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Rethinking Musical Instrument Classification: Towards a Modular Approach to the Hornbostel-Sachs System

2011; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 43; Linguagem: Inglês

10.5921/yeartradmusi.43.0122

2304-3857

Stéphanie Weisser, Maarten Quanten,

Music Technology and Sound Studies

In 1914, Erich von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs created a hierarchic ordering (macrotaxonomy) of all musical instruments, even though they (and many others after them, see Kartomi 1990 and 2001) pointed out the difficulty of developing a systematic classification of all musical instruments (Hornbostel and Sachs 1961:5). This conceptual framework implies that the classifier has to walk one and only one route in the process of classifying objects. This cut-off “tracing” cannot possibly encompass all the possible features that make an instrument what it is and inevitably eliminates several other essential qualities of the object.