Musical instrument classification
Encyclopedia
At various times, and in various cultures, various schemes of musical instrument classification have been used.
The most commonly used system in use in the west today divides instruments into string instrument
s, wind instrument
s and percussion instrument
s. However other ones have been devised, and some cultures also use different schemes.
The oldest known scheme of classifying instruments is Chinese
and dates from the 3rd millenium BC. It groups instruments according to what they are made out of. All instruments made out of stone
are in one group, all those made out of wood
in another, those made out of silk
are in a third, and all those made of bamboo in the 4th, as recorded in the Yo Chi (record of ritual music and dance), compiled from sources of the Chou period (9th-5th centuries BC), and corresponding to the 4 seasons and 4 winds (Kartomi, 1990).
The 8-fold system of pa yin ("8 sounds"), from the same source, occurred gradually, and in the legendary Emperor Shun's time (3rd millenium BC) it is believed to have been presented in the following order: metal (chin), stone (shih), silk (ssu), bamboo (chu), gourd (p'ao), clay (t'u), leather (ko), and wood (mu) classes, and it correlated to the 8 seasons and 8 winds of Chinese culture, autumn and west, autumn-winter and NW, summer and south, spring and east, winter-spring and NE, summer-autumn and SW, winter and north, and spring-summmer and SE, respectively (Kartomi, 1990).
However, the Chou-Li (Programs of Chou), an anonymous treatise compiled from earlier sources in about the 2nd century BC, had the following order: metal, stone, clay, leather, silk, wood, gourd, and bamboo. The same order was presented in the Tso Chuan (Tso Commentary), attributed to Tso Chiu-Ming, probably compiled in the 4th century BC (Kartomi, 1990).
Much later, Ming dynasty (1300s-1600) scholar Chu Tsai Yu recognized 3 groups: those instruments using muscle power or used for musical accompaniment, those that are blown, and those that are rhythmic, a scheme which was probably the 1st of scholarly type, the other earlier ones being traditional, folk taxonomies. (Margaret Kartomi, 2011, Upward and Downward Classifications of Musical Instruments-musicology.ff,cuni.cz)
More usually, instruments are classified according to how the sound is initially produced (regardless of post-processing, i.e. an electric guitar is still a string-instrument regardless of what analog or digital/computational post-processing effects pedals may be used with it).
origin (in the Hellenistic period, prominent proponents being Nicomachus and Porphyry). The scheme was later expanded by Martin Agricola
, who distinguished plucked string instruments, such as guitar
s, from bowed string instruments, such as violin
s. Classical musicians today do not always maintain this division (although plucked strings are grouped separately from bowed strings in sheet music
), but there is a distinction made between wind instruments with a reed (woodwind instrument
s) and wind instruments where the air is set in motion directly by the lips (brass instrument
s).
There are, however, problems with this system. Some rarely seen and non-western instruments do not fit very neatly into it. The serpent, for example, an old instrument rarely seen nowadays, ought to be classified as a brass instrument, as a column of air is set in motion by the lips. However, it looks more like a woodwind instrument, and is closer to one in many ways, having finger-holes to control pitch, rather than valves. There are also problems with classifying certain keyboard instrument
s. For example, the piano
has strings, but they are struck by hammers, so it is not clear whether it should be classified as a string instrument or a percussion instrument. For this reason, keyboard instruments are often regarded as inhabiting a category of their own, including all instruments played by a keyboard, whether they have struck strings (like the piano), plucked strings (like the harpsichord
) or no strings at all (like the celesta
). It might be said that with these extra categories, the classical system of instrument classification focuses less on the fundamental way in which instruments produce sound, and more on the technique required to play them.
Various names have been assigned to these 3 traditional Western groupings (On Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments, Margaret Kartomi, 1990, U. of Chicago Press, pp. 136–138, 157, and notes for Chp. 10):
Boethius (5th and 6th centuries AD) labelled them intensione ut nervis, spiritu ut tibiis ("breath in the tube"), and percussione;
Cassiodorus, a younger contemporary of the above, used the names tensibilia, percussionalia, and inflatilia;
Roger Bacon (13th century) dubbed them tensilia, inflativa, and percussionalia;
Ugolino da Orvieto (14th and 15th centuries) called them intensione ut nervis, spiritu ut tibiis, and percussione;
Sebastien de Brossard (1703) referred to them as enchorda or entata (but only for instruments with several strings), pneumatica or empneousta, and krusta (from the Greek for hit or strike) or pulsatilia (for percussives);
Filippo Bonanni (1722) used vernacular names: sonori per il fiato, sonori per la tensione, and sonori per la percussione;
Joseph Majer (1732) called them pneumatica, pulsatilia (percussives including plucked instruments), and fidicina (from fidula, fiddle) (for bowed instruments);
Johann Eisel (1738) dubbed them pneumatica, pulsatilia, and fidicina;
Johannes de Muris (1784) used the terms chordalia, foraminalia (from foramina, "bore" in reference to the bored tubes), and vasalia (for "vessels");
Regino of Prum (1784) called them tensibile, inflatile, and percussionabile.
Turkish encyclopedist Hadji Khalifa (1600s) also recognized the same 3 classes in his Kashf al-zunun an asami al-kutub wa-funun ("clarification and conjecture about the names of books and sciences"), a treatise on the origin and construction of musical instruments. but this was exceptional for Near Eastern writers as they mostly ignored the percussion group as did early Hellenistic Greeks, the Near Eastern culture traditionally and that period of Greek history having low regard for that group (Kartomi, 1990).
The T'boli of Mindanao use the same 3 categories as well, but group the strings (t'duk) with the winds (nawa) together based on a gentleness (lemnoy) -strength (megel) dichotomy, regarding the percussion group (tembol) as strong and the winds-strings group as gentle. The division pervades T'boli thought about cosmology, social characters of men and women, and artistic styles (Kartomi, 1990).
n origin, dating from the 4th or 3rd century BC, in the Natya Shastra, a theoretical treatise on music and dramaturgy, by Bharata Muni, divides instruments into four main classification groups: instruments where the sound is produced by vibrating strings (tata vadya , "stretched instruments"; instruments where the sound is produced by vibrating columns of air (susira vadya, "hollow instruments"); percussion instruments made of wood or metal (ghana vadya, "solid instruments"); and percussion instruments with skin heads, or drum
s (avanaddha vadya,"covereed instruments"). Victor-Charles Mahillon
later adopted a system very similar to this. He was the curator of the musical instrument collection of the conservatoire in Brussels
, and for the 1888 catalogue of the collection divided instruments into four groups: strings, winds, drums, and other percussion. This scheme was later taken up by Erich von Hornbostel
and Curt Sachs
who published an extensive new scheme for classication in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie in 1914. Their scheme is widely used today, and is most often known as the Hornbostel-Sachs
system (or the Sachs-Hornbostel system).
