MUSICAL INSTRUMENT

any device for producing a musical sound. The principal types of such instruments, classified by the method of producing sound, are percussion, stringed, keyboard, wind, and electronic. Musical instruments are almost universal components of human culture: archaeology has revealed pipes and whistles in the Paleolithic Period and clay drums and shell trumpets in the Neolithic age. It has been firmly established that the ancient city cultures of Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, India, East Asia, and the Americas all possessed diverse and well-developed assortments of musical instruments, indicating that a long previous development must have existed. As to the origin of musical instruments, however, there can be only conjecture. Some scholars have speculated that the first instruments were derived from such utilitarian objects as cooking pots (drums) and hunting bows (musical bows); others have argued that instruments of music might well have preceded pots and bows; while in the myths of cultures throughout the world the origin of music has frequently been attributed to the gods, especially in areas where music seems to have been regarded as an essential component of the ritual believed necessary for spiritual survival. Whatever their origin, the further development of the enormously varied instruments of the world has been dependent on the interplay of four factors: available material, technological skills, mythic and symbolic preoccupations, and patterns of trade and migration. Thus, residents of Arctic regions use bone, skin, and stone to construct instruments; residents of the tropics have wood, bamboo, and reed available; while societies with access to metals and the requisite technology are able to utilize these malleable materials in a variety of ways. Myth and symbolism play an equally important role. Herding societies, for example, which may depend on a particular species of animal not only economically but also spiritually, often develop instruments that look or sound like the animal or prefer instruments made of bone and hide rather than stone and wood, even when all the materials are available. Finally, patterns of human trade and migration have for many centuries swept musicians and their instruments across seas and continents, resulting in constant flux, change, and cross-fertilization and adaptation. The sound produced by an instrument can be affected by many factors, including the material from which the instrument is made, its size and shape, and the way that it is played. For example, a stringed instrument may be struck, plucked, or bowed, each method producing a distinctive sound. A wooden instrument struck by a beater sounds markedly different from a metal instrument, even if the two instruments are otherwise identical. On the other hand, a flute made of metal does not produce a substantially different sound from one made of wood, for in this case the vibrations are in the column of air in the instrument. The characteristic timbre of wind instruments depends on other factors, notably the length and shape of the tube. The length of the tube not only determines the pitch but also affects the timbre: the piccolo, being half the size of the flute, has a shriller sound. The shape of the tube determines the presence or absence of the upper partials (harmonic or nonharmonic overtones), which give colour to the single note. This article discusses the evolution of musical instruments, their structure and methods of sound production, and the purposes for which they have been used. Although it focuses on the families of instruments that have been prominent in Western art music, it also includes coverage of non-Western and folk instruments. Additional reading Comprehensive information on diverse musical instruments is found in such authoritative reference sources as Don Michael Randel, The New Harvard Dictionary of Music (1986); New Oxford History of Music, 10 vol. (195490); Stanley Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, 3 vol. (1984); Sibyl Marcuse, Musical Instruments: A Comprehensive Dictionary, new ed. (1975); and Q. David Bowers, Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments (1972).History and evolution of musical instruments are studied in many well-illustrated works, including Donald Jay Grout and Claude V. Palisca, A History of Western Music, 4th ed. (1988); Giovanni Comotti, Music in Greek and Roman Culture (1989; originally published in Italian, 1979); Solon Michaelides, The Music of Ancient Greece: An Encyclopaedia (1978); David Munrow, Instruments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (1976); Sibyl Marcuse, A