A Comparative Study Of Merriam And Nettle’s Theories Of Anthropology Of Music

Alan P. Merriam (1923-1980) and Bruno Nettle (1930-) are the famous music anthropologists in the United States in different periods. Merriam had made pioneering contributions to the development of anthropology of music. Nettle has developed and expanded further the theories on the basis of Merriam, and he is one of the extremely important academic leaders with expanding contribution. The circles of anthropology of music in China pay pretty attention to them by the translation of their works and drawing upon their achievements. However, academic circles lack deep analysis and criticism of their academic theories, say nothing of the overall comparative study. The dissertation uses literature method and comparative research to search for Merriam’s and Nettle’s academic tracks and analyzes their theories connotation and their internal connection of anthropology of music, makes a comparison between Merriam’s and Nettle’s theories of anthropology of music from the perspective of anthropological concept of music, anthropology of music discipline orientation and the research methods of anthropology of music. Each of the contents discussed in the paper is the original, and each analyzes, compares and comments their academic theories for one of the core issues, and tries to put forward author’s own ideas of the academic theories in some parts.The first chapter of the paper is the introduction part which mainly introduced the present situation of the research into Merriam and Nettle of scholars at home and abroad, illustrated the research value of papers, ideas and methods. The comparison isn’t the same between them and different schools of thinkers in the same period, due to Merriam and Nettle being in different historical period of anthropology of music. Their theories of anthropology of music have accurately different characteristics of their own in the development of disciplines, but rarely tit-for-tat argument.The second chapter of the paper describes the general situation of the academic of Merriam and Nettle. In view of there is no scholar to research into their academic theories systematically in the circles of anthropology of music in our country, it is necessary to collate and sum up academic background and academic achievements before the comparative study of Merriam and Nettle’s theories of anthropology of music in this paper.The third chapter of the paper discusses the concept of music from the perspective of anthropology. Merriam analyzed the reason that anthropology neglected seriously to research art was the misunderstanding about art, in other word, the anthropologist were still running under the concept of art according to the perspective of art theory, they should have had the anthropological concept of music. Similarly, we should also hold the concept of music from the perspective of anthropology in the research of anthropology of music. The first important concept is to regard music as a human learned behavior, which is anthropologist’s "special skills". Merriam regarded music as a kind of human learned behavior and carried on the classification, but Merriam usually regarded behavior as music production behavior. Merriam established the "concept-behavior-sound" model from the ins and outs of the behavior, and developed it into the model "concept-behavior-sounds-social feedback". Nettle basically continued Merriam’s concept of music behavior. The second important concept is music as a whole. In Merriam’s eyes, musicologist taked music structure as a closed system away from its cultural background and discusses inherent rules and laws, and in anthropologist’s eyes we should hold a holistic view to treat the relationship between music and culture. In the west there are three kinds of expression about relationship between music and culture:"music in cultural background", "music in culture" and "music as culture", and the latter two are often mentioned in the study of anthropology of music. The article discusses the characteristics and differences of their overall view from overall view of music culture, overall view of music production process as well as longitudinal overall view of music. The third is the understanding of "music in culture". According to music view of western essentialism there is an objective, popular and eternal music nature beyond culture, geographical, ethnic, history, understanding music as the entity without people and supposing music away from cultural and historical context that generated music. Merriam and Nettle got rid of the understanding of the western essentialism, they thought perception of music turned "what is music" to "what is it that makes something regarded as music" from the perspective of anthropology. Merriam thought cultural concept was the key to define music, and Nettle thought the function and value of music in culture decide the concept of music. Music is considered "music in culture" according to the perspective of anthropology. The paper mainly discusses Merriam and Nettle understanding of the connotation and denotation of "music in culture" and their difference in researching cultural functions and significance.The fourth chapter of the paper discusses the similarities and differences of subject orientation of anthropology of music. Firstly, paper discusses the issue of subject category. A subject must firstly determine the (?) of the subject. Is anthropology of music the social science or humanities on earth? Merriam thought it is the integration of both, and its approach and goals more scientific, its theme more humanism in comparison. Then the paper discusses the independence of the discipline. Although anthropology of music has the most direct relationship with anthropology, anthropologists failed to use their theory to research music successful and easily. It is necessary that anthropology of music as specialized subject sets up some knowledge paradigm and ideology peculiar to the subject of anthropology of music. Anthropologists of music point out the importance of art in human life to anthropologists. Anthropology of music belongs to musicology before, and trend to integrate with musicology now. Nettle thought that anthropology of music should remain independent of discipline, and also keep certain affinity with ethnology, anthropology and other subjects, and absorb the essence from them in order to be able to continue to deal with the basic problem in music. The domestic academic circles have not agreed uniform expression about the name of the subject. In fact, there is a development process of name of this subject:from "comparative musicology" to "ethnomusicology" to "anthropology of music", which represent three stages in the development of the subject in western. If we want to contain the entire subject with a name, I suggest use the "Anthropology of music". The second issue discussed in this chapter is the definition of subject. Many scholars solve the problem of subject orientation through the discipline definition. Merriam thought that there is a close relationship between music concept and subject definition, and define anthropology of music as "study music in culture". The discipline definition of anthropology of music is complicated, and difficult to have a specific, accurate and unified definition. Nettle thought that any specific definition should been avoided according to the nature of the discipline, discard the essentialism definition, and put forward to the basic principles of anthropology of music to solve the basic problem of music as the guiding ideology. The chapter discusses Merriam and Nettle’s holding of the discipline connotation from the research purpose, research objects and research paradigm.The fifth chapter of the paper discusses the otherness of research method of anthropology of music from the whole methods, concrete methods and field skills. The whole method is a fundamental method of anthropology of music with both the significances of methodology and epistemclogy. Merriam and Nettle integrated with scientific spirit and humanistic interpretation, but they had the differences of tendency. The overall concept is of epistemology significance. Merriam tended to regard music with static overall view of culture, by contrast, Nettle tended to regard music with dynamic overall view of culture. Their researches of anthropology of music were based on cultural relativism as the foundation of epistemology. Merriam tended to exaggerate the difference between cultures, and Nettle argued that the cultures coexist. Specific methods include three aspects:field investigation method, method of data collection and data analysis methods. Merriam claimed encyclopedic survey, and Nettle argued problem-based survey. Early anthropologists of music paid attention to collecte music works, Merriam’s contribution is to begin to concern the folk evaluation in the process of the collection. Since then, the collection of the concept data has become an important content. However, Merriam and Nettle’s collection methods and perspective were different. From the method of analyzing data, they combined with many methods, including causal analysis, historical analysis, functional analysis and cross-cultural comparison analysis, and so on. The front three has discussed in the front part of the paper, and this chapter mainly discusses Merriam and Nettle’s deviation on the understanding and application of comparative method. Field techniques discuss three aspects:sampling, notation and ethical practice.The sixth chapter of the paper briefly talks about three aspects of enlightenment about the discipline construction of the anthropology of music in China which obtained after research. Merriam’s main contribution is that behavior is an important dimension in music research, but "why a music structure exists in the form of its existing" is at the core of the problem in his behavior research, so that his research is still not out of the "rituals" of "works of center" in western music study and eventually led to the chain scission and static display of behavior in the music production chain. I think the researches on behavior in anthropology of music need focus on the behavior process of one performance. Nettle thought anthropology of music had diversiform expression, so we think that there is also the Chinese expression of anthropology of music. Comparative method has two dimensions:the one the epistemology significance, the other the methodology sense, which is very important to us.