who asked the first question? - International Research Center For ...

187hear assertions that a certain singing style is “extremely archaic”, mostly because it“sounds very archaic”. We will discuss some such styles later in this part of the book. Ofcourse, there is nothing wrong in having a strong audio impression about certain singingstyles. As a matter of fact, it is very important to have strong audio impressions, but if wewant to include our impressions in a scholarly hypothesis, we need to put them throughvigorous analyses, using all the available background information and cross-disciplinarydata about the particular carriers of this particular singing style.The empl oyment of the right method is crucially important for any research. Thesame is true for the comparative study of polyphonic cultures. The method I am going toemploy is very simple. It is based on the specific set of stylistic parameters of thepolyphonic tradition. But before we discuss the all-important set of stylistic parametersfor the classification and comparative study of part-singing traditions, we need first of allto discuss whether we can trust music for any kind of diachronic conclusions. So, thenext crucial question that we are going to discuss is how deep musical data can go inhuman history, or simply – how stable is music.Whatis more stable: language or music?To some readers this might sound a silly and “non-scholarly” question. In fact, itis a very serious question, and I remember quite a few discussions of this topic at severalethnomusicological conferences. So, what is more stable: language or music? I guess, formost readers music is one of the unstable elements of human society and culture.According to this opinion, although it might not be exactly clear “how mobile” or “howunstable” is music, we can’t go wrong saying that at least language is much more stablethan music. “Look at the languages,” they would say, “languages come throughouthuman history and cultures for hundreds and thousands of years. They do not changequickly, they do not follow a fashion, and there are certain rules of very slow changesthat languages undergo during the centuries and millennia. And now look at the musicalculture and musical styles – they change almost every decade, and different songs travelacross the cultures and state borders with an amazing easiness. Of course, language ismuch more stable than music, no question about this.” I guess a big proportion of thelinguists will be in this camp.But this opinion is not the only one on this topic. Now let us listen to anotheropinion. According to this point of view, music is extremely stable. Again, although itmight be difficult to specify exactly how stable music can be, the proponents of thisopinion would argue that music is at least much more stable than language. They canname countless examples when people (or part of the people) for different historical(political, economical, migration) reasons lose their language, but still keep alive theirmusical traditions. “Besides,” they would say, “even the most sophisticated linguisticanalyses can not go further than four or five thousand years back in human history. Looknow at the traditional musical cultures of the world – you can see the musical traditionsthat come from many more thousand or even tens of thousands of years. Of course, musicis much more stable than language, no question about that”. At least someethnomusicologists would agree with this opinion, including myself. For those whowould not believe there is something serious behind this bold assertion, I would like to