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Fakürt ( Hungarian , "wooden horn"), also kürt ("horn"), is a natural trumpet with a predominantly cylindrical wooden tube that disappeared from everyday life in the first half of the 20th century and was mainly used by shepherds and farmers in Hungary as a signaling instrument . The wooden trumpet , which belongs to the alphorn type, was up to 2.5 meters long among the Szeklers in Romania and less than a meter in the Great Hungarian Plain .

Origin and Distribution

The detail of an initial in the Hungarian illustrated chronicle from the 14th century shows the legend according to which the captured Hungarian prince Lehel struck down the victorious German duke Heinrich with a long trumpet. Probably the oldest illustration of a Hungarian wooden trumpet.

Natural trumpets and animal horns produce either only one tone or several overtones of the natural tone series and are distributed worldwide in a wide variety of forms. For the possible origin and distribution of the northern and eastern European wooden trumpets, see the article Bazuna on the wooden long trumpet played by the Kashubians in northern Poland .

While the wooden trumpet is rarely found in Western Europe apart from the alphorn (and the Büchel ) in Switzerland, its tradition lives on in some rural communities in Eastern Europe. Related wind instruments in the region are the trembita of the Hutsuls in Ukraine and the wooden lur, which is found next to the birch bark trumpet neverlur in Norway.

The narrow musical boundaries correspond to the few possible uses of European wooden trumpets: They are usually connected to the seasonal grazing of the shepherds, who in early summer drive their flocks to the high pastures over greater distances and in stables down into the valley when winter sets in. This form of transhumance is still practiced today in the Pyrenees , the Alps , the Balkan countries , the Carpathians , the Baltic States and Scandinavia. The wooden trumpet was often an aid for the herdsmen there, at least in the past. Hollow trumpets serve the shepherds to round up their flock and to keep predators away. In addition, they warn of dangers; Forest workers and fishermen convey messages with trumpet signals. Furthermore, according to ancient cultic traditions, wooden trumpets have a magical meaning for shepherds as well as in the villages for Christmas customs and other seasonal celebrations. Their sound is supposed to drive away spirits and protect them from evil. Wooden trumpets played as melody instruments in folk music today have a symbolic meaning at folklore events for the national identity traced back to a pastoral culture. In Switzerland, among the Hutsuls in Ukraine ( trembita ), in Romania (with the old Latin name bucium ), among the Kashubians in Poland ( bazuna ) and elsewhere, wooden trumpets are considered "national" instruments.

The name bucium refers to the bucina and the name truba for Belarusian , Finnish , Ukrainian and other Eastern European wooden trumpets (like the Ukrainian jew's harp drymba ) has a linguistic relationship with the tuba . Bucina and tuba were Roman bronze trumpets that served as military signal transmitters. The late medieval field trumpeters and timpanists in the Kingdom of Hungary , who transmitted signals with their instruments or announced their arrival, were also in military service. The Hungarian military power was based on horsemen, which is why the field musicians on horseback beat the drum and blew the trumpet. In addition, in the 15th and 16th centuries belonged bagpipe ( duda ) and jew's harp ( doromb ) on field instruments. In addition to field trumpeters, there were trumpeters in municipal services ("Türmer") who had become professional musicians in Hungary in the 16th century and who also played the trumpet and other instruments in church music. Another professional group were the court trumpeters, whose activity at the Hungarian royal courts went beyond blowing signals for some of them, who were considered musicians.

The brass trumpet trumpeters playing in the various official functions are documented in Hungarian literary sources from the 10th to the 19th century. The first written evidence for the natural horn in Hungary is the name kürtös ("horn player"), which has been handed down from the 13th century. The wooden trumpet has been known by name since the 15th century. In a military order from 1463, during the reign of King Matthias Corvinus , it is said that the Szekler soldiers should be summoned with "tympanis et zaldobomibus", i.e. with drums and wooden trumpets, because zaldog or zádog means "wooden trumpet made of linden wood". In an illustrated manuscript from the 14th century, the Hungarian Chronicle of Kalti Márk, in a is initial length and shape of a wooden trumpet - - with which in the illustrated, a long trumpet of Lechfeld Battle losing 955 and jailed Hungarian prince Lehel after the legend the German Duke Heinrich reflected.

Alphorn blowers in costume. Genre scene by the Swiss painter and graphic artist Gabriel Lory from 1824.

The wooden trumpets and natural horns were mainly handed down as pastoral instruments in the folk tradition. Shepherds and farmers played the wooden trumpet in Hungary until the first half of the 20th century, the Szeklers used it until around the 1930s / 1940s. Hungarian swineherd owned a wind instrument made from cattle horn ( kanásztülök ) until the 1960s . Up to this time, brass trumpets ("modernized" wooden trumpets) were also used for signaling.

