Nettl, Bruno (EN)

Nettl Bruno, *14th March 1930 Prague, †15th January 2020 Urbana (Illinois), American ethnomusicologist of Czech origin, son of Paul Nettl. He studied musicology at Indiana University in Bloomington under his father and W. Apel and ethnomusicology under G. Herzog, where he was curator of the record archive from 1949 to 1952 and obtained his doctorate in 1953. In 1960, he also completed a degree in library science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. From 1953 to 1964 he was affiliated with Wayne State University in Detroit, and from 1956 to 1958 he was a visiting lecturer at Kiel University. From 1964, he worked at the University of Illinois in Urbana, where he was appointed professor of music and anthropology in 1967. He conducted field research among Native Americans, in Iran, southern India and Europe. He was one of the founders of the Society for Ethnomusicology (1955) and served as its president (1968–1971). He was also editor of the society’s journal “Ethnomusicology” (1961–65, 1998–2002).

Bruno Nettl was one of the leading American ethnomusicologists after World War II. His academic interests focused on theoretical and methodological issues, which he examined drawing on his own extensive experience gained during field explorations. Bruno Nettl engaged in the discussion on the definition of ethnomusicology; he believed that the field should focus on the music of indigenous people, the music of non-European cultures, and the orally-transmitted folk music of stratified societies. The definition of ethnomusicology should also encompass such issues as the study of world musical systems, comparative research on the music of different cultures, and music as part of culture. Bruno Nettl considered the preservation of musical tradition to be one of the primary goals of ethnomusicology; in this context, phonographic archives acquire particular importance as the most suitable place for storing collected ethnomusicological materials.

Bruno Nettl devoted considerable attention in his work to the issue of field research, broadly adopting the research model presented by A. Merriam, in which concepts related to music are considered before musical behaviours and products. However, unlike Merriam, he addressed the problem of researching musical function, which can be understood differently by the informant and the researcher. To avoid directly confronting these differences, he proposed a pyramid-shaped research model, the base of which would cover the uses of music that were evident to both parties, with the apex representing the most abstract analytical level.  Bruno Nettl emphasised the historical dimension of fieldwork and posed new research questions arising from increasingly intensive contacts between non-European cultures and Western culture. He also conducted studies on the musical traditions of contemporary cities, seeking to explain what distinguishes urban musical culture from rural culture or nomadic societies. His research encompassed different social strata and types of classical, folk, and popular music. He was also interested in various aspects of individual creativity and personal musical experience.

As a student of Herzog, Bruno Nettl was involved from the very beginning of his academic career in attempts to create a musical map of the world showing the geographical distribution of musical styles He advocated the concept of cultural areas, considering it useful for organisational purposes, but opposed its use as a basis for historical interpretation, as was done by representatives of the cultural-historical school. He divided the area north of Mexico into six cultural areas (Eskimo-Northwest Coast; California–Yuman; Plains-Pueblo; Athabascan; Great Basin; Eastern and Southeastern), taking into account musical characteristics (including the distinctive raising of melodies to a higher pitch) as well as living conditions that influenced musical practice. The presented classification is based on the assumption that the musical repertoire of the tribes studied is homogeneous, or at least that a significant part of it was not subject to external influences. Bruno Nettl later revised this concept and reduced the number of areas to four to account for significant changes in musical styles resulting from increased Native American migration, intertribal contacts, and progressive Westernisation. Globally, he identified three major groups of musical styles (the Far East, North Asia, and the Americas; sub-Saharan Africa and Europe; India, the Middle East, and North Africa), basing his classification on the number of voices, the nature of their relationships, and the intervallic structure of the scale. Analysing the music of different cultures in terms of the use of transposition, i.e. the repetition of the same musical material at different pitches, he also identified a broad band of “transposing cultures” stretching from Western Europe through Northern Asia to North America. He also determined the ranges of different types of transposition depending on the ambitus of the melody.

Throughout his academic career, Bruno Nettl analysed phenomena related to changes in music and musical acculturation, topics frequently discussed within the community of American ethnomusicologists. He pointed to the causes of change in music, sought to define their types and establish their relationship to broader cultural changes. He distinguished between “external” changes, i.e. those caused by external factors, and “internal” changes, generated from within. He formulated the concept of strong features, which resist acculturative processes, and weak features, which succumb to these processes, as well as the concept of stylistic compatibility, which favours the emergence of hybrid styles. In describing the mechanism of musical syncretism, Nettl focused on acculturation processes taking place between non-European and European cultures. In this context, he elaborated on two key types of processes involving cultural interaction: Westernisation and modernisation.  In the case of Westernisation, non-European music undergoes a change towards European music. In the process of modernisation, traditional music does not lose its identity, but becomes a modern part of the contemporary world and its value system. The most obvious example of this is the introduction of European instrumentation, harmony, notation, recording techniques and modes of transmission into traditional cultures.

Bruno Nettl’s numerous publications and teaching work have had a stimulating effect on the development of ethnomusicology. He trained many prominent ethnomusicologists. His works Music in Primitive Culture, Reference Materials in Ethnomusicology, Theory and Method in Ethnomusicology, The Study of Ethnomusicology and The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-one Issues and Concepts, an expanded version of his 1983 book Twenty-nine Issues and Concepts, are considered essential reading in ethnomusicology programs.