Husle
Koncert in Slavic languages a word root , which in the Middle Ages indiscriminately plucked or painted string instruments meant and their derivatives now mostly String loud - including violins , other box necked lutes and shell necked lutes - and furthermore, zithers call.
Among the Sorbs in East Germany, husle ( husla ) is an old type of three-stringed fiddle (" Sorbian violin ") with tapered sides corresponding to an early form of the violin, which has been known since the 17th century . In the Slovak language , husle is understood to mean the modern violin and a number of different string instruments from Slovak folk music. In Czech the violin is called housle . The husle types of folk music in Slovakia mostly have a corpus carved out of a block of wood, which can be channel-shaped, narrow, pear-shaped or trough-shaped.
In southern Slavic areas in the Balkans, gusle ( gusla ) for a single-string bowl-neck lute and in Polish gęśle for a folk musical instrument are related .
The first Byzantine illustration of a string instrument is dated to the 10th century. With the Arab conquest, string instruments came to the Iberian Peninsula from Western Asia, which al-Farabi first mentioned as rabāb at the beginning of the 10th century . The name-related rebec with a narrow oval body came from there to Western Europe; a broader, pear-shaped string lute was already widespread across Western Europe under the same name around 1100. In addition to these round strokes that were played on the shoulder, there were eight-shaped fiddles held between the legs in Christian Spain from the 12th century .
In Russian , gusli ( Cyrillic гусли) mainly stands for two traditional box zithers that have been depicted since the 14th century: a narrow, wing-shaped and a broad, helmet-shaped type. The latter is also known in the Ukraine as husli or gusli (гуслі).
Another context of meaning of husle and gusle (also Polish gusła ), which in Slavic languages has a semantic connection with the stringed instruments, is “ witchcraft ”, “ magic ”.
etymology
The theories on the origin of the Slavic word group husle refer to a broad, also extra-musical context . Husle and related forms are feminine plural. The singular husla occurs less often, because the musical instrument consists of several strings and is viewed as a whole with the plural word. In the Ukraine is husla a Pluraletantum , as is possibly from the Ukrainian borrowed Gusla in Bulgarian and Polish . With the beginning of the Christianization of the Slavs around the 10th century, the old Slavic forms husle, husli had the meaning "strings" and "string instruments in general". In Czech, a distinction between plucked instruments and string instruments called husle can be seen from the end of the 14th century. In written Czech String Instruments today called housle (colloquially husle, husle or Hosle, diminutives are huslicky and huslky ). In medieval Slavic harps will husle always associated with psalms mentioned, and for example, as "neunsaitiges psaltery explained". Only in Ukrainian lexicons of the 17th and 18th centuries (in the Hetmanat area ) husla is used in the singular as a term for harp , zither and generally stringed instrument.
The Ukrainian music historian Irene Zinkiv (2014) summarizes the considerations on the etymology. Accordingly, the Russian Medievalist R. Halayska takes the view that when non-Slavic peoples were accepted into the Principality of Moscow after their conversion to the Orthodox Church in the 12th century, the names of the zither instruments brought from the Volga region found their way into the language. The Tatars called their helmet-shaped zither type husle, the Mari (Cheremiss) a stringed instrument kyslye and the Chuvash their own hyuslye . This kind of foreign adoption of the Slavic word husle speaks for its origin, which cannot be traced back any further. In the early Slavic Bible translations of the Orthodox Church from the second half of the 9th century, when Christianity was just beginning to spread, husle does not yet appear. Instead, Greek kithara and Latin cythara are translated with gusti and gudu .
Ignác Jan Hanuš (1842) combined the old meaning fields of husle , "witchcraft", "magic", "superstition" (corresponding to the names Huslar, Guslarz , for example "magician") and "zither" with the assumption that the musical instrument could originally be have been used in magical practices. Such a connection is suggested by the Russian epic Sadonschtschina , probably composed at the end of the 14th century , in which a singer and an obvious magician plays a stringed instrument and praises the past in "old words" - probably referring to the performance of pagan epics. In a folk song recorded in the north of Russia, further motifs from the Bylina myths have been preserved. A husle drifts across the sea until it lands on a steep coast. This refers to sacrificial rituals and the worship of water, possibly accompanied by the sounds of the husle , which is also the tradition of another legend from the 11th century. Slavs from Novgorod on Lake Ilmen made sacrifices to the lake to the sound of a gusli . The gusli used with a hole at one end of the long rectangular body was instrumental because of its yoke construction a lyre , whereby the shape of the body corresponded to a box zither. Archaeologists found several examples of this “Novgorod lyre” from the 11th to 13th centuries. Sadko , a legendary singer from Novgorod in the 12th century, is said to have beguiled the mythical inhabitants of the sea with his gusli game and the heroic songs he performed.
To this day there are several gusli variants that can be differentiated according to their design and number of strings . They share this wealth of shapes with the Baltic and Scandinavian zithers, which include the Finnish kantele and the Lithuanian kankles . Numerous songs and written sources document an early occurrence of the gusli among Slavic tribes in the area of the Kievan Rus , and a connection between the gusli and the tradition of the Baltic-Scandinavian zithers is recognizable. The Russian composer Aleksandr Famintsyn (1841–1896), through language analysis of the Bylina stories, came up with a derivation from Old Slavic gandtli to gosli among the medieval Slavs, gusli among the Russians to kantele, kantlis and similar among the Balts and Finns. He postulated a connection of kantele (with the root word kant ) from Old High German goose , English goose , with housle and husli . The sound shift g- to h- can also be seen in Russian gus , Lower Sorbian guss , Upper Sorbian husy and Czech hus, husa . Famintsyn added a practical explanation, according to which, according to an anonymous German source from 1788 , the Lausitz Wends (Sorbs) owned a string instrument called husle , which consisted of three strings stretched over the sternum of a goose bird with a tied piece of wood as a resonator. The Slavs in Bohemia owned a similar instrument , the sound of which was also reminiscent of the screaming of geese. Furthermore, the sound of the Kazakh kobys was compared with the scream of a swan, which is probably to be interpreted as a reminder of the magical-mythical meaning of goose / swan in Asia. Goose birds appear in many myths, they were totem animals and were considered a link to the world beyond. In Russian folk songs, especially about birds, musical instruments are often compared to water birds. The swan should have the clearest voice. The anthropologist Alexander Francis Chamberlain (1865-1914) refers in connection with the alleged name of origin of the Russian zither gusli of gus ( "goose") and the Slavic Fidel husle of hus ( "goose") to the Ostyak stringed instrument chotning , whose name means "swan “Means.