At the beginning of the 20th century, trumpets were rather underrated in folk music, although a century earlier they had played a leading role in the bands. The amateur musician Fabó Bertalan (1868–1920) wrote in 1908: “The brass instrument is not popular with Hungarians; Among the uneducated and backward gypsy bands in the country there is a brass trumpet that is blown mercilessly during wedding procession on the garden paths ... “Folk bands with trumpets were rare at that time - they only spread in Hungary from the 1930s onwards Villages, but wooden trumpets and natural horns were still so widespread that folklorists collected them in large numbers and brought them to the ethnographic museums. In 1911 Béla Bartók published a work on wooden trumpets and horns that was essential for Hungarian folk music research. The name havasikürt (“Alpine Horn”, literally “Horn of the Snow Mountains”) goes back to Bartók (1935) .

Design

In addition to fakürt , there were other regional names that indicate the shape and use of the wooden trumpet. Among the Szeklers these are: pásztorkürt ("shepherd's horn "), nyírfakürt ("birch wood horn ", if wrapped with birch bark), hárskürt, szádokkürt and zádogkürt ("linden horn ", if wrapped with linden bark ). In the lowlands the following names were common for the smaller wooden trumpet: duda ("trumpet", a common Slavic word for wind instruments), especially füzfaduda ("willow wood trumpet ") and víziduda ("water trumpet", because a leaky trumpet was placed in water with it the leak closed by itself due to the swelling wood).

Szekler wooden trumpet

Norwegian birch bark trumpet neverlur .

In the case of the Hungarian minority in Romania, it actually consists of a 1.5 to 2.5 meter long, approximately cylindrical wooden tube, the lower part of which is conically widened and bent up. A correspondingly grown, young fir or maple tree must be found for the more or less strong curvature . The tree cut below the point of curvature is debarked using the traditional manufacturing method, which is basically the same for all wooden trumpets, and split lengthways into two halves with an ax. In a time-consuming work process, both halves are chiseled out with a gouge and smoothed. The halves placed on top of each other are wrapped with wire in three or four places for the first fixation. In order to hermetically seal the interfaces, heated liquid fir resin is poured over it. Resin dripped over the entire pipe ensures better adhesion of the now wrapped strips of birch bark or linden bark. In order to soften the strips of bark, which are four to five centimeters wide, spirally cut around the trunk and then peeled off, they are placed in warm water before processing. The wrapping is carried out starting from the thinner, upper end (blowing opening) with overlapping, tightly drawn strips until the pipe is completely surrounded by bark. To test the airtightness of a wooden trumpet, close the vent opening with a wooden plug and pour water into it.

In some of the trumpets in the Ethnographic Museum in Budapest, which come from Csík County , the tube is not made of wood, but of the bark of a young willow tree , which is lifted from the trunk after a lengthwise cut and rolled into a tube. As with the wooden trumpet, strips of birch bark are now wrapped around this bark tube.

In the 19th century there were wooden trumpets in almost all of Hungary, which were also wrapped in other materials. Specimens from the Mátra Mountains in the central north of the country are wrapped in strips of animal skin and some from the lowlands with linen cloth soaked in wax. According to a report from the end of the 19th century, there were trumpets wrapped in sheep intestines in the Bakony Forest .

The mouthpiece ( szipka , "tip") is the 10 centimeter long branch tip of a three to four year old fir tree with a diameter of 20 to 25 millimeters, which is cut 6 millimeters deep in the middle. By holding the piece of wood sideways with both hands and turning it against each other, a tubular piece on one of the two sides detaches from the corresponding growth ring, which can be pulled off. The thicker half is now funnel-shaped and the thinner half, if necessary, is slightly pointed so that it fits into the pipe end.

Wooden trumpet in the lowlands

Wooden trumpet ligawka from central Poland. Drawing in the "Old Polish Encyclopedia" by Zygmunt Gloger , published between 1900 and 1903 .

The 70 to 100 centimeter long wooden trumpets in the Great Hungarian Plain are of a similar design to the Szeklers, using maple , willow and poplar wood . The pipe halves are not completely wrapped with strips of bark, but are held together at four or five places by wicker or metal rings, depending on their length.

This type of construction is also common in other Eastern European wooden trumpets, such as the three-meter-long busókürt of the Šokci (Schokatzen), the southern Slavic minority in the area of Mohács in southern Hungary. The Hungarian name (regionally it was called obremenica ) refers to the previous use of the trumpet in the local masked games busójárás during the carnival season .

The mouthpiece (here sípóka ) of the trumpets in the lowlands is made of cherry , mulberry or other fruit tree wood and is kettle or funnel-shaped with different end diameters. The holes have a diameter between 3 and 6 millimeters.

Style of play

Particularly long wooden trumpets are not held horizontally when playing, but placed on the floor or on an object placed underneath with the curvature of the curved funnel opening. The player can produce dull, but several kilometers audible tones from the first to - depending on his constitution and the dimensions of the tube - a maximum of the eleventh overtone. In accordance with the predominantly practical uses of the wooden trumpets, shepherds, fishermen or farmers blew as warning signals and simple tone sequences that served to facilitate communication. The wind instruments often adopted signals known from the military. In this way, the Szekler shepherds tried to keep predators, especially bears and wolves, away from their herd.

