Hornbostel, Erich (Moritz) von (1877–1935)

Austrian musicologist. He is most famous (with Curt Sachs) for his part in the Sachs–Hornbostel classification of musical instruments, still employed by most scholars and museums.

He studied physics and philosophy at Vienna, Austria, and Heidelberg, Switzerland, and in 1906 became head of the gramophone archives in Berlin, Germany, for the recording of ethnic music, on which he wrote several learned works. In 1933 he left Germany and went to New York, USA; in the following year he went to London and Cambridge, England.