The original Sachs-Hornbostel system classified instruments into four main groups:
Later Sachs added a fifth category, electrophone
s, such as theremin
s, which produce sound by electronic means. Within each category are many subgroups. The system has been criticised and revised over the years, but remains widely used by ethnomusicologists
and organologists
.
conceivable instruments".
Schaeffner's system has only two top-level categories which he denoted by Roman numerals:
The system agrees with Mahillon and Hornbostel-Sachs for chordophones, but groups percussion instruments differently.
Second-century Greek grammarian, sophist, and rhetoritician Julius Pollux, in the chapter called De Musica, in his 10-volume Onomastikon, had presented the 2-class system, percussion (including strings) and winds, which persisted in medieval and postmedieval Europe. It was used by St. Augustine (4th and 5th centuries), in his De Ordine, applying the terms rhythmic (percussion and strings), organic (winds), and adding harmonic (the human voice); Isodore of Seville (6th to 7th centuries AD); Hugh of St. Victor (12th century), also adding the voice; Magister Lambertus (13th century), adding the human voice as well; and Michael Pretorius (17th century)(Kartomi, 1990, pp. 119–21, 147).
The Kpelle of West Africa also use this system. They distinguish the struck (yàle), including both beaten and plucked, and the blown (fêe), as revealed by Ruth Stone in Let the Inside Be Sweet: the interpretation of music among the Kpelle of Liberia, 1982, Indiana U. Press (Kartomi, 1990). The yàle group is subdivided into 5 categories: instruments possessing lamellas (the sanzas); those possessing strings; those possessing a membrane (various drums); hollow wooden, iron, or bottle containers; and various rattles and bells. The Hausa, also of West Africa, classify drummers into those who beat drums and those who beat (pluck) strings (the other 4 player classes are blowers, singers, acclaimers, and talkers), as reported by Ames and King in Glossary of Hausa Music and its Social Contexts, 1971, Northwestern U. Press. Kartomi does not specify if these 2 classifications pre-date Schaeffner or Pollux. The concept, the way the person produces the sound, is human-centered, which is part of their traditional culture so presumably they at least pre-date Schaeffner.
The MSA (Multi-Dimensional Scalogram Analysis) of René Lysloff and Jim Matson (A New Approach to the Classification of Sound-Producing Instruments, Ethnomusicology, Spring/Summer, 1985, also at mywebspace.wisc.edu), using 37 variables, including characteristics of the sounding body, resonator, substructure, sympathetic vibrator, performance context, social context, and instrument tuning and construction, corroborated the taxonomy of Schaeffner, producing 2 categories, aerophones and the chordophone-membranophone-idiophone combination.
Another similar system is the 5-class, physics-based organology, which was presented in 2007 by Steve Mann (Natural Infaces for Musical Expression, Proceedings of the Conference on Interfaces for Musical Expresion, pp. 118–23), comprises Gaiaphones (Chordophones, Membranophones, and Idiophones), Hydraulophones, Aerophones, Plasmaphones, and Quintephones (electrically and optically produced music), the names referring to the 5 essences, being earth, water, wind, fire, and the quintessence, thus adding 3 new categories to the Schaeffner taxonomy.
:
Some instruments fall into more than one category: for example, the cello may be considered either tenor or bass, depending on how its music fits into the ensemble, and the trombone may be alto, tenor, or bass and the French horn, bass, baritone, tenor, or alto, depending on which range it is played.
Many instruments have their range as part of their name: soprano saxophone
, alto saxophone
, tenor saxophone
, baritone saxophone
, baritone horn
, alto flute, bass flute
, alto recorder
, bass guitar
, etc. Additional adjectives describe instruments above the soprano range or below the bass
, for example: sopranino saxophone
, contrabass clarinet
.
When used in the name of an instrument, these terms are relative, describing the instrument's range in comparison to other instruments of its family and not in comparison to the human voice range or instruments of other families. For example, a bass flute's range is from C3 to F6, while a bass clarinet plays about one octave lower.
s, while those made of stone are called lithophone
s. Similarly, wind instruments made from metal are often categorized as brass instrument
s. This idea is not limited to western practice: the ancient Chinese categorized instruments into eight categories of materials (silk, bamboo, wood, gourd, earth, stone, metal, and skin).
Sometimes instruments are classed according to the method of their construction rather than their materials. For example Lamellaphone
s are instruments that produced sound by the plucking of their "lamellae" or tongues—strips of metal, wood, or bamboo fixed to a sound-board or resonator. In the Hornbostel-Sachs
classification of musical instruments, lamellophones are considered plucked idiophones
, a category that includes various forms of jaw harp and the European mechanical music box, as well as the huge variety of African and Afro-Latin thumb piano
s such as the mbira
and marimbula
.
Sometimes instruments are categorized according to a common use, such as signal instrument
s, a category which may include instruments in very different Hornbostel-Sachs categories such as trumpet
s, drum
s, and gong
s. "According to social function" may be in this category or a separate one, but an example based on this criterion is Bonanni (e.g., festive, military, and religious)(Kartomi, 1990). He also classified them according to geography and whether they were past or present.
Benjamin de la Borde (1780) classified them according to ethnicity, his categories being black, Abyssinian, Chinese, Arabic, Turkisk, and Greek (Kartomi, 1990).
Instruments can also be classified according to the ensemble in which they play, or the role they play in the ensemble. For example, the horn section
in popular music typically includes both brass instrument
s and woodwind instrument
s. The symphony orchestra typically has the strings in the front, the woodwinds in the middle, and the basses, woodwinds, and percussion in the back.
