Épinette des Vosges

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Traditional épinette des Vosges with two melody and three drone strings. The arrangement of the frets results in a diatonic tone sequence.

Épinette des Vosges is a zither fingerboard with an elongated resonance box that became popular in France in the 18th century and owes its name to the Vosges Mountains , where it is mainly made and played in the communes of Le Val-d'Ajol and Gérardmer in the Vosges department . With traditionally two melody strings and three drone strings , the épinette des Vosges, like the older Scheitholt , is a drone (French bûche , "log wood").

Origin and Distribution

Modern épinette des Vosges with three melody and three drone strings. The frets allow a chromatic tone sequence.

The simplest representative of the type of instrument, in which strings run parallel over a straight, one-piece string carrier, is the single-stringed zither (also known as a musical staff) , which is structurally related to the musical bow . Curt Sachs (1930) draws attention to an Asian model of the elongated European zithers with several strings, which is possible because of its design , by referring to the report on the musical instruments of the Katschinzen by P. Ostrowskich (1895). This is about the Qatscha belonging to the Turkic peoples in Khakassia (southern Siberia) and depicts a fretless box zither with seven strings called "Tschat'gàn", in which the aspect ratio of the long rectangular body is about 10: 1. The length of the instrument shown is around 150 centimeters, the width increases from 15 centimeters on one side to 18 centimeters on the other. Epensingers accompanied their songs with her or with the two-stringed long-necked lute topchyl-khomys (Ostrowskich “Koms”, related to the sounds komuz and agach kumuz ). In addition to the shape of the body, the two ends of the “Tschat'gàn” rolled into snails correspond to the decorative ends of the Norwegian langeleik , the Swedish hummel , the Dutch hommel , the log and the French épinette des Vosges .

The Scandinavian, Baltic and Russian zithers, which are known in Slavic languages with the word husle and to which, for example, the fretboard-free Finnish kantele belongs , form a separate class of box zithers, the “Baltic Psalter ” . They come from an old, at the time of the Khazars declining cultural layer and with the dated around the 12th century finds of so-called " Novgorod - Lyre " associated.

Psalteries, the name of which goes back to stringed instruments of various types called psaltērion in ancient Greek , are considered to be early forms of European zithers. In terms of instruments, these belong to the box zithers, in which the strings run parallel over the top of a resonance box. Because of the roughly trapezoidal shape of the resonance box , the outline of which is reminiscent of the frame of a harp , psalteries can be imagined as further developed harps, the open center of which has been replaced by a flat box. Accordingly understood the early Christian writers under psalterion usually a triangular harp. The forerunners of the psalteries are the Arabic box zither qānūn, mentioned since the 10th century, and the Persian dulcimer santūr . European illustrations from the 12th to 15th centuries show several different forms and positions of psalteries. Most often the psaltery is depicted in the hands of angels making music, i.e. as an instrument of fine Christian music. The instrument was apparently taken out of this context in the 15th century, because Sebastian Virdung called in Musica gotutscht und auszieh (1511) small violins, psalteries and Trumscheit "onnütze instrumenta" and in an inventory of musical instruments of the Württemberg court in 1589 by Balduin Hoyoul In Stuttgart, the Psalterium, Trumscheit, Dulcimer and Triangle have sunk into the “Carnival Game” section. The fact that the psaltery was already disappearing in the 16th century may have been the main reason for its disregard.

In terms of developmental history, the medieval monochord could be understood as the forerunner of the older European zithers in addition to the psaltery , but according to Anthony Baines (1996) there is no demonstrable direct connection. But there is a linguistic relationship between Monochord and Trumscheit. The name Trumscheit appears for the first time - in the spelling trumb schitt - as a translation for "Monochord" in a manuscript from 1417 of the Latin-German dictionary Vocabularius ex quo and is common until the beginning of the 17th century when it was translated into Western European languages ​​by the word group tromba marina, marin trumpet and the like has been replaced. Until the 18th century, the single-stringed Trumscheit could also be called a "monochord". There were also monochords with several strings in order to compare intervals in music theory studies . In the 14th century, for example, two or more strings were recommended for the monochord.

Michael Praetorius first described a new kind of zither with frets , which can hardly be documented before the 16th century, in his Syntagma musicum (Volume 2, 1619) under the name Scheitholt . With this type of zither, classified as a drone zither or fingerboard zither, one or more strings are shortened to form a melody at the frets and the remaining strings are used as accompaniment when they are empty. A fretboard zither which is comparable to the European drone zither in its long rectangular shape, but is much older, is the Chinese guqin . The bordunzithers found their way into folk music from Central Europe to Iceland, Belgium ( vlier, pinet, blokviool ), Sweden ( hommel ), Norway ( langeleik ), Hungary ( citara ) and Romania. Anglo-Saxon immigrants brought the Appalachian dulcimer and Pennsylvania Dutch the zitter to the United States . In the Alpine region, the Scheitholt was replaced by the Scherr zither and then the normal zither. Typical of the drone are two to three melody strings with diatonic frets and several drone strings at an octave distance above the fundamental and the dominant .

The épinette des Vosges is the smallest of the drone. The French word épinette means " spinet ", while the name affix refers to the Vosges mountain region, where the instrument was played in the 18th century and survives to this day. In the 18th century it was produced in two different sizes in the communes of Le Val-d'Ajol and Gérardmer , in the latter place the épinette des Vosges is first recorded in writing in 1723. From èpinette des Vosges , the names of several regionally widespread drones in Belgium with different shapes and numbers of strings are derived: pinet, epinet, espinet, spinet and épinette .

Design and style of play

Épinette des Vosges with a broad resonance body, four melody and three drone strings in the Musée départemental d'Art ancien et contemporain in Épinal , Département Vosges.

The instrument manufactured in Le Val-d'Ajol in the 18th century consisted of a 40 to 50 centimeter long, narrow resonance box with four, later five strings and 14 frets under the melody strings. In the 19th century the instrument was lengthened to 60 centimeters and the number of frets increased to 17. The instruments made in Gérardmer are significantly larger, 70 to 80 centimeters long and 10 to 12 centimeters wide. The height of the box, over which up to eight strings are stretched, is 5 centimeters.

The resonance box of the most common type is very slim and tapers slightly from the lower straight end to the pegbox with lateral wooden pegs at the other end, and with modern instruments also with a tuning mechanism . A small clover-shaped sound hole has been cut into the ceiling and a small heart-shaped sound hole above. The peg box ends in a snail or some other form of jewelry. He is on the left side of the player who is laying the instrument on his knees or on a table roughly across in front of him. Traditional instruments have a total of five metal strings that are held in place by flat, notched saddles at both ends. Two melody strings lead over 13 to 17 metal frets and are tuned in unison to approximately g 1 , the drone strings match g 1 and c 1 or an octave lower. The musician shortens the two melody strings either with a crossed stick, which he holds in his left hand, at the same pitch, or he plays the melody line in a third interval by placing the first string with the thumb and the second string with the index finger and middle finger on top of each other at the same time depresses. With a goose quill as a pick in his right hand, he strokes all five strings in an up and down motion in the old playing technique, which was also described for the Appalachian dulcimer at the end of the 19th century . Other plucking techniques adopted from the guitar are possible. In addition, instruments with a wider resonance body are known which, with their double bulged shape on both sides, resemble the Appalachian dulcimer and produce a somewhat fuller sound.

The most important instrument maker of the 19th century, who is said to have produced around 500 épinette des Vosges per year in his most active period , was Amant Constant Lambert (called Amé Lambert, 1843–1908). His instruments are 60 centimeters long. He was responsible for the introduction of mandolin tuning pegs in 1888 and steel strings instead of the brass strings that had been drawn up until then. Other well-known épinette manufacturers were Jean Joseph Perney (1835–1882), a blacksmith in the municipality of Fougerolles , and Albert Balandier (1872–1945), Lambert's son-in-law.

In the past, women in France sang folk songs on certain social occasions, but rarely played musical instruments in public in rural areas, at most such as the épinette des Vosges, which is considered undemanding . It is the only traditional stringed instrument in French folk music worth mentioning, apart from the psaltery ttun-ttun , which occurs in the Basque region of Soule , and whose strings are struck percussively with a stick.

The épinette des Vosges almost disappeared between the world wars . Its revival in the 1950s is due in particular to Jules Vançon (1895–1980) from Le Val-d'Ajol. He pulled six strings on his instruments, which at 64 centimeters are slightly longer than Lambert's. Today Christophe Toussaint makes very large zithers that are 84 centimeters long and 7 to 11 centimeters wide at the lower end and 5 to 7 centimeters wide at the upper end. These modern épinette des Vosges are hybrid musical instruments that also contain formal elements of other fretboard zithers .

Well-known current épinette players are Christophe Toussaint, Jean-François Dutertre (1948–2017) and Jean-Loup Baly.

literature

  • Michael J. King: The épinette des Vosges . (PDF)
  • Joan Rimmer: Epinette de Vosges . In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments . Volume 2, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 232

Web links

Commons : Épinette des Vosges  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ P. Ostrowskich: About the musical instruments of the Katschinzen. Contribution to: Meeting of October 19, 1895. In: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Volume 27, 1895, pp. 531–672, here pp. 617f
  2. ^ Curt Sachs : Handbook of musical instrumentation . 2nd edition 1930, reprint: Georg Olms, Hildesheim 1967, p. 130f
  3. ↑ M. Khay: Enclosed Instrumentarium of Kobzar and Lyre Tradition. (PDF) In: Music Art and Culture, No. 19, 2014, section Psalnery (gusli) .
  4. ^ Anthony Baines: Popular early forms . In the S. (Ed.): Musical instruments. The history of their development and forms . Prestel, Munich 1982, p. 214
  5. ^ Andreas Michel: Zither. C. European box zither. II. Fretboard-less zither. 1. Psalteries . In: MGG Online , November 2016 ( Music in the past and present , 1998)
  6. ^ Anthony Baines: Lexicon of Musical Instruments . JB Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart (1996) 2005, keyword: “Zither”, p. 376
  7. ↑ Silke Berdux, Erich Tremmel: Trumscheit. I. Designations. In: MGG Online , November 2016 ( Music in the past and present , 1998)
  8. ^ Sibyl Marcuse : A Survey of Musical Instruments . Harper & Row, New York 1975, p. 199
  9. ↑ Anthony Baines: Volkstümliche Frühformen , 1982, p. 218; Anthony Baines, 2005, p. 376
  10. ^ Ferdinand J. de Hen: Folk Instruments of Belgium: Part I. In: The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 25, July 1972, pp. 87-132, here pp. 112f
  11. ^ Jean Richie: The Dulcimer Book . Oak Publications, New York 1963, p. 13 (images of both forms)
  12. ↑ Some epinette builders and epinette players . L'épinette des Vosges
  13. ^ Hugh Shields: France . In: Timothy Rice, James Porter, Chris Goertzen (Eds.): The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume 8: Europe. Routledge, New York / London 2000, pp. 545, 548
  14. ↑ Les Epinettes des Vosges de Christophe Toussain. epinettes.fr
  15. ↑ Michael J. King: The épinette des Vosges. (PDF)