According to Irene Zinkiv, the Slavic husle should be derived from an Indo-European word origin, as the Polish linguist Franciszek Slavskii (1916-2001) suggests for the Polish word gęśle . He leads gęśle as before Aleksandr Famintsyn the onomatopoeic Indo-European root, the verb gundti back. During the later separation of the Baltic Slavic , the word gunsti occurs, which is modified to gosti in Old East Slavonic . The same derivation applies to the Polish gusła (“magic”, “witchcraft”) and guslarz (old Slavic magical priest ). Polish gęśle is only known as the name of a musical instrument from the end of the 14th century, possibly introduced from the East Slavic-speaking area.
Often husle (or gusli ) is initially traced back to the Old Church Slavonic verb gusti , which means "hum, drone". From there the semantic transition to the humming object - the strings - ( hysl ) and to the entire instrument ( husle ) took place. Annemarie Slupski (1971) specifies the context of Lithuanian ga altsti (“dull, rustle, hum”) and Latvian gaũst (“whine, complain”) for the Old Church Slavonic word gǫsli (“string instrument”) . Husla and gusla ("magic, conjurations") came into the Ukrainian language via Polish ( gusla , from * gud-sl- ) . Polish gęśle and Ukrainian gusla / gusli stand for different stringed instruments. The Ukrainian gusli players who used to wander around were musicians and magicians at the same time. Their music was associated with magical rites. Based on “ playing gusli ”, a semantic link can be identified (“ playing gusli and performing magical actions”), which in the next step leads to “general practice of magical actions” ( gusla ). Because of the shift in the meaning of "sound, hum", also "sing", to "magic, sorcery", Slupski refers to the parallel between Latin carmen , "poem, stanza, song" and "magic formula", derived from carminare , "sing about , discuss" and "enchant". What is meant is the magical aspect of music that is supposed to put you in a state of enchantment. The word environment with both meanings also includes Russian guditь ("enchant, cheat" and "make a dull sound") and New Sorbian guslowaś ("magic, witchcraft" and "play the violin").
Origin and Distribution
Box zithers
Instrumental and etymological aspects have led to the theory of a relationship between the Scandinavian, Baltic and Russian zithers, which is based on an old cultural layer that arose during the hegemony of the Khazars and which reached in the south via Belarus to the Ukraine. The magical meaning of the stringed instruments handed down in myths, stories and songs suggests their existence in the time before the introduction of Christianity. The medieval igor song neither gives the type nor the name of the instrument with which the prophetic singer Boyan accompanied himself. If the stringed instruments came from Asia, there was evidently a reluctance among the Slavic Christians to mention the instruments they had taken over by their old names because they were used in pagan rituals. The Asiatic family of words for stringed instruments fandur, pondur , pandur , panduri , already occurs in the angle harps widespread by the Scythians and in Asiatic lyres, which like those have long since disappeared. The word family was not adopted in the Middle Ages and only later found its way into the Slavic language area with the Ukrainian plucked bandura ( played by Cossacks from the 16th century ).
Wing-shaped type
Archaeological finds from the 11th century to the beginning of the 13th century in Eastern Europe show two types of stringed instruments: In northeastern Russia, the slender, asymmetrical, wing-shaped lyre shape with an opening in the body in the upper area is of the Old Slavonic, "pagan" type ( krylovidnye gusli ), to which the "Novgorod lyres" belong. It was held upright. Such a wing-shaped lyre with a large opening and five strings was excavated near Danzig in 1949 and dated to the 11th century. The five-string Danziger gusli is 40 cm long, another specimen with two strings unearthed at Opole measures 27.5 cm.
The wing-shaped type, with a number of variants, forms the group of "Baltic psalteries " that occur among the Finns , Balts and Eastern Slavs . In addition to the older, five-string form of the Finnish kantele, the slender "Baltic psalteries" include the Lithuanian kankles in several variants, the Latvian kokles and the Estonian kannel . The Scandinavian string veils differ in their construction and playing style, which include the Estonian talharpa with four strings and the two- or three-string Finnish jouhikko . They all don't have a fingerboard. In contrast, the Norwegian langeleik with a melody side that is shortened on a fingerboard and with several drone strings belongs to the drone zithers and is not directly related to the Baltic zithers. From the slender Eastern European gusli , the central European "wing psaltery" began to separate itself in the 14th century, which is characterized by a trapezoidal shape with a circular protruding head at the top and was given the name ala bohemica (" Bohemian wing").
A variant of the "old gusli " without a hole has 7 to 13 strings that diverge like a fan up to the tuning pegs. The seated musician holds the latter gusli -type horizontally on his knees and plucks all the strings with the fingers of his right hand, while with his left hand he mutes the strings that are not supposed to sound.
