Extract (PDF) - Peter Lang

Studies in Systematic Musicology and Ethnomusicology 15
transformations she has observed when visiting Latvia and Lithuania, respectively.
Finally, she compares phenomena and concepts that result from processes of transformation
(e.g., hybridization) as found in English folk music and ’Electric Folk’,
on the one hand, and in folk music (including ’Electric Folk’) of the Baltics, on the
other.
Martin Boiko is a musicologist based at Riga, Latvia. He has studied the traditional
music of his home country on which he has published in-depth analyses
dealing with specific genres and styles (e.g., Boiko 1996). Some of the fieldwork he
carried out in the Latgalian district of Southeastern Latvia in the 1990s was devoted
to the study of religious music that had been neglected for a long time due
to political circumstances. A genre of prime interest to Boiko is the Office of the
Dead (the Catholic officium defunctorum) as still practiced in Latgalia. His report
based on fieldwork indicates continuity and change, the latter being mostly due to
demographic factors.
Tiago de Oliveira Pinto, who has been a member of the International Institute for
Comparative Music Studies (Berlin), is currently teaching ethnomusicology and comparative
musicology at Weimar, Göttingen, and Hamburg. He conducted fieldwork
in Brazil (cf. Pinto 1999) and in Angola. In his essay, he reflects on ethnography
and addresses problems a researcher might face when working in the field. Such
problems can be technical, however, there are issues that are possibly of greater
concern in regard to concepts and methodology: What is the role of the fieldworker
within a different society and cultural context? How can, and how should he or she
communicate with members of a (music) culture he or she wants to study? What is
the nature, and what is the purpose of (musical) ethnography? Pinto rightly points
to significant changes in anthropological thought that have affected the self-image of
ethnologists and ethnomusicologists alike, and which might call for a reassessment
of concepts and tasks relevant for ethnomusicology.
Jörgen Torp, an expert on Tango and Tango-related music and dance on both sides
of the Atlantic Ocean (Torp 2007), has conducted fieldwork in Argentine. From his
experience as a field-worker that is used to adopt a "culturalist" perspective and a
basically hermeneutic methodology (as has been advocated, perhaps most prominently,
by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz), Torp discusses such crucial issues
as the quest for ’objective’ methods and ’valid’ interpretations in ethnomusicology
and musicology. Pointing to the ’World of Tango’ as a specific cultural sphere that
includes (at least for the Milongueros) a peculiar way of life, he argues that it would
be in vain to expect that such a cultural complex could be investigated with some
standard methodology. Rather, an approach based on personal experience should
be allowed; though it might appear less ’scientific’ in regard to method, such an
approach might be more adequate with respect to the socio-cultural and subjective
phenomena under study.
Finally, we have included, as an appendix, a biographical note of Albrecht Schneider
as well as a bibliography that contains a selection of his scientific publications
from 1971 to the present. Besides doing research in the lab and in the field, Schneider
has been exceptionally active as an academic teacher who, in the Institute of
Musicology of the University of Hamburg, has supervised more than 120 students
writing their M.A. theses on topics in Systematic and Comparative Musicology un-