Herzog, George

(b Budapest, 11 Dec 1901; d Indianapolis, 4 Nov 1983). American ethnomusicologist of Hungarian birth. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music, Budapest (1917–19), at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik (1920–22) and with Egon Petri (piano) in 1921; while at Berlin University (1922–4) he was an assistant to Hornbostel at the Phonogramm-Archiv. On emigrating to the USA in 1925 he took a postgraduate course in anthropology at Columbia University, where he was influenced by Franz Boas; he was a research associate in anthropology at the University of Chicago (1929–31) and at Yale University (1932–5), participating in the University of Chicago Anthropological Expedition to Liberia (1930–31). In 1935 and 1947 he was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships. He took the doctorate at Columbia University in 1938 with a dissertation on the musical styles of Pueblo and Pima and also worked there as a visiting lecturer (1936–7), visiting assistant professor (1937–8) and assistant professor of anthropology (1939–48). It was mostly through Herzog's efforts that Bartók came to the United States of America and eventually to Columbia University. In 1948 he became professor of anthropology at Indiana University, bringing with him the Columbia University Archives of Folk and Primitive Music (established by him in 1936), which became the Indiana University Archives of Traditional Music, modelled on the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv. He retired as emeritus professor in 1962.

Herzog was a founder of ethnomusicological studies at American academic institutions. Besides teaching courses in linguistics and cultural anthropology he introduced courses in primitive and folk music (1936) and comparative musicology (1941) at Columbia, later amalgamating them as a course in folk, primitive and oriental music (1944). He was one of the leading authorities on North Amerindian music, having engaged in field research among such tribes as the Apache, Comanche, Dakota, Maricopa, Navaho, Pima, Pueblo, Yuma and Zuni. His interest in methods of transcription and analysis extended his research into European folk music (Greek, Irish, Spanish and south Slav) and to the study of Jewish (Babylonian, Yemenite and Judeo-Spanish), Peruvian and Javanese traditions. Besides building up an archive of commercial and field recordings, he undertook invaluable bibliographical surveys of published materials and compiled descriptive catalogues of archives in museums, institutions and private collections. His entry on ‘Song’ in the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore (1950) furnishes important insights concerning the functional aspects of folksong.

WRITINGS

‘The Yuman Musical Style’, Journal of American Folklore, xli (1928), 183–231

Transcr. of over 100 melodies and comments in F. Eckstorm, M.W. Smyth and P. Barry: British Ballads from Maine (New Haven, CT, 1929)

‘Musical Styles in North America’, Proceedings of the Twenty-Third International Congress of Americanists: New York 1928 (New York, 1930/R), 455–8

‘Die Musik auf Truk’, in A. Krämer:Truk, Ergebnisse der Südsee-Expedition, 1908–10, ii/5 (Hamburg, 1932), 384–404

‘The Collections of Phonograph Records in North America and Hawaii’, Zeitschrift für vergleichende Musikwissenschaft, i (1933), 58–62

‘Maricopa Music’, in L. Spier:Yuman Tribes of the Gila River (Chicago, 1933), 271–9

Appx of song transcrs. in T. Adamson: Folk Tales of the Coast Salish (Philadelphia, 1934), 422–30

‘Speech-Melody and Primitive Music’, MQ, xx (1934), 452–66

‘Plains Ghost Dance and Great Basin Music’, American Anthropologist, new ser., xxxvii (1935), 403–19

‘Special Song Types in North American Indian Music’, Zeitschrift für vergleichende Musikwissenschaft, iii (1935), 1–6, 23–33

‘Die Musik der Karolinen-Inseln aus dem Phonogramm-Archiv, Berlin’, in A. Eilers: Westkarolinen, Ergebnisse der Südsee-Expedition, 1908–10, iib/9 (Hamburg, 1936), 263–351

Research in Primitive and Folk Music in the United States: a Survey (Washington DC, 1936)

Transcr. of 49 melodies in J. and A. Lomax:Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Leadbelly (New York, 1936)

A Comparison of Pueblo and Pima Musical Styles (New York, 1937; Journal of American Folklore, xlix (1936), 283–417)

‘Musical Typology in Folksong’, Southern Folklore Quarterly, i (1937), 49–55

‘The Study of Folksong in America’, Southern Folklore Quarterly, ii (1938), 59–64

‘Etats-Unis d’Amérique’, Folklore musical (Paris, 1939), 85–128

‘Stability of Form in Traditional and Cultivated Music’, PAMS, iii (1940), 69–73

‘General Characteristics of Primitive Music’, BAMS, vi (1942), 23–6

‘The Study of Native Music in America’, Proceedings of the Eighth American Scientific Congress: Washington DC 1940, ii, ed. P.H. Oehser (Washington DC, 1942), 203–9

‘African Influences in North American Indian Music’, PAMS Congress of Musicology: New York 1939, ed. A. Mendel, G. Reese and G. Chase (New York, 1944), 130–43

‘Drum-Signalling in a West African Tribe’, Word, i (1945), 217–38

‘Some Primitive Layers in European Folk Music’, BAMS, viii (1945), 11–14

‘Comparative Musicology’, Music Journal, iv (1946), 11, 42–4

‘Béla Bartók as a Folklorist-Composer’, BAMS, xi–xiii (1948), 17–18

‘Salish Music’, Indians of the Urban Northwest, ed. M.W. Smith (New York, 1949), 93–109

‘Song: Folk Song and the Music of Folk Song’, Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, ii, ed. M. Leach (New York, 1949–50, 2/1972/R), 1032–50

‘The Music of Yugoslav Heroic Epic Folk Poetry’, JIFMC, iii (1951), 62–4

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B. Krader: ‘ George Herzog: a Bibliography’, EthM, i/6 (1956), 11–20; i/8 (1956), 10

M. Graf: ‘The Papers of George Herzog’, Resound, v (1986), 5–6

A. Seeger: ‘ The Indiana University Archives of Traditional Music’, World of Music, xxix/3 (1987), 95–8

Y. Lenoir: ‘Bela Bartok et George Herzog: Chronique d'une collaboration exemplaire (1940–1945)’, Revue des archeologues et historiens d'art de Louvain, Belgium, xxi (1988), 137–45

C.E. Steinzor: American Musicologists, c.1890–1945: a Bio-Biographical Sourcebook to the Formative Period (New York, 1989), 109–16

B. Nettl: ‘The Dual Nature of Ethnomusicology in North America: the Contributions of Charles Seeger and George Herzog’, Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of Music: Essays on the History of Ethnomusicology, ed. B. Nettl and P.V. Bohlman (Chicago, 1991), 266–74

G. Skoog: ‘The Life of George Herzog’, Resound, xviii (1999), 6–8

ISRAEL J. KATZ