peter etzkorn georg simmel and the sociology of music

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Georg Simmel and the Sociology of Music Author(s): K. Peter Etzkorn Source: Social Forces, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Oct., 1964), pp. 101-107 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2575972 . Accessed: 26/06/2014 05:49 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Forces. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 119.15.93.148 on Thu, 26 Jun 2014 05:49:07 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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  • Georg Simmel and the Sociology of MusicAuthor(s): K. Peter EtzkornSource: Social Forces, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Oct., 1964), pp. 101-107Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2575972 .Accessed: 26/06/2014 05:49

    Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

    .

    JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

    .

    Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Forces.

    http://www.jstor.org

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  • GEORG SIMMEL AND MUSIC 101

    traditionally hypothesized adoption of an oppo- sitional political position.

    Naturally, but especially in view of the limited nature of the data presented herein, the usual caveats concerning further research apply. It is especially necessary that the whole concept of ressentimnent be carefully analyzed

    and operationalized for further testing and examination. Additionally, this testing should make use of samples and population which allow for some determination of the sources and generability of the concept insofar as it may be used to explain and predict the behavior of other social groups.

    GEORG SIMMEL AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF MUSIC* K. PETER ETZKORN University of Nevada

    ABSTRACT Simmel's first published study is examined for its current relevance to the sociological

    study of music. It is found to be rich in suggestions for research while it does not present a coherent theoretical scheme or program for the sociology of music. Simmel's empirical exam- ples, however, suggest that key areas for this discipline are (1) the social meanings which are represented and expressed in music, and (2) the position and function of music in society. Implications for a theory of taste groups on the basis of. differential socializationi are suggested.

    A rticles in sociological j ournals and books contain many references to the manifold aspects of Georg Simmel's

    work. Indeed the recent centenary of his birthi (1858) occasioned several reappraisals of his various contributions to sociology in the light of contemporary scholarship.' One significant aspect of his work, though, has to our knowl- edge been neglected. It is of sufficient merit to be brought to the attention of contemporary scholars, especially since there seems to be a growing interest in the sociology of artistic life. This is Simmel's extensive early work in what today might be called the sociology of music or ethnomusicology.

    In his later life Simmel's discourse on artistic and aesthetic subjects tends to pursue more philosophical interests while it nevertheless still contains passages that reveal his sociological

    interests.2 However, more directly sociological and relevant to the traditional concerns of the social sciences is his 1882 paper "Psycholo- gische und Ethnologische Studien ihber Musik" which he published in Lazarus and Steinthal's Zeitschrift fuir Vo3kerpsychologie.3 This study was published three years prior to the well known Alexander Ellis paper "On the Musical Scales of Various Nations,"4 which is fre- quently considered the earliest important land- mark in the history of ethnomusicology.5 Ellis' paper is concerned with the analysis of structural aspects of the tonal materials of different culture areas and with developing de- vices for their description and measurement. In many ways Ellis' approach is analogous to traditional anthropological concerns with the study of culture traits.

    * This version of a paper originally prepared for the 1960 American Sociological Association meet- ings owes much to the incisive discussion of Sey- mour Leventman and helpful comments by my former colleagues Walter F. Buckley and Clovis R. Shepherd.

    For example Kurt H. Wolff, ed., Georg Sim- inel 1858-1918: A Collection of Essays, with Trans- lations and a Bibliography (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1959), xv, 396 pp.

    2 See for example chapters IV and V in Georg Simmel, Philosophische Kufltur (Leipzig: Klink- hardt, 1911).

    3Vol. 13 (1882), pp. 261-305. 4 Alexander J. Ellis, "On the Musical Scales of

    Various Nations," Journal of the Society for Arts, 33 (1885).

    5 Curt Sachs, Our Mlusical Heritage (New York: Prentice Hall, 1955), p. 12. Bruno Nettl, Music in Primnitive Culture (Cambrdige: Harvard Univer- sity Press, 1956), p. 28.

