Single tone flute

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Single-tone flutes are lengthways flutes without finger holes that only produce one tone. According to the type of sound generation, they belong to the core gap flutes or edge-blown flutes . Short flutes with only one sound are also whistle called, to distinguish them from multi-tone handle hole flutes. The lower end can be open or closed ( Gedackt be).

There are flutes without finger holes which, depending on the blowing pressure, produce several tones of the natural tone series and are summarized as overtone flutes . Pan flutes consist of two or more differently tuned single-tone flutes connected in parallel and are suitable for melodic playing.

origin

Longitudinal flutes are historically older than transverse flutes . Most flutes have a cylindrical music tube, vessel flutes are in the minority. Single-tone flutes or pipes served and still serve mainly as signaling instruments. They mark the beginning of the development of the musically universally usable flute family. The pan flutes, which consist of bundled single-tone flutes, presumably precede the finger-hole flutes, because the development of the latter means material savings with the same musical possibilities. Single-tone flutes are very rare as a musical instrument, and flutes with up to three finger holes are also rarely used. Flutes with four or more finger holes are much more common. Ensembles with several individual, differently tuned single-tone flutes appear as forerunners of the pan flutes.

Single-tone flutes played individually

Two wooden pifilca from Patagonia .

In southern Africa there are long, side-blown antelope horns phalaphala , which, with their one tone, were used in courtly ceremonies and as a crier at meetings. The Herero used smaller antelope horns than single-tone flutes with a closed lower end by blowing in from the opening towards the tip. Such natural horn whistles, used on happy occasions and as signal calls, reported on by European travelers in the 19th century, emitted a loud, shrill sound. The simplest short single-tone flutes in South Africa are known by the Zulu and Xhosa as impepe (plural izimpepe ). They consist of a reed that is closed on the underside by an ovary and the player blows into the top end of which has just been cut. He places the end of the pipe on the tip of the tongue and blows at an oblique angle against the upper edge of the pipe. According to a report from 1899, the impepe was used by boys during dances or as a signal when fighting among themselves. The now obsolete longitudinal flute igemfe of the Zulu was blown according to the same archaic principle of sound generation . Its end, which is open at the bottom, could be closed with a finger when playing, so that when the pipe was closed, a second tone, a fourth lower, could be heard.

The shortest of the flutes ( fluier fără dop ) played in Romanian folk music is the fifă ("pipe"). With this single-tone flute, women in the Oltenia region create a keynote for the simple melody of a yodelling singing voice.

Prehistoric flute finds are always associated with magical rituals. This also applies to the pifilca of the Andean region in central Chile . This flute from pre-Hispanic times can still be found in a few isolated areas. Archaeological specimens are made of stone or wood. They have two bores that are narrow in the middle and widen on both sides and produce a high-pitched, dissonant sound with which ancestors and supernatural beings should be called to the ritual site. Today, Mapuche often make pifilca from one type of bamboo and blow them in pairs with the same effect. The pifilca has certain similarities with the Aymara panpipe siku .

Single-tone flute ensembles

An ensemble of several single-tone flutes, in which each musician contributes a note to the overall sound, can be used like a pan flute to create a melody. In sub-Saharan Africa there are occasional single-tone flute ensembles that musically correspond to the more widespread ensembles with single-tone horns (for example the calabash trumpets waza in the border area between Sudan and Ethiopia and the enzamba cross horns in Uganda ), but are of lower volume. African single-tone flute ensembles have been known in Europe since they heard and reported about Vasco da Gama when he circumnavigated South Africa in 1497. With the musically related pan flute ensemble, they are spread from South Africa to Mozambique , Zambia , Uganda, Sudan and Ethiopia . Heading towards West Africa, they were found in Nigeria , Cameroon and Chad .

In Rwanda such an ensemble, which, like the ensemble of the transverse horns amakondera, used to perform mainly in honor of the king, is called insengo . The insengo is an edge-blown, short lengthwise flute that is carved from wood and then cut in half lengthways . Both halves are cut out in the shape of a channel, placed on top of each other, first wrapped with a cord and then with an elastic band from the esophagus of a bull. Before the game, the musician pours banana beer through the tube to soften the wood and improve the sound. He holds the flute pointing downwards between the thumb and forefinger of the clenched hand with the palm of his hand against his mouth and blows over the larger end. The insengo , together with the ceremonial drums ( ingoma ), has been a symbol of the Tutsi rulers since the beginning of the Kingdom of Rwanda . The Rwandan single-tone flute ensemble includes flutes in three sizes, which are named like the drum types of the ingoma ensemble and produce a high tone ( ishakwe ), a medium tone ( inyahura ) and a low tone ( ibihumulizo ). The three flute sizes in the ensemble are single or multiple. A corresponding ensemble of the Ankole in southwest Uganda uses the single-tone flute ensheegu .

