Kultura Sustatu

  A wide array of criteria has been used in studying the huge number of musical instruments so as to categorise them according to their particularities, likenesses and relationships.

  Below are three groups of classification systems, based on the following factors:
  The musical function of the instruments: melody, rhythm, harmony, etc.
  The materials they are made of.
  The melodic origins and the acoustics of the instruments.

  Using the latter as a launching pad the system developed in 1914 by German-born Erich von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs is based on acoustic principles. This classification system is generally accepted and is the one we have decided to use to classify and associate our native or indigenous instruments. We do realise, however, that we cannot always speak in absolute terms, as some instruments are very difficult to classify and others fit into more than one group.

  Erich von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs propose a system involving five basic groups. The fifth group is that of the so-called electrophones (instruments that produce sound by electronic means), which will not be included in the present paper.

Idiophones: instruments that produce sound by vibration of the whole body of the instrument. The instrument, therefore, is made of a material which requires no particular tautening (as opposed to strings and membranes) and which can produce music.
Membranophones: instruments that produce sound by vibration of a stretched membrane.
Chordophones: instruments that produce sound through the vibration of strings.
Aerophones: also known as wind instruments, these instruments produce sound from a vibrating column of air, and have two basic characteristics: a tube or receptacle that holds the column of air and a means of making the air vibrate.

   These classifications can be further broken down, based on the following variables:
- The means by which sound vibrations are activated (for example, how the vibrations are transmitted to the air column in the case of wind instruments).
- Material, appearance and composition (for example, in idiophones: metallophone, lithophone, etc.).
- The way the sound-producing material is made to vibrate (in stringed instruments, for example, whether strings are activated by plucking, bowing or striking).
   Seeing as how this is all rather complex, and aware of the wide variety of musical instruments in the Basque Country, we will try our best here to simplify matters as much as possible.