Horanewa

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Horanewa , also horanäva, horanava, horanawa (plural horane ), is a short cone-shaped double-reed instrument of the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka , which is played together with various tubular drums bera in Buddhist ritual music and in the accompanying music to several folk theaters. The horanewa is the only indigenous melody instrument of the Sinhalese, it is related to the north Indian shehnai and other cone oboes of the Persian surnai type .

A musician in the Sri Dalada Maligawa ("Temple of the Tooth") in Kandy plays horanewa .

Origin and Distribution

In the traditional Sinhala music of Sri Lanka there are noticeably few types of musical instruments. According to the teaching of Theravada Buddhism, to which the Sinhalese profess, no gods are worshiped and salvation from the cycle of life ( samsara ) can only be achieved individually, so that religious rituals and collective music-making are not required in the temple. The assessment of music and other arts as “worldly”, superfluous luxury goes back to a sentence in the Buddha's discourse Dasa Dhamma Sutta , according to which beauty means nothing to him. The existing ritual music with several drum types and occasionally a horanewa belongs to the area of ​​the Buddhist folk religion and other religious practices anchored in the people.

The horanewa is the only melodic wind instrument in traditional Sinhalese music. Two other wind instruments have no melodic function: the snail horn and the natural trumpet kombu , which essentially only produce one tone and are used briefly in some rituals. The traditional classification of musical instruments in Sri Lanka ( panchaturya ) does not have four main groups as in India, but five, whereby the meaning of the first three terms is interpreted differently in the ancient Buddhist scriptures. Atata, vitata and atatavitata stand for single-headed and double-headed drums ( kettle drums , frame drums and tubular drums ), alternatively drums struck by hand or with a stick. Ghana combines metal idiophones like cymbals ( talampata ) and susira refers to wind instruments , essentially the horanewa .

The oldest surviving Tamil work, Silappatikaram , which is one of the five great Tamil epics and dates to the 1st century AD, shows that there was a highly developed musical culture in South India at that time with professional musicians, the drums and flutes , Harps ( vina ) and reed instruments played. The instruments mentioned were used together with singing to accompany dance performances.

In northern India, reed instruments can be traced back to the centuries immediately before and after the turn of the century in sculptures that were created under the influence of Iranian, Greek and Central Asian immigrants. Reliefs on the stupa from Sanchi (1st century BC) and from Gandhara (early 1st century AD) reveal a wind instrument with a conical bore, but without a bell and without a lip support . The early images of alleged double reed instruments refute the view that cone oboes only came to South Asia in the course of the Muslim conquests from the end of the first millennium. In the relief by Sanchi, two musicians with straight long trumpets can be seen on one side of the oboe player and two drummers on the other. Apart from various details of the forms, this illustration represents an early preliminary stage of the Persian Naubat military orchestra with the kettle drum naqqara , the long trumpet karna and the double reed instrument surnā . It is unclear whether there was a continuity of the instruments shown in the course of the 1st millennium or whether the orchestral formation used in India after the 8th century and especially in the Mughal period for military and representative purposes was introduced completely independently from the Orient.

The name shehnai for the bowling oboe, which is also played in classical music in northern India today, goes back to the Arabic-Persian surnā . This word context is common from the Balkans (drum-oboe ensemble tapan -zurle ) via Turkey ( zurna ), Myanmar ( hne ) to China ( suona ) and Malaysia ( serune ). Other names for the same type of instrument are, besides horanewa, algaita in Niger , pi chanai in Thailand and tarompet and preret in Indonesia . In India, some cone oboes are known under modifications of the name mavari or madvari , which appears for the first time in the work Brihaddeshi by the music scholar Matanga , written between the 6th and 8th centuries - before the Muslim conquests in South Asia . In Sanskrit texts from the 12th and 13th centuries, the shape of the reed instruments is described in more detail. The name was retained in several bowling oboes played in regional folk music, including mohori in Odisha and tangmuri in the far northeast of India. According to Alastair Dick (2014), the most likely word origin is Arabic mizmar . Dileep Karanth (2005) considers this etymological connection and thus the origin of the South Asian cone oboe from the Middle East to be improbable. Mukhavina for a short South Indian bowling oboe is a Sanskrit name that has been used since the 12th / 13th centuries. Century is mentioned, and kuzhal for a similar bowling oboe in the southern Indian state of Kerala has stood in Tamil for a flute since the 1st millennium . The long nadaswaram is most widespread in southern India .