Major classifications done for the Indonesian ensemble, the gamelan, have been done by Jaap Kunst (1949), Martopangrawit, Poerbapangrawit, and Sumarsam ( all in 1984) (Kartomi, 1990). Kunst's taxonomy has 5 categories: nuclear theme (cantus firmus in Latin and balungan ("skeletal ramework") in Indonesian); colotomic ( a word invented by Kunst)(interpunctuating), the gongs; countermelodic; paraphrasing (panerusan), subdivided as close to the nuclear theme and ornamental filling; agogic (tempo-regulating), drums.
Martopangrawit has 2 categories, irama (the rhythm instruments) and lagu (the melodic instruments), the former corresponds to Kunst's classes 2 and 5, and the latter to Kunst's 1, 3, and 4.
Poerbapangrawit, similar to Kunst's, derives 6 categories: balungan, the saron, demung, and slenthem; rerenggan (ornamental), the gendèr, gambang, and bonang); wiletan (variable formulaic melodic), rebab and male chorus (gerong); singgetan (interpunctuating); kembang (floral), flute and female voice; jejeging wirama (tempo regulating), drums.
Samusam's scheme comprises:
an inner melodic group (lagu)(with a wide range), divided as elaborating (rebab, gerong, gendèr (a metallophone), gambang (a xylophone), pesindhen (female voice), celempung (plucked strings), suling (flute)); mediating ( between the 1st and 3rd subdivisions (bonang (gong-chimes), saron panerus(a loud metallophone); and abstracting (balungan, "melodic abstraction")( with a 1-octave range), loud and soft metallophones (saron barung, demung, and slenthem);
an outer circle, the structural group (gongs), which underlines the structure of the work;
and occupying the space outside the outer circle, the kendang, a tempo-regulating group (drums).
The gamelan is also divided into front, middle, and back, much like the symphony orchestra.
In West Africa, tribes such as the Dan, Gio, Kpelle, Hausa, Akan, and Dogon, use a uniquely human-centered system. It derives from 4 myth-based parameters: the musical instrument's nonhuman owner (spirit, mask, sorcerer, or animal), the mode of transmission to the human realm (by gift, exchange, contract, or removal), the making of the instrument by a human (according to instructions from a nonhuman, for instance), and the 1st human owner. Most instruments are said to have a nonhuman origin, but some are believed invented by humans, e.g., the xylophone and the lamellophone. (Kartomi, 1990).
An orally-transmitted Javanese taxonomy has 8 groupings (Kartomi, 1990):
ricikan dijagur ("instruments beaten with a padded hammer," e.g., suspended gongs);
ricikan dithuthuk ("instruments knocked with a hard or semihard hammer," e.g., saron (similar to the glockenspiel) and gong-chimes);
ricikan dikebuk ("hand-beaten instruments", e.g., kendhang (drum);
ricikan dipethik ("plucked instruments");
ricikan disendal ("pulled instruments," e.g., trump harp with string mechanism);
ricikan dikosok ("bowed instruments");
ricikan disebul ("blown instruments");
ricikan dikocok ("shaken instruments").
A Javanese classification transmitted in literary form is as follows (Kartomi, 1990):
ricikan prunggu/wesi ("instruements made of bronze or iron");
ricikan kulit ("leather instruments", drums);
ricikan kayu ("wooden instruments");
ricikan kawat/tali ("string instruments");
ricikan bambu pring ("bamboo instruments", e.g., flutes).
This is much like the pa yin. It is suspected of being old but its age is unknown.
Minangkabau musicians (of West Sumatra) use the following taxonomy for bunyi-bunyian ("objects that sound"): dipukua ("beaten"), dipupuik ("blown), dipatiek ("plucked"), ditariek ("pulled"), digesek ("bowed"), dipusiang ("swung"). The last one is for the bull-roarer. They also distinguish instruments on the basis of origin because of sociohistorical contacts, and recognize 3 categories: Mindangkabau (Minangkabau asli), Arabic (asal Arab), and Western (asal Barat), each of these divided up according to the 5 categories. Classifying musical instruments on the basis sociohistorical factors as well as mode of sound production is common in Indonesia. (Kartomi, 1990).
The Batak of North Sumatra recognize the following classes: beaten (alat pukul or alat palu), blown (alat tiup), bowed (alat gesek), and plucked (alat petik) instruments, but their primary classification is of ensembles (Kartomi, 1990).
In 1960, German musicologist Kurt Reinhard presented a stylistic taxonomy, as opposed to a morphological one, with 2 divisions determined by either single or multiple voiced playing (Kartomi, 1990). Each of these 2 divisions was subdivided according to pitch changeability (not changeable, freely changeable, and changeable by fixed intervals), and also by tonal continuity (discontinous (as the marimba and drums) and continuous(the friction instruments (including bowed) and the winds), making 12 categories. He also proposed classification according to whether or not they had dynamic tonal variability, a characteristic that separates whole eras (e.g., the baroque from the classical) as in the transition from the terraced dynamics of the harpsichord to the crescendo of the piano, grading by degree of absolute loudness, timbral spectra, tunability, and degree of resonance.
Al-Farabi, Arab scholar of the 10th century, also distinguished tonal duration. In 1 of his 4 schemes, in his 2-volume Kitab al-musiki al-kabir (Big Music Book, or Big Book of Music) he identified 5 classes, in order of ranking, as follows: the human voice, the bowed strings (the rebab) and winds, plucked strings, percussion, and dance, the 1st 3 pointed out as having continuous tone.
Ibn Sina, Persian scholar of the 11th century, presented a scheme in his Kitab al-najat (Book of the delivery), making the same distiction, having 2 classes. In his Kitab al-shifa (Book of soul healing), he proposed another taxonomy, this one having 5 classes: fretted instruments, unfretted (open) stringed, lyres and harps, bowed stringed, wind (reeds and some other woodwinds, such as the flute and bagpipe), other wind instrumets such as the organ, and the stick-struck santur (a board zither). The distinction between fretted and open was in classic Arab fashion.
The most commonly used system in use in the west today divides instruments into string instrument
String instrument
A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
s, wind instrument
Wind instrument
A wind instrument is a musical instrument that contains some type of resonator , in which a column of air is set into vibration by the player blowing into a mouthpiece set at the end of the resonator. The pitch of the vibration is determined by the length of the tube and by manual modifications of...
s and percussion instrument
Percussion instrument
A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...
s. However other ones have been devised, and some cultures also use different schemes.