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  • 102 SOCIAL FORCES It may be idle to speculate why Simmel's

    study apparently did not arouse comparable attention in his owIn day and why it should have fallen into such neglect that even his profes- sional colleague and personal acquaintance Max Weber ignores it in the fragment of his study of the rational bases of tonal systems.6 Weber's preoccupation with tonal systems as the build- ing material of music is indicative of the trend of scholarsship in this field which followed Ellis' model. Perlhaps Simmel's reluctant attitude towards behavioristic psychology averted the early German ethnomusicologists from taking serious issue with his work since their profes- sional affiliation and training was largely in this area.7 Perlhaps these scholars felt more at ease with Ellis' "Cent System" for the ob- jective measuring of tone intervals than with Simmel's insistence that there was an important relationship between ethnic folk music and the- psychology of the social group practicing it. In this context one mi-ay be reminded that it also took several generations of sociologists before the French conception of coi&science collective entered into the working vocabulary of. British social-anthropology and American sociology.8 And yet it is interesting to note that the only reference to Simmel's study which we found in English appeared in 1909 in W. I. Thomas, So-urce Book for- Social Origins.9

    In this paper we wish to address ourselves more specifically to some of our reasons for resuscitating Simmel's study rather than to paying general homage to one of the fathers of the sociological discipline. This decision does not imply that there would be no legitimate

    grounds for, say, searching for a sociological explanation of the neglect of this aspect of Sinimel's work by sociologists, especially since several outstanding scholars later arrived inde- pendently at related and even similar positions. Nor would it be less significant to examine the variety of methodological implications that are raised by Simmel's differing epistemological positions in the treatment of the arts during the course of his scholarly life. Here, how- ever, we wish to restrict ourselves to an ex- ploration of this early study of Simmel in which he treats mnusic as an aspect of social relation- ships by which individuals communicate amonig one another andcl wlhich in turn, maintain, struc- ture and restructure these relations.

    In his later analytical distinctions between the various modes of sociological inquiry and related Kantian arguments, he relegated music to the sphere of Itultur2.30 Kutltur was to be treated aesthetically and philosophically. The early Simmel in general, therefore, might per- haps be most relevant to modern sociological appraisals of art and music. In order to make the content of the Simmel paper more accessi- ble to contemporary readers, we first wish to provide an extensive summary of Simmel's study before we relate it to aspects of his later writings and point to its present relevanlce.

    SIMMEL ON MUSIC

    In Simmel's paper we have an example of truly 19th century scholarship. Simmel com- bines classical erudition (and ample quotes in Latin and Greek) with philosophical focus and the search for corroborating evidence in collec- tions of ethnographic museums and the journals of world travellers. He opens his paper with a critical analysis of Darwin's theory of the origin of music. According to Darwin the human species developed vocal music before developing rhythm and speech. Herbert Spen- cer had held a related view that "all the leading vocal phenomnena . . . have a physiological basis . . ." and that "the expressiveness of the

    6 Max Weber, Die rationalem tnd soziologischen Grundlagen der M11usik (Munich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1921).

    7 Among the pioneers of this field may be men- tioned besides Ellis, a physicist, the psychologists von Hornbostel and Carl Stumpf, and the physician and physicist Helmnholtz.

    8 Paul J. Bohannan recently traced the develop- ment of this concept to its present relationship with the concept culture. "Conscience Collective and Culture," in Kurt H. Wolff, ed., Emnile Durkheiin.. 1858-1917: A Collection of Essays zuith Transla- tions and a Bibliography (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1960), p. 77-96.

    9 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1909), p. 646.

    10 On this point see several quotations below and the discussion of Simmel's methodology in Rudolph H. Weingartner, Experience and Cuiltutre: The Philosophy of Georg Simmel (Middletown: Wes- leyan University Press, 1962), p. 102.