The Indonesian cone oboes tarompet, preret and others in the Malay Archipelago prove that this type of instrument passed from Muslim immigrants to distant, non-Islamic cultures at an early stage. In the Pali literature of Sri Lanka from the 13th century, cone oboes are mentioned - a century before Islamic conquerors reached southern India. The names horana (to horanewa ) and nagasura (to nadaswaram ) occur in the palitext Saddharma-ratnavaliya of the 13th century in connection with wind instruments. The combination of tubular drum and cone oboe is typical of Islamic musical culture : in Turkey davul and zurna , in Kashmir dohol and swarnai ( surnay ), in southern India tavil and nadaswaram . Dileep Karanth does not rule out that this ensemble formation could also have been present in Indian folk music before the arrival of the Muslim courtly military orchestras. In Saddharma-ratnavaliya the instrument name davura is mentioned in connection with other Ceylonese drums, called bera . In Thupavamsa , a chronicle of Sri Lanka written in Pali in the 13th century , the drum davul is mentioned in addition to the wind instrument horana . The Turkish-Persian drum name does not necessarily require the use of a drum conveyed with Muslim culture in Sri Lanka, but can refer to the fact that in regions that were shielded from the innovative Muslim culture, their and indigenous names were used interchangeably. Karanth concludes from this that, as in the Malay Archipelago or in remote regions of the Himalayas in Sri Lanka, the combination of drum and oboe ( dawula and horanewa ) existed even before the arrival of Islam. There they belonged and still belong to religious and ceremonial music.

Design

Kuzhal player at a temple festival in Kerala. The kuzhal has no pirouette, its shape is otherwise comparable to the horanewa .

The horanewa , like the shehnai in northern India and the kuzhal in southern India, is one of the short, tall and shrill-sounding cone oboes. The total length is 28 to 33 centimeters, of which about 7 centimeters are accounted for by a funnel-shaped bell ( muhukkuwa ) made of brass (also copper or silver). The slightly conical play tube ( horane kanda or nale kanda ) consists of Ceylon ebony ( Diospyros ebenum , Sinhala kaluwara ) or another hardwood, such as Pericopsis mooniana (Sinhala nedun , family of legumes ), Gliricidia sepium (Sinhala wetani tree or ), Frangipaniira (Sinhala araliya ). Game tubes made of ivory , buffalo horn or antlers are also valued . Like most Indian double-reed instruments , the tube usually has seven finger holes ( vith ), but no thumb hole. The wood between the finger holes is often decorated with surrounding colored lines or patterns. A slim, conical mouthpiece ( nalli kura ) with a pirouette and reeds ( ipiyawa ) is attached to the upper end . The reeds are cut from the tip of a young palm leaf, boiled in water with a little turmeric powder, and air-dried. Then rub the strip of leaf between your fingers to make it softer and fold it twice so that four reeds are parallel, which are tied with nylon thread. Only the two inner reeds vibrate when they are blown, the player puts his lips on the outer ones.

With a horanewa measured in 1994 and measuring 28 centimeters in length, the play tube is 15 centimeters long and has a diameter of 13 millimeters inside and 16 millimeters outside at the top. At the lower end, the inside diameter is 18 millimeters and the outside diameter is 25 millimeters, which means that the wall thickness increases as the inside diameter decreases. This instrument only has six finger holes with different distances, not equidistant as is usually the case. The center distances from hole 6 to hole 1 are: 17.5 - 20 - 25.5 - 22 - 26 millimeters. Some buffalo horn play tubes only allow five finger holes due to their limited length.

The range corresponds to about an octave and starts with the lowest note at about a 1 . Eight tones can be produced with seven finger holes. The three deepest finger holes are rarely used. A lower-sounding variant with a total length of 56 centimeters called dirgha horanewa ("long horanewa ") is obsolete.

