<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>During his prolific career, the German Jewish scientist Franz Boas (Minden, 1858 - New York, 1942) recognized as the founding father of American Cultural Anthropology – maintained assiduous contacts with the European scientific community, in a privileged way with that of the German area. The contribution addresses the Boasian correspondence with the two directors of the <italic>Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv</italic>, the philosopher and psychologist Carl Stumpf, and the ethnomusicolo-gist Erich Moritz von Hornbostel. All three were united by a common scientific experimental training and a solid musical education, typical of their <italic>Bildungsbu</italic><italic>ü</italic><italic>rgertum</italic>. With them, Boas consistently shared his fieldwork findings regarding music, sound, and language among the Indians of British Columbia: indeed, their epistolary exchanges intertwine epistemological reflections centered on the study of «<italic>exotische Musik</italic>» in context with technical problems, derived from the use of phonographic recordings and the relative shipments of wax cylinders by Boas to the Phonographic Archive. So far, the critical literature has not paid particular attention to their correspondence, that offer instead a privileged look in observing the birth of Ethnomusicology, at the time still defined as comparative Musicology (<italic>vergleichende Musikwissenschaft</italic>). Starting from a biographical contextualization and following the micro-history of the scientific and personal relationship of these scientists, the contribution aims to explore the hypothesis that the emerging Ethnomusicology significantly contributed to the definition of Cultural Anthropology as a discipline. In his painstaking research devoted to the Native Indian sounds and languages, Boas observed indeed what happens if a mind is exposed to a new sound, musical or linguistic context; he had therefore to rigorously deal with the phenomena of mishearing, sound-blindness and biasing filter related to the perception of «new sounds». Thanks to his fieldwork, Boas would endorse a relativistic and “in context” approach to perception and mental representations of sounds, fostering his eventual lifelong, hectic concern about a broaden antiracist theory of human mental functions.</p>
</abstract>

During his prolific career, the German Jewish scientist Franz Boas (Minden, 1858 - New York, 1942) recognized as the founding father of American Cultural Anthropology – maintained assiduous contacts with the European scientific community, in a privileged way with that of the German area. The contribution addresses the Boasian correspondence with the two directors of the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv, the philosopher and psychologist Carl Stumpf, and the ethnomusicolo-gist Erich Moritz von Hornbostel. All three were united by a common scientific experimental training and a solid musical education, typical of their Bildungsbuürgertum. With them, Boas consistently shared his fieldwork findings regarding music, sound, and language among the Indians of British Columbia: indeed, their epistolary exchanges intertwine epistemological reflections centered on the study of «exotische Musik» in context with technical problems, derived from the use of phonographic recordings and the relative shipments of wax cylinders by Boas to the Phonographic Archive. So far, the critical literature has not paid particular attention to their correspondence, that offer instead a privileged look in observing the birth of Ethnomusicology, at the time still defined as comparative Musicology (vergleichende Musikwissenschaft). Starting from a biographical contextualization and following the micro-history of the scientific and personal relationship of these scientists, the contribution aims to explore the hypothesis that the emerging Ethnomusicology significantly contributed to the definition of Cultural Anthropology as a discipline. In his painstaking research devoted to the Native Indian sounds and languages, Boas observed indeed what happens if a mind is exposed to a new sound, musical or linguistic context; he had therefore to rigorously deal with the phenomena of mishearing, sound-blindness and biasing filter related to the perception of «new sounds». Thanks to his fieldwork, Boas would endorse a relativistic and “in context” approach to perception and mental representations of sounds, fostering his eventual lifelong, hectic concern about a broaden antiracist theory of human mental functions.

Music in the mind and <italic>primitive sounds</italic>: «<italic>only differences in kind</italic>»

Department of Humanistic Studies – DISU

Gestalt Theory

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

During his prolific career, the German Jewish scientist Franz Boas (Minden, 1858 - New York, 1942) recognized as the founding father of American Cultural...

Music in the mind and primitive sounds: «only differences in kind»

Publié en ligne: 02 mai 2024

Pages: 235 - 257

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/gth-2023-0018

Mots clés
Franz Boas, Carl Stumpf, History of Cultural Anthropology, Ethnomusicology, Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv

© 2023 Irene Candelieri, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Music in the mind and primitive sounds: «only differences in kind»

Publié en ligne: 02 mai 2024

Pages: 235 - 257

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/gth-2023-0018

Mots clésFranz Boas, Carl Stumpf, History of Cultural Anthropology, Ethnomusicology, Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv

© 2023 Irene Candelieri, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Mots clés
Franz Boas, Carl Stumpf, History of Cultural Anthropology, Ethnomusicology, Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv