European and Western 2nd-century Greek grammarian, sophist, and rhetorician
Julius Pollux, in the chapter called De Musica of his ten-volume
Onomastikon, presented the two-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);
Isidore of Seville (6th to 7th centuries);
Hugh of Saint Victor (12th century), also adding the voice; Magister Lambertus (13th century), adding the human voice as well; and
Michael Praetorius (17th century). Modern synthesizers and electronic instruments fall in this category. Within each category are many subgroups. The system has been criticized and revised over the years, but remains widely used by
ethnomusicologists and
organologists. One notable example of this criticism is that care should be taken with electrophones, as some electronic instruments like the
electric guitar (chordophone) and some
electronic keyboards (sometimes idiophones or chordophones) can produce music without electricity or the use of an amplifier. 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 pianos such as the
mbira and
marimbula.
André Schaeffner In 1932, comparative musicologist (ethnomusicologist)
André Schaeffner developed a new classification scheme that was "exhaustive, potentially covering all real and conceivable 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
claves); • 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
piano or
harp); plus drums • 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. The MSA (Multi-Dimensional Scalogram Analysis) of René Lysloff and Jim Matson, using 37 variables, including characteristics of the sounding body, resonator, substructure, sympathetic vibrator, performance context, social context, and instrument tuning and construction, corroborated Schaeffner, producing two categories, aerophones and the chordophone-membranophone-idiophone combination. André Schaeffner has been president of the French association of musicologists Société française de musicologie (1958–1967).
Kurt Reinhard In 1960, German musicologist
Kurt Reinhard presented a stylistic taxonomy, as opposed to a morphological one, with two divisions determined by either single or multiple voices playing. This system is composed of gaiaphones (chordophones, membranophones, and idiophones),
hydraulophones,
aerophones, plasmaphones, and quintephones (electrically and optically produced music), the names referring to the five essences, earth, water, wind, fire and the
quintessence, thus adding three new categories to the Schaeffner taxonomy. Elementary organology, also known as physical organology, is a classification scheme based on the elements (i.e. states of matter) in which sound production takes place. "Elementary" refers both to "element" (state of matter) and to something that is fundamental or innate (physical). The elementary organology map can be traced to Kartomi, Schaeffner, Yamaguchi, and others, as well as to the Greek and Roman concepts of elementary classification of all objects, not just musical instruments. It grouped instruments according to the materials they are made of. Instruments made of
stone were in one group, those of
wood in another, those of
silk are in a third, and those of
bamboo in a fourth, 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 four seasons and four winds. The eight-fold system of eight sounds or timbres (八音, bā yīn), from the same source, occurred gradually, and in the legendary
Emperor Shun's time (3rd millennium BC) it is believed to have been presented in the following order:
metal (金, jīn),
stone (石, shí),
silk (絲, sī),
bamboo (竹, zhú),
gourd (匏, páo),
clay (土, tǔ),
leather (革, gé), and
wood (木, mù) classes, and it correlated to the eight seasons and eight 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-summer and SE, respectively. 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).
Indonesian Classifications done for the Indonesian ensemble, the
gamelan, were done by
Jaap Kunst (1949), Martopangrawit, Poerbapangrawit, and Sumarsam (all in 1984). The
yàle group is subdivided into five 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 four player classes are blowers, singers, acclaimers, and talkers), ==See also==