Hornbostel–Sachs or Sachs–Hornbostel is a system of musical instrument classification devised by Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs, and first published in the Zeitschrift für Ethnologie in 1914.
The system was updated in 2011 as part of the work of the Musical Instrument Museums Online (MIMO) Project.
[2] Hornbostel and Sachs based their ideas on a system devised in the late 19th century by Victor-Charles Mahillon, the curator of musical instruments at Brussels Conservatory.
From this basis, Hornbostel and Sachs expanded Mahillon's system to make it possible to classify any instrument from any culture.
Idiophones primarily produce their sounds by means of the actual body of the instrument vibrating, rather than a string, membrane, or column of air.
The player executes the movement of striking; whether by mechanical intermediate devices, beaters, keyboards, or by pulling ropes, etc.
It is definitive that the player can apply clear, exact, individual strokes, and that the instrument itself is equipped for this kind of percussion.
Idiophones which are rubbed, for example the nail violin, a bowed instrument with solid pieces of metal or wood rather than strings.
Mixed sets of blown idiophones (143) Membranophones primarily produce their sounds by means of the vibration of a tightly stretched membrane.
Instruments in which the membrane is vibrated by an unbroken column of wind, without a chamber Instruments in which the membrane is placed in a box, tube or other container Chordophones primarily produce their sounds by means of the vibration of a string or strings that are stretched between fixed points.
In either case, according to more recent views, a periodic displacement of air occurs to the alternate flanks of the edge.
The player makes a ribbon-shaped flow of air with their lips (421.1), or their breath is directed through a duct against an edge (421.2).
The fifth top-level group, the electrophones category, was added by Sachs in 1940, to describe instruments involving electricity.
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.
Present-day ethnomusicologists, such as Margaret Kartomi[4] and Ellingson (PhD dissertation, 1979, p. 544), suggest that, in keeping with the spirit of the original Hornbostel–Sachs classification scheme, of categorization by what first produces the initial sound in the instrument, that only subcategory 53 should remain in the electrophones category.
The valveless bugle, for instance, has the classification number 423.121.22, even though it is generally regarded as a relatively simple instrument.
In addition to these, there are a number of suffixes unique to each of the top-level groups indicating details not considered crucial to the fundamental nature of the instrument.