The Ingessana in the Sudanese province of an-Nil al-azraq play five to eight single-tone flutes called bal , which are closed at the bottom, with a longitudinal trumpet, which consists of a bottle-shaped calabash , and several calabashes rattle in an ensemble.

The Khoisan in southern Africa used to play single single-tone reed flutes to accompany dances. According to the accounts of eyewitnesses since Vasco da Gama in the 15th century, the single-tone flutes seem to have been the main musical instruments of the Khoisan. The flutes were always unconnected, it was only under European influence that they began to bundle flutes of different lengths into pan flutes. The nyanga or nanga ("small horn") of the Venda in South Africa are corresponding pan flutes, which often consist of four pipes and are blown by the dancers during the tshikona circle dance .

The hindewhu is a seven to eight centimeter long single-tone flute made from a plant tube among the pygmies in the Central African Republic , which a musician blows in rapid succession with sung notes. The flute provides an upper drone tone to the sung intervals and several musicians produce a polyphonic melody in harmony . The hindewhu style of music was a source of inspiration for American minimal music in the 1970s .

Very ancient instruments have survived in folk music in northern Lithuania . The skudutis ( Lithuanian , plural skudučiai ) is an 8 to 20 centimeter long single-tone flute, closed at the bottom, which is blown through two notches on the upper edge. In an ensemble of two to five players, everyone holds one, two or three flutes in their hand in order to create a rhythmic pattern with several second intervals. Similar to the skudučiai ensemble, the wooden trumpet ragas is used. The skudučiai are used in the instrumental versions of the polyphonic vocal style sutartinė . The sutartinės used to be sung and danced by women in the spring while men played the instruments. In addition to the single-tone flute, they used other wind instruments such as the horn pipe birbynė and the box zither kanklės (similar to the Finnish kantele ).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sibyl Marcuse : A Survey of Musical Instruments. Harper & Row, New York 1975, p. 552
  2. ↑ Klaus P. Wachsmann : The primitive musical instruments. In: Anthony Baines (ed.): Musical instruments. The history of their development and forms. Prestel, Munich 1982, pp. 13–49, here p. 42
  3. ^ Percival R. Kirby : The Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa. (1934) 2nd edition. Witwatersrand University Press, Johannesburg 1965, pp. 88, 93
  4. ↑ Tiberiu Alexandru: FIFA. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments . Vol. 2, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 278
  5. ^ Carolina Robertson: Latin America. I. Indigenous music, 3. History, context and performing practice. In: Grove Music Online , 2001
  6. ↑ José Pérez de Arce: Sonido Rajado: The Sacred Sound of Chilean Pifilca Flutes. In: The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 51, July 1998, pp. 17-50, here p. 19
  7. ^ Peter Cooke: Stopped flute ensembles. In: Grove Music Online, 2001
  8. ^ Ferdinand J. de Hen: Insengo (Rwandan stopped flute ensemble). In: Grove Music Online, October 26, 2011
  9. ↑ Jos goose Emans, Barbara Schmidt-Wrenger: Central Africa. Music history in pictures. Volume 1: Ethnic music, delivery 9th Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1986, p. 48
  10. ↑ Timkehet Teffera: Aerophone in the instruments of the peoples of East Africa. (Habilitation thesis) Trafo Wissenschaftsverlag, Berlin 2009, p. 308
  11. ^ David K. Rycroft: Khoikhoi music. 1. Musical instruments. In: Grove Music Online, 2001
  12. ^ Percival R. Kirby: The Reed-Flute Ensembles of South Africa: A Study in South African Native Music. In: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 63, July – December 1933, pp. 313–388, here p. 384
  13. ↑ See Andrew Tracey: The Nyanga Panpipe Dance. In: African Music, Vol. 5, No. 1, 1971, pp. 73-89
  14. ↑ Juozas Antanavičius, Jadvyga Čiurlionytė: Lithuania. II. Traditional music. 6. Instruments. In: Grove Music Online, Jan. 18, 2006