    11 Charles Darwin, Abstamming des Menscheit, 1875, Vol. II, p. 317.

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  • GEORG SIMMEL AND MUSIC 103

    various modifications of voice is . . . therefore innate."12

    While Simmel does not deny that vocal phenomena have physiological bases-wlhich would be untenable from any scientific point of viewv-he proceeds to refute the claim of the genetic priority of musical vocal belhavior over language behavior. In the course of this stim- ulating argument, Simmel develops his con- ception of music which is of interest here. He views music as an acoustic mediumn of commu- nication which conveys feelings of the per- former. "Just as language is related to con- crete thought so is music related to feelings which are somewhat less precise. The first [language] creates the second [thought], since the second created the first."13 Accepting the psychologist Steinthal's thesis-according to which the first manifestation of Man is con- nected with processes of thought and "human thought is derived from speech"-Simmel rea- sons that language could not have developed out of vocal music.

    For empirical support of this argument Sim- mel turns to evidence contained in a number of ethnographic sources.14 In this fashion he presents data from a sample of societies which includes people of Rio de Janeiro, the Carib- bean, the Maori, Brasilians, Australians, Cau- casian soldiers, "the Tehueltschen," and classi- cal antiquity.15 In addition to these data gleaned from published sources, he also reports his own experiences with a family in Berlin whose children could not sing the melodies of folksongs without also singing their words. Simmel seems to be convinced by this combined evidence that vocal music camne chronologically after the development of speech in the history of communication. Thus the role of music is

    only to provide special emphiases to existing linguistic communication patterns rather than to form the very origin of human communica- tion.

    Having establislhed this point, he proceeds to supply further ethnographic illustrations. From this evidence he then concludes that occasions for the employment of musical em- phases oln speech communication occur when- ever, in the view of the respective social groups, some of the hunima emotions are not adequately represented by speech. Anger, happiness, and joy are such occasions which are characterized in primitive and civilized discourse by varia- tions in the voice pitch and modulations of the speech melody. Von Humboldt is quoted- as having shown that the expression of sexual desire in the courtilng situation also leads to pitch variations in speech patterns. Another example of humanl emotions which find expres- sion in music is the complex of mystic-religious phenomena.

    Simmel's refutation of Darwin's hypothesis could be treated as an example of an elementary functional approach to the sociology of music. His search for the origins of music proceeds from relatively contemporary social conse- quences of music to the hypothetical recon- struction of its very origin. This is the identi- cal process by which 19th century ethnography was shown to illustrate "incipient functional- ism" by Evans-Pritchard.l6 For Simmel, the definition of vocal music is "speech which is exaggerated by rhythm and modulation."'7 Thus, rhythmic patterns have to be superim- posed on the variation of pitch, which is the outgrowth of emotional vocal expression, be- fore modulated speech becomes vocal music.

    *The structure of Simmel's argument for explaining the origin of instrumental music is similar. From his subsequent analysis of addi- tional ethnological reports he infers that in- strumental music is generally a further elab- oration of the already practiced performance of vocal music.'s The use of ideophones seems to be predoominantly associated with dance

    12 Herbert Spencer, Essays ont Edutcation (New York: Dutton), p. 317.

    13 "Wie die Sprache zum concreten Gedanken, verhalt sich die Musik zu der mehr verschwinimen- den Stimmnung: das erste ruft das zweite hervor, weil das zweite das erste hervorrief."

    14 He refers to the writings of Amniian, John Horne, Freycinet, Hochstetter, Martius, Grey, Poppig, Bodenstedt, and Cicero without, however, giving full citations of his sources.

    15 One should probably not be too critical as to whether he is indeed dealing with "societies" since this criterion would not be satisfied by the scanty evidence which he provides.

    16 See especially chapters II and III of E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Social Anthropology (Glencoe, Illinois: the Free Press, 1952).

    17 Simmel, op. cit., p. 264. Is He refers especially to the reports of Gerland-

    Waitz, Briigsch, Le Gobien, and Salvado.

