Pays multinational, le Vietnam compte plus de soixante groupes ethniques différents. Il nous serait impossible de brosser un tableau d'ensemble de tous les types de musiques populaires des descendants des Chàms dans la région de Châu-dôc (Sud- Vietnam) ou de Phan-rang (Centre VN), des Rhadés, des Mnong, des Sedang, des Djarai sur les Hauts-Plateaux du Vietnam central, des Mèo, des Thái, des Nùng, des Lolos, sur les hautes régions du Nord du Vietnam. … Chaque groupe ethnique a sa propre musique et ses propres instruments. Dans cet article, nous examinons seulement la musique populaire des Vietnamiens, peuple vivant surtout dans les plaines et qui constitue environ 86% de la population vietnamienne.

Notre terminologie musicale semble indiquer une nette séparation entre la musique savante (quan nhac ou nha nhac: littéralement musique des dignitaires de Cour, musique élégante) et la musique populaire (tuc nhac: musique vulgaire). De nos jours, on distingue encore le nhac cô truyên (musique traditionnelle) des dân ca (chansons populaires).

It is generally thought that Chinese music is homophonic. In instrumental music, the players tend to play in unison, and in vocal music, the instrumental accompaniment closely follows the pattern of the singing. The science of harmony, or the system that governs the combining of the intervals as applied in European music, was not known to China in the past. In fact, very little was said in the long history of Chinese music about the theory of combining the intervals.

However, unison is not to be regarded as the sine qua non in Chinese instrumental and vocal music. In many types of Chinese folk music, one finds that the players or singers do not adhere strictly to unison but vary their parts in juxtaposition and in relay. Frequently, the players resort to embellishing the melody and the more skilful ones will embark on extemporization, giving rise to heterophonic effects. The practice of embellishment and extemporization is intended to avoid monotony in ensemble playing and to show off the skill of the player. But in specific cases, different parts are planned for the singers and players to perform.

Die Anlage zum mehrstimmigen Musizieren kann man als einen der wichtigsten Züge der traditionellen Praxis des jugoslavischen Dorfes ansehen. Ich betone: des Dorfes, da diese Anlage bloss auf dem Gebiete der dörflichen Tradition zu bestimmten Formen führte, die sehr verschiedenartig und an bestimmte Landstriche streng gebunden erscheinen. In dieser Hinsicht unterscheiden sich also nicht nur Dorf und Stadt, sondern audi die einzelnen Gebiete untereinander.

One of the most pressing demands of current Hungarian folk music research is to single out those precise elements in the traditions of Hungarian folk music which can be proved to be archaic residues of an early culture of Finno-Ugric origin. Under the inspiration of the labours of Bartók and Kodály this goal was attacked with enthusiasm as much as with methodical reflection. The methods of investigation which have been applied and also the results of the research attained thus far could arouse objection at many points. On the other hand, there can be no doubt about the justification of formulating the question as such.

Following the model of linguistic science, Hungarian folk music research has used above all comparative as well as historical methods. Through close study of recent collections of melodies recorded from Finno-Ugric peoples living far apart from each other, pains have been taken to establish stylistic coincidence or relationships which justify the tracing back of certain melodic structures and style complexes to Finno-Ugric roots.

During two recent field expeditions to the Atlantic coast region of Colombia (October 28th-November 14th, 1964, and March 5th-21st, 1965) only one active player of the musical bow came to my attention. This player, Rafael Terán Valdés, is a native and resident of Palenque de San Basilio, Departamento de Bolívar, a village known in the region as the primary centre of African influence. Palenque was settled in the first decade of the seventeenth century by fugitive Negro slaves from the coastal capital, Cartagena de Indias, at that time a principal dispersion point for slaves brought from Africa. Negroes from many African tribes formed the population of Palenque which maintained its independence throughout the period of Spanish rule. Its isolation for a long period resulted in the formation of a mixed pan-African and Spanish culture. Study of the Spanish dialect spoken in Palenque has indicated the existence of words of possible African origin. Many such words are found in the song texts of the lumbalú, a funeral ceremony. However, the singers no longer know the meaning of these words.

Heute wird es wohl kaum jemanden geben, der die zuständigkeit der Volksmusikforschung auch für Gebiete wie das in der Überschrift angegebene bezweifelt. Analysen von Choralmelodien und anderer mittelalterlicher Monodik sind für ihre Zwecke ebenso unentbebrlich wie das Studium späterer Liedausgaben und -bear-beitungen oder die Orientierung in der Stilgeschichte der Kunstmusik. So verfolgt sie auch mit Interesse den (freilich zur Zeit noch entfernten) Plan des obengenannten Unternehmens, in die neue, erweiterte Ausgabe des Eitnerschen Quellenlexikons auch die mittelalterlichen Choralbandschriften einzubeziehen. Dass für die Volksmusikforschung die Anlage und Anordnung solcher Ausgaben nicht ohne Belang ist, versteht sich von selbst.

Before we can envisage a method for the classification of folk melodies, there are a number of points which need to be made clear. If we envisage each melody as something by itself, as an independent entity, there can be no satisfactory method of classification. A succession of notes, written approximately and taken out of the context of a particular musical language, has no meaning by itself and superficial similarities can be extremely misleading. The search for a classification already implies that there are types of melodies with common characteristics. In fact, we are always led to link a form of music with a particular culture. The folk music of a given cultural area will usually be nearer to the art music of the same culture than to the folk music of another culture. There may, however, be considerable overlapping between art music areas and folk music areas leading to a somewhat different geographical division.

To the constituent elements of every scientific discipline belongs the elaboration of a system of documentation (as a method of gathering data) and of sorting and classifying these data so as to elaborate the essential methodical and theoretical postulates for marking the history, genesis and evolution of specific phenomena on which research is undertaken. The problem of documentation (recording, collecting, transcribing, measuring) has since the beginning of this century become for ethnomusicology a constant methodological question. Parallel with this emerge the first attempts to elaborate systems of the musical classification of melodies, the problem initiated by the editors of Sammelbände der internationalen Musikgesellschaft in 1902, which was directed not only to the classification of folk music material. The problem of classification was partly connected with the documentary work of cataloguing, and partly with the theoretical scientific area, coming before the need to penetrate into the inner organism of the melodies to be classified.