Abstract
A COMPREHENSIVE account of the musical instruments and their distribution has been wanted for a long time by ethnologists and others, so this work on the simpler musical instruments by M. Schaeffner is very welcome. The author admits that it is not exhaustive; it is evident that he has done his best to cover the ground, but as might be expected, specialists in certain areas are acquainted with instruments that are not alluded to by Schaeffner. For example, there are on the Sepik River, New Guinea, drums without a tympanum which are struck on the ground or on the surface of water. Fig. 2 is drawn from a photograph which shows a sede lying on the ground, so Schaeffner supposed that it was played while resting on the ground, but it is played only on vessels, lakatoi, while on the great trading expeditions, hiri, of the Motu peoples. The remarkable temes naainggol of Malekula, described by Deacon, have also been overlooked.
Origine des instruments de musique:
introduction ethnologique à l'histoire de la musique instrumentale. Par André Schaeffner. (Bibliothèque musicale.) Pp. 406 + 32 plates. (Paris: Libr. Payot, 1936.) 50 francs.
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HADDON, A. Musical Instruments and their Distribution. Nature 139, 905 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139905a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139905a0