Music Typology

Seeger outlines the manner in which these topics, and as a result, folk music(s), have been classified: by nationality, by race, or by language. The most promising of the three appears to be language, although Seeger cautions his audience that “music is not language,” and “as a separate, perhaps opposite or complementary, art, we may have to accept the conclusion that musical traditions cannot be divided as can language traditions”.

For this encyclopedia entry, Seeger attempts organization of European folk music by dividing it geographically by Eastern, Southwestern, and Northwestern Europe; within these three sections he describes musical characteristics and textual sources for folk music in areas divided by language (for instance the Romance languages define Southwestern Europe while the Germanic languages define the northwest).(Hoover Review of Seeger 'folk music' entry in Collier's

Encyclopedia)

Maybe we could first make clear through research how different languages affect their music, as Romance languages and German languages mentioned above, and then we can conclude whether it’s possible to classify musical traditions into families like language families. Without the first step the second step of work cannot be completed.(Shuo Zhang comments)