The oldest known scheme of classifying instruments is Chinese
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and dates from the 3rd millenium BC. It groups instruments according to what they are made out of. All instruments made out of stone
Rock (geology)
In geology, rock or stone is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids.The Earth's outer solid layer, the lithosphere, is made of rock. In general rocks are of three types, namely, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic...
are in one group, all those made out of wood
Wood
Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...
in another, those made out of silk
Silk
Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...
are in a third, and all those made of bamboo in the 4th, as recorded in the Yo Chi (record of ritual music and dance), compiled from sources of the Chou period (9th-5th centuries BC), and corresponding to the 4 seasons and 4 winds (Kartomi, 1990).
The 8-fold system of pa yin ("8 sounds"), from the same source, occurred gradually, and in the legendary Emperor Shun's time (3rd millenium BC) it is believed to have been presented in the following order: metal (chin), stone (shih), silk (ssu), bamboo (chu), gourd (p'ao), clay (t'u), leather (ko), and wood (mu) classes, and it correlated to the 8 seasons and 8 winds of Chinese culture, autumn and west, autumn-winter and NW, summer and south, spring and east, winter-spring and NE, summer-autumn and SW, winter and north, and spring-summmer and SE, respectively (Kartomi, 1990).
However, the Chou-Li (Programs of Chou), an anonymous treatise compiled from earlier sources in about the 2nd century BC, had the following order: metal, stone, clay, leather, silk, wood, gourd, and bamboo. The same order was presented in the Tso Chuan (Tso Commentary), attributed to Tso Chiu-Ming, probably compiled in the 4th century BC (Kartomi, 1990).
Much later, Ming dynasty (1300s-1600) scholar Chu Tsai Yu recognized 3 groups: those instruments using muscle power or used for musical accompaniment, those that are blown, and those that are rhythmic, a scheme which was probably the 1st of scholarly type, the other earlier ones being traditional, folk taxonomies. (Margaret Kartomi, 2011, Upward and Downward Classifications of Musical Instruments-musicology.ff,cuni.cz)
More usually, instruments are classified according to how the sound is initially produced (regardless of post-processing, i.e. an electric guitar is still a string-instrument regardless of what analog or digital/computational post-processing effects pedals may be used with it).
Strings, percussion, and wind
The system used in the west today, dividing instruments into wind, strings, and percussion, is of GreekAncient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
origin (in the Hellenistic period, prominent proponents being Nicomachus and Porphyry). The scheme was later expanded by Martin Agricola
Martin Agricola
Martin Agricola was a German composer of Renaissance music and a music theorist.He was born in Schwiebus in Lower Silesia. His German name was Sohr or Sore....
, who distinguished plucked string instruments, such as guitar
Guitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
s, from bowed string instruments, such as violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
s. Classical musicians today do not always maintain this division (although plucked strings are grouped separately from bowed strings in sheet music
Sheet music
Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...
), but there is a distinction made between wind instruments with a reed (woodwind instrument
Woodwind instrument
A woodwind instrument is a musical instrument which produces sound when the player blows air against a sharp edge or through a reed, causing the air within its resonator to vibrate...
s) and wind instruments where the air is set in motion directly by the lips (brass instrument
Brass instrument
A brass instrument is a musical instrument whose sound is produced by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips...
s).
There are, however, problems with this system. Some rarely seen and non-western instruments do not fit very neatly into it. The serpent, for example, an old instrument rarely seen nowadays, ought to be classified as a brass instrument, as a column of air is set in motion by the lips. However, it looks more like a woodwind instrument, and is closer to one in many ways, having finger-holes to control pitch, rather than valves. There are also problems with classifying certain keyboard instrument
Keyboard instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
s. For example, the piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
has strings, but they are struck by hammers, so it is not clear whether it should be classified as a string instrument or a percussion instrument. For this reason, keyboard instruments are often regarded as inhabiting a category of their own, including all instruments played by a keyboard, whether they have struck strings (like the piano), plucked strings (like the harpsichord
Harpsichord
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...
) or no strings at all (like the celesta
Celesta
The celesta or celeste is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. Its appearance is similar to that of an upright piano or of a large wooden music box . The keys are connected to hammers which strike a graduated set of metal plates suspended over wooden resonators...
). It might be said that with these extra categories, the classical system of instrument classification focuses less on the fundamental way in which instruments produce sound, and more on the technique required to play them.
Various names have been assigned to these 3 traditional Western groupings (On Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments, Margaret Kartomi, 1990, U. of Chicago Press, pp. 136–138, 157, and notes for Chp. 10):
Boethius (5th and 6th centuries AD) labelled them intensione ut nervis, spiritu ut tibiis ("breath in the tube"), and percussione;
Cassiodorus, a younger contemporary of the above, used the names tensibilia, percussionalia, and inflatilia;
Roger Bacon (13th century) dubbed them tensilia, inflativa, and percussionalia;
Ugolino da Orvieto (14th and 15th centuries) called them intensione ut nervis, spiritu ut tibiis, and percussione;
Sebastien de Brossard (1703) referred to them as enchorda or entata (but only for instruments with several strings), pneumatica or empneousta, and krusta (from the Greek for hit or strike) or pulsatilia (for percussives);
Filippo Bonanni (1722) used vernacular names: sonori per il fiato, sonori per la tensione, and sonori per la percussione;
Joseph Majer (1732) called them pneumatica, pulsatilia (percussives including plucked instruments), and fidicina (from fidula, fiddle) (for bowed instruments);
Johann Eisel (1738) dubbed them pneumatica, pulsatilia, and fidicina;
Johannes de Muris (1784) used the terms chordalia, foraminalia (from foramina, "bore" in reference to the bored tubes), and vasalia (for "vessels");
Regino of Prum (1784) called them tensibile, inflatile, and percussionabile.
Turkish encyclopedist Hadji Khalifa (1600s) also recognized the same 3 classes in his Kashf al-zunun an asami al-kutub wa-funun ("clarification and conjecture about the names of books and sciences"), a treatise on the origin and construction of musical instruments. but this was exceptional for Near Eastern writers as they mostly ignored the percussion group as did early Hellenistic Greeks, the Near Eastern culture traditionally and that period of Greek history having low regard for that group (Kartomi, 1990).
The T'boli of Mindanao use the same 3 categories as well, but group the strings (t'duk) with the winds (nawa) together based on a gentleness (lemnoy) -strength (megel) dichotomy, regarding the percussion group (tembol) as strong and the winds-strings group as gentle. The division pervades T'boli thought about cosmology, social characters of men and women, and artistic styles (Kartomi, 1990).
Mahillon and Hornbostel-Sachs systems
An ancient system of IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n origin, dating from the 4th or 3rd century BC, in the Natya Shastra, a theoretical treatise on music and dramaturgy, by Bharata Muni, divides instruments into four main classification groups: instruments where the sound is produced by vibrating strings (tata vadya , "stretched instruments"; instruments where the sound is produced by vibrating columns of air (susira vadya, "hollow instruments"); percussion instruments made of wood or metal (ghana vadya, "solid instruments"); and percussion instruments with skin heads, or drum
Drum
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...
s (avanaddha vadya,"covereed instruments"). Victor-Charles Mahillon
Victor-Charles Mahillon
Victor-Charles Mahillon was a Belgian musician and writer on musical topics. He built, collected, and described more than 1500 musical instruments....
later adopted a system very similar to this. He was the curator of the musical instrument collection of the conservatoire in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
, and for the 1888 catalogue of the collection divided instruments into four groups: strings, winds, drums, and other percussion. This scheme was later taken up by Erich von Hornbostel
Erich von Hornbostel
Erich Moritz von Hornbostel was an Austrian ethnomusicologist and scholar of music. He is remembered for his pioneering work in the field of ethnomusicology, and for the Sachs–Hornbostel system of musical instrument classification which he co-authored with Curt Sachs.-Life:Hornbostel was born in...
and Curt Sachs
Curt Sachs
Curt Sachs was a German-born but American-domiciled musicologist. He was one of the founders of modern organology , and is probably best remembered today for co-authoring the Sachs-Hornbostel scheme of musical instrument classification with his fellow scholar Erich von Hornbostel.Born in Berlin,...
who published an extensive new scheme for classication in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie in 1914. Their scheme is widely used today, and is most often known as the Hornbostel-Sachs
Hornbostel-Sachs
Hornbostel–Sachs is a system of musical instrument classification devised by Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs, and first published in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie in 1914. An English translation was published in the Galpin Society Journal in 1961...
system (or the Sachs-Hornbostel system).
The original Sachs-Hornbostel system classified instruments into four main groups:
- idiophoneIdiophoneAn idiophone is any musical instrument which creates sound primarily by way of the instrument's vibrating, without the use of strings or membranes. It is the first of the four main divisions in the original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification...
s, such as the xylophoneXylophoneThe xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets...
, which produce sound by vibrating themselves; - membranophoneMembranophoneA membranophone is any musical instrument which produces sound primarily by way of a vibrating stretched membrane. It is one of the four main divisions of instruments in the original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification....
s, such as drumDrumThe drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...
s or kazooKazooThe kazoo is a wind instrument which adds a "buzzing" timbral quality to a player's voice when the player vocalizes into it. The kazoo is a type of mirliton, which is a membranophone, a device which modifies the sound of a person's voice by way of a vibrating membrane."Kazoo" was the name given by...
s, which produce sound by a vibrating membrane; - chordophoneChordophoneA chordophone is any musical instrument that makes sound by way of a vibrating string or strings stretched between two points. It is one of the four main divisions of instruments in the original Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification....
s, such as the piano or celloCelloThe cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
, which produce sound by vibrating strings; - aerophoneAerophoneAn aerophone is any musical instrument which produces sound primarily by causing a body of air to vibrate, without the use of strings or membranes, and without the vibration of the instrument itself adding considerably to the sound...
s, such as the pipe organPipe organThe pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass...
or oboeOboeThe oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
, which produce sound by vibrating columns of air.
Later Sachs added a fifth category, electrophone
Electrophone
The electrophone category was added to the Hornbostel-Sachs musical instrument classification system by Sachs in 1940, to describe instruments involving electricity...
s, such as theremin
Theremin
The theremin , originally known as the aetherphone/etherophone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox is an early electronic musical instrument controlled without discernible physical contact from the player. It is named after its Russian inventor, Professor Léon Theremin, who patented the device...
s, which produce sound by electronic means. Within each category are many subgroups. The system has been criticised and revised over the years, but remains widely used by ethnomusicologists
Ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology is defined as "the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in local and global contexts."Coined by the musician Jaap Kunst from the Greek words ἔθνος ethnos and μουσική mousike , it is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music...
and organologists
Organology
Organology is the science of musical instruments and their classification. It embraces study of instruments' history, instruments used in different cultures, technical aspects of how instruments produce sound, and musical instrument classification...
.
André Schaeffner
In 1932, comparative musicologist (ethnomusicolist) André Schaeffner developed a new classification scheme that was "exhaustive, potentially covering all real andconceivable instruments".
Schaeffner's system has only two top-level categories which he denoted by Roman numerals:
- I: instruments that make sound from vibrating solids:
- I.A: no tension (free solid, for example xylophones, cymbals, or clavesClavesClaves are a percussion instrument , consisting of a pair of short Claves (Anglicized pronunciation: clah-vays, IPA:[ˈklαves]) are a percussion instrument (idiophone), consisting of a pair of short Claves (Anglicized pronunciation: clah-vays, IPA:[ˈklαves]) are a percussion instrument (idiophone),...
); - I.B: linguaphones (lamellophones)(solid fixed at only one end, such as a kalimba or thumb piano;
- I.C: chordophones (solid fixed at both ends, i.e. strings such as pianoPianoThe piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
or harpHarpThe harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...
); plus drums
- I.A: no tension (free solid, for example xylophones, cymbals, or claves
- II: instruments that make sound from vibrating air (such as clarinets, trumpets, or bull-roarers.
The system agrees with Mahillon and Hornbostel-Sachs for chordophones, but groups percussion instruments differently.
Second-century Greek grammarian, sophist, and rhetoritician Julius Pollux, in the chapter called De Musica, in his 10-volume Onomastikon, had presented the 2-class system, percussion (including strings) and winds, which persisted in medieval and postmedieval Europe. It was used by St. Augustine (4th and 5th centuries), in his De Ordine, applying the terms rhythmic (percussion and strings), organic (winds), and adding harmonic (the human voice); Isodore of Seville (6th to 7th centuries AD); Hugh of St. Victor (12th century), also adding the voice; Magister Lambertus (13th century), adding the human voice as well; and Michael Pretorius (17th century)(Kartomi, 1990, pp. 119–21, 147).
The Kpelle of West Africa also use this system. They distinguish the struck (yàle), including both beaten and plucked, and the blown (fêe), as revealed by Ruth Stone in Let the Inside Be Sweet: the interpretation of music among the Kpelle of Liberia, 1982, Indiana U. Press (Kartomi, 1990). The yàle group is subdivided into 5 categories: instruments possessing lamellas (the sanzas); those possessing strings; those possessing a membrane (various drums); hollow wooden, iron, or bottle containers; and various rattles and bells. The Hausa, also of West Africa, classify drummers into those who beat drums and those who beat (pluck) strings (the other 4 player classes are blowers, singers, acclaimers, and talkers), as reported by Ames and King in Glossary of Hausa Music and its Social Contexts, 1971, Northwestern U. Press. Kartomi does not specify if these 2 classifications pre-date Schaeffner or Pollux. The concept, the way the person produces the sound, is human-centered, which is part of their traditional culture so presumably they at least pre-date Schaeffner.
The MSA (Multi-Dimensional Scalogram Analysis) of René Lysloff and Jim Matson (A New Approach to the Classification of Sound-Producing Instruments, Ethnomusicology, Spring/Summer, 1985, also at mywebspace.wisc.edu), using 37 variables, including characteristics of the sounding body, resonator, substructure, sympathetic vibrator, performance context, social context, and instrument tuning and construction, corroborated the taxonomy of Schaeffner, producing 2 categories, aerophones and the chordophone-membranophone-idiophone combination.
Another similar system is the 5-class, physics-based organology, which was presented in 2007 by Steve Mann (Natural Infaces for Musical Expression, Proceedings of the Conference on Interfaces for Musical Expresion, pp. 118–23), comprises Gaiaphones (Chordophones, Membranophones, and Idiophones), Hydraulophones, Aerophones, Plasmaphones, and Quintephones (electrically and optically produced music), the names referring to the 5 essences, being earth, water, wind, fire, and the quintessence, thus adding 3 new categories to the Schaeffner taxonomy.
Instruments by range
Western instruments are also often classified by their musical range in comparison with other instruments in the same family. These terms are named after singing voice classificationsVocal range
Vocal range is the measure of the breadth of pitches that a human voice can phonate. Although the study of vocal range has little practical application in terms of speech, it is a topic of study within linguistics, phonetics, and speech and language pathology, particularly in relation to the study...
:
- SopranoSopranoA soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
instruments: fluteFluteThe flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
, clarinetClarinetThe clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
, recorderRecorderThe recorder is a woodwind musical instrument of the family known as fipple flutes or internal duct flutes—whistle-like instruments which include the tin whistle. The recorder is end-blown and the mouth of the instrument is constricted by a wooden plug, known as a block or fipple...
, violinViolinThe violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
, trumpetTrumpetThe trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
, oboeOboeThe oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
, soprano saxophoneSoprano saxophoneThe soprano saxophone is a variety of the saxophone, a woodwind instrument, invented in 1840. The soprano is the third smallest member of the saxophone family, which consists of the soprillo, sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass, contrabass and tubax.A transposing instrument pitched in... - AltoAltoAlto is a musical term, derived from the Latin word altus, meaning "high" in Italian, that has several possible interpretations.When designating instruments, "alto" frequently refers to a member of an instrumental family that has the second highest range, below that of the treble or soprano. Hence,...
instruments: alto fluteAlto fluteThe alto flute is a type of Western concert flute, a musical instrument in the woodwind family. It is the next extension downward of the C flute after the flûte d'amour. It is characterized by its distinct, mellow tone in the lower portion of its range...
, violaViolaThe viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...
, hornHorn (instrument)The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....
, alto saxophoneAlto saxophoneThe alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in 1841. It is smaller than the tenor but larger than the soprano, and is the type most used in classical compositions... - TenorTenorThe tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
instruments: English horn, tromboneTromboneThe trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
, tenor saxophoneTenor saxophoneThe tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor, with the alto, are the two most common types of saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B, and written as a transposing instrument in the treble... - BaritoneBaritoneBaritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
instruments: celloCelloThe cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
, bass clarinetBass clarinetThe bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B , but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B clarinet...
, bassoonBassoonThe bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
, baritone saxophoneBaritone saxophoneThe baritone saxophone, often called "bari sax" , is one of the largest and lowest pitched members of the saxophone family. It was invented by Adolphe Sax. The baritone is distinguished from smaller sizes of saxophone by the extra loop near its mouthpiece... - BassBass (instrument)Bass describes musical instruments that produce tones in the low-pitched range. They belong to different families of instruments and can cover a wide range of musical roles...
instruments: double bassDouble bassThe double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...
, tubaTubaThe tuba is the largest and lowest-pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped mouthpiece. It is one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra, first appearing in the mid-19th century, when it largely replaced the...
, bass saxophoneBass saxophoneThe bass saxophone is the second largest member of the saxophone family. Its design is similar to that of the baritone saxophone, with a loop of tubing near the mouthpiece. It was the first type of saxophone presented to the public, when Adolphe Sax exhibited a bass saxophone in C at an exhibition...
Some instruments fall into more than one category: for example, the cello may be considered either tenor or bass, depending on how its music fits into the ensemble, and the trombone may be alto, tenor, or bass and the French horn, bass, baritone, tenor, or alto, depending on which range it is played.
Many instruments have their range as part of their name: soprano saxophone
Soprano saxophone
The soprano saxophone is a variety of the saxophone, a woodwind instrument, invented in 1840. The soprano is the third smallest member of the saxophone family, which consists of the soprillo, sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass, contrabass and tubax.A transposing instrument pitched in...
, alto saxophone
Alto saxophone
The alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in 1841. It is smaller than the tenor but larger than the soprano, and is the type most used in classical compositions...
, tenor saxophone
Tenor saxophone
The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor, with the alto, are the two most common types of saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B, and written as a transposing instrument in the treble...
, baritone saxophone
Baritone saxophone
The baritone saxophone, often called "bari sax" , is one of the largest and lowest pitched members of the saxophone family. It was invented by Adolphe Sax. The baritone is distinguished from smaller sizes of saxophone by the extra loop near its mouthpiece...