To Komárom Fischer used in northwestern Hungary halászkürt ( "Fischer Horn") or halászduda ( "Fischertröte") called, short wooden trumpets as a signal instrument. So that they should be heard from far away, the fishermen blew their trumpets horizontally just above the surface of the water. In this area, the operators of water mills used trumpet signals to signal to the farmers in the area that they needed more grain for grinding.

Recently, wooden trumpets were rarely used for making music. According to a description from 1868, the Szekler shepherds used the wooden trumpet on their mountain pastures in the evening to exchange messages with one another over great distances. To do this, they must have determined the meaning of certain tone sequences, which have not been handed down for Hungary, but for the bark and wooden truba truba that was still played in Slovakia in the 19th century . In an ethnographic document from 1907, a short curved wooden trumpet is shown, with which lunch was announced in a peasant family around Debrecen in the east.

Wind instruments used by Hungarian shepherds in folk music are the core- gap flute furulya with six finger holes and the bagpipe duda .

literature

  • Bálint Sárosi: The folk musical instruments of Hungary . (= Ernst Emsheimer , Erich Stockmann (Hrsg.): Handbook of European Folk Music Instruments. Series 1, Volume 1). German publishing house for music, Leipzig 1967

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Aindrias Hirt: The European Folk Music Scale: A New Theory. University of Otago, 2013, pp. 1–70, here p. 5 (abridged version: The Origin of the European Folk Music Scale: A New Theory. ) In: Ethnomusicology Review , Volume 21, September 2013. The knowledge about the occurrence of wooden trumpets in the 19th century in the Pyrenees and Scotland is based only on a reference in Heinrich Szadrowsky: The music and the sound-producing instruments of the Alpine inhabitants: From Schafhäutl's estate. A cultural-historical sketch. Reprinted separately from the yearbook of the Swiss Alpine Club, Volume IV, 1867, p. 297
  2. ^ Andreas Michel, Oskár Elschek: Instruments of folk music. In: Doris Stockmann (Ed.): Folk and popular music in Europe. ( New Handbook of Musicology, Volume 12) Laaber, Laaber 1992, p. 324
  3. ↑ Max Peter Baumann : survey model and comparison. Explained using the example of long trumpets . In: Die Musikforschung , (31st year) issue 2, April / June 1978, pp. 161–176, here p. 166
  4. ↑ Wojciech M. Marchwica: The Musical Tradition of Central European Intangible Heritage . (PDF) In: K. Jagodzińska, J. Purchla (Ed.): The Limits of Heritage. The 2nd Heritage Forum of Central Europe. Krakau 2015, pp. 674–686, here p. 678
  5. ↑ Inna D. Nazina, Ilkka Kolehmainen: Truba . In: Grove Music Online, May 25, 2016
  6. ^ William Noll: Ukraine . In: Thimothy Rice, James Porter, Chris Goertzen (Eds.): Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume 8: Europe. Routledge, New York / London 2000, p. 812
  7. ^ Eugen Brixel: The signaling of the postillions in Austria, Hungary. In: Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae , Volume 32, No. 1/4, 1990, pp. 347-382, here p. 348
  8. ↑ László Zolnay: field trumpeters and musicians war in the Hungarian Middle Ages. In: Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae , Volume 16, No. 1/4, 1974, pp. 151-178, here p. 152
  9. ↑ Péter Király: Court trumpeter in Hungary in the 16th-17th centuries Century. In: Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae , Volume 46, No. 1/2 ( Urban and courtly musical life in Hungary and the neighboring regions in the 16th – 19th centuries ) 2005, pp. 1–19, here p. 7
  10. ^ Bálint Sárosi, 1967, p. 103
  11. ↑ Bertalan Fabó: A magyar népdal zenei feilödése [The musical development of the Hungarian folk song]. Budapest 1908, p. 533, cit. based on: Lujza Tari: The folk music practice of the Hungarian brass bands, presented using historical sources from the 19th century. In: Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae , Volume 32, No. 1/4, 1990, pp. 409-419, here p. 410
  12. ↑ Béla Bartók : A hangazeres zene folklória Magyarországon I. Kanásztülök [The Folklore of instrumental music in Hungary I. swineherd Horn]. Budapest, 1911; Lujza Tari, 1990, p. 410
  13. ↑ Pásztorkürt díszes. Europeana Collections (image of an ox horn called pásztorkürt )
  14. ↑ Bálint Sárosi, 1967, p. 100 f.
  15. ^ Bálint Sárosi, 1967, p. 101
  16. ^ Oskár Elschek: The folk musical instruments of Czechoslovakia. Part 2: The Slovak folk musical instruments. (Ernst Emsheimer, Erich Stockmann (Ed.): Handbook of European Folk Music Instruments. Series 1, Volume 2) Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1983, p. 232, 235
  17. ^ Bálint Sárosi, 1967, p. 103
  18. ^ Lujza Tari: The Instruments and Instrumental Folk Music of the Hungarian Minority in Slovakia in the 20th Century . In: Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae , Volume 39, No. 1, 1998, pp. 35-52, here p. 39