The scholarly investigation of the folk music of every people and every land is one of the important tasks of the International Folk Music Council, perhaps its central task. This charge, which is laid down in the rules of the Council and thus carries the weight of an obligation, we tried to fulfill by holding scholarly conferences and publishing their papers in a journal. Thus, the work of scholars from all parts of the world was made known and had a stimulating effect.

Wenn zu Recht behauptet wird, dass die Ethnomusikologie erst durch den Phonographen und seine Möglichkeit, das in der Zeit ablaufende Musikphänomen festzuhalten und zu fixieren, um es immer von neuem einer Untersuchung unterziehen zu können, zur Wissenschaft wurde, so kann man ebenfalls die These aufstellen, dass die Ethnomusikologie sich erst dann zu einer modernen sozial-und musikwissenschaftlichen Disziplin entwickelte, als sie sich geeignete Mittel zur analytischen und systematisierenden Erfassung des Musikphänomens geschaffen hatte. Ja man könnte sogar soweit gehen und die Behauptung aufstellen, dass das wissenschaftliche Niveau der jeweiligen ethnomusikologischen Forschungen vom Stand der ethnomusikologischen Klassifikation und Systematisierung abhängt, d.h. von der Fähigkeit, in den musikalischen Organismus einzudringen, sich seiner inneren Beziehungen und Komponenten bewusst zu werden und anderseits die analytischen Ergebnisse zu sichten und zu vergleichen, sie im Zusammenhang zu sehen und in stilgeschichtliche, regionale, ethnische und interethnische Bezugssynthesen zusammenzufassen. Ohne eine solche Arbeitsweise wären weder die hervorragenden Ergebnisse etwa der finnischen und ungarischen ethnomusikologischen Schulen noch die umfangreichen und grundlegenden ethnomusikologischen Werke z.B. von I. Krohn, Fr. Densmore, B. Bartók und F. Kolessa entstanden.

The points raised herein address the methodologies and assumptions which undergird the theory-building process in ethnomusicology and ethnology. Hypotheses and conclusions are derived from field research among the Mapuche-speaking peoples of Andean Argentina (1971-72) and have been further tested in cooperative research with Edward A. DeCarbo, Jr., among Kasem-speakers in Northern Ghana. The discussion concerns the description and explanation of tayil, a form of musical communication among the Argentine Mapuche, as well as the utility of the Western musicological category “music” as a point of entry to the explication of a social system.

Cet article a moins pour objet la description des instruments de musique des Yezidi, instruments qui ne présentent en eux-mêmes aucune singularité remarquable, que celle de l'usage qui en est fait dans cette communauté religieuse, usage qui offre d'intéressantes particularités sur lesquelles, à notre connaissance tout au moins, aucune étude n'a encore été publiée. Corollairement, la description portera sur le statut social des instrumentistes, médiateurs entre ces instruments de musique et leur fonction sociale.

The study of song texts by scholars in various fields has taken many directions. Some of those directions have been the result of particular disciplinary methodology such as literary history and criticism, history, folklore, anthropology, linguistics, and musicology. Others have been the result of peculiarities of a language, such as the problems of song in tone languages. This article is an introduction to and analysis and reinterpretation of some of the approaches to the study of song texts which seem at this time to present fruitful avenues for future research.

The enigmatic union of a lyrical text with an improvisatory melody has earned for the hora lunga (or long song) a special place in the history of Rumanian folksong research. Béla Bartók first discovered this exceptional genre in the northern counties of Maramureş and Satu-Mare in the years 1912-13, and later remarked that this discovery had been the highlight of his career in Rumanian ethnomusicology (1967:24 and 1923:ii). Constantin Brailoiu (1970:405) noted the occurrence of similar improvisatory genres in other regions of Rumania, and suggested that the broader term doina be used for all such vocal improvisations, irrespective of region. In the last two decades, systematic investigations of this larger category, the doina, have been carried out by such scholars as Emilia Comişel (1959:147-74) and Mariana Kahane (1963:99-116). To facilitate a comparative study of the doina as a whole, Comişel proposed a broad classificatory scheme based on text content and social use. She also proposed an analytical framework for the study of those musical aspects which she felt were common to all doine. Kahane investigated the tonal aspects of the regional subtype found in Oltenia, and compared this specific genre with examples from Moldavia and Maramureş.

En abordant la psychologie, le côté interdisciplinaire de l'ethnomusicologie nous met en évidence l'une des plus importantes voies de recherche du phénomène folklorique musical. La nature de loi de la réflexion affective nous apparaît dans absolument toutes les manifestations folkloriques et aux différents niveaux d'intensité, en dépendant autant de la fonction et des modalités de développement des catégories respectives dans le milieu de la communauté détentrice, que de la personnalité artistique et le tempérament des praticiens chanteurs.

In my studies of Slavic folk melodies I have adopted the following definition of ‘type': “…a body of material is said to be typical when there is a common, or nearly common set of features in terms of which the material can be characterized…” From the mathematical point of view it can be defined as a state of relative equilibrium. From a statistical point of view the term ‘typical’ can be used particularly when a large part of the analysed material is represented by a certain type.

During recent years there have been two major attempts to take stock of folk music research in Austria. Walther Wünsch, former head of the Institute for Ethnomusicology at the University of Music and Theatre Arts in Graz, has reported on the history of ethnomusicology in Austria, and Walter Graf, who once held the chair of comparative musicology at Vienna University, has published an essay on comparative musicology in Austria since 1896. Neither of them, it seems to me, does complete justice to his subject, in that he limits himself to the work of those Austrian collectors, editors, and researchers who have dealt with fields other than Austria itself. Of course, there is as little agreement on the question of what really constitutes comparative musicology as there is on the definition of ethnomusicology. But for that very reason we should be careful not to ignore either the new field of “European ethnomusicology” or, in particular, those comparative studies that have dealt with the researches of Béla Bartók, Werner Danckert, Constantin Brâiloiu, Walter Wiora, and with the results of their collecting activities.