, baritone horn
Baritone horn
The baritone horn is a member of the brass instrument family. The baritone horn has a predominantly cylindrical bore as do the trumpet and trombone. A baritone horn uses a large mouthpiece much like those of a trombone or euphonium, although it is a bit smaller. Some baritone mouthpieces will sink...
, alto flute, bass flute
Bass flute
The bass flute is the bass member of the flute family. It is in the key of C, pitched one octave below the concert flute. Because of the length of its tube , it is usually made with a "J" shaped head joint, which brings the embouchure hole within reach of the player...
, alto recorder
Recorder
The recorder is a woodwind musical instrument of the family known as fipple flutes or internal duct flutes—whistle-like instruments which include the tin whistle. The recorder is end-blown and the mouth of the instrument is constricted by a wooden plug, known as a block or fipple...
, bass guitar
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, etc. Additional adjectives describe instruments above the soprano range or below the bass
Contrabass
Contrabass refers to a musical instrument of very low pitch; generally those pitched one octave below instruments of the bass register...
, for example: sopranino saxophone
Sopranino saxophone
The sopranino saxophone is one of the smallest members of the saxophone family. A sopranino saxophone is tuned in the key of E, and sounds an octave above the alto saxophone. This saxophone has a sweet sound and although the sopranino is one of the least common of the saxophones in regular use...
, contrabass clarinet
Contrabass clarinet
The contrabass clarinet is the largest member of the clarinet family that has ever been in regular production or significant use. Modern contrabass clarinets are pitched in BB, sounding two octaves lower than the common B soprano clarinet and one octave lower than the B bass clarinet...
.
When used in the name of an instrument, these terms are relative, describing the instrument's range in comparison to other instruments of its family and not in comparison to the human voice range or instruments of other families. For example, a bass flute's range is from C3 to F6, while a bass clarinet plays about one octave lower.
Other classifications
Sometimes instruments are classified according to the materials from which they are made. For example, percussion instruments made from metal are sometimes called metallophoneMetallophone
A metallophone is any musical instrument consisting of tuned metal bars which are struck to make sound, usually with a mallet.Metallophones have been used in music for hundreds of years. There are several different types used in Balinese and Javanese gamelan ensembles, including the gendér, gangsa...
s, while those made of stone are called lithophone
Lithophone
A lithophone is a musical instrument consisting of a rock or pieces of rock which are struck to produce musical notes. Notes may be sounded in combination or in succession...
s. Similarly, wind instruments made from metal are often categorized as brass instrument
Brass instrument
A brass instrument is a musical instrument whose sound is produced by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips...
s. This idea is not limited to western practice: the ancient Chinese categorized instruments into eight categories of materials (silk, bamboo, wood, gourd, earth, stone, metal, and skin).
Sometimes instruments are classed according to the method of their construction rather than their materials. For example Lamellaphone
Lamellaphone
A lamellophone is any of a family of musical instruments. The name comes from the Latin word "lamella" for "plate" and the Greek root "phonos" for "sound"...
s are instruments that produced sound by the plucking of their "lamellae" or tongues—strips of metal, wood, or bamboo fixed to a sound-board or resonator. In the Hornbostel-Sachs
Hornbostel-Sachs
Hornbostel–Sachs is a system of musical instrument classification devised by Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs, and first published in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie in 1914. An English translation was published in the Galpin Society Journal in 1961...
classification of musical instruments, lamellophones are considered plucked idiophones
Plucked idiophones
Plucked idiophones is one of the categories of musical instruments found in the Hornbostel-Sachs system of musical instrument classification that is usually referred to as . These idiophones are equipped with one or more tongues or lammelae that produce sound by being plucked by the performer...
, a category that includes various forms of jaw harp and the European mechanical music box, as well as the huge variety of African and Afro-Latin thumb piano
Thumb piano
The thumb piano is an African musical instrument, a type of plucked idiophone common throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.-Description:Each note of a kalimba, mbira, etc. is a separate idiophone, and in orchestral terms, the instrument as a whole belongs in the bar percussion family...
s such as the mbira
Mbira
In African music, the mbira is a musical instrument that consists of a wooden board to which staggered metal keys have been attached. It is often fitted into a resonator...
and marimbula
Marímbula
A marímbula is a folk musical instrument of the Caribbean Islands . The marímbula is usually classified as part of the lamellophone family of musical instruments. With its roots in African instruments, marimbula originated in the province of Oriente, Cuba in the 19th century...
.
Sometimes instruments are categorized according to a common use, such as signal instrument
Signal instrument
A signal instrument is a musical instrument which is not only used for music as such, but also fit to give sound signals as a form of auditive communication, usually in the open air....
s, a category which may include instruments in very different Hornbostel-Sachs categories such as trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
s, drum
Drum
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...
s, and gong
Gong
A gong is an East and South East Asian musical percussion instrument that takes the form of a flat metal disc which is hit with a mallet....
s. "According to social function" may be in this category or a separate one, but an example based on this criterion is Bonanni (e.g., festive, military, and religious)(Kartomi, 1990). He also classified them according to geography and whether they were past or present.
Benjamin de la Borde (1780) classified them according to ethnicity, his categories being black, Abyssinian, Chinese, Arabic, Turkisk, and Greek (Kartomi, 1990).
Instruments can also be classified according to the ensemble in which they play, or the role they play in the ensemble. For example, the horn section
Horn section
In music, a horn section can refer to several groups of musicians. It can refer to the musicians in a symphony orchestra who play the horn . In a British-style brass band it refers to the tenor horn players. In popular music, it can also refer to a small group of wind instrumentalists who augment a...
in popular music typically includes both brass instrument
Brass instrument
A brass instrument is a musical instrument whose sound is produced by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips...
s and woodwind instrument
Woodwind instrument
A woodwind instrument is a musical instrument which produces sound when the player blows air against a sharp edge or through a reed, causing the air within its resonator to vibrate...
s. The symphony orchestra typically has the strings in the front, the woodwinds in the middle, and the basses, woodwinds, and percussion in the back.
Major classifications done for the Indonesian ensemble, the gamelan, have been done by Jaap Kunst (1949), Martopangrawit, Poerbapangrawit, and Sumarsam ( all in 1984) (Kartomi, 1990). Kunst's taxonomy has 5 categories: nuclear theme (cantus firmus in Latin and balungan ("skeletal ramework") in Indonesian); colotomic ( a word invented by Kunst)(interpunctuating), the gongs; countermelodic; paraphrasing (panerusan), subdivided as close to the nuclear theme and ornamental filling; agogic (tempo-regulating), drums.