Helmet-shaped type
The other, symmetrical shape was known as kyusle in the Volga region and appeared in Russian literature from the 14th century. The symmetrical gusli type is represented with a triangular body, held vertically in front of the body by the standing player with the point upwards and with the strings horizontal so that the shortest string is on top. By the 16th century, this type had become wider and helmet-shaped (bell-shaped) and had approximated the rounded edges of the modern kantele . The musician was still holding the zither upright in front of his body. Today, on the other hand, it is played lying horizontally on your lap. The 11 to 36-string instrument is called gusli šlemovidnye ("helmet-shaped gusli ") or gusli psal'tirevidnye ("psalterium- shaped gusli ") and belongs to the tradition of the Skomorochen , the traveling singers who, around 1900, wrote epic songs ( bylins ) and sacred songs Performing chants accompanied by the gusli .
In the Ukraine , Mykola Budnyk (1953–2001), a player of the Ukrainian, plucked short-necked lute kobsa (кобза, related to the Romanian cobză ) was responsible for the revival of a number of traditional string instruments that have become rare, including the kobsa types and the helmet-shaped box zither gusli or husli which he recreated using conventional manufacturing methods.
Dissemination theories
All "Baltic Psalters" have a strong cultural reference to the time before Christianization. From the end of the 19th century, three theories were put forward about their origin and the distribution of the different forms: Aleksandr Famintsyn, who published a monograph on the gusli in 1890 , saw the helmet-shaped gusli as a further development of the older forms and introduced the so-called Slavic theory, according to which the zither instruments came from the Byzantines to the Balts and Finns through Slavs. Mikhail Petukhov (1892), NI Privalov (1908) and others opposed the “Finnish theory”, which emphasized the multiple mention of the kantele in the Finnish national epic Kalevala and located the origin of the zithers in central Siberia between the Urals and Altai . Conversely, the Slavs would have taken over the zither from the Balts and Finns. They rejected a relationship between the helmet-shaped gusli and the Baltic instruments, and they traced the instrument names back to a Finnish vocabulary. Because the kantele appears frequently on Finnish runes and the oldest runes are almost 2000 years old, many Finnish scholars, if they look at the kantele with a nationalistic view , believe that their instrument is just as old. The Finnish professor of ethnomusicology , Timo Leisiö (1983) holds the import of the zither in the Middle Ages (12-13. Century) by immigrant Karelians and Savonier realistic and points out that from the first millennium otherwise absolutely no melody instrument from Finland is known.
Curt Sachs (1916) put forward the third, “oriental” theory that was most influential on Western researchers , according to which the Baltic zithers came from the Arab region to Russia and the Baltic States on an unspecified route through the strong Byzantine cultural influence in the Middle Ages. The name al-qānūn for a trapezoid-shaped box zither has been mentioned in Arabic-language sources since the 10th century . Sachs made a linguistic connection from ancient Greek canon (κανών, "guideline, rule, regulation") to Arabic al-qānūn , Middle High German cannale , Georgian kankula to kantele . Literary sources attest to the early medieval use of string instruments by the Western Slavs as well as the exchange with Byzantium and Central Europe. The early Byzantine historian Theophylaktos Simokates reports at the beginning of the 7th century about three Slavic prisoners who were deported from the Baltic states to Thrace in 591 and brought with them "kitharas". Around the middle of the 9th century, the monk Ermenrich von Ellwangen mentioned in a letter to Abbot Grimald of the Abbey of St. Gallen that the Slavs had a "psaltery". From the area of the Piast (today Poland ) the monk Gallus Anonymus wrote in his chronicle from 1115 that people had so lamented the death of the Polish king Bolesław in 1081 that the "kithara" and all other musical instruments fell silent.
After evaluating archaeological finds, more recent studies establish a connection between Asian lyres and zithers. Ilya Tëmkin (2004) tries to develop a line of development with a detailed instrumental basis for comparison between ethnological and archaeological psalter types in the region. As hypothetical early stages, Tëmkin uses a rotta (stroked lyre similar to crwth ) from Germany and a nars-yukh ( nares-jux , "music wood"), long-right, box-shaped lyre from the Chanten and Mansi east of the Urals is played and is the only existing Asian lyre). An essential structural feature that characterizes the style of play and represents a distinctive stage of development is the hole in the body of the gusli specimens from the 11th / 12th century found near Novgorod . Century. With the left hand, the player can hold the instrument on the thigh in front of the body at an angle or in a vertical position and at the same time mute the strings from below. This technique corresponds to the old way of playing lyres, such as the Greek kithara and today's lyres in the Horn of Africa such as tanbura . The position of the instrument is iconographically documented in an illumination in the Anglo-Saxon Vespasian Psalter from the 7th century. Because the fixed position of the left hand cannot reach very far, only one of the Novgorodgusli had eight strings. All other gusli of this type are very narrow and have fewer strings. According to Tëmkin, the oldest zithers had no opening in the body. As a hypothetical route of distribution in the Middle Ages - based on the self-imposed specifications of 26 selected instruments - he draws a route starting from Central Europe in the early Middle Ages, which splits east of Germany into Slavic territory. One direction leads eastwards directly to Novgorod, the other leads a little later northwards across the Baltic regions to Finland. Due to the geographical outskirts of Finland, the shape of the stringed instruments there is said to have been less influenced by the neighbors and thus remained more uniform than in Russia. Tëmkin sees no direct radiating influence from the early Novgorod zithers.
According to other considerations, the gusli are related to central European late medieval psalteries. Details of the design, the way it is played in chords and the song repertoire result in an independent Russian gusli tradition.
