Erich von Hornbostel

Erich Moritz von Hornbostel (25 February 1877 – 28 November 1935) was an Austrian ethnomusicologist, comparative musicologist, and scholar of music.

He is remembered for his pioneering work in the field of ethnomusicology, and for the Sachs–Hornbostel system of musical instrument classification which he co-authored with Curt Sachs.

He moved first to Switzerland, then the United States, and finally to Cambridge in England, where he worked on an archive of non-European folk music recordings.

He died there in 1935 leaving behind a legacy as a key figure in ushering the next wave of comparative musicologists through his contributions in the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv.

In the South Sea Islands, Hornbostel collected and anaylzed recordings focusing on preservation which helped contribute greatly to the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv as a central repository for non-European music.