The ethnological study of music / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Charles Samuel Myers
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The ethnological study of music / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    3/24
    I THE CHARLES MYERS . LIBRARY NATIONAL iNSTIl UTt 3,:iinE OSTiilAL PS'/CHOLOGIf 14. WElBiCK STREET. ' :.C0N, W I. THE ETHNOLOGICAL STUDY OF MUSIC By CHARLES S. MYERS, M.A., M.D. Professor of Psychology, King’s College, London Introductory\—It is hardly surprising that the ethnological study of music has been neglected until recent times. For, in the first place, its recognition as a serious branch of scientific investigation has been very tardy. Not long ago we were all of us apt to look on primitive music just as the Greeks regarded the language of their neighbours. We now know that, disorderly and meaningless as unfamiliar language and unfamiliar music at first appear, an in¬ herent order and a meaning are revealed after sufficient study and habituation. In the second place, the subject has until recently demanded a worker who is alike a trained ethnologist and a musician. But within the last fifteen years, the use of the phonograph has enormously lightened the weight of musical knowledge, which the worker must otherwise take with him into the field. It is now possible for the ethnologist of very moderate musical attainments to collect phonographic records and other data of great musical interest which can be worked out by the specialist at home. The theorist should henceforth have no cause for complaint of paucity of material. Nor need he longer rely on the unverifiable guesses and errors made by independent and often untrained observers in the field. Contamination of primitive music.—There is hardly any other branch of ethnology where so much remains to be done, and where the opportunities for research are so rapidly vanishing beyond recall, as the study of comparative music. The borrowing and adulteration of music proceed apace. When tribes, formerly hostile, become pacified, fresh routes are opened up for the mutual exchange and contamination of different styles of primitive music. When sacred and profane European tunes are introduced by the missionary or the trader, unpolluted aboriginal music soon has a precarious existence.