1936_LANG_Morphology 18th-Century Music

American Musicological Society
University of California Press
Morphology of the Music of the Eighteenth Century

Author(s): Paul Henry Láng
Source: Bulletin of the American Musicological Society, No. 1 (Jun., 1936), pp. 2-3
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological Society
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BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
Western New York Chapter,April 4, 1935,at the EastmanSchool of Music,

Rochester. Officers: Chairman, C. Warren Fox; Secretary, Richard S. Hill.
At the first Annual meeting, held in Philadelphia on December
28th, 1935, the officers as elected at the previous meeting remained
in their respective offices, with the exception of Mr. Seeger who was
replaced by George S. Dickinson, while Glen Haydon, Hugo
Leichtentritt, Otto Ortmann, Roy D. Welch were elected the
members at large.
At this meeting the President announced the receipt of several
inquiries, from members, concerning publications. He reported that
the Editor of The Musical Quarterly had offered to assign ioo pages
of his magazine each year to papers submitted through the Publica-
tion Committee of the Association, the final selection of such papers
to be subject to the approval of the Editor and the papers to be
printed with some notation, in the captions, designating the authors
as members of the Society. . . . The Publication Committee had
proposed that, in addition, the Society issue a Bulletin. . . . After
general discussion it was, upon motion duly made, seconded, and
carried, resolved that the offer of the Editor of The Musical Quarterly
be accepted, and furthermore, that the Publication Committee be
instructed to study the question of issuing a Bulletin, as a Society publi-
cation, . . . to contain abstracts of papers read before the Society and
its Chapters, and news of interest to the Society, the period to be cov-
ered by the first Bulletin being the first calendar year of the Society.
GREATER NEW YORK CHAPTER

(All the meetings of this Chapter wete held at the Club Rooms of the
Beethoven Association, 30 West 56th Street, New York.)
Morphology of the Music of the

Eighteenth Century
Paul Henry Ldng
(FEBRUARY3RD, 1935)
MUSICALFORMis usually interpreted by counting the measures and
then classifying the material in "two-part" and "three-part" forms,
or in larger forms whatever their designation be. While this system
may be helpful for the practical composer it does not explain musical
structure. In order to explain musical structure we must first examine
the idiom itself, its morphology. It appears that the basic stylistic
COPYRIGHT, 1936, BY OTTO KINKELDEY
Communicationsrelative to the Bulletin may be addressed to the Editor, at
One Lexington Avenue, New York.
BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICALSOCIETY 3
feature of the music of the Baroque period is continuous expansion.
Totality of a closed form is achieved by an uninterrupted "discursive"
development of the given musical material. Opposed to this style
stands the musical idiom of the socalled classical period. Here we
have to deal with the organization of sections into a whole. The
"bridge" or the "closing theme" of a sonata exposition are meaning-
less unless confronted with each other as organic members of a
larger constellation. The question of contrasting themes-usually
considered of great importance in the sonata-form-seems to have
been of secondary importance to the earlier members of the classical
school; their main concern was to establish clear sections divided by
tonalities rather than by themes.
Primitive Music
George Herzog
(MARCH 3RD, 1935)
THE GENERAL,THEORETICALSTATEMENTSmade in the
past are no longer
advanced in the study of primitve music against its cultural back-
ground. Thus it is no longer held that simple musical forms will
always develop into more complex ones, nor that comparatively
simple or complex musical forms will be found associated with com-
paratively simple or complex forms of other manifestations of human
culture. All evidence points to the wisdom of dispensing with
sweeping theoretical schemes and of inquiring in each case into the
specific historical processes that have molded the culture and musical
style of a nation or tribe. Historicity is the fundamental background
of primitive as of sophisticated culture, and thus also of primitive
music. Consequently, primitive musical forms cannot be taken either
as the primordial forms of musical development, or as the spontaneous
self-expression of a "primitive mind". Improvisation proper is not
common, outside of Africa; songs are very often committed to the
new generation through teaching, and are practiced meticulously
before performance.
Also the old theories of the origin of music have suffered in
prestige: Spencer's theory of speech-melody, Biicher's of the rhythm
of group labor, Darwin's of the sex instinct and Helmholtz's of the
upper partials as the fountainhead of musical development. Serious
studies of primitive musical styles have brought to the fore a sur-
prising amount and variety of musical form. So little is actually
known, however, that the main attention of this field is devoted to
increasing that little, and collecting more material before it all
disappears under the impact of Western civilization.

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American Musicological Society

University of California Press

Morphology of the Music of the Eighteenth Century

Western New York Chapter,April 4, 1935,at the EastmanSchool of Music,

GREATER NEW YORK CHAPTER

Morphology of the Music of the

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