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  • 104 SOCIAL FORCES activities or other functions which are rlhythm- ically patterned, such as tribal preparationls for warfare. His designation of European mili- tary music as Ldrm und BlasmusikI9 may sug- gest that he conceives of military activities as primitive, especially since he stresses that wind instruments are more characteristic of primi- tive society than string instruments. Instru- mental music thus represents to Simmel a more elaborated mode of expressing human emotions than can be gained through vocal music alone.

    Onice instrumental music has been developed in the history of mankind, it can be divorced from its accompanying function for vocal music and come to stand by itself. To Simmel, vocal music expresses referential emotions in their natural state, while instrumental music can more easily approach objectivity-which is for Simmel "the ideal of art." In instrumental music "feelings do not disappear, . . . they still stimulate the production of music and are still stimulated by it." However, instrumental music and its performance are not the immediate ex- pression of these emotions. Rather instrumen- tal music turns out to be "an image of them which is reflected through the mirror of beauty."20

    Instrumental music, thus, is also shown to be related to the basic communicative function of vocal music. But it is much less direct in ex- pressing human emotions. It is more of an imitation of the original emotions and is, there- fore, not as constrained in the use of musical idioms and expressive musical symbolism as is vocal music. By being less precise in expres- sion, instrumental music is more inclusive than vocal music. Music as an art form, according to Simmel's views in his early period, comnluni- cates feelings less precisely than vocal folk- music. Nevertheless it creates "typical reac- tions which include fully the more individually specific responses which are produced by verbal communication."21

    MUSIC IN SIMMEL S SOCIOLOGY

    From this summary of the "forgotten" Simmel paper it may already become clear why it might be of relevance to the contemporary student of the relations between art and social

    structure. Simmel not only provides us with a suggestive explanation of the role of music in social life and an elementary (though theoreti- cally based) taxonomy of types of music, but he also demonstrates that a proper sociological assessment of the social context of art requires both an understanding of the technical aspects of the musical art medium and an awareness of the social processes which surround it. His example suggests that it is important to study how the musical properties are acquired by social actors, how they become socially defined as something special and how this special status is related to the variety of special social adjust- ments which influence the social system and may in turn have repercussions on the musical mode of expressions. These are some of the concerns which are implied in the early Simmel, but are not as explicitly explored in his later sociological writing where he seems to be more colncerned with the impact of already given art forms on selected forms of social interaction. In his Grundfragen dero Soziologie (1917), for example, he treats art as having laws all of its own.22 "Fully established, art is wholly sep- arated from life. It takes from it only what it can use, thus creating, as it were, a second time.3 . . . From the realities of life they [art and play] take only wlhat they can adapt to their own nature, what they can absorb in their autonomous existence."24 Even though he speaks here metaphorically, as if art by acting anthropomorphically could produce social con- sequences independently of human actors, he seems to employ this ambiguity in order to in- troduce philosophical and aesthetic ideals con- cerning wllat the ideal role of art should be. While I do not mean to suggest that one could not study sociologically the relations between some relatively autonomous properties in social life and those social action patterns which are typically influenced by them, the limitation to this approaclh on aesthetic (or philosophical) grounds would seem to be an unjustified trun- cation of other promising modes of scientific inquiry. By itself, such an approach would also

    19 Simmel, op. cit., p. 278. 20 Ibid., p. 282. 21 Ibid.

    212 Georg Simmel, Grundfragen der So2iologie (Berlin: de Gruyten, 1917) as cited from the translation in Kurt H. Wolff, The Sociology of George Simiiiel (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1950).

    23Ibid., p. 42. 24Ibid., p. 43.

