Alphorn
The alphorn is a brass instrument . This assignment results (regardless of the material used - mostly wood, less often plexi) from the technique of sound generation and the type of mouthpiece (bowl or funnel mouthpiece or combinations thereof). Since it has no way of flexibly changing its pipe length, the alphorn is tied to the tones of the natural tone series (for the physics of tone generation, see the article upholstered pipe ) and is therefore a natural horn . It is considered a national symbol of Switzerland . Alphorns are also common in Austria and the Bavarian Alps .
origin
Long wooden trumpets without finger holes exist or have existed in many cultures and countries, e.g. B. in the Carpathians ( trembita ), in Poland ( bazuna ) in Romania ( bucium ), in Hungary ( fakürt ) in Scandinavia ( lur ), in Peru ( pampa corneta ) and among the Maori in New Zealand ( pūkaea ).
As the Swiss historian Sigismund Furrer (1788-1865) reports, a cowherd in Baltschiedertal is said to have blown the horn so loudly in 1212 that it could be heard as far as Visp to warn of the invasion of the Duke of Zähringen . According to popular tradition, the alphorn was used as a signaling instrument in some Swiss areas in the 14th century.
The first known written mention of an alphorn in Switzerland dates back to 1527. From that time there is an entry in an account book of the St. Urban monastery about “two chunks of a Valaisan with an alphorn”. The alphorn is briefly mentioned in Johann Rudolf Wyss , Reise in das Berner Oberland (1817). Several historical descriptions of the construction of an alphorn have come down to us, including in Heinrich Szadrowsky, The music and the sound-producing instruments of the Alpine inhabitants (1867/68), and Erich Röhr, The production of an alphorn (1934).
In the 18th century, the alphorn was almost forgotten, as the impoverished shepherds making music in the cities brought it into disrepute in the 17th century and mocked it as a beggar's horn. But romance and the tourists in the Swiss Alps (at first it was mainly the English) brought folklore and the alphorn to bloom in the 19th century . Today, the alphorn and the Swiss Army Knife are the national symbols alongside cheese and chocolate. The first shepherd festivals ( Unspunnenfeste ) with alphorn music took place in 1805 and 1808.
Design
Due to its blowing technique, the alphorn is one of the brass instruments in terms of instrumentation , although it is traditionally mainly made of wood. It can be heard 5 to 10 km away, depending on the landscape. The alphorn is very popular in Switzerland. It has neither keys, slides nor valves and is therefore limited to the natural tone series with regard to the notes to be played . The Büchel , which works on the same principle, and the Tiba are less common in Switzerland.
For example, in the Sinfonia pastorella for alphorn and strings by Leopold Mozart, the solo instrument has a range of only four notes, the triad of the 4th, 5th and 6th natural note and the fourth below (3rd note). Experienced players, however, can reach the first 16 notes of the natural series. Three of the natural tones (7th / 14th, 11th - the Alphorn Fa , 13th) lie relatively in the middle between two successive semitones of the equal scale. Some musicians therefore do not use these tones, which are unfamiliar or dissonant-sounding for ears familiar with Western music. Others see them as typical of instruments and consciously use them as a sound characteristic of a natural instrument.
Dissemination and use
The Federal Yodelling Association has around 1800 organized alphorn players in Switzerland and around the world among its members. In Germany there are numerous alphorn players who come together at international meetings and perform there as soloists, ensembles or in mass choirs, for example at the annual Allgäu alphorn players' meeting or at the state meeting of the Baden-Württemberg alphorn players. In Austria there is, among other things, the Alphorn Festival in Baad in the Kleinwalsertal .
In Munster (Alsace), now in France , the history of which was shaped by immigrants from the Alpine countries after the Thirty Years' War , playing the alphorn among dairymen on the Vosges peaks has been common practice for two centuries. Although this tradition is only documented in writing at the beginning of the 19th century, there is no doubt that the manufacture and use of the alphorn by Münster herdsmen on the Vosges alpine pastures can be traced back to the Swiss or Tyrolean immigration to the devastated valley. It took several centuries for this introduced knowledge to establish itself permanently in the Fecht Valley and to develop so far that local production also began with other materials such as glass or tinplate.