As with the tubular drums, a mythological significance is ascribed to the dimensions of the horanewa . The length is indicated with a handspan and three finger widths, the former referring to the god of music, Pancasikka, who played the cone oboe at the enlightenment of Prince Siddharta Gautama . The three finger widths stand for the three jewels (i.e. Buddha , Dharma and Sangha ). The instrument is said to have originated as a commission from the king of gods Shakra (Sakka, Indra ) to the other gods. According to the myth of origin, each part was procured from a different deity. The reeds were provided by the love god Kamadenuwa ( Kamadeva ), the mouthpiece Shiwa ( Shiva ), the play tube Ganadewi ( Ganesha ) and the bell provided by the earth goddess Mihikata ( Bhudevi ).

Style of play

As the only usable melodic musical instrument, the horanewa is indispensable for the Buddhist temple ritual hewisi puja , for drum music in Buddhist processions, perahera , and for three Sinhalese folk theater forms: the mask theater kolam and sokari and the drama nadagam . In all cases the horanewa is used together with drums to accompany dances, but with different playing styles.

The horanewa is often blown with circular breathing (Sinhala dik ose , "long playback") and experienced, mostly older players can keep this method in processions for several hours. The high- pitched, shrill sound makes the horanewa suitable for music performed outdoors and for use in drum ensembles. This timbre cannot be varied with circular breathing and is consistently loud because the reeds are completely in the player's mouth and can vibrate freely there. If there are two horanes in an ensemble, both play the same melody line in unison.

Hewisi

The hewisi ensemble in Buddhist monasteries ( vihara ) practices a "musical sacrifice ceremony" called sabda puja or hewisi puja three times a day . The basic line-up generally requires a large kettle drum dawula ( daule ), a pair of kettle drums tamattama and a horanewa . For special occasions or for more affluent temples, this line-up is expanded to include a pair of hand cymbals talampata and a snail horn. When walking around the stupa and while the music group arrives at one of the four gates, they play special rhythms. With the horanewa , the wind player produces a sequence of fixed melody patterns, which he adorns in a complex way. In the central highlands, a barrel drum gata bera and in the lowlands on the southwest and south coasts a slim cylinder drum yak bera can complement this ensemble.

In addition to the daily temple rituals, the hewisi ensemble is also used for welcoming ceremonies for monks and for ceremonies with relics on various occasions. The largest procession ( perahera ) with hundreds of drummers, dancers and several horanewa players is the annual Esala Perahera parade at the most famous Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka, the Sri Dalada Maligawa ("Temple of the Tooth") in Kandy, during which the sanctuary of the teeth on an elephant is carried through the city. Furthermore, the horanewa plays when Buddhist monks arrive at funerals, in the accompanying music when the procession goes to the burial site and during the subsequent ceremonies.

In the temple of the tooth in Kandy the daily “musical sacrifice” takes place early in the morning, at noon and in the evening as thevava ceremony, in which, in addition to horanewa players, several drummers take part, who produce a variety of drum rhythms. The three ceremonies are called aluyam dure (morning), dahawal pujawa or mädiyam dure (noon) and handä dure (evening). There is also the weekly ritual nanumura mangalle , the bathing or anointing ceremony in honor of the tooth relic. There are also other weekly rituals with drums and horanewa , which are collectively called poya hewisi . The auspicious rhythm magul bere is particularly significant . In addition to its ritual function, the music is also divided according to the instruments used: Bera hewisi is played on a tube drum, dawul hewisi on a large cylinder drum, horane hewisi on the cone oboe and hakgedi hewisi on the snail horn.

Besides their use in Buddhist monasteries, hewisi ensembles are also used in small Buddhist temples and shrines ( devale ). There holy scriptures are recited and food is offered for the gods. The ceremonies of the hewisi ensembles in front of the divine shrines are called kemmura hewisi and take place on Wednesdays, Thursdays and sometimes on Saturdays.

Kolam

Mask dance kolam in Kandy. Left cylinder drum yak bera , right barrel drum gata bera .