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  • GEORG SIMMEL AND MUSIC 105 tend to overlook the dynamic qualities of social life which demand that every aspect has to be given social significance anew-even though, of course, this process of continuous validation is seemingly automatic and ordinarily escapes our everyday attention. Nevertheless, J. S. Bach's music had to be composed first in its peculiar style and then had to acquire social significanice in each. succeeding generation of admirers of Bach. This is so even though his music represents the aesthetic perfection of the art of a period and serves as a model for the evaluation of other composers of the same period. While it is a legitimate sociological question to ask how Bach's music affects social groupings under varying circumstances, it is also a legitimate and fruitful approach to ask how certain social groupings today happen to appreciate Bach (and not Teleman) and what musically speaking, they come to appreciate in Bach and how these acquired musical insights affect other significant aspects, say, in the lives of Bach disciples. It is these latter types of questions which the early Simmel raises and which the later Simmel does not seem to enter- tain.25

    In the early Simmeel analysis of music, all types of musical expressions are, as we have seen, examined in terms of their communication function in social life. A given piece of music may communicate both absolutistic and referen- tialistic meanings.26 While niot ruling out the former, it is the latter meanings with which the early Simmel is principally concerned. These refer in some way to concepts, actions, and emotions of the extramnusical world in which the composer and musicians (and their audiences) live. They would seem to be re- lated to the socially mediated choice of the par- ticular musical activity and its content. The later Simmel is more concerned with absolu- tistic meanings which are provided by the con- text of the musical composition itself. Fre- quently (if not exclusively) they concern for- mal relationships between musical elements which make up the structure of the composi- tions.27 Since music in general is defined as a

    vehicle for the communication of emotions and instrumental music as the vehicle for the com- munication of diffuse emotions, Simmel raises theoretical questions as to the basic structure of social communication.

    Part of his argument is, we recall, that in instrumental music the commmunicative content is not as precise as in vocal music. Yet we know that the degree of communicative pre- cision depends on a variety of social responses to the vehicle of communication. These re- sponses, of course, are learned responses and subject to variations by changes in the learning situation. Musical themes, thus, may call fortlh specific emotional (or other) responses among properly prepared listeners. For example, comnposers of film music frequently capitalize on this phenomenon when they accompany love scenes with the sounds of soft violins. By em- ploying systematically selected musical cliches, composers of film music have succeeded in pre- paring the audiences of mioving pictures to expect certain happenings on the screen or to have an appropriate emotional set for the happenings. As long as the listener has learnedi how to convert the abstract musical tone se- quences into anticipations of socially significant consequences, it is not necessary to employ Simmel's referentially more precise vocal music. Instrumental music will do tlle same if a sufficiently consensual group has learned to associate similar responses with appropriate musical stimuli.

    Even though it might be desirable to discuss undeveloped and weak points in the Simmel paper and to comment at lenigth on Simmel's questionable ethnographic evidence, this would not substantially contribute to what would seem to me to be the more essential contribution of the study to contemporary scholarship. That is, for him sound patterns per se are devoid of meaning unless they are perceived as conveying learned emotive content. While Simmel dem- otistrates that the learned emotive content and the form of expression may vary, he concludes from this examination of the descriptive mate- rials that "apparently [the style of] music is

    25 See for example Simmel's books on Goethe (1913) and Rembrandt (1916).

    26 For this distinction see chapter I of Leonard B. Meyer, Emotion and Meaning of Music (Chi- cago: University of Chicago Press, 1956).

    27 Karl Mannheim's distinction between "in-

    trinsic" and "extrinsic" modes of analysis raises analogous methodological problemns in the sociol- ogy of knowledge. "Ideologische und soziologische Interpretation der geistigen Gebilde," in Salomon, ed., Jahrbuch fur Soziologie (Karlsruhe: Braun, 1926), Vol. II, pp. 424-440.