There are few classical compositions for alphorn, the best known of which are the Sinfonia pastorella for alphorn and strings in G major by Leopold Mozart and the Parthia on peasant instruments by Jiří Družecký (Georg Druschetzky) . More recent works are the Concertino Rustico by the Hungarian composer Ferenc Farkas and the Concerto for Alphorn and Orchestra and Dialogue with Nature for Alphorn, Piccolo and Orchestra by the Swiss conductor and composer Jean Daetwyler . In 1996 the Concertino for alphorn in F and strings by Franz Kanefzky was created . In 2004 the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad commissioned the Concerto for Alphorn and Orchestra by the Swiss composer Daniel Schnyder , which was premiered by Arkady Shilkloper . It uses a conventional, classical symphony orchestra, but includes a triple drum part and synthesizer. Stylistically, it can be described as a crossover between jazz and classical music. In 2014, as a composition commission from musica viva, the concerto grosso No. 1 for 4 alphorns and orchestra by Georg Friedrich Haas , which works with overtone series and microtonality , was premiered .
Occasionally the alphorn is also used purely in jazz. The group Kerberbrothers Alpenfusion uses the instrument in the pieces Alphornblues and Geierwalli , both released on CD in 1998. The jazz trumpeter and composer Matthias Schriefl also uses several alphorns in different keys in his band 6, Alps and Jazz .
production
The technique of making pipes out of wood is very old, until recently even water pipes were made in this way or similar.
Today there are some specialized instrument makers who make an alphorn from suitable logs. Its curved shape originally came from the spruce , which grew crooked on the slope and was peeled and cut in half lengthways. This curved part has not been used for a long time and the shape of the cup no longer depends on the natural curvature, but is standardized: In Switzerland a distinction is made between the Bernese shape - larger arch - from the Lucerne or Central Switzerland shape, with a slightly narrower one Bell curvature. The subsequent hollowing out of the two halves to a wall thickness of 6 to 8 millimeters takes over seventy hours of manual work. A subsequent wrapping of rattan (formerly bark leaves, strips of wood or roots) serves as weather protection and a (mostly) wooden mouthpiece as a means of sound generation, as is usual with brass instruments. The price for such an instrument is around 1200 to 3300 euros (as of 2013).
Mood
The following moods are being built today:
| Tuning (keynote) | length | lowest note |
|---|---|---|
| It | 4.05 m | It 1 |
| E. | 3.89 m | E 1 |
| F. | 3.68 m | F 1 |
| F sharp / Ges | 3.47 m | Fis 1 / Ges 1 |
| G | 3.27 m | G 1 |
| G sharp / a flat | 3.09 m | G sharp 1 / A flat 1 |
| B. | 2.75 m | B 1 |
| C. | 2.45 m | C. |
In Switzerland the F sharp / Ges alphorn is most widespread, in Germany the F alphorn. In the usual design, alphorns can now be divided into three parts.
The longest alphorn
The longest alphorn in the world is 47 meters long. This world record is held by the alphorn maker Josef Stocker from Kriens along with the Americans Peter Wutherich, whereby the final decision by the diameter of the cup (English bell was wrestled). According to Josef Stocker, this alphorn cannot be played. However, if not all parts are used during assembly, the longest playable alphorn is created with a length of 14 meters. This has 64 tones compared to the 16 tones of a "normal" alphorn.
The longest alphorn made in one piece at 20.67 meters, entered in the Guinness Book of Records, comes from Alois Biermaier's workshop in Bischofswiesen (Upper Bavaria) and can be viewed there.
Further developments and variants
Today alphorns are made from plastic reinforced with glass or carbon fibers, but also from acrylic glass. They weigh no more than a kilogram and cost around 2500 euros. In terms of sound, such a modern alphorn is clearly inferior to the wooden horns. As an experiment, instruments with keys or a valve machine (the valves act like a trumpet ) were built in order to expand the range to a diatonic scale (keys) or a chromatic scale (valve machine).
Organ register "Alphorn"
The alphorn register is occasionally found in organs . The special sound of the alphorn is imitated on these organs by an organ pipe (mostly made of wood), which can be found, for example, in the swallow's nest organ from 1977 in Ulm Minster as a 16 'register in the main work.
Movie
A documentary about the alphorn comes from Stefan Schwietert and is called Music of the Alps - The Alphorn . It has a playing time of 76 minutes. It deals with the origins of the instrument and leads on to a modern conception of alphorn music - from the yodelling association to jazz, so to speak.
music
Swiss protagonists in the field of alpine world music are Hans Kennel , Eliana Burki , MYTHA with Betty Legler and Hans Kennel, Balthasar Streiff as solo performer, with Hornroh , the Modern Alphorn Quartet and Stimmhorn . Hartmut Schmidt wrote two concerts for alphorn and orchestra.