Kolam is a ritual mask theater that only occurs on the southwest coast of Sri Lanka. It is originally from South India and was brought with them by the Karawa fishing caste who perform it on festive occasions. The roles of both sexes are played by men, as are the musical instruments: the cylinder drum yak bera and the horanewa . An opening ceremony in honor of the Buddha is followed by a similarly standardized narrative about the visit of a mythical royal couple and then a free sequence of dances and individual stories from village life. The mask theater is almost always accompanied by the yak bera . A snail horn can only be heard at the opening and in a few scenes the horanewa . Some dancers wear bells on string ( gejji ) on the lower legs or anklets ( Silambu ) at the ankles.

Sokari

At the popular theater sokari , two or three of the actors wear simple masks. It is shown as a cult for the protection and fertility goddess Pattini in the highlands of Kandy. Like the harvest festival gammadu, which is also associated with Pattini, and the ritual dance Kohomba kankariya to invoke the demon Kohomba Yaka (a yaka ), Sokari belongs to the rural rituals and rain cults of the villagers. It takes place during the Sinhala New Year (March / April). The story is about a man and his beautiful wife Sokari who, together with their servant from the lower Paraiyar caste (named after the drum parai ), set out from southern India to settle in Sri Lanka. There the experiences of the woman and her desire for offspring are spread, which illustrates a fertility cult. All roles are played by men. The accompanying musicians for the scenes play the barrel drum gata bera , the hourglass drum udakki (in southern India idakka ) and the horanewa .

Nadagam

The Sinhalese folk drama nadagam with Hindu, Buddhist and Christian themes was performed in the coastal towns from the mid-18th century, but only gained popularity in the second half of the 19th century. Nadagam from southern India is believed to have been influenced by the Tamil folk theater nattukuttu or the street theater therukuthu .

At the beginning a narrator recites the content of the plot and introduces the individual characters. The music has recognizable Tamil origins, but is performed in the Sinhala style. The musical line-up consists of two players of the Tamil barrel drum maddala , who sit opposite each other. In previous performances there were also a horanewa and a pair of hand cymbals talampata ( thalampota ). Today, a violin, bamboo flute and harmonium are commonly used instead of the traditional melody instrument .

Ritual or entertaining folk theater, in which an accompanying ensemble with drums and a double reed instrument is an essential part, are also known from other regions of South Asia. One example is the bhand pather theater in Kashmir, which has a thousand-year history. The musicians play the pair of kettle drums nagara , the barrel drum dohol and the cone oboe swarnai (larger than the north Indian shehnai ).

literature

  • Oliver Fabian Frei: Music in the Kolam: Representation and analysis of the musical aspects in a Sinhalese masquerade. (Master's thesis) University of Hamburg, 2000
  • Chinthaka Prageeth Meddegoda: The Cultural Function of the Sri Lankan Horanawa . In: Gisa Jähnichen, Terada Yoshitaka (Ed.): Double Reeds along the Great Silk Road. 25th International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM) Colloquium, Double Reeds of the Great Silk Road: The Interaction of Theory and Practice from Antiquity to Contemporary Performance. Shanghai Conservatory of Music in China, November 29 to December 1, 2018, pp. 81–96
  • Chinthaka Prageeth Meddegoda: Playing Non-Music on the Sri Lankan Horanawa. In: Gisa Jähnichen (Ed.): Studia Instrumentorum Musicae Popularis (New Series) IV. (Series of the ITCM Study Group on Musical Instruments) Logos, Berlin 2019, pp. 189–206
  • Natalie M. Webber: Horanäva . In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Volume 2. Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, pp. 693f