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  • 106 SOCIAL FORCES characteristic for the character of a people."28 Variations in the appreciation of different musical styles might therefore be associated with social group differences. More specifi- cally, Simmel stipulates that in order to become great art, music must embody national or social group characteristics. Only thereby will it have meaning for the members of the nation. He cautions, though, that this observation. "is not to be construed to mean that they [the arts] have to be patriotic [in subject matter]. On the contrary, history shows that art could pro- duce the most beautiful blossoms in politically most disorganized states-iin analogy to flowers which grow on heaps of rubbish. What I mean is simply this, whatever great and well-formed talents an individual may bring into his life, living within his society will only transform him into what he is. It will impress his char- acter on him. From it he will receive his goals and means. Precisely, the greater are his talents, the more will he accept from his na- tional heritage."29 In order to achieve great- ness, the artist has to work within an artistic tradition, parts of which he must accept anid refine.

    This train of reasoning will hardly sound revolutionary to the contemporary social scien- tist, even though it might have had such a flavor in the outgoilng 19th century romantic era. Simmel's early conception of artistic great- ness is thus based to a large extent on tech- niical artistic dimensions, such as how an indi- vidual makes use of the artistic tools which are provided for him by his tradition. Moreover, it would seem to me that it may contain the beginnings of a theory of taste groups. In stug- gesting that the artist is great who refines the artistic style of his national heritage, Simmel opens the question as to (a) the social processes which differentiate between the access that in- dividuals have to the sources of artistic tradi- tions-e.g., Bach spent most of his life in Northern Germany while Handel (another North German) lived and worked in the major musical centers of the 18th century; (b) there are obvious differences in the processes of ac- quisition of the technical skills needed for the refining of musical traditions-e.g., Mozart's extensive and protected early studies vs. Bee-

    thoven's lhardships in Bonn; and (c) there are differences in the conditions for the demon- stration of acquired skills in various social circumstances -e.g., the captive audience of official court composers and the available facil- ities for musical performance vs. the contem- porary free-lance composer. What, in other' words, are the social conditions that favor or tend to retard artistic greatness and the forma- tion of taste?

    The current practice of defining taste groups as acceptance groups has thus been anticipated by Simmel in his view that the artist works within the taste patterns of his artistic heritage. But Simmel did not confuse the issue of popu- larity with that of greatness of art (as is some- times done today) since for him greatness in art is a matter which can be established andl validated only through technical intra-artistic analysis. Success of an artist, on the other hand, may be the consequence of the size of his group or following. Russel Lynes "highbrows" would not necessarily be cultivating any greater art for Simmel than the "lowbrows." These groups would be examples of different con- sensual groups in which, perhaps, different meanings would be accorded to obj ectively identical artistic stimuli. Thus the Van Cli- burn recording of the Tschaikowsky pianio con- certo might be played for different reasons by high and low-brows and correspondingly com- municate different emotional meanings to these listeners. Nor would Simmel likely conclude from the contemporary increase in statistics of classical LP record sales that good music is be- coming more widely appreciated and that the cultural level of the society is rising. Ratlher, in keeping with his argument, he would prob- ably demand additional data on the social circumstances of the utilization of the records, the types of listening situations, the musical educational preparation of the listeners, the emotional impact of the music oir, in short, the communicated musical meaning, before he would conclude that an increase in consumption corresponds with an increase in appreciation of classical music.

    CONCLUSION

    Simmel's foremost contribution to the so- ciology of music as contained, in his early study consists, we would think, inl having shown that

    28 Simmel, op. cit., p. 302. 29 Ibid., p. 297.

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  • GEORG SIMMEL AND MUSIC 107 emnpirical work in this area is possible and can lhave fruitful theoretical implications. IHe does not provide us with a systematic program of what the sociology of music ought to be con- cerned with. Thus he differs from contributors who make up the major proportion of the litera- ture in this field which is noted for its scarcity of empirical woirk.30 Rather his focus on em- pirical problemls and his search for empirical answers would seem to us to be an example worth emulating in the building of this branch of social science. Perhaps he might be criti- cized for not going far enough in his search for answers, since not having an explicit sys- tem (or explicit frame of referenice) may have prevented 11 im from asking systematic ques- tions. To this it might be replied that there is no agreemenlt likely to come about as to what would constitute the final boundary of asking questions or systematizing answers in science. It would seem to us to be eminently more in the

    interest of science to ask the kind of questions that can be answered in the light of the data and can produce new insights than to be overly concerned with the neatness of systems of analysis. While Simmel did not construct a systematic program for the sociology of music, his study makes it clear that he did not con- ceive of it as Bindestrich Sociology (special subfield) but saw it within the major sociolog- ical context of human communications and so- cial relations.