Armin Rosin brought classical music in connection with the alphorn: Alphorn Goes Classic (CD recording 2001).
In the jazz category , the Russian horn player Arkadi Fimowitsch Schilkloper performs with the alphorn.
The alphorn has also been used in more modern pop music. The Swiss musician Pepe Lienhard and his band used the instrument in their 1977 song Swiss Lady , with which they took part in the Eurovision Song Contest and thus achieved sixth place. In Switzerland the title was a number one hit and stayed in the national charts for 18 weeks.
Well-known Swiss alphorn players include Lisa Stoll and Eliana Burki .
literature
- Brigitte Bachmann-Geiser : The alphorn - from a lock to a rock instrument . Haupt, Bern 1999, ISBN 3-258-05640-4 .
- Anthony C. Baines, Max Peter Baumann : Alphorn. In: Grove Music Online . 2001.
- Werner Bauregger, Josef Focht, Werner Sepp: The Alphorn in Upper Bavaria . Bayerischer Landesverein für Heimatpflege, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-931754-11-1 .
- Pierre Grandjean: The alphorn - tradition, craft, music. AT-Verlag, Aarau, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-03800-599-5 .
- Alfred Pfleger: The Swiss Alphorn in the High Vosges. In: Swiss Archives for Folklore = Archives suisses des traditions populaires . Volume 49, 1953, pp. 34-50
- Franz Schüssele : Alphorn and Hirtenhorn in Europe. Wooden horns from Switzerland to Sweden, from Russia to Romania, past and present . Book and accompanying CD with 63 sound samples, Gälfiäßler Verlag, Friesenheim 2000, ISBN 3-927781-22-3 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Max Peter Baumann : Function and Symbol: on the “Alphorn” paradigm. In: Erich Stockmann (Ed.): Studia instrumentorum musicae popularis . 5. Musikmuseet, Stockholm 1977, pp. 27–32, here p. 28.
- ^ Sibyl Marcuse : A Survey of Musical Instruments. Harper & Row, New York 1975, p. 815.
- ^ Johann Rudolf Wyss : Journey to the Bernese Oberland. Volume 2, Bern 1817, p. 892 .
- ^ Heinrich Szadrowsky: The music and the sound-producing instruments of the alpine inhabitants . In: The Alphorn. Yearbook of the Swiss Alpine Club . 4th year, Bern 1867–1869.
- ↑ Erich Röhr: The production of an alphorn. In: The Alps . Volume 10, 1934, p. 219.
- ^ Alphorn in the Allgäu , accessed on December 31, 2013
- ^ Complete choir at the state meeting of the alphorn blowers Baden-Württemberg in Rötenbach im Allgäu on August 18, 2013 , video on YouTube
- ↑ Alphorn groups. Brass music association Baden-Württemberg
- ↑ website Alphorn Festival in Baad in Kleinwalsertal
- ↑ Explanations by Guy Buecher, Ensemble des Alpes du Hohnack Walbach to read online, part history ( alphorn.fr , accessed on June 11, 2018)
- ↑ See H. Dierstein: Les origines de Mittlach, du Tyrol et d'ailleurs. In: Annuaire de la Société d'histoire du val et de la ville de Munster. 2004, pp. 119–133, p. 120, for example, he tells the branch of the Lachat brothers from Delémont in the canton of Jura in Mittlach in the Rothenbach high valley.
- ↑ The Swabian alphorn maker Bernhard Köhler confirms it in his travel report Report International Alphornbläsertreffen on September 14, 2008 in Münster / Alsace to Munster: “Before we went to the hospitable Sennhütte I unpacked my alphorn and let it down into the valley and to the alpine pastures all around resound, with echo reply. The landlord and the herdsman came in at once and disappeared briefly. He wiped his sleeve over a dusty picture that showed the hut in Steinwasen, in front of which a young herdsman was blowing the alphorn. It was an alphorn made of sheet metal without an extra mouthpiece. 'Now the herdsmen would have to answer from the alpine pastures around, but they are no longer there to blow the alphorn.' "; Quotation from the website alphornkoehler.de ( Memento from November 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Information from BR-Klassik ( Memento from April 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ The longest alphorn in the world on the Alphornmusik.de website with photos of the longest alphorns
- ↑ World's Biggest Alphorn Claimed Article in the Chicago Tribune, December 28, 1999
- ↑ Largest playable alphorn in the world , article in the Neue Luzerner Zeitung from June 14, 2011
- ^ Alfons Gaisbauer: Alphorn goes jazz. TMK Cologne website, accessed on June 11, 2018 .