Distribution of the medieval fiddles
The origin of the string instruments is generally believed to be between the 6th and 8th centuries in Central Asia. The Arab scholar al-Farabi first describes the string instrument rabāb at the beginning of the 10th century , which at that time was probably a one to two-stringed long-necked lute. The oldest known illustration of a Byzantine string instrument on a Greek psaltery manuscript also dates from this period. With the Islamic expansion , string instruments came to southern Europe. The first European illustration of such a picture is a picture of the St. John Apocalypse in a Mozarabic Beatus manuscript ( originated in northern Spain) around 920–930 ( National Library Madrid , Hh58, fol .127r). Four angels can be seen on it, playing oversized, spade-shaped long-necked lutes with three strings in a vertical position with a round arch: it says habentes citharas dei .
The bow made its way to Western Europe via Byzantium and Andalusian Spain, where several types of lute instruments were bowed until around 1100. In the following centuries regional forms emerged. Up to the 15th century, the petting rotta was popular in Germany (in England the crwth ). The spade-shaped fiddles were common in southern Europe (Spain, Italy) in the 12th century, and an approximately round type was predominant in central Europe. In manuscripts from the 12th century onwards, a fiddle with an eight-shaped body can be seen propped up vertically on the knees or held between the legs (“ da gamba ”). The body can be tailored more or less. Added to this are the rebec types introduced from the Islamic world with a narrow or pear-shaped body. The resonance bodies of all lute instruments were carved out of a single block of softwood and provided with a thin wooden cover. Folk musical instruments are still produced in many regions today.
Information on fiddles from the 15th century is largely due to Johannes Tinctoris . Until then called many in French , the string instruments, which were derived from the Byzantine lira , were called French viole or vyolon , English vyell, Italian viola, Dutch vedel and later German fiddle from the 15th century . What the fiddles have in common is an attitude and playing technique similar to the later violin. Tinctoris distinguished three forms of painted viole : one with a flat bottom and more or less strongly tapered sides on a body that is smaller than that of the lute . A second viole , believed to have been introduced by the Greeks, has a slightly different shape and stringing than the lute. The third form is a small instrument, called the rebec by the French, with a body that is semicircular (literally testudineum, "turtle shell - shaped ") like the lute . The first type (guitar-shaped body, C-shaped sound holes, three or five strings) was the typical shape in Western Europe throughout the 15th century and continued to be used as a niche instrument in folk music, while the current shape of the violin remained in the 16th century asserted.
One of the "Fidel niches", in which derivatives of medieval instruments and partly old ways of playing are handed down, is the Iglau region in Moravia (in today's Czech Republic) - a linguistic island where German was spoken until the end of the Second World War - with three Sizes from husle , as well as Bohemia and neighboring Slovakia with several Fidel types. The Sorbs in Lusatia form another language island .
In the center and west of Poland the three-stringed fiddle mazanki , which resembles a small violin, was played until the beginning of the 20th century. Today it is recreated using adapted working techniques. The three- or four-string Polish złóbcoki (also gęśliki ) is a rebec- like fiddle with a slender oval or boat-shaped body, which occurs only in the Podhale region in the Polish Tatras . The violin played in a folk music ensemble is called gęśle in this region today. In medieval Poland, gęśle, gęśl, gąsłki and gusli stood for different types of plucked, later bowed string instruments.
Sorbian fiddle
The chronicle of the bishop and historian Thietmar von Merseburg (975-1018) gives an indication of an independent musical culture of the Sorbs (Latin surbi ) in the 10th century . The Sorbs lost their feudal aristocracy through the German expansion to the east . This prevented the development of a courtly musical culture in the High Middle Ages, which is why Sorbian music has been handed down over the centuries purely in folk songs and instrumental folk music. However, Sorbian folk music asserted itself in the village communities in strictly defined forms and in contrast to the musical culture of the German settlers. In the 17th century, "Wendish beer fiddlers" and singing groups (unmarried girls) maintained their orally handed down repertoire of sacred and secular folk songs, which had become part of national identity. Written sources have survived since the end of the 18th century, among which the Krals violin book by the folk musician Mikławš Kral (1791–1812) should be emphasized. Characteristic of Sorbian music are two bagpipes of different sizes ( měchawa and kózoł ) and the wooden double-reed instrument tarakawa, a small three-stringed fiddle ( małe husle ) and a large version of the same ( wulke husle ).
Its body with a flat bottom and slightly tapered sides bears a certain resemblance to the key figures that first appeared in Scandinavia in the 15th century. The archaic-looking, narrow rectangular sound holes that flank the curved bridge are also found in the Moravian fiddles. The great Sorbian fiddle ( wulke husle ), which was widespread in central and southwestern Upper Lusatia, belongs to the medieval type of treble violin , its three strings are tuned to d'-a'-e ". The Sorbian husle , like some medieval fiddles, are held diagonally across the chest on a shoulder strap. By the end of the 19th century, they practically disappeared. After the middle of the 20th century, a newly awakened interest in Sorbian folk culture ensured a certain revival of the Fidel tradition.
Fiddles in the Czech Republic
Since at least the 16th century, three sizes of fiddles have been preserved in the German-speaking region Jihlava in Moravia in the middle of today's Czech Republic, which are similar to the Sorbian. The fiddles are called according to their size: high-sounding clear fiddle (Czech malé husle ), medium-high coarse fiddle ( velké husle ) and the bass ploschperment ( skřipkařský baset ). Its body is hollowed out of a block of maple wood and provided with a glued-on spruce top. Two long rectangular sound holes are cut into the ceiling in the area of the bridge. The webs are comb-like, as depicted by Hans Memling , a painter of the Dutch school in the second half of the 15th century.
The clear fiddle has four strings that, like the violin, are tuned to g – d'– a'– e ”. The three strings of the coarse fiddle correspond to the three lowest strings of the clear fiddle, i.e. g-d'-a '. The bass is the size of a violoncello , but is not placed on the floor with a spike, but is held diagonally in front of the body on a shoulder strap. Its strings are mostly tuned to C – G – d – d '.
