Hornbostel Sux

Resist concussed ideophones

and Sachs's mental snot

Castanets are percussion

and clarinets are not

- Andrew Alder, June 2012

Background to the above doggerel

The widely used Hornbostel-Sachs classification system (invented by Hornbostel and Sachs, of course, and published in 1914) doesn't call castanets percussion at all, instead they are classified under 111.141 (Directly struck concussive idiophone), and in contrast to for example the woodblock, classified under 111.2 (Percussion idiophone).

The clarinet, on the other hand, is classified under 422.2 (Single reed instruments – The pipe has a single 'reed' consisting of a percussion lamella).

H-S is at least consistent. In H-Speak, percussion always means hitting something dissimilar, and concussion always means hitting something similar. The problem is, in 1914 both percussion and concussion already had important and long-established meanings, and these were not contrasting.

And they are still synonymous, in every other area of discourse including but not only in music outside of the H-S system. When a player is commissioned to clash two cymbals together, they become a percussionist, not a concussionist. On the other hand, when your doctor tells you that you are concussed, they mean simply that your head has hit something, anything, not necessarily that someone has banged two similar heads together. (Although that could produce the effect described. Those of two particular musicologists come to mind.)

H&S could probably have managed their theft of terminology had they not been so greedy. Concussion they can have (at least in a musical context, see above). But I'm sorry, we can't give you percussion. The percussion section isn't going to give up the castanets so easily, let alone the clashing cymbals. Our adoring public won't let us, and neither we nor they are to be taken lightly. You have been warned.

Unless... could we arrange a compromise? Can we find a mutually acceptable new name for percussion? Something with a bit more groove to it than H-S 1+2?

The (former) percussion section is the most violent section of the orchestra, both by calling and by nature. Just look at us, either in repose or in action. See the tats? See the conductor grit his or her teeth a little whenever an important percussion passage is about to erupt? They cast a last longing look over the winds and strings, lean back a little and then make sudden ferocious eye contact, vainly struggling to take control. Which is understandable. Strictly speaking, the conductor is the most junior member of the percussion section. Striking a music stand with a baton doesn't make much noise, but it's a lovely sound, and so expressive. And even H&S would call it percussion, or at least up until the point that the conductor drops the baton, picks up a music stand and begins to beat another similar stand with it. In H-Speak that would now be concussion, and so delightfully John Cage (or perhaps in reply) .

But I digress. The point is, what we used to call the percussion before H&S, we could logically call the violins. Little violent ones, sort of. If our name can be stolen, why not theirs too? Surely that's fair. I'm sure they'll find another term for the squeakers. Perhaps LIFCTV (Little Instrument Formerly Called The Violin, same idea as TIFKAD). Problem solved!

No, perhaps not. They've had the name for a while. The violin has existed by something like that name ever since Amati built one in about 1555, only about two and a third centuries after Jean de Muris grouped musical instruments into strings, wind and (wait for it) percussion in about 1320, following several other similar traditions. You'd have to be pretty stupid, or outrageously arrogant, or completely ignorant of the subject, or probably all three, to simply ignore that much history. Which brings us back to H&S.

Ideophone means A vivid representation of an idea in sound, and you can play the very word percussion on a snare drum using steel brushes (well, the nasal at the end is a problem, but get it right up to there and the mind fills in the blank). So how vivid is that? But it's important to contrast ideophone to idiophone, which has at least two non-exclusive meanings:

Idiophone (n):

1. Musical instrument classified as 1 in the uppermost level of Hornbostel-Sachs classification.

2. Musical instrument classified by an idiot.

Recommendation

Take a suitable beater such as a single reed about a metre long in a two-handed tam-tam grip (your percussion teacher can demonstrate this) and apply con_brio to the backsides of those who use this ridiculous categorisation, taking care of course to prime the instrument. Perhaps let's not be too hard on Hornbostel and Sachs, who wrote in German. Perhaps. But Sachs lived in the USA, and later writers, including their translators, have no such excuse.

See also

http://tunings.pbworks.com/w/page/22530564/about%20Fender%20and%20names for some similar nonsense.