Organology
Since the beginning of the 16th century the advent of the colonial conquests, the period of huge discoveries and exploration, new objects and musical instruments from non-western civilizations such as the Native American, Chinese, Arab, and Indian to the west. For instance, in 1620 the popular Praetorius made plates representing the African musical instruments in the Theatrum instrumentorum, which included Horns, Harps, Drums and a Bell. The introduction of the non-western musical instruments is owed much to the observations made by the travelers, missionaries, navigators, and to the works of various scientists who toured the world and experienced different cultures and civilizations in the 17th century.
While other civilizations and cultures had their classification systems for musical instruments, it was not until the late 17th century when the western civilization adopted a novel classification system for musical instruments. The western classification system was intended to be a universal system that would classify all instruments across the various civilizations based on given sets of principles. The introduction of the system took long because there were numerous controversies around the basis of classification of the instruments. For instance, the Hornbostel-Sachs System developed by Eric von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs classified instruments into idiophones, Membranophones, Chordophones, and Aerophones. Then came Andre Schaeffner, who opposed Hornbostel-Sachs system and developed his system of classification based on the physics of musical instruments, which he ended up classifying them into two groups that are solid instruments, and instruments containing air. Therefore, this explains why it took a long time to develop a classification system in the west (Dournon).
2.
The Hornbostel-Sachs classification system borrows a lot from the Indian classification system because it was divided into four categories based on the type of the vibrating element. T. Some of the Indian musical instruments had vibrating components such as the strings (Tata vadhya), the closed drums made of skin (Avanadha vadhya), hollow pipes (Sushira vadhya), and the solid instruments (Ghana vadhya). Similarly, the Hornbostel-Sachs has four categories of musical instruments based on the type of the vibrating component, which resulted in four categories of instruments. The first category is the chordophones, which uses strings as the vibrating element. Aerophones use air as the vibrating component, membranophones use stretched membranes to produce sound, and idiophones use solid materials as the vibrating components (Dournon).
3.
The development of the Indian, Chinese, and African classification systems of musical instruments was influenced by the cultural, social, and religious factors of each of the civilizations. Therefore, these civilizations coined the basis of classifying sound-producing musical instruments as the vibrating component of the instrument. Despite the common basis of classification, the different cultural and religious backgrounds of the civilizations gave rise to the different classification systems witnessed. For instance, the Chinese classification system is the most ancient system and was inspired by the Chinese perception of the world, such as cosmic forces. The Indian system, on the other hand, was majorly inspired by the arts such as poetry and music, which was famous among the Indians (Dournon).
4.
When classifying a musical instrument, it is important to ask the following questions: What vibrates? What is the mechanism of vibration? These two questions aim to guide the focus to the component that vibrates in the musical instrument as well as the mechanism by which the component vibrates. Essentially, the mechanism which an instrument is set to vibrate and how it relates to the structure of the instrument is the basis of defining the category in which an instrument falls (Dournon).
Works Cited
Dournon, G. “Organology.” Dournon, G. Organology. Norton, 1992. 245-295. Document.