Publications

Building on Curt Sachs’s Real-Lexikon, but using a systematic rather than alphabetical order, Sibyl Marcuse’s compendium focuses on musical instruments of the Western world and considers to some extent their non-Western counterparts. Structured on the organological classification devised by Erich von Hornbostel and Sachs, it is divided into four parts: Idiophones such as the triangle, xylophone, bells, scrapers, rattles, and the Jew's harp; membranophones, covering a wide range of drums and drum-like instruments; chordophones of a broad variety from ground zithers to player pianos, harps to double basses; and aerophones such as flutes and reed pipes, and the organ. Marcuse omits the fifth section in the Hornbostel-Sachs system—electrophones. For each instrument, Marcuse provides its history and morphology with emphasis on the instrument’s evolution as a mechanical device for producing sound and playing techniques. The vast amount of knowledge conveyed is rooted in the study of primary sources: musical treatises, literature, iconographical evidence, and archival documents. Marcuse includes countless facts that are also of interest to those not engaged in the study of instruments: for example, the Ferrarese chancellor Bernardo Prospero wrote about Spanish musicians in Italy who, in 1493, played viols about as large as a man; a manuscript notation made about 1536 by the unidentified owner of a 1515 cookbook reveals how Alfonso della Viola preferred to tune his viol—both fascinating facts with possible implications about a number of aspects of performing practice in the 15th and 16th centuries. (Neither of these names is listed in the index of the printed book, but they can be conveniently found through a keyword search in RILM Music Encyclopedias).