
such
aspects,
as is evident from
working
with
living
musicians, this sort of
approach
is
interesting
and
gives
music the
initiative,
rather than
assigning
it a
marginal
role.
(I
strongly
recommend
Joseph
Needham's
fascinating chapter
on
Sound,
in his
study
of Ancient Chinese
Physics,
1962:126-228, as
background
to
DeWoskin's
essay.)
DeWoskin bases his
argument
on the
analysis
of
paired
Jiahu flutes and the
tuning systems
and
inscriptions
of an
extraordinary
hoard of 65 bronze bells
and 32 stone
lithophones
from the
Marquis
Yi of
Zeng's tomb,
located close
to Wuhan in
China,
dated
(from
a bell
inscription)
to around 433 BCE. He
interprets
the different
languages
used for
the
inscriptions
on these bells and the
varied forms of
tuning
nomenclatures as a
means
by
which the
Marquis manipulated
his affiliations with
competing
genealogical
and
political groups.
This is
fascinating material, although
not
always
easy
to follow for the
non-specialist,
partly
due to the failure of the
figures
to
materialize, despite tantalizing
references
to them in the text.
Many
other
chapters
in this volume
are
excellently illustrated, however,
making
this an attractive and valuable
book for its
iconographic impact
alone.
The visual
aspect
is
particularly
evident
in Reis Flora's
chapter,
which considers
music culture contact between the Sumer
and Indus
regions.
I'm afraid I found the
text
excessively descriptive
and
dry,
although
such a
style
is
probably
welcome to hard-core archaeo-
organologists
and those used to
wading
through archaeological reports. However,
the illustrations and their evidence for the
extraordinary antiquity of, for
example,
harps
and
long-necked
lutes in the
Persian Gulf and Indus
regions (some
dating
back almost five
millennia)
are
fascinating.
The final three
chapters
of the book,
in a section entitled
"Representations
and
Reflections", are dedicated to Ancient
Greek and Roman material. The first two
essays
are
richly
illustrated. Jane
Snyder
focuses on
representations
of women
musicians in Attic
vase-painting,
and
argues
that Greek
literary
sources
give
the false
impression
that women's music-
making
was confined to
essentially
two
models:
(a)
the activities of a few noted
aristocratic
individuals, such as the
famous
poet-musician Sappho
of Lesbos,
who
composed wedding
and love
songs,
and
(b)
performances
of low status
professionals,
who
played
the
harp
or
aulos at men's
drinking parties.
From an
analysis
of
vase-painting
she
suggests
that
upper-class
women
principally
played
for their own
pleasure
and the
pleasure
of other women in the
household, who lived in
separate quarters
from those of the men. Music
appears
to
have served as an
important
medium for
the transmission of female ideas and
culture in Athenian
society,
where
women were
severely
restricted from
participation
in
public
life
-
a situation
reminiscent of that described
by
Veronica
153
154 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.9/1i 2000
Doubleday
for modem
Afghanistan
(1999:116-7).
Jon Solomon's
chapter
is also
dedicated to music and dance
representations
from Greek
pottery,
in
this case
focusing specifically
on the
geometric style.
From an art
history
perspective,
I found his discussion of the
development
of
design conventions, such
as
representations
of the horse,
fascinating. However, as a means of
reaching
a better
understanding
of
musical
performance practices
in
pre-
classical Greece,
the
interpretation
of
these vase
paintings
is
fraught
with
problems (as
Solomon is
evidently
well
aware himself). He
points
out that while
"individualized"
images
of the
positions
and
postures
of musicians and dancers
may
come close to
portraying
actual
musical
practices,
those that are
highly
decorative or
regularized
are
unlikely
to
be a reliable source of information about
performance practice.
But we are also
reminded that there
may
have been
occasions
(as
there are
today)
when a
chorus
group adopted regularized
and
decorative
postures
that could have been
represented
on
pottery.
While I concur
with
many
of Solomon's
points,
I do not
feel that this sort of
iconographic
material
(especially
if
truly geometric)
can be
seriously
fed into debates about whether
or not ancient Greek music was
played
in
ensembles or solo, or whether
polyphony
or
"harmony"
was used. This is a theme
that he
briefly
touches
upon
at the close
of his
essay.
Was this a case of
clutching
at straws?
Being desperate
to
say
something
about actual music
performance practices
even
though
the
material is not conducive to such
interpretations?
I am
certainly
sympathetic
to his dilemma.
