The Origin of Musical Instruments: An Ethnological Introduction to the History of Instrumental Music

The work of French musicologist, ethnologist, curator, and critic Andre Schaeffner (1895 - 1980) grew naturally out of his first organological studies of the history of Western classical instruments in the late 1920s and came to be encapsulated in his monumental and wide-ranging Origine des instruments de musique, the fruit of labour in Paris and in the field between 1931 and 1936. Almost 80 years after its first publication, the scientific relevance and influence of Schaeffner’s primary hypothesis - that the origins of music can be traced to the human body through gesture, dance, and the movements involved in the use of musical instruments and their ancestor tools - remains pertinent in fields which have returned to informed speculative and empirical research on the origins of music. This first English edition is accompanied by editorial footnotes and introductory texts, and the influence of Schaeffner’s thought on several generations of musicologists makes his work an essential piece of reading for ethnomusicologists, music psychologists, organologists and musicologists interested in the history of their field. Schaeffner’s text is an intellectual link between the studies of Hornbostel and Sachs and the contrasting research of later generations, notably figures with which he had direct contact, such as John Blacking and Simha Arom. More than a simple field guide and system of classification, the Origin of Musical Instruments is also a profound reflection on the nature and origins of music and musical activity, as well as the place of that activity in human society.