British Forum for Ethnomusicology

Review: [untitled]
Author(s): Stephen Cottrell
Reviewed work(s):
Reed Instruments: The Montagu Collection: An Annotated Catalogue, Volume 4 part 2 by
Jeremy Montagu
Source: British Journal of Ethnomusicology, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2003), pp. 128-130
Published by: British Forum for Ethnomusicology
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30036857
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128 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.12/ii 2003
matter which needs serious discussion and
research.
The final chapter is in some respects the
most fascinating. It covers the period from
about 400 BC to 400 AD, from the
Nabatean to the early Byzantine through a
wide cultural and ethnic range. This
includes the Idumeans and the Samaritans,
where Braun convincingly contradicts the
normal theory that the Samaritans had no
instrumental music, and continues through
that of the Ptolemaic Greeks, with their
pagan elements such as the Dionysiac
which led to the Maccabean revolt and
thence to the Roman occupation, which in
turn resulted in the second, and abortive,
revolt of Bar Kochba, with the important
evidence of the instruments portrayed on
the coins struck in that short-lived period
of independence. The last section is the
detailed study of the shofar.
There is a very comprehensive and
well-used bibliography, though, as we
noted above, the original version is much
more useful here. As well as the main
index there is an index of scriptural and
later references. With over 200 illustrations
one must remark also on the very reason-
able price for a book of such wide-ranging,
exhaustive and invaluable scholarship.
References
Baines, Anthony (1957) Woodwind instru-
ments and their history. London: Faber
(and later editions).
Montagu, Jeremy (1993 and 1998) "One
of Tutankhamon's trumpets." Galpin
Society Journal 29:115-17; reprinted in
The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
64:133-4.
Montagu, Jeremy (2002) Musical instru-
ments of the Bible. Lanham: Scarecrow
Press.
JEREMY MONTAGU
University of Oxford
jeremy. montagu @ wadham. ox.ac. uk
JEREMY MONTAGU Reed instruments:
the Montagu collection: an annotated
catalogue. Volume 4 part 2. Fallen
Leaf Reference Books in Music,
No. 36. Drawings. Bibliography.
Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow
Press, February, 2002. 206pp. $60
hardback. ISBN 0810839385.
This volume represents the first offering
of what is intended to be a complete
annotated catalogue of Jeremy Montagu's
extensive collection of musical instru-
ments, built up over 35 years or so and
now apparently numbering some 2,500.
One doubts whether even the author
knows exactly how many instruments he
has, however, since he tells us (p.18-19)
that "a hundred or two" of his instru-
ments remain on loan to the Bate collec-
tion; presumably the completion of this
catalogue will reveal the full extent of his
own collection. The completed series will
be laid out according to the Hombostel
and Sachs (HS) system of instrument
classification, and, thus, although this
volume is chronologically first, it is
described as Volume 4 part 2, correspon-
ding to the aerophones group identified
by the number 4 in the HS system, with
part 2 here indicating that the volume is
devoted solely to reed instruments. We
are told that parts 1 (flute and whistles)
and 3 (trumpets and horns) of this vol-
ume will follow in due course, along with
volumes 1, 2 and 3 for the other classes
of idiophones, membranophones and
chordophones. Free aerophones (category
41 in the HS system) are also included
here, with reeds themselves (412) distrib-
uted among the sections to which they
most logically belong, rather than being
collated together as the HS system would
have them. Indeed, one of the many
interesting features of the book is its
demonstration of some of the difficulties
and illogical thinking behind certain parts
of the HS system, and the author has
BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.12/ii 2003
provided many telling observations of the
system's limitations. There is an exten-
sive discussion (6-7), for example, on
why it would have been more sensible to
use bore shape to distinguish between
(422.1) oboes and (422.2) clarinets,
rather than reed type, in part because the
bore has a fundamental acoustical effect
on the instrument in a way that the reed
type does not (although the latter can
have a profound effect on the nature of
the sound, as the author's own comments
on page 124 regarding the relationship
between ophecleide and early saxophone
demonstrate). Given the acknowledged
limitations of the HS system, then, it
might have been interesting to see some
application of the author's own proposed
system of classification, devised with
John Burton and put forward in the early
1970s (Montagu and Burton 1971).
Whereas the HS system was based on
the numerical Dewey decimal system
devised for the classification of library
books, the Montagu/Burton proposal was
based on the nominal Linnaean system
familiar to biologists, requiring a generic
and a specific name attached to each
example. The author's justification for
continuing to use the HS system (that it
was better known and "because of the
difficulties encountered in using our
system" (2)) are noted, but it would
have been instructive to see something of
his own system in action, as well as its
limitations.
Were the present volume simply a sta-
tistically led description of this large range
of various instruments, it would be worthy
but rather dry. That the book is in fact quite
readable is because we are treated not only
to the author's instructive comments on
technical issues but also to many small
gems of information along the way, both
relating to the instruments and their con-
text; hence its subtitular description as "an
annotated catalogue". For example, on
page 7 we learn that one reason for the
slow adoption of the clarinet in the eigh-
teenth century was that players who were
used to doubling on the oboe and trans-
verse flute (which have similar fingerings
since they both overblow at the octave)
were resistant to the new fingerings
required for the clarinet (which overblows
at the twelfth). Similarly, on page 47, it is
disclosed that the chromatic note above
"the six-finger note" (that is, the key which
needs to be opened with the right-hand
little finger when all other fingers are
employed) was referred to as D# by early
flautists because they preferred sharp keys,
and as E by oboists because they preferred
playing in flat tonalities. Ethnomusi-
cologists will find much to enjoy in the
discussions on shawm transmission and
related etymologies (13-14), for example,
as well as in the detailed descriptions of a
large number of non-Western instruments
and the occasional thought-provoking
questions the author provides ("why did so
many instruments start in this area [of cen-
tral Asia]?" (9)).
What further takes the book beyond
that of a simple catalogue is that we are
given some tantalizing insights into the
manner in which many of the instruments
were acquired. Clearly, the trading of
instruments between some of our most
respected organologists (Philip Bate,
Anthony Baines, Laurence Picken, the
author and others) is both long established
and reminiscent of gift relationships else-
where, since many of these instruments
seem to have arrived in the collection as a
result of exchanges of one kind or another.
But there are numerous other forms of
acquisition (purchase being a major one),
and the author's recollections of some of
these are also informative and/or enter-
taining. For one particular shawm (17)
Sotheby's "lost the staple and reed during
the sale. It was there when viewed", while
another pair of shawms were bought from
a USAF captain who acquired them "while
he was supervising arrangements for feed-
129
130 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.12/ii 2003
ing Kurds in Northern Iraq after the [first]
Gulf War" (19). These asides and observa-
tions - in addition to the more technical
commentaries on the instruments them-
selves - expand the book's interest beyond
that of the museum curator.
But if there is one significant drawback
to the book it is in the lack of accompany-
ing illustrations. Other than the front cover,
which has one colour plate, and a handful
of line drawings at the beginning (mainly
of oboes, clarinets and bassoons), there are
no images to give more depth to the
descriptions. This is a pity, since such
images can vastly enrich a book of this
sort; one thinks of Anoyanakis's (1979)
book on Greek folk instruments by com-
parison (one also remembers that this
was sponsored by the National Bank of
Greece). Doubtless this omission was on
grounds of publishing costs, since many
of the entries are referenced against
the author's own photograph collection,
implying that copies already exist and
could easily have been included. Clearly
the author is himself conscious of this defi-
ciency since he has recently acknowledged
it elsewhere.1 However, in this internet
age, it is surely not beyond the means of
the publishers and/or author to establish
these images on a website, where they
could be cross-referenced against the
book's contents. Such a project might also
include soundclips of those instruments
which are in a playable condition. They
could be aided in this by one of our
academic institutions via a research grant,
perhaps in collaboration with similar
institutions, such as the Ashmolean or
Horniman museums, whereby the author's
undoubted erudition and experience
could be made widely available and easily
accessible, and in an information-rich
environment which such expertise
deserves. Now that would be an on-line
resource to treasure, and would undoubt-
edly enrich the fine and detailed work
already evident in this volume.
Note
1. See newsletter of the American Musical
Instrument Society, vol. 32 no. 1.
http://www.amis.org/pubs/newslet-
ter/2003/v32no 1/oxford.htm
References
Anoyanakis, Fivos, (1979), Greek popular
musical instruments. Athens: National
Bank of Greece.
Montagu, Jeremy, and John Burton (1971),
"A proposed new classification system
for musical instruments." Ethnomusi-
cology, 15:49-70.
STEPHEN COTTRELL
Department of Music, Goldsmiths
College, University of London
s.cottrell@gold.ac.uk
RUTH CRAWFORD SEEGER. The music
of American folk song. Edited by
Larry Polansky with Judith Tick.
Rochester NY: University of
Rochester Press, 2001. 210pp. Hard-
back $45. Paperback $24.95. ISBN
1580461360.
This monograph, written around the late
1930s and early 1940s, was not published
until 2001. It is by Ruth Crawford Seeger,
modernist composer, pianist and member
of a family who have played a crucial role
in the twentieth-century folk music revival
and the development of the discipline
of ethnomusicology. Originally intended
as an appendix or musical introduction
to John and Alan Lomax's Our singing
country (1941), the piece was rejected by
the compilers and publishers because of its
length and technicality - the publishers are
reputed to have said that they did not want
a thesis in a popular book. Ruth Crawford
Seeger (hereafter RCS, as Polansky refers
to her in his Editor's Introduction) had to
make do with writing a short introduction
to the anthology. Her stepson, Pete Seeger,