    In summing up, Simmel's early study on the ethnological and psychological foundations of musicj in addition to providing stimulatinig sug- gestions for further research, touches on at least two major concerns of the contemporary sociologist dealing with artists and art. (1) His elementary taxonomy of types of mllusic relates to the complex of questions concerning the social meaning which is represented in music. (2) His discussion of what I have here called "taste groups" relates to tlhe general area of questions concerning the position and function of music in society. It. contributes a clearer diagnosis of the relationships between different groups within the social structure and representative items of artistic production by suggesting the importance of studying the social relationship structures which are typically asso- ciated with the socializationi of artists and au- diences.

    30 While there is a small number of empirical studies by Mueller, Leventman, Nash, Kaplan, and several other contemporary scholars, this does not detract from the fact that most of the published articles that incorporate "sociology of mnusic" in their titles are of the mentioned programmatic variety. For relevant citations see K. P. Etzkorn, Musical and Social Patterns of Songzwriters: An Exploratory Sociological Study, Ph.D. disserta- tioin, Princeton University, 1959, especially Chapter IV.

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    Article Contentsp. 101p. 102p. 103p. 104p. 105p. 106p. 107

    Issue Table of ContentsSocial Forces, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Oct., 1964), pp. 1-147Front MatterSocial Change, Social Movements and the Disappearing Sectional South [pp. 1 - 10]Toward a Sociology of Africa [pp. 11 - 18]For a Sociological Concept of Charisma [pp. 18 - 26]Impact of the "GI Bills" on the Educational Level of the Male Population [pp. 26 - 32]Logical Error as a Function of Group Consensus: An Experimental Study of the Effect of Erroneous Group Consensus upon Logical Judgments of Graduate Students [pp. 33 - 38]An Attitude Scale on Accepting Negro Students [pp. 38 - 41]The Relative Size of the Negro Population and Negro Occupational Status [pp. 42 - 49]Status Conflicts within a Hindu Caste [pp. 50 - 57]Ambition and Social Class: A Respecification [pp. 58 - 70]Racial Group Membership and Juvenile Delinquency [pp. 70 - 81]Female Delinquency and Relational Problems [pp. 82 - 89]Inter-Generational Occupational Mobility and Legislative Voting Behavior [pp. 90 - 93]Covert Political Rebellion As Ressentiment [pp. 93 - 101]Georg Simmel and the Sociology of Music [pp. 101 - 107]Book Reviewsuntitled [p. 108]untitled [pp. 108 - 109]untitled [p. 110]untitled [pp. 110 - 111]untitled [pp. 111 - 112]untitled [pp. 112 - 113]untitled [pp. 113 - 114]untitled [pp. 114 - 116]untitled [p. 116]untitled [pp. 116 - 117]untitled [pp. 117 - 118]untitled [pp. 118 - 119]untitled [pp. 119 - 120]untitled [p. 120]untitled [pp. 120 - 121]untitled [pp. 121 - 122]untitled [pp. 122 - 123]untitled [pp. 123 - 124]untitled [pp. 124 - 125]untitled [pp. 125 - 126]untitled [p. 126]untitled [pp. 126 - 127]untitled [pp. 127 - 128]untitled [p. 128]untitled [pp. 128 - 129]untitled [pp. 129 - 130]untitled [pp. 130 - 131]untitled [p. 131]untitled [pp. 132 - 133]untitled [p. 133]untitled [pp. 133 - 134]Briefer Comment [pp. 134 - 139]New Books Received [pp. 139 - 146]

    A Letter to the Editors [p. 147]Back Matter