Kamantsche

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Kamantsche player

The Kamantsche or Kamangah ( Persian کمانچه Kamāntsche , DMG kamānče , Azerbaijani kamança , also kamantscha, kamāntscheh, kemāntscheh , English transcriptions kamancha, kamānche (h) or kamānča , from kamān "bow" and the diminutive form tscha or tsche (h) , so "arched geese") is in Iranian and Azerbaijani music . The word ` ` kamantsche '' refers to similar spiked violins from Georgia , Armenia to the Iranian highlands to Afghanistan .

Distinction

The kamantsche is also called ghaichak , whereby two types of strings are understood under this name : On the one hand, the spiked fiddles with a simple, round resonance body and long, thin neck (long-necked vessel skewers) like the kamantsche , the old Arabic and Turkish string instruments rabāb and kabak -kemane ; on the other hand the sarinda type of stringed instruments. The latter have a short, sometimes wide neck with a double or two-half body . In addition to the string sarinda , this category also includes the plucked Afghan national instrument rubab . Further developments of the sarinda in northern India resulted in the sarangi , dilruba and esraj with a body that was only slightly waisted and a neck of almost the same width. The kamantsche is related to the language, but not structurally similar to the Turkish string kemençe and the kamaica played in the Indian state of Rajasthan . Between the Mediterranean and North India, different spelled long-necked or short-necked sounds are understood with different spellings of the word root kamān .

Design and style of play

Kamanche players in Azerbaijan

The development of the kamantsche can be derived from Turkish string instruments such as the rabāb from the Byzantine lyra . The body is relatively small, rounded and made of hardwood ( walnut or mulberry wood). The circular opening on the ceiling is covered with fish skin, which ensures the fine and warm timbre , sometimes similar to a violin played sul ponticello . Four steel strings (as opposed to the older rabāb played by dervishes with strings made of hair) run over a flat bridge and a narrow fretless fingerboard to the vertebrae opposite in pairs . The fourth string was probably only added at the beginning of the 20th century after becoming acquainted with the European violin . The strings are tuned in fourths or fifths . In the past, like all spