A GRAPHIC METHOD OF RECORDING SONGS. . . REPRINTED FROM THE BOAS MEMORIAL VOLUME by Goddard, Pliny Earle - 1906

New York: [s.n.], 1906. First Separate Edition. Softcover. Fair. 137-142 pp. including two in-text figures, table, and musical notation, plus folding plate. Original printed wrappers. Wrappers detached and significantly chipped and discolored, pencil and ink inscriptions and ownership inkstamp in front wrapper, internally clean. Fair to good.

A scarce offprint of an article by American linguist and ethnologist Pliny Earle Goddard on a method of recording sung music directly to paper through the use of a kymograph equipped with a mouthpiece and "vowel recorder." The article includes illustrations of the equipment and an example, in the folding plate, of a Hupa song (also shown in standard musical notation) recorded by this method. Goddard (1869-1928) was an American linguist and ethnologist noted for his work on the Athabaskan peoples of North America. He was closely associated during the 1910s and 1920s with Franz Boas, who invited him to work with him at the American Museum of Natural History in 1909.