Martopangrawit has 2 categories, irama (the rhythm instruments) and lagu (the melodic instruments), the former corresponds to Kunst's classes 2 and 5, and the latter to Kunst's 1, 3, and 4.
Poerbapangrawit, similar to Kunst's, derives 6 categories: balungan, the saron, demung, and slenthem; rerenggan (ornamental), the gendèr, gambang, and bonang); wiletan (variable formulaic melodic), rebab and male chorus (gerong); singgetan (interpunctuating); kembang (floral), flute and female voice; jejeging wirama (tempo regulating), drums.
Samusam's scheme comprises:
an inner melodic group (lagu)(with a wide range), divided as elaborating (rebab, gerong, gendèr (a metallophone), gambang (a xylophone), pesindhen (female voice), celempung (plucked strings), suling (flute)); mediating ( between the 1st and 3rd subdivisions (bonang (gong-chimes), saron panerus(a loud metallophone); and abstracting (balungan, "melodic abstraction")( with a 1-octave range), loud and soft metallophones (saron barung, demung, and slenthem);
an outer circle, the structural group (gongs), which underlines the structure of the work;
and occupying the space outside the outer circle, the kendang, a tempo-regulating group (drums).
The gamelan is also divided into front, middle, and back, much like the symphony orchestra.
In West Africa, tribes such as the Dan, Gio, Kpelle, Hausa, Akan, and Dogon, use a uniquely human-centered system. It derives from 4 myth-based parameters: the musical instrument's nonhuman owner (spirit, mask, sorcerer, or animal), the mode of transmission to the human realm (by gift, exchange, contract, or removal), the making of the instrument by a human (according to instructions from a nonhuman, for instance), and the 1st human owner. Most instruments are said to have a nonhuman origin, but some are believed invented by humans, e.g., the xylophone and the lamellophone. (Kartomi, 1990).
An orally-transmitted Javanese taxonomy has 8 groupings (Kartomi, 1990):
ricikan dijagur ("instruments beaten with a padded hammer," e.g., suspended gongs);
ricikan dithuthuk ("instruments knocked with a hard or semihard hammer," e.g., saron (similar to the glockenspiel) and gong-chimes);
ricikan dikebuk ("hand-beaten instruments", e.g., kendhang (drum);
ricikan dipethik ("plucked instruments");
ricikan disendal ("pulled instruments," e.g., trump harp with string mechanism);
ricikan dikosok ("bowed instruments");
ricikan disebul ("blown instruments");
ricikan dikocok ("shaken instruments").
A Javanese classification transmitted in literary form is as follows (Kartomi, 1990):
ricikan prunggu/wesi ("instruements made of bronze or iron");
ricikan kulit ("leather instruments", drums);
ricikan kayu ("wooden instruments");
ricikan kawat/tali ("string instruments");
ricikan bambu pring ("bamboo instruments", e.g., flutes).
This is much like the pa yin. It is suspected of being old but its age is unknown.
Minangkabau musicians (of West Sumatra) use the following taxonomy for bunyi-bunyian ("objects that sound"): dipukua ("beaten"), dipupuik ("blown), dipatiek ("plucked"), ditariek ("pulled"), digesek ("bowed"), dipusiang ("swung"). The last one is for the bull-roarer. They also distinguish instruments on the basis of origin because of sociohistorical contacts, and recognize 3 categories: Mindangkabau (Minangkabau asli), Arabic (asal Arab), and Western (asal Barat), each of these divided up according to the 5 categories. Classifying musical instruments on the basis sociohistorical factors as well as mode of sound production is common in Indonesia. (Kartomi, 1990).
The Batak of North Sumatra recognize the following classes: beaten (alat pukul or alat palu), blown (alat tiup), bowed (alat gesek), and plucked (alat petik) instruments, but their primary classification is of ensembles (Kartomi, 1990).
In 1960, German musicologist Kurt Reinhard presented a stylistic taxonomy, as opposed to a morphological one, with 2 divisions determined by either single or multiple voiced playing (Kartomi, 1990). Each of these 2 divisions was subdivided according to pitch changeability (not changeable, freely changeable, and changeable by fixed intervals), and also by tonal continuity (discontinous (as the marimba and drums) and continuous(the friction instruments (including bowed) and the winds), making 12 categories. He also proposed classification according to whether or not they had dynamic tonal variability, a characteristic that separates whole eras (e.g., the baroque from the classical) as in the transition from the terraced dynamics of the harpsichord to the crescendo of the piano, grading by degree of absolute loudness, timbral spectra, tunability, and degree of resonance.
Al-Farabi, Arab scholar of the 10th century, also distinguished tonal duration. In 1 of his 4 schemes, in his 2-volume Kitab al-musiki al-kabir (Big Music Book, or Big Book of Music) he identified 5 classes, in order of ranking, as follows: the human voice, the bowed strings (the rebab) and winds, plucked strings, percussion, and dance, the 1st 3 pointed out as having continuous tone.
Ibn Sina, Persian scholar of the 11th century, presented a scheme in his Kitab al-najat (Book of the delivery), making the same distiction, having 2 classes. In his Kitab al-shifa (Book of soul healing), he proposed another taxonomy, this one having 5 classes: fretted instruments, unfretted (open) stringed, lyres and harps, bowed stringed, wind (reeds and some other woodwinds, such as the flute and bagpipe), other wind instrumets such as the organ, and the stick-struck santur (a board zither). The distinction between fretted and open was in classic Arab fashion.
See also
- OrganologyOrganologyOrganology is the science of musical instruments and their classification. It embraces study of instruments' history, instruments used in different cultures, technical aspects of how instruments produce sound, and musical instrument classification...
- Hornbostel-SachsHornbostel-SachsHornbostel–Sachs is a system of musical instrument classification devised by Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs, and first published in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie in 1914. An English translation was published in the Galpin Society Journal in 1961...
- List of musical instruments
- Musical instruments (Section Classification)
- Signal instrumentSignal instrumentA signal instrument is a musical instrument which is not only used for music as such, but also fit to give sound signals as a form of auditive communication, usually in the open air....