The fiddle ensemble, consisting of two clear fiddles for the melody, an accompanying chords contributing coarse fiddle and a ploschperment was considered "peasant music" and played at family celebrations, other festive events and in the guest houses for dancing. There were also the more urban brass bands. The folk dances of the Iglauer Sprachinsel are known as hatscho . How the dance participants had to behave at weddings was dictated by customary rules. Today's Fidel ensembles in Moravia ( hudecká muzika ) and beyond in East Central Europe usually consist of a first violin ( primáš ), a second violin ( obligát ), viola and double bass . In addition to the strings, the cimbálová muzika primarily includes a dulcimer ( cimbalom ) and often a clarinet .
In Bohemia , a three-string fiddle with a body made from a block of wood with rounded corners and a peg is still played today. As an illustration in a Czech Bible from the 14th century shows, the musician holds the instrument pressed under the head against the right upper arm and fixed by a strap that runs over his left elbow and around the body.
Strokes in Slovakia
In folk music in Slovakia , several different types of stringed lutes have been preserved in museums and in everyday use, which are organologically related to medieval instruments. Small string instruments that are held horizontally on the shoulder or against the upper body, like the violin, are generally called husle . Instruments the size of a violoncello played vertically are called basa ("bass"). The resonance bodies, carved from a block of wood with the neck, are channel-shaped, slim, pear-shaped or trough-shaped. Many of the instruments with two to four strings belong to the bowl-neck lute that is frameless. There are also instruments with ribs that are simpler than the violin. Today, however, the violins taken from art music are predominantly used in folk music ensembles.
Small octave violin
The groove-shaped types include the malé oktávky ("small octave"), or oktávky for short ( obtávky or optávky ), according to their shape also dlabané husle (or vydlabané husle , "grooved violin") and according to the method of hollowing out the body, called varechové husle (" wooden spoon violin "). The very narrow body widens only slightly from the neck to the middle and, together with the slightly bent pegbox ( žlab na struny made, "Rinne for the strings") of a piece of wood. The total length is 52 to 56 cm, of which the neck ( krk ) accounts for 12 to 13 cm. The width of the sound box increases from 2.5 cm at both ends to 70–80 cm in the lower center. The walls are thinned to 0.5 cm. The four strings run from a tailpiece at the lower end over a 5 cm wide bridge, a fingerboard and a saddle to wooden pegs on the side. Instead of the earlier strings made from sheep intestine ( struny drobové, "gut strings"), metal strings are used today. There are two symmetrical f-shaped sound holes above the bridge . The bow ( bičík , "whip") used, 61 to 63 cm long, is slightly curved and covered with 47 to 48 cm long horsehair. The distance between the beechwood bow and the cover is a maximum of 3 cm.
The most desirable for production is maple wood, which is carefully selected for the desired sound properties. It should be stored for at least seven years before processing. The artisan production that used first names the players themselves, is done with adzes , chisels and a double-edged knife. Rasps and sandpaper are used to smooth the surface until the wall thickness of 0.5 cm or less is reached. The spruce top is glued to the sound box and first tied with a hemp cord. Before this, the neck is hollowed out from below. A maple fingerboard is glued to the neck from above, forming a small step towards the top. When the instrument is finished, it is washed off with water to remove glue residue. The wood surface is usually not coated with lacquer. Traditionally, the violins were kept hanging on the wall of the room with a ribbon.
Of the strings tuned in the pitch of the violin (g-d'-a'-e "), mostly only the two upper strings are played in the first and second positions. With the middle or ring finger, a higher note is occasionally achieved from the second position with a glissando . Due to the rigid, narrow body and the insufficient sound transmission from the ceiling to the body walls, the malé oktávky only produces a quiet and thin sound. Melodies are played that belong to the genre of shepherd songs and wedding songs and whose tonal range does not significantly exceed a fifth . In a string ensemble of three to four instruments, the malé oktávky takes on the role of the melody-leading violin ( primáš ), otherwise songs are played as a soloist for entertainment.
The malé oktávky cannot be found in historical images . The oldest examples date from the beginning of the 19th century. Most of the instruments used to be made in Liptovské Sliače on the northern edge of the Low Tatras . From the 1920s onwards, malé oktávky was gradually replaced by the violin, but since the 1960s some ensembles have been playing it again in village dances. Oskár Elschek first thoroughly examined the instrument in the 1960s, and Ivan Mačák described it in a documentary film in the 1970s.
Big octave violin
The veľké oktávky ("large octave") is called liptovské oktávky (" Liptauer octave") or simply husle after the region of origin . It belongs to the bowl-neck lute with a pear-shaped body. This is made of one piece of wood with the neck and the pegbox, whereby the body and neck appear as separate parts, as with the assembled lutes. The total length is about 62 cm, the body width 17 cm and its height 5 cm. The neck is about 14 cm long and semicircular at the bottom. The shape of the neck, the approximately 10 cm long tailpiece and the 29 cm long fingerboard, which protrudes almost into the middle of the ceiling, were taken from the violin. The tailpiece is attached by a connecting cord to a button ( gombík, "button", pupok , "navel", or pupčok huslový , "violin navel") carved from the underside of the body wall . The f-shaped sound holes on the side of the bridge are 8 cm long. The bridge stands on two feet and is artfully decorated with ornamental recesses. The pegbox for the four lateral vertebrae ends in an upwardly rolled snail ( slimáková hlavočka, "head of the snail"). With some instruments, the head consists of an animal head (such as levová hlavočka , “lion's head”) or a human figure ( pana, “virgin”) instead of the snail .
