Musical Instrument - History

History

Scholars agree that there are no completely reliable methods of determining the exact chronology of musical instruments across cultures. Comparing and organizing instruments based on their complexity is misleading, since advancements in musical instruments have sometimes reduced complexity. For example, construction of early slit drums involved felling and hollowing out large trees; later slit drums were made by opening bamboo stalks, a much simpler task.

Curt Sachs argued that is misleading to arrange the development of musical instruments by workmanship since all cultures advance at different levels and have access to different materials. For example, contemporary anthropologists attempting to compare musical instruments made by two cultures that existed at the same time but who differed in organization, culture, and handicraft cannot determine which instruments are more "primitive". Ordering instruments by geography is also partially unreliable, as one cannot determine when and how cultures contacted one another and shared knowledge.

German musicologist Curt Sachs, one of the most prominent musicologists and musical ethnologists in modern times, proposed that a geographical chronology until approximately 1400 is preferable, however, due to its limited subjectivity. Beyond 1400, one can follow the overall development of musical instruments by time period.

The science of marking the order of musical instrument development relies on archaeological artifacts, artistic depictions, and literary references. Since data in one research path can be inconclusive, all three paths provide a better historical picture.