Survey of Musical Instruments (1975); Anthony Baines (ed.), Musical Instruments Through the Ages, new ed. (1976); Anthony Baines, European and American Musical Instruments (1966, reissued 1983); Alexandr Buchner, Musical Instruments Through the Ages, trans. from Czech (1956; reissued 1973 as Musical Instruments: An Illustrated History); Robert Donington, The Instruments of Music, 3rd rev. ed. (1970); Francis W. Galpin, A Textbook of European Musical Instruments: Their Origin, History, and Character (1937, reissued 1976); Karl Geiringer, Musical Instruments: Their History in Western Culture from the Stone Age to the Present Day, trans. from German, 2nd ed. (1959, reissued 1965); Curt Sachs, The History of Musical Instruments (1940, reprinted 1968); and Jeremy Montagu, The World of Medieval and Renaissance Musical Instruments (1976), The World of Baroque and Classical Musical Instruments (1979), and The World of Romantic & Modern Musical Instruments (1981).Physical properties of the instruments are addressed in Reinhold Banek and Jon Scoville, Sound Designs: A Handbook of Musical Instrument Building (1980); Charles Ford (ed.), Making Musical Instruments: Strings and Keyboard (1979); and Dennis Waring, Folk Instruments (1979, reprinted 1990 as Making Wood Folk Instruments). Exhibitions and collections are the source of useful and well-illustrated information. See Phillip T. Young, The Look of Music: Rare Musical Instruments, 15001900 (1980); Laurence Libin, American Musical Instruments in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1985); and James Coover, Musical Instrument Collections: Catalogues and Cognate Literature (1981).Geographic and ethnic distribution of musical instruments is explored in David Reck, Music of the Whole Earth (1977); Elizabeth May (ed.), Musics of Many Cultures: An Introduction (1980); Francis W. Galpin, The Music of the Sumerians and Their Immediate Successors, the Babylonians & Assyrians (1937, reprinted 1970); Nicholas Bessaraboff, Ancient European Musical Instruments (1941, reissued 1964); Emanuel Winternitz, Musical Instruments of the Western World (1967); Frank Harrison and Joan Rimmer, European Musical Instruments (1964); Jaap Kunst, Music in Java, 3rd ed., rev. by E.L. Heins, 2 vol. (1973; originally published in Dutch, 1934); Henry George Farmer, Studies in Oriental Musical Instruments, 2 vol. (193139, reprinted in 1 vol., 1978); William P. Malm, Japanese Music and Musical Instruments (1959, reissued 1990); S. Bandyopadhyaya, Musical Instruments of India (1980); Marie-Thrse Brincard (ed.), Sounding Forms: African Musical Instruments (1989); Percival R. Kirby, The Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa, 2nd ed. (1965); Margaret Trowell and K.P. Wachsmann, Tribal Crafts of Uganda (1953); William P. Malm, Music Cultures of the Pacific, the Near East, and Asia, 2nd ed. (1977); Bruno Nettl, Music in Primitive Culture (1956), and Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents, 3rd ed., rev. by Valerie Woodring Goertzen (1990); Mary Remnant, Musical Instruments of the West (1978); and Emanuel Winternitz, Musical Instruments and Their Symbolism in Western Art (1967, reissued 1979).The process of arranging music for particular instruments and combinations of instruments is discussed in Edmund A. Bowles, Haut and Bas: The Grouping of Musical Instruments in the Middle Ages, Musica Disciplina, 8:115140 (1954); Howard Mayer Brown, Sixteenth-Century Instrumentation: The Music for the Florentine Intermedii (1973); Claude V. Palisca, Baroque Music, 3rd ed. (1991), surveying the seminal period in the development of concerted music; Adam Carse, The History of Orchestration (1925, reissued 1964); Hector Berlioz, Treatise on Instrumentation, rev. and enlarged by Richard Strauss (1948; originally published in French, 1844); Nicolas Rimsky-Korsakow (Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov), Principles of Orchestration, trans. from Russian (1923, reissued 1964); Cecil Forsyth, Orchestration, 2nd ed. (1935, reprinted 1982); Michael Hurd, The Orchestra (1980); Madeau Stewart, The Music Lover's Guide to the Instruments of the Orchestra (1980); Joan Peyser (ed.), The Orchestra: Origins and Transformations (1986); and Mark C. Gridley, Jazz Styles: History & Analysis, 4th ed. (1991).Current developments and research in the field are reflected in the articles of such special periodicals as The Galpin Society Journal (annual); Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society (annual); The Musical Quarterly; Early Music (quarterly); Ethnomusicology (three times a year); and Asian Music (semiannual). Sir Jack Allan Westrup Theodore C. Grame