The large octave violin is made similar to the small one. After the measurements have been transferred from a template to a roughly hewn maple block, the neck is roughly processed with a saw and adze before the body is hollowed out. The top made of spruce wood with a knife is 2 mm thick at the edge and 3 to 4 mm thick in the middle. Compared to the edge, the ceiling bulges 10 to 12 mm upwards in the middle. Under the right foot of the bridge, the bass bar ( prut , "rod") remains parallel to the strings on the underside of the ceiling . The position of the sound post, which is decisive for the sound, is carefully checked, which consists of a spruce stick with a diameter of 4 to 5 mm. The veľké oktávky is also not varnished, just lightly rubbed with vegetable oil.
The body of the veľké oktávky is more voluminous than that of the malé oktávky and the entire workmanship is more careful, which is why the sound of the instrument is stronger and more balanced. As an ensemble instrument for shepherd and dance melodies, the veľké oktávky takes on the role of second violin if a small violin takes over the melody. Occasionally she is also used as a soloist. The oldest instrument in a museum was also made in Liptovské Sliače and dates from the 19th century.
Trough violin
The bowl-neck lute with a trough-shaped body carved out of a half-trunk is called korytkové husle ("trough violin") or dlabané husle ("grooved violin"). The total length is between 55 and 62 cm; the body forms an oval around 34 cm long, which is rounded evenly to the bottom on the long and narrow sides. A level spruce top is nailed onto the maple wood body. Except for the body shape, the other components such as tailpiece, fingerboard and pegs correspond to those of the large octave violin. The name of the instrument is common in north and north-west Slovakia. Two copies were acquired for the Slovak National Museum (SNM) in the 1960s .
The age of this type of instrument is unknown. The trog bass violin ( basička , "Bässlein", or korytková basa , "trough bass") with a spruce wood body, which was used in string ensembles until the 1930s, has a similar shape .
Gutter violin
The type belonging to the group of korytká ("troughs, troughs") is called žliabkové husle ("gutter violin", also zlobcoky, žlobcoky or žlobky ) and is similar to the trough violin, but has a slightly waisted body at the top. This is called zlob ("gutter") or korytko ("trough"). The gutter violin thus approximates the violins with an eight-shaped body. The peg box does not end in a snail, but in a downward-curved eagle's head or sometimes a sheep's head. Apart from the body, the components largely correspond to the violin. The 7 to 9 cm long tailpiece, like the body, is made of maple wood or is carved from deer antlers. The button ( copec, "pigtail") on the underside, to which the string holder is tied, is carved out of the wood of the body or inserted as a plug into a hole. 8 to 12 cm long, slightly curved sound holes are sawn into the glued-on spruce wood top ( virh , "upper part"). Some copies have a sound post next to the right foot of the bridge. Two specimens examined are 60 and 64 cm long and 32 and 38 cm wide on the body. In contrast to other string instruments, all surfaces are decorated with burnt-in line ornaments, black burn marks are created with a flame, sometimes the entire instrument is smoked and finally coated with a clear lacquer or oiled. This gives a yellow-brown color. The gutter violin was strung with strings made from sheep gut twisted by the instrument maker himself or with purchased metal strings. Until the 1930s, gutter violins were made for personal use in the villages around Ždiar on the northern Slovakian border. In the 1950s, instrument maker Matej Pitoňák in Ždiar made gutter violins, among other things. His wooden house with an economic part was converted into a museum in 1971.
The municipality of Ždiar is located north of the High Tatras in the settlement area of the Gorals , who instead of the usual fifth tuning of the violin (g – d'– a'– e ”) tune the a 'higher. This “gorale mood” ( goralské ladenie ) is probably related to the regional singing tradition. The repertoire includes pastoral melodies with a range from a fifth to a sixth , which are played with folk dances (including kresaný, ozvodny, goralsky and polka ). The gutter violin took over the position of first violin in the ensemble, alongside the second violin (usual violin) and the bass (violoncello). Their known distribution area is limited to the area around Ždiar. After the 1960s it was replaced by the violin in the ensembles there.
Other violin types
A string instrument that is modeled on the violin down to the last detail, which only reveals on closer inspection that it was carved from a piece of maple wood, is called dlabané husle (" fluted , chiseled violin") because of this manufacturing method . The back and sides have protruding edges to mimic a composite body. A typical instrument is 61 cm long with a body length of 36 cm. Tailpiece, fingerboard, bridge and pegs are partly taken from the violin. When coated with clear varnish, the wood appears yellow-brown. The sound is similar to that of the other lutes with a bowl-shaped, grooved body and is less voluminous than the violin. The dlabané husle occurs in the distribution areas of the related types in northern Slovakia.
The type of box neck lute includes a box cello called basa ("bass"), the rectangular body of which is made of boards, and an octagonal violin, which is called Turiec turčianské husle after its region of origin . Four instruments made at the beginning of the 20th century found their way into Slovak museums in 1971. The peg boxes end in a twisted snail. The instruments are made of maple and spruce wood, they are varnished with spirit varnish and are dark brown in color.
Some children's violins ( husličky, "little violin", or detské husle , "children's violin ") have a small, roughly structured body of different designs, a flat top and two to three strings. Poor villagers in the mountains used to make simple flat violins to replace the violin. Its outline corresponds to the violin; However, the floor and ceiling are flat. The result is a thin, low-resonance sound. The flat violins form a link between the trough-shaped folk instruments and the violin.