Web links

  • Horanava. Grinnell College Musical Instrument Collection

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wolfgang Laade: The Influence of Buddhism on the Singhalese Music of Sri Lanka. In: Asian Music , Volume 25, No. 1/2 ( 25th Anniversary Double Issue ) 1993–1994, pp. 51–68, here p. 52
  2. ↑ Heinz Zimmermann: The Indian cultural area. Sri Lanka . In: Hans Oesch : Non-European Music (Part 1). New Handbook of Musicology Volume 8. Laaber-Verlag, Laaber 1984, p. 302
  3. ↑ Anuradha Seneviratna: Pañcatūrya Nāda and the Hēwisi Pūjā. In: Ethnomusicology , Vol. 23, No. 1, January 1979, pp. 49-56, here p. 51
  4. ↑ E. Senavarayan: Internet Based Learning For Ancient Tamil. (PDF) In: Shanlax International Journal of Arts, Science & Humanities , Volume 1, No. 1, July 2013, pp. 69–73, here p. 70
  5. ↑ Walter Kaufmann : Old India. Music history in pictures. Volume II. Ancient Music. Delivery 8. Ed. By Werner Bachmann. VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1981, pp. 90, 100
  6. ^ Alastair Dick: The Earlier History of the Shawm in India . In: The Galpin Society Journal , Volume 37, March 1984, pp. 80-98, here pp. 83f
  7. ↑ Bigamudre Chaitanya Deva: The Double-Reed Aerophone in India. In: Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council , Volume 7, 1975, pp. 77-84, here p. 78
  8. ↑ Alastair Dick: Mahvarī. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Volume 3, 2014, p. 368
  9. ^ Dileep Karanth: The Indian Oboe Reexamined . In: E-ASPAC: An Electronic Journal in Asian Studies , 2005, p. 5
  10. ↑ Dileep Karanth, 2005, pp. 6f, 13f
  11. ↑ a b Chinthaka Prageeth Meddegoda, 2019, p. 192
  12. ↑ Chinthaka Prageeth Meddegoda, 2018, p. 82f
  13. ↑ Oliver Fabian Frei, 2000, p. 42
  14. ↑ Natalie M. Webber, 2014, p. 693 f.
  15. ↑ Oliver Fabian Frei, 2000, p. 46
  16. ↑ Chinthaka Prageeth Meddegoda, 2018, pp. 87f
  17. ^ Anne Sheeran: Sri Lanka . In: The Concise Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume 2: The Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia. Routledge, New York / London 2008, pp. 1072f
  18. ↑ Jim Sykes: South Asian Drumming Beyond Tala: The Problem with “Meter” in Buddhist Sri Lanka. In: Analythical Approaches to World Music , Volume 6, No. 2, December 2018, pp. 1–49, here p. 27
  19. ↑ Chinthaka Prageeth Meddegoda, 2018, pp. 84, 86
  20. ↑ Daily Service (Tevava). Sri Dalada Maligawa
  21. ↑ Anuradha Seneviratna: Pañcatūrya Nāda and the Hēwisi Pūjā . In: Ethnomusicology , Volume 23, No. 1, January 1979, pp. 49-56, here p. 53
  22. ↑ Jayantha Amarasinghe, Saman M. Kariyakarawana: Caste Roots of Sinhalese Mask Drama (Kolam). (PDF) In: Indian Journal of Research in Management, Business and Social Sciences (IJRMBSS) , Volume 1, No. 1, March 2013, pp. 121–128, here p. 121
  23. ↑ Oliver Fabian Frei, 2000, pp. 26f, 34
  24. ↑ MH Goonatilleka: Mime, Mask and Satire in Kolam of Ceylon. In: Folklore , Volume 81, No. 3, Fall 1970, pp. 161–176, here p. 161
  25. ↑ Anuradha Seneviratna: Folk Beliefs and Rituals Associated with Rain and Drought . In: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Sri Lanka Branch, New Series , Volume 29, 1984/85, pp. 33-54, here pp. 47 f .; see. Heinz Zimmermann: The Indian cultural sector. Sri Lanka. 1984, p. 310
  26. ^ Rajendra Bandara: Sokari. The indigenous folk drama of Sri Lanka. The Island, March 9, 2012
  27. ↑ MB Ariyapala: Wa de Silva Memorial Lecture: Some Aspects of the Cultural Traditions in Sri Lanka of the Late Medieval Period. In: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka, New Series , Volume 41 (special edition: Sesquicentennial Memorial Lectures 1995–1996 ) 1996, pp. 205–227, here p. 221
  28. ^ Richard F. Nyrop: Tamil Culture . In: Area Handbook for Ceylon. Library of Congress, Washington 1971, p. 184
  29. ^ Western Music. Additional Reading Book. Grade 10. (PDF) National Institute of Education, Maharagama 2015, p. 3
  30. ^ Waseem Ahmad Bhat: Musical Instruments used with Bhand Pather of Kashmir. (PDF) In: UGC Approved Sangeet Galaxy , Volume 6, No. 2, July 2017, pp. 26–32