Musical Instruments.(Origins and Development of Musical Instruments)(Book review)

Origins and Development of Musical Instruments. By Jeremy Montagu. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007. [xvi, 257 p. ISPN-13: 9780810856578. $75.] Illustrations, maps, bibliographic references, index.

Jeremy Montagu's Origins and Development of Musical Instruments is a welcome addition to the field of organology. Montagu, the former curator of the Bate Collection of Musical Instruments and lecturer in the faculty of music at Oxford, is the author of numerous works, including a book on timpani and percussion (Tympani and Percussion [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002]), and another on reeds (Reed Instruments: The Montague Collection: An Annotated Catalogue [Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001]). In this latest of his books, the author focuses not only on the origins and history of instruments from many cultures and time periods, but also on technology and classification. An abundant number of black and white figures--120 photos--many from the author's own collection of over 2,500 instruments, appear within the 257 double column pages. The images, in keeping with his desire "to give priority to the lesser known," (p. xiii) favor the exotic and less familiar. Perhaps one of his inspirations was Filippo Bonanni's Gabinetto armonico (1723), "The first book on musical instruments to show as much interest in the instruments of the common people and the exotic, as those of the art music of the upper classes" (p. 26). For students, his inclusion of descriptions and images of some rarely seen instruments is essential to an understanding of how modern musical instruments developed from a wide variety of times and places.

Montagu fills the densely printed pages with important factual information. His prefatory material includes basic terminologies and definitions, rudimentary music theory, abbreviations, and maps of five major regions: Oceania, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. He borrows techniques from ethnography and archeology, and deliberately and judiciously avoids designations such as "Western music," "European orchestras," and so forth (p. 2) replacing them with "international culture" or "international music." The book is divided into eight chapters: 1, "Origins" 2, "Drums" 3, "Flutes and Recorders" 4, "Reeds" 5, "Brass Instruments, Trumpets, and Horns" 6, "Strings" 7, "Pipe Organ" and 8, "Electrophones." At the close of each chapter are citations. Between chapters are short interludes: Interlude A: Instruments of Protection, B: Musicians, C: The Medieval Renaissance and The First Industrial Revolution, D: The Ideal Accompaniment, E: The Second Industrial Revolution, F: Messengers, G: Symbiosis, and H: Newly Created, Recognized, or Discovered Instruments. Appendices includes subchapters on archeology and other -ologies, classification of instruments, scales and music, the sounds of science, followed by a bibliography and three indices: instruments and accessories, places and peoples, and a general index. At times, Montagu's organization is somewhat confusing; while there is some cross-referencing, information about specific instruments is spread over a number of chapters, making the indices--particularly the "Instruments and Accessories"--critically important. Even the most arcane instruments are discussed, but not always in the expected places.

Of the many systems for classifying musical instruments from the Renaissance to Sachs and Hornbostel and more recently, Kartomi, some of the earliest written classification systems of Western European instruments, such as those of Paulus Paulirinus in the fifteenth century, divided the instruments into five categories: Natural wind (played by human breath); Pitched percussion; Artificial wind (played by the wind of bellows); Artificial wind and pitched percussion (played by wind and percussion); and non-pitched percussion. Sebastian Virdung and Martin Agricola in the sixteenth century divided the families into three major categories (further divided into four subcategories): chordophones (with keyboards, without keyboards, fretted and unfretted), aerophones (subdivided further as with finger holes, without finger holes, blown by bellows), and idiophones. Michael Praetorius in the early seventeenth century includes only two: fidicinia (strings) and tibicinia (winds). Montagu chooses to adopt a five-part classification system: idiophones (rigid enough to clang when struck), skin instruments and strings (each requiring tension), winds (hollow with an orifice for blowing), electrophones (a power source). He theorizes that in the progression from "clapping paws or hands to the use of a pair of sticks or a couple of stones lies the origin of musical instruments" (p. 1).

In chapter 1, he explores aspects of music, from its intrinsic sound, to the qualities of voices, instruments, such as lithophones (dating to the Paleolithic era and still in use today), percussion bars, bells, gongs, and rattles. Montagu asserts that sounds produced by these tools can be classified as music if they have deliberate rhythms. In his description of the origins he calls attention not only to early instruments, but ...