South Slavic bowl-neck lute
Gusle
In the South Slavic-speaking area - in the successor states of the former Yugoslavia and in Bulgaria - gusle ( gusla ) is a single-stringed, bowed bowl-neck lute with a body and neck usually carved from a maple block . An animal skin is stretched out as a blanket. The shape of the body is called kusalo ("spoon"). There are three regional variants of this "farmer's violin" based on the shape of the body. In Serbia , the gusle has a pear-shaped, simple body, while the body of the Croatian gusle is sometimes intricately ornamented and the bridge sits a little higher than on the Serbian instrument. The variant of Herzegovina and Montenegro is the largest and also decorated with ornaments . There the footbridge is higher and wider than in other regions. The length including the long, thin neck is between 63 and 75 cm. The Bulgarian gusla measures 75 to 80 cm. The seated gusle player ( guslar ) holds his instrument either vertically between his knees, like a violoncello, with his long neck leaning against his left shoulder, or at an angle between his knees with his neck bent to the left. He strikes the string with a weakly curved bow in his right hand, while he touches the side of the string with the index finger, middle finger and occasionally ring finger of the left hand in a fixed position on the neck. The gusle is used to accompany epic songs from an old singing tradition.
The gusle may have had two strings in the past. The instrument is not related to the medieval western and central European fiddles. The design and the grip technique of the left hand, with which the string is shortened by touching it from the side, point to a West Asian origin. Accompanying instruments of Asian epic singers with a long tradition are the oriental rabāb types and further east, for example, the ravanahattha in the Indian state of Rajasthan.
Guslice
Single -stringed string instruments that are related in the region and have a comparable playing tradition are the Albanian lahuta and a Polish gęśle . The three- to four-string Bulgarian gadulka and the three-string Cretan lyra are pear-shaped bowl-necked lutes with a shorter neck.
The guslice (also lirica ) played on the Montenegrin coast is related to them. The guslice has a pear-shaped body made from one piece of wood with semicircular sound holes in the top and is covered with three horsehair strings that are tuned f'-c'-g '. The vertebrae are stuck in a vertebral disc from above. The middle string produces a drone tone and the bow sweeps across all strings at the same time. The type refers to the old Greek lira , which has been known as rebec in Western Europe since the 11th century and is still widespread in the Mediterranean today. Often a string is used as a drone on these instruments. In the old way of playing the strings were shortened from the side between the fingernail and fingertip, today the strings are touched on the side with the fingers. The old way of playing was also practiced in the so-called Polish violin by Michael Praetorius (1619) , which was popular in Poland in the 15th and 16th centuries. The instrument is said to have survived in folk music in the Polish Carpathians until the beginning of the 20th century . The four-string suka , the violin-like body of which merges into a very wide neck, was played with fingernails and in a vertical position in Polish folk music until the end of the 19th century, as were the replicas of this fiddle that had been made since the 1990s. The three-string Russian gudok has no neck and the almond-shaped body, which tapers to a point at the lower end, merges directly into the vertebral plate at the top. Otherwise, gudok and guslice are similar in shape and style of play.
Other stringed instruments are also sometimes referred to as guslice . One of the traditional sound producers in Bosnia and Herzegovina is an instrument called guslice od kukuruske (“fiddle made of grain”), which consists of two stalks of grain. In early autumn, pieces with two ovaries at the ends are cut from the stalks. With three longitudinal cuts on one side, thin strips are cut out of the stalks as strings, which remain connected to the stalks at the knot ends. Both tubes are now rubbed against each other to create a humming sound. In terms of instruments, children's toys belong to the friction idiophones and the tubular zithers, a group of instruments that is widespread in Southeast Asia (cf. guntang ).
literature
- Anthony Baines: Lexicon of Musical Instruments. JB Metzler'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 2005, s. v. Fidel, Gusle, Gusli.
- Oskár Elschek: The folk musical instruments of Czechoslovakia. Part 2: The Slovak folk musical instruments. ( Ernst Emsheimer , Erich Stockmann (Hrsg.): Handbook of European folk musical instruments. Series 1, Volume 2) German publishing house for music, Leipzig 1983.
- Sibyl Marcuse : A Survey of Musical Instruments. Harper & Row, New York 1975.
- Carl Rahkonen: The Kantele Traditions of Finland. (Dissertation) Folklore Institute, Indiana University, Bloomington, December 1989.
- Mary Remnant: Husla . In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments . Volume 2, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 732
- Ilya Tëmkin: Evolution of the Baltic psaltery: a case for phyloorganology? In: The Galpin Society Journal, January 2004, pp. 219-230.
- Irene (Iryna) Zinkiv: To the Origins and Semantics of the Term "husly". (PDF) In: Music Art and Culture. No. 19, 2014, pp. 33-42.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Irene Zinkiv, 2014, p. 38.
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- ↑ Irene Zinkiv, 2014, p. 41.
- ^ Ludvík Kunz: The folk musical instruments of Czechoslovakia. Part 1. (Ernst Emsheimer, Erich Stockmann (Hrsg.): Handbook of European Folk Musical Instruments. Series 1, Volume 2) Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1974, p. 79.
- ↑ Irene Zinkiv, 2014, p. 39.
- ↑ Irene Zinkiv, 2014, p. 34 f.
- ↑ Ignác Jan Hanuš : The science of the Slavic myth in the broadest sense, the old Prussian-Lithuanian myth with a comprehensive sense: edited according to sources, including the literature of Slavic-Prussian-Lithuanian archeology and mythology. As a contribution to the history of the development of the human mind. Verlag von Joh. Millikowski, Lemberg 1842, p. 406 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
- ↑ Irene Zinkiv, 2014, p. 36.
- ↑ History of gusli . gusly.by.
- ↑ a b M. Khay: Enclosed Instrumentarium of Kobzar and Lyre Tradition. (PDF) In: Music Art and Culture, No. 19, 2014, section Psalnery (gusli) .
- ↑ a b c Carl Rahkonen, 1989, Chapter 2: A Brief History of the kantele .
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- ↑ Ulrich Morgenstern: Russia. A. II. 2. c .. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, material part, volume 8 (flute suite). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 1998, ISBN 3-7618-1109-8 ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
- ↑ Husli . Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (figure helmet-shaped Ukrainian zither husli ).
