The International Musicological Congress in Hamburg in September, 1956, devoted one of its four general subjects to "Ethnological Music Research," thereby indicating the significance of this young branch of musicology.

From the aspect of folklore, the Hamburg ethnologist Kunz Dittmer spoke on the role of music in universal ethnology. He emphasised the views of modern ethnology against the origin and evolution theories of the cultural groups doctrine held by the Viennese school, and against the isolated consideration of individual characteristic of style. He pleaded for an integral conception of the culture of foreign races, most particularly of primitive races.