1. Introduction

 

“The rapid expansion of Western culture is a big threat to every other culture, because it is going to destroy the last musical expressions of those cultures. Therefore, we have to save everything that can still be saved.”[1] (Hornbostel 1905 : 97)


This quote is from Erich Moritz von Hornbostel who, among others, established the discipline ethnomusicology within musicology. In the quote he makes clear that he wants to safeguard cultures before they are destroyed by western culture. How did he do it? By doing fieldwork!

Fieldwork is an important part of musicology. For ethnomusicology it is even essential as it creates the basic sources to work on. “Field” stands for the region, the ethnomusicologist is researching on and “work” is for the actual research he is doing. So “Fieldwork” means to do a research in a certain region.

Fieldwork is used in many different disciplines. From biologists who observe the animals interaction with environment, to linguists who do researches on peoples languages, everyone is using fieldwork as their approach to the object of research. For ethnomusicology, it is even more important. Unlike historical musicology, which basically works with musical scores, in ethnomusicology there is mostly nothing like that. Instead, ethnomusicologists work with transcriptions and recordings of music and video, interviews and travel reports. The reason for that is our object of interest, the music of the world, which is rarely written down in musical scores, but is passed on orally. So, the only way to do scientific researches on world music is to use existing literature or, the better way, to go into the field and do own recordings and reports. If the music is still in a lively tradition, it can be transcribed or recorded. In the last century it was very common to transcribe the recorded music into western staff notation or create new forms of notation, but today it is done less often. If the musical tradition is not practiced anymore and thus, cannot be recorded or transcribed, we have to look for information in archives. Then, if nothing can be found, the musical tradition cannot be researched anymore and is therefore, dead.


[1] Original quote in German: „Die Gefahr ist groß, daß [sic] die rapide Ausbreitung der europäischen Kultur auch die letzten Spuren fremden Singens und Sagens vertilgt. Wir müssen retten, was zu retten ist.”