- ^ Curt Sachs: The Lithuanian musical instruments in the Kgl. Collection for German Folklore in Berlin. In: International Archive for Ethnography. Volume 23. EJ Brill, Leiden 1916, pp. 1-7 ( archive.org ).
- ^ Paul M. Gifford: The Hammered Dulcimer: A History. (American Folk Music and Musicians Series) Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2001, p. 26.
- ^ Hans Hickmann: The music of the Arabic-Islamic area. In: Bertold Spuler (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Orientalistik. 1. Dept. The Near and Middle East. Supplementary Volume IV. Oriental Music. EJ Brill, Leiden / Cologne 1970, p. 64.
- ↑ See Sibyl Marcuse, 1975, p. 221.
- ↑ Alicia Simon: An Early Medieval Slav Gesle. In: The Galpin Society Journal. Volume 10, May 1957, p. 64.
- ↑ Sibyl Marcuse, 1975, p. 376; Curt Sachs: Handbook of musical instruments. (1930) Georg Olms, Hildesheim, 1967, p. 165.
- ↑ Ilya Tëmkin, 2004, pp. 223-226.
- ↑ Ilya Tëmkin, 2004, p. 228 f.
- ^ Andreas Michel: Zithers. C. II. 2 .. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, factual part, Volume 9 (Sydney - Cyprus). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 1998, ISBN 3-7618-1128-4 ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
- ↑ Rainer Ullreich: Fidel. II .. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, factual part, volume 3 (Engelberg - Hamburg). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 1995, ISBN 3-7618-1104-7 ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
- ↑ Liutaio Mottola: A Bass for Kids, based on the Canotto Savart Style Upright Bass. 2015 (picture at the bottom).
- ^ Sibyl Marcuse, 1975, p. 470.
- ^ Sibyl Marcuse, 1975, p. 471.
- ^ Curt Sachs: The History of Musical Instruments. Norton, New York 1940, p. 276 ( archive.org ).
- ^ Anthony Baines: Fifteenth-Century Instruments in Tinctoris's De Inventione et Usu Musicae. In: The Galpin Society Journal. Volume 3, March 1950, pp. 19–26, here p. 23.
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- ↑ January Stęszewski: Poland. II. Folk music. 4. Regional differentiation. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, factual part, Volume 7 (Myanmar Sources). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 1997, ISBN 3-7618-1108-X ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
- ↑ Gęśle. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Volume 2, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 418
- ↑ Detlef Kobjela: Sorbian music culture. In: Madlena Norberg (ed.): Anthology on Sorbian / Wendish culture and identity. (PDF) Universitätsverlag Potsdam, Potsdam 2008, pp. 70–79, here p. 71.
- ^ Sibyl Marcuse, 1975, p. 475.
- ↑ January rawp-Raupp: Sorbian music . Domowína-Verlag, Bautzen 1978, p. 26.
- ^ Mary Remnant, 2014, p. 732.
- ↑ Iglauer Sprachinsel - Cultural. iglauer-sprachinsel.de.
- ^ Iglauer Heimatmuseum and archive. Heidenheim an der Brenz. Community of Iglauer Sprachinsel (illustration Klarfiedel, Grobfiedel and Ploschperment).
- ^ Sibyl Marcuse, 1975, p. 475.
- ↑ Iglauer dance and music tradition: Our hatscho . Community of Iglauer Sprachinsel.
- ^ Fr. Piger: Birth, marriage and death in the Iglauer Sprachinsel in Moravia. In: Karl Weinhold (Ed.): Journal of the Association for Folklore. Verlag von A. Asher & Co., Berlin 1896, p. 262 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
- ↑ Cf. Jesse A. Johnston: The Cimbál (Cimbalom) and Folk Music in Moravian Slovakia and Valachia. In: Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society. Volume 36, 2010, pp. 78-117.
- ↑ Oskár Elschek, 1983, pp. 85-88.
- ^ Bernard Garaj: Ivan Mačák (1935-2016). In: Bulletin of the International Council for Traditional Music, (PDF) No. 33, January 2017, p. 6 f.
- ↑ Oktávky veľké; Benčo, Albín, Liptovské Sliače. Europeana Collections. Right click on the link SNM - Hudobné múzeum v Bratislave : Image of a veľké oktávky in the Music Museum ( Hudobné múzeum ) of the Slovak National Museum (SNM), Bratislava. Acquired in 1966, dimensions as stated in the text.
- ↑ Oskár Elschek, 1983, pp. 88–90.
- ↑ Oskár Elschek, 1983, pp. 90f, 95.
- ↑ Múzeum Ždiarsky . muzeum.sk.
- ↑ Oskár Elschek, 1983, pp. 91–93.
- ↑ Oskár Elschek, 1983, pp. 93f, 98-101.
- ^ Sibyl Marcuse, 1975, p. 477.
- ^ Curt Sachs: Handbook of musical instrumentation. (1930) Georg Olms, Hildesheim 1967, p. 274.
- ↑ Anthony Baines, 2005, p. 119 ("Gusle").
- ↑ GA Küppers-Sonnenberg: Ornaments and symbols of South Slavic peasant sounds (Guslen). In: Journal of Ethnology. Volume 84, Issue 1, 1959, pp. 88-109, here p. 93.
- ^ Anthony Baines: Popular early forms. In the S. (Ed.): Musical instruments. The history of their development and forms. A symposium by sixteen authors. Prestel, Munich 1982, p. 226.
- ↑ Guslice. In: Sibyl Marcuse, 1966, p. 223.
- ↑ Curt Sachs, 1967, p. 173 f.
- ↑ Polish Folk Instruments: Bilgoray Suka. poloniamusic.com.
- ↑ Jasmina Talam: Folk Musical Instruments in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne 2013, p. 51.