Electrophone

For the early UK telephone broadcasting system, see Electrophone (information system).

The electrophone category was added to the Hornbostel-Sachs musical instrument classification system by Sachs in 1940, to describe instruments involving electricity. Sachs divided his 5th category into 3 subcategories:

51=electrically actuated acoustic instruments (e.g., pipe organ with electronic tracker action)
52=electrically amplified acoustic instruments (e.g., acoustic guitar with pickup)
53=instruments which make sound primarily by way of electrically driven oscillators

The last category includes instruments such as theremins or synthesizers, which he called radioelectric instruments.

Francis William Galpin provided such a group in his own classification system, which is closer to Mahillon than Sachs-Hornbostel. For example, in Galpin's 1937 book A Textbook of European Musical Instruments, he lists electrophones with three second-level divisions for sound generation ("by oscillation," "electro-magnetic," and "electro-static"), as well as third-level and fourth-level categories based on the control method. Sachs himself proposed subcategories 51, 52, and 53, on pages 447-467 of his 1940 book The History of Musical Instruments. However, the original 1914 version of the system did not acknowledge the existence of his 5th category.

Present-day ethnomusicologists, such as Margaret Kartomi (page 173), and Terry Ellingson (PhD dissertation, 1979, p. 544) suggest that, in keeping with the spirit of the original Hornbostel Sachs classification scheme, if one categorizes instruments by what first produces the initial sound in the instrument, that only subcategory 53 should remain in the electrophones category. Thus it has been more recently proposed that, for example, the pipe organ (even if it uses electric key action to control solenoid valves) remain in the aerophones category, and that the electric guitar remain in the chordophones category, and so on.

Thus, in present-day ethnomusicology, an electrophone is considered to be only musical instruments which produce sound primarily by electrical means. It is usually considered to constitute one of five main categories in the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification (though it is not actually present in the scheme published in 1914).

11. Struck	111. Directly 111.1. Concussion 111.2. Percussion 112. Indirectly 112.1. Shaken/rattle 112.2. Scraped/rasp

12. Plucked	121. Frame 121.1. Clack 121.2. Guimbarde 122. Comb 122.1. Lace 122.2. Cut out

13. Friction	131. Stick Nail violin 132. Plaque Musical saw Daxophone 133. Vessel Glass harmonica

14. Blown	141. Stick 142. Plaque

2. Membran-
ophone
(list)

21. Struck	211. Directly 211.1. Bowl 211.2. Tubular 211.3. Frame 212. Shaken

22. Plucked	Nyatiti

23. Friction	231. Stick 232. Cord 233. Hand

24. Kazoo	241. Free 242. Tube/vessel

3.
Chordophone
(list)

31. Simple / zither	311. Bar/stick Musical bow Stick zither 312. Tube Whole Half 313. Raft Idiochord Heterochord 314. Board 315. Trough 316. Frame

32. Composite	321. Lute 321.1. Bow 321.2. Yoke 322. Harp 322.1. Open 322.2. Frame 323. Harp lute

4. Aerophone
(list)

41. Free	411. Displacement Whip 412. Interruptive 412.1. Idiophonic/reed 412.2. Non-idiophonic 413. Plosive

42. Non-free	421. Flute 421.1. Non-fipple 421.2. Fipple 422. Reed 422.1. Double reed 422.2. Single reed 422.3. Reedpipe 423. Brass 423.1 Natural 423.2 Chromatic

5.
Electrophone
(list)

51. Action
52. Amplification
53. Radioelectric
- Theremin

Authority control	GND: 4014362-4

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Electrophone

See also