Cross-cultural Perspectives on Music ed. by Robert Falck and Timothy Rice (review)

HUMANITIES 517 treated as meticulously: although different tunes are reproduced for some songs, the details of melodic/rhythmic variation among different performers are not noted. For each song the informant and tape reference is identified, as well as the number of versions, timbre (if known), and bibliographic reference. Back matter includes a listing of songs according to the aforementioned social groups, a glossary of song words which fall outside normal French usage, a bibliography of collections and publications (including recordings), an alphabetical index ofsongs, and a table of contents. Insummary, thisisanimportantcollectionfor severalreasons. Since the majority of the songs were transcribed from archival sources, their contribution to the growing corpus ofFrenchCanadianfolk-song material is substantial. In addition, by defining its scope according to a social group and by concentrating on the song texts, this volume offers an emic perspective on animportantdimensionofFrench Canadiansocialhistory, the various 'voyageurs' of past and present. (BEVERLEY CAVANAGH) Robert Falck and Timothy Rice, editors. Cross-cultural Perspectives on Music University of Toronto Press 1982. xxiv, 189. $30.00 This volume is a Festschrift dedicated to the late Mieczyslaw Kolinski, who taught ethnomusicology at the University of Toronto from 1966 to 1976 and whose influence on the development of the discipline has been considerable since his student days under Von Hornbostel in Berlin. Kolinski's own theoretical work is founded on the controversial premise that cross-cultural comparison is the propervenue for ethnomusicological research. In one way or another, each paper in this volume uses comparisonasa pointofdeparture, sometimesdevelopingnewmethodologies or categorical frameworks for comparative method, sometimes extendingthe domains ofstudyin a search for morevalid (i.e. comparable) 'units.' As the editors note in their introduction, 'the essays ... represent work done in the spirit, rather than a working out, of the methods and assumptions of Kolinski.' The essays are prefaced by a biographical sketch and bibliography of Kolinski's writing and composition. This warm and insightful account by his colleague John Beckwith is especially important where it sheds light on Kolinski's traumatic life during the Nazi years, when many of the foundations of his theoretical approach were formulated. The first four essays constituting section one, 'Systematic Perspectives,' are perhaps closest to the spirit of Kolinski: they all seek universally valid frameworks for music study. Nettl's 'Types of Tradition and Transmission' begins with a characteristically thorough bibliographic review of the extensive research on oral transmission and presents four potential transmission 518 LETTERS IN CANADA 1984 types, cross-cut by the processes of 'density' and'dynamics' of change. These are then applied to examples from North American Indian cultures and Iranian cultures, as well as Anglo-American and Czech folk traditions . The paperposits new terminology for the'process' of transmission, but somewhat in advance of the data. There is nothing to suggest that NettI's 'types' are accurate reflections oftransmission processes on a more detailed level orthat the list is exhaustive. In particular, Ifind his notion of process still heavily 'artifact'-dependent, especially where his model assumes that a song always stems from a single parent source. W. Jay Dowling's 'Musical Scales and Psychophysical Scales: Their Psychological Reality' reminds us that the perspectives ofthis volume are not only cross-cultural but cross-disciplinary. David Waterhouse next attempts a clarification of rhythmic terminology in 'Towards a New Analysis of Rhythm in Music.' His system gets well beyond the narrow Western conception of 'metre,' even though some ambiguities remain in terminology (e.g. 'primarybeat'). The final paperin this group, Jay Rahn's 'Simple Forms in Universal Perspective,' again seeks to tighten the logic and terminology of musical description by examining aspects of 'diversity,' 'adjacency and extremity,' 'sequence,' and 'cardinality' in a very formal manner. The last ofthese, 'cardinality,' is especially difficult for me, since the means of reducing larger forms to simpler types seems to be mostly intuitive. The next five papers constitute the section entitled 'Comparative Perspectives.' In all of these the focus is somewhat narrower and less abstract, with comparative methodology used in rather innovative ways. Next, using an analytical approach that is more traditionally musicological , Timothy McGee describes Arabic features in several monophonic dances that are atypical within the medieval collection, British Library Additional 29987. While the conclusions here are...