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Sounding Decolonial Futures: Decentering Ethnomusicology's Colonialist Legacies

John C. Fillmore (1843-1898)

The late 19th-century American ethnologist and anthropologist, Alice C. Fletcher was one of the first researchers to focus her studies on Omaha peoples and their music practices. After her first stay among the Omahas in 1881, she began to record and transcribe Omaha songs and melodies with Western musical notation (also known as staff-notation) with the help of indigenous scholar Francis La Flesche , amassing as many as three hundred songs by 1888 (Pantaleoni 1895: 219). Sifting through all of the material she had ‘collected’, she began to catalog, analyze, and theorize about the importance of these songs, their text, and their tonal structure. Later that same year in 1888, Fletcher sent a transcription she took of an Omaha song to John Comfort Fillmore to get his advice on how the song may be analyzed and, preferably, harmonized, as she believed harmonizing these melodies would help spread the songs. Fillmore, a musicologist, music theorist, textbook author, and professor, studied organ and piano at Oberlin College from 1862-65 and then theory of music and organ, Leipzig, 1866-67. He taught at Oberlin 1867-68, received an Honorary A.M in 1870, and eventually became Director of Music at Pomona College (McLean 2006: 142; Oberlin College Archives). At the time Fletcher wrote to him in 1888, he would have been director of the Milwaukee School of Music, which he founded in 1884.

In 1890, Fillmore composed a short orchestral work entitled Indian Fantasia No. 1, which was a set of 14 variations on the very first song he received from Fletcher: “Hae-thu-ska Wa-an” (Pisani 2005: 172). This composition was one of the first concertized works to be inspired by the music of an Indigenous community in America at the time. And after releasing this new setting and spending a week with La Flesche in Washington D.C. intensely studying Omaha music, Fillmore expounded on his theories of harmonization in his Report on the Structural Peculiarities of the Music which was published alongside Fletcher’s and La Flesche's monograph A Study of Omaha Indian Music.

Fletcher's volume included 92 harmonizations by Fillmore in addition to the 14 renditions of “Hae-thu-ska Wa-an” (which were presented as No. 11 - No. 24 in the 1893 collection: click here to see a gallery of these harmonizations). With the creation of these harmonizations, Fillmore sought to “employ the natural harmonies implied in the melody,'' as he states in his report (1893: 291), believing that Indigenous musical practices were less ‘evolved’ due to the lack of harmony in their songs. In an article published by a scholar who reconsiders Fillmore’s report, James McNutt states that Fillmore “assumed, among other things, that melody evolved more or less directly into harmony and ignored the possibility that more complex melodies, for example, might just as easily develop instead of harmony” (1984: 64). In other words, Fillmore is using an evolutionist lense to explain why the Indigenous music he began writing about did not use harmony in an equivalent way to the Western art music he spent his life studying; a belief that the refined homophonic melodies of North American indigenous populations were not as progressed as their western counterpoint since they did not utilize a Euro-centric harmonic sensibility.

After Fillmore released this initial report, he became increasingly invested in explaining why Omaha melodies did not contain vertical harmony in their original form, continuing to publish many articles which contained theories about a universal idea of harmony which imposed ideas of Western classical music onto the unrelated musics of other cultures, particularly Indigenous ones (McNutt 1984: 64). In an 1895 paper published by Fillmore in The Journal of American Folklore entitled “What Do Indians Mean to Do When They Sing, and How Far Do They Succeed?”,he structures an argument that implies Western music theory and harmony have a certain objective truth (1895: 138-142). In the paper, he argues that “the Indian always intends to sing precisely the same harmonic intervals which are a staple of our own music, and that all aberrations from harmonic pitch are mere accidents” (Fillmore 1895: 138), claiming these “accidents” are due to “imperfect training, or rather to the total lack of it” (Fillmore 1895: 138). Fillmore’s logic infers that Indigenous musicians educated in music vis-a-vis their own culture still lack ‘formal training’ because their approach to music is not informed by a Western methodology. We can even see this ideology play out in the title, where he assumes that native singing is inherently unsuccessful if it doesn’t closely align with music rules and harmonic structures of Western Art Music. It seems his research, like that of his peers at the time, lacks the understanding that Indigenous songs in their original form can inherently be authentic and intentional.

Fillmore’s research, and publications, into this notion of a universal harmonic principle, came to a halt after his untimely death in 1898, just a few years after initially embarking on this research trail. And his work, though problematic in some respects, remained a seminal piece of scholarship which shifted the way subsequent scholars and society at larger viewed indigenous music in America.

CITATIONS

Fillmore, John Comfort. 1893. “Report on the Structural Peculiarities of the Music” from Alice C. Fletcher A Study of Omaha Indian Music. Archaeological and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum, vol. 1, no. 5. Cambridge, Mass. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. 59-77.
Fillmore, John C. 1895. “What Do Indians Mean to Do When They Sing, and How Far Do They Succeed?” The Journal of American Folklore 8 (29): 138-142.
Pantaleoni, Hewitt. 1985. “A Reconsideration of Fillmore Reconsidered” American Music, 3 (2):217-228.
Pisani, Michael V. 2005. Imagining Native America in Music. New Haven: Yale University Press
McNutt, James C. 1984. “John Comfort Fillmore: A Student of Indian Music Reconsidered.” American Music 2(1).:61-70.

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Transcription Practices 13 The history and legacy of transcription practices used for indigenous music plain 2022-06-07T20:20:03+00:00
The transcription practices used for indigenous musics in the settler states part of North America evolved drastically over time. Some of the earliest transcriptions of indigenous music were done by French music scholars during the 17th century. These tended to be in western styles, leaving out details that could not be adequately portrayed by the transcription techniques current at that time. Because so many details were left out, these transcriptions portray indigenous music as simplistic, or what they might have called “primitive” and “uncivilized.” This can be seen in a transcription done in 1741 of a piece listed as “Tabagia Song”.
Though there are some forms of notation that attempted to depart from the standard western staves in order to more accurately capture how the music sounded, such as graphic notation, most music relied on staff notation. Some transcribers, like Alice Fletcher, wrote detailed summaries to accompany their transcriptions in order to provide some context about the cultural aspects or unique tonal qualities that could not be transcribed. Others, for example, put rhythmic details or vocal effects above or below the staff for readers. These techniques attempted to maintain some authenticity to the original music, but most other transcribers abandoned any notion of attempting authenticity for accessibility to western classical musicians because they didn’t have the skills to transcribe beyond the familiar system.
Alice C. Fletcher was well known for her transcriptions which are regarded as some of the earliest significant transcriptions of indigenous music. She began transcribing indigenous music during her first trip to the Omaha and Sioux reservations in 1881, beginning by transcribing some tunes by ear and later from phonograph recordings. When getting ready to publish her work, Study of Omaha Indian Music (1893), she reached out to John Comfort Fillmore to assist with the accompanying transcriptions as she was not confident in her skills (Levine, 2002). When Study of Omaha Indian Music was later published it included a “Report on the Structural Peculiarities of the Music” written by Fillmore. Fillmore, a notable arranger in his own right, attempted to increase interest in Native American music by making it “fit” into the euro american music style. He adjusted certain pitches in order to make the music easier to play by musicians trained in standard European music and for listeners to digest. He also provided many harmonizations of tunes transcribed by Fletcher, which were published in that 1893 volume and later in Indian Story and Song (1900).
Despite the inadequacies of western notation, the transcription techniques established during this time period set a precedent for transcribing music outside canonical Euro American traditions that lead to problematic thinking that can be seen in music to the present day. Techniques like alterations to fit the European standard staff and rhythm, providing minimal cultural context, and arrangements for piano accompaniment continued to plague such adaptations of music. Transcriptions of North American indigenous sonic practices as a whole, starting with and shaped by the work done by Fletcher and Fillmore with Omaha and Sioux music, created a dynamic where indigenous music was a novelty to be altered and absorbed at the whim of the Euro-American musical world. As the techniques of this time period continued to be used, the social dynamics they were born out of were continually reinforced. The legacy of the transcription practices discussed above can be seen in musical studies that continue to be dominated by an exclusively Euro-American and/or White perspective and problematic approaches to music not traditionally seen in the Euro-American canon.
Works Cited
- Fillmore, John Comfort. 1893. “Report on the Structural Peculiarities of the Music” from Alice C. Fletcher with Francis La Flesche, A Study of Omaha Indian Music. Cambridge, Mass. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. 59-77.
- Fletcher, Alice with Francis La Flesche. 1893. A Study of Omaha Indian Music. Cambridge, Mass. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
- Fletcher, Alice C. and La Flesche, Francis. 1911. "The Omaha tribe." in Twenty-seventh annual report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1905-1906, 17–654. Bureau of American Ethnology.
- Levine, Victoria Lindsay. 2002. “Reading American Indian Music as Social History” in Writing American Indian Music: Historic Transcriptions, Notations, and Arrangements. Middleton, Wis.: Published for the American Musicological Society by A-R Editions, Inc.
- Oldmixon, Mr. (John), 1673-1742: The British Empire in America: Containing the History of the Discovery, Settlement, Progress and State of the British Colonies on the Continent and Islands of America (second edition, corrected and amended, 2 volumes; London: Printed for J. Brotherton et al., 1741), illust. by Herman Moll.
Alice Cunningham Fletcher (1838-1923) 6 A Brief Biography plain 2022-03-30T19:13:27+00:00
Alice Cunningham Fletcher (15 March 1838-6 April 1923) was an early fieldworker and collector of Indigenous sonic practices. Trained in archaeology and ethnology, Fletcher is renowed as one of the very first ethnologists to conduct fieldwork among Indigenous peoples in the settler state of the U.S. and engage musical practices in their context. She first visited the Omaha peoples in 1881. At first, she engaged their sonic practices through the act of transcription, rendering complex practices into "Western" staff notation. Later, she employed wax cylinder phonograph technology to document, study, and preserve them.

She was employed by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University and later the Bureau of American Ethnology, which was part of the Smithsonian Institution. She was a member of the American Folklore Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Women's National Indian Association.

Important moments in her career:
- in 1881, she started fieldwork with the Omaha, marking the beginning of her collaboration with Francis La Flesche
- in 1888, she reached out to Prof. John Comfort Fillmore, requesting his assistance in approaching and transcribing Indigenous materials. They remained in collaboration until his death in 1898.
- in 1893, she published A Study of Omaha Indian Music acknowledging with La Flesche a co-author. This was considered to be first systematic ethnography on Indigenous music in the settler state of the U.S.
  - This publication included "A Report on the Structural Peculiarities of the Music" by Fillmore
  - All 92 transcriptions are presented in "Western" staff notation and virtually all are harmonized by Fillmore
  - As Pisani writes,
This book was particularly significant for musical composition because it included transcriptions by the music historian and prototheorist John Comfort Fillmore, who proposed ways in which monophonic Indian chants could be harmonized and, as he saw it, made more palatable to "cultured tastes." (Pisani 2005: 168)
- in the same year, she "delivered papers [drawing on her studies of North American Indians] at three of the international congresses (music, anthropology, and religion)" at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (Pisani 2005:174).
  - it should be noted that a young Frances Densmore was in the audience, having learned of Fletcher's work during piano studies in Boston in 1888
- in 1898, she presented at the Congress of Musicians at Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in Omaha, along with La Flesche and Fillmore.
  - Several Omaha performed, in coordination with their talks, largely "for an audience composed largely of trained musicians"
  - More significant, however, was the evening concert "devoted to compositions 'founded upon Indian themes,' so the [Musical] Courier reports, and included 'the famous 'Indian Suite' recently composed by [Edward] MacDowell and a symphonic poem [Hiawatha] composed by Ernest Kroeger of St. Louis.'...
the Omaha Congress was probably the first occasion that scholars and ethnologists heard Indian tribal themes transformed into iconic concert works" (Pisani 2005:175-6)
- in 1900, she published Indian Story and Song from North America (1900), which included thirty songs and accompanying stories about them. Contrasting with The Study of Omaha Indian Music, this publication was designed not for scholars, but public consumption.
Other key contributions:
- in 1888, she transcribed around 300 tunes by encouraging Omaha visiting Washington, D.C., to sing for her
- over her lifetime, she recorded 300+ wax cylinders
- a progressive in her time who lobbied for Indigenous rights in Washington, however misguided some of those policies now seem from contemporary perspectives
- active as a suffragist
- Secretary, Association for the Advancement of Women, 1873-76
- President, Women's Anthropological Society of America, 1890-99
- Department of lnterior consultant, World's Columbian Exposition [i.e. Chicago World's Fair ], 1892-93
- President, American Folklore Society, 1905
Biographical data informed by
- McLean, Mervyn. 2006. Pioneers of Ethnomusicology. Coral Springs, FL: Llumina Press.
- Pisani, Michael V. 2005. Imagining Native America in Music. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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