The different aspects of the subject and the corresponding methods.

The life-history of melodies is the subject of comparative melodic research. It offers various aspects and forms of approach, and research has consequently developed in different directions and has employed a variety of methods. These are differentiated not only by nomenclature but by the emphasis laid upon special aspects of the subject-matter.

Tout observateur impartial est frappé par l'extraordinaire tenacité des traditions et croyances ègyptiennes, datant quelquefois du règne des Pharaons et survivant encore au XXème siècle. II est en effet possible de retracer les differentes ètapes de cette evolution, d'etablir scientifiquement la filière de certaines croyances reliant le présent au passé, sans interruption aucune. Le folkloriste est d'autant plus redevable à toute recherche sérieuse ayant trait aux traditions millénaires, qu'il trouve, par ce moyen, l'explication de certaines coutumes populaires dans l'Egypte moderne, remontant parfois aux périodes les plus reculées de l'histoire de la Vallée du Nil, dans les croyances qui avaient cours, il y a 45 siècles ou davantage.

Six years ago I reported upon an attempt to graph instantaneously a single melodic line in such a manner as to permit ready correlation with the auditory sense, without employment of costly and time-consuming photographic apparatus, film development and printmaking, their mathematical interpretation and hand-written graph. The trial was conducted in my son's radar-telescopic laboratory at Cornell University in 1949, where an assembly of separate units, currently used in his observations that happened to be available for a scant two hours one Sunday morning, was wired together. Of the three sources of input—voice, guitar and whistling—the limited filter and smoothing systems at hand gave a readable graph of the last mentioned only.

Folk song is too protean an affair to put into any tidy pattern of musical history. Yet even the most conservative popular traditions are liable to growth and change; and if the growth is slow, the change when it comes may be far-reaching and even violent. Hitherto it has been difficult to describe any stage in the evolution of folk song with scientific accuracy, for as a rule we lack a truly precise record of what existed before. But in this connection, a group of workers from the Rumanian Folklore Institute recently completed a survey of unusual scope and importance. Five specialists—musical, literary and choreographic—under the leadership of Miss Emilia Comisel, made a series of expeditions to the Padureni district of Hunedoara in south-western Transylvania.

Within the distinguished framework of this Congress, held in the most pleasant and friendly setting of the University of Pennsylvania and its great Museum from September 1st to 9th, 1956, two sessions were devoted to Comparative Musicology—or, using the term propagated chiefly by Dr. Jaap Kunst and favoured increasingly in the U.S., Ethnomusicology. There was also related matter at a few other sessions, and many ethnological films—some with music; some outstanding in craftsmanship, quality, and conception. In the absence of a central topic or theme, the sessions reflected some of the great variety within our subject matter and some of the different points of view.

The International Musicological Congress in Hamburg in September, 1956, devoted one of its four general subjects to "Ethnological Music Research," thereby indicating the significance of this young branch of musicology.

From the aspect of folklore, the Hamburg ethnologist Kunz Dittmer spoke on the role of music in universal ethnology. He emphasised the views of modern ethnology against the origin and evolution theories of the cultural groups doctrine held by the Viennese school, and against the isolated consideration of individual characteristic of style. He pleaded for an integral conception of the culture of foreign races, most particularly of primitive races.