Erich von Hornbostel facts for kids
Erich Moritz von Hornbostel (born February 25, 1877, died November 28, 1935) was an important Austrian ethnomusicologist. An ethnomusicologist is someone who studies music from different cultures around the world. He is famous for his early work in this field and for helping create a system to classify musical instruments. This system is called the Sachs–Hornbostel system, and he developed it with Curt Sachs.
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Early Life and Studies
Erich Hornbostel was born in Vienna, Austria, into a family that loved music. As a child, he learned to play the piano and studied music theory. However, when he went to the University of Vienna, he earned his PhD in chemistry.
After his studies, he moved to Berlin, Germany. There, he met Carl Stumpf, a famous psychologist. Hornbostel became very interested in the psychology of music and how sound works. He worked as Stumpf's assistant at the Berlin Psychological Institute.
The Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv
The research materials from the Berlin Psychological Institute were used to create the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv (Berlin Phonogram Archive). This archive collected recordings of music from all over the world. In 1905, Hornbostel became its first director.
During his time at the archive, he worked with Curt Sachs. Together, they created the Sachs–Hornbostel system. This system, published in 1914, helps classify musical instruments into different groups based on how they produce sound. It is still used by music experts today.
Later Life
Sadly, in 1933, Hornbostel lost his jobs because of the Nazi Party. He was forced to leave Germany. He first moved to Switzerland, then to the United States, and finally to Cambridge, England. In England, he continued his work on an archive of folk music recordings from outside Europe. He passed away there in 1935.
Contributions to Music
Hornbostel did a lot of important work in ethnomusicology, which was often called comparative musicology back then. This field compares music from different cultures.
Studying World Music
In 1906, he traveled to America to study the music and psychology of the Pawnee people. The Pawnee are a Native American group in Oklahoma. Before this, he had already studied the traditional music of Tunisia and people from the South Sea Islands.
Hornbostel taught many students, including the American composer Henry Cowell. He focused especially on music from Africa and Asia. He made many recordings and created a way to write down non-Western music from recordings onto paper.
Understanding Musical Tunings
Hornbostel believed that the specific musical tunings used by different cultures were very important to their music's unique sound. He spent a lot of time comparing these different tunings. While some of his ideas have been updated since, his work was groundbreaking at the time. He also thought that studying music should be part of wider anthropological research, which is the study of human societies and cultures.
Sound Research
Hornbostel also helped develop the theory of binaural hearing. This is how our two ears work together to figure out where sounds are coming from. He suggested that the small time difference between a sound reaching each ear is the main clue. During World War I, he helped develop devices to find the direction of things like artillery, aircraft, and submarines for the German army. He even created a special listening device called the Wertbostel with Max Wertheimer.