In a
chapter
that
brings together
ancient Greek and Roman ideas about
music,
Daniel Delattre confines himself
to
literary
sources
-
specifically
a
papyrus
on which are written what
survives of Philodemus of Gardara's
Commentaries on music. The
chapter
includes a useful overview of earlier
Greek writers' views on the ethical
qualities
of music, which is essential
background
to his later discussion of
Philodemus's text. Philodemus was an
Epicurian,
and Delattre
argues
that his
book should be read as a "coherent and
critical examination" of a work written a
century
earlier
by
the Stoic, Diogenes
of
Babylon. Following
Stoic aesthetic
doctrine and the line of earlier writers on
the ethical
powers
of music
(such
as
Damon and
Plato), Diogenes
reasoned
that music was
indispensable
for the
upbringing
of children, seeing
it as the
gateway
to all virtues, which effected
morality
and
reasoning. (According
to
this view, certain melodies were
conducive to vice
just
as others were to
virtue.)
In his Commentaries, Philodemus
refutes the moral effects of music and
excessive intellectualism of
Diogenes'
approach, focusing
instead on the
pleasurable
sensations and affections that
music
produces.
Philodemus wrote his
text in
Italy where, despite ample
interest
in
performance
-
as evidenced
by
the
musical
exploits of,
for
example,
Nero
-
the Romans
evidently
ascribed less
importance
to music
theory
than did the
Greek tradition. Delattre
suggests
that
Philodemus's
commentary
was a skilful
attempt
to reconcile
Epicurian
doctrine
with the Roman
reality
of the time, while
attacking
a Stoic
opponent,
and
promoting
a more cultivated status for
Epicurians.
This rich and
engaging
chapter
has
many
resonances with
continuing
debates about the
power
of
music and its role in music education.
Without considerable
specialist
knowledge
of the Javanese
gamelan
or
gong
ensembles of Borneo,
I find it
difficult to evaluate
Inge Skog's
wide-
ranging chapter
on this theme.
Basing
his
BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.9/1i 2000 155
reasoning
on a
range
of historical,
anthropological, linguistic
and
musicological approaches,
he
argues
that
gong
ensembles are a much later
phenomenon
than
many
earlier scholars
have
suggested.
The view that the first
gamelan
ensemble was created in Java
some 2000
years ago
is
consigned
to
myth
and
interpreted
as a means of
legitimating
more recent institutions.
While individual
gongs
have
probably
been in use for more than a 1000
years,
Skog
maintains that ensembles with
suspended gongs probably developed
no
earlier than the fifteenth
century.
He also
relates the dissemination of these
instruments and
playing traditions,
especially during
the sixteenth
century,
to
European
interests and the
spice
trade.
The
argument
is
compelling
and chimes
resonantly (gamelan-like!)
with much
recent work on invented traditions,
suggesting
a shallower and more
colonized cultural
history
for
gamelan
performance practices. However, a few
suspicions concerning methodology
and
historiography
were aroused for me
by
Skog's
use of the
anthropological present
in certain
places,
when
referring
to
practices
referenced to the 1970s, as well
as to unattributed comments such as
"which
symbolizes
a soul within the
body" (81).
We are left to wonder: for
whom, when, why
and where...?
Specialists
will
undoubtedly
have their
own
strong feelings
about this
chapter.
Much food for
thought
is
provided by
Catherine Homer-Lechner's
challenging
and
wide-ranging study enigmatically
entitled "False. Authentic. False
authenticity.
Contributions and failures of
experimental archaeology
as
applied
to
musical instruments". This
essay ranges
from an overview of the
beginnings
of
the
early
music movement in France to a
multiplicity
of issues
concerning
experiments
in the reconstruction and
performance
of
early
or ancient musical
instruments. I found
myself squirming
at
Homer-Lechner's
apparent assumption
that it is "the search for
authenticity" (30)
-
as some sort of
utopian
desire to relive
the
past
-
which motivates
performers
of
early
music. However, this
essay
is full of
lively questions
and it is a
piece
that I
will
undoubtedly
continue to return to
and refer to students. It
highlights
the
shifting
subjectivities
in our
relationships
with past musical cultures and
accordingly
the
place
of historical
context of current
performance practices.
In
general
I
very
much
enjoyed
reading
this volume, though
from time to
time I felt relieved to be
working
in
ethnomusicology
rather than music
archaeology,
where the
possibility
of
"hearing
the
past",
or even its
vaguest
semblance, sometimes seems
excessively
remote. This attractive book covers a
wide
range
of materials and cultures and
should
certainly
be included in the
library
of
any self-respecting department
of
ethnomusicology,
music or
archaeology.
References
Doubleday,
Veronica
(1999)
"The frame
drum in the middle east: women,
musical instruments and
power."
Ethnomusicology
43:1.
Needham, Joseph (1962)
Science and
civilisation in China, vol. 4, Part 1,
Physics
and
Physical Technology.
Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Orders: 1500 BEF +
p.&p.
to: Emmanuel
Delye,
Universite de
Liege
-
Archeologie
Prehistorique,
Place du XX
Aofit, 7, bat.
A1, B-4000
Liege, Belgium;
e-mail:
Emmanuel.Delye@ulg.ac.be.
Credit card
payments acceptable.
HENRY STOBART
Royal Holloway, University
of London
h.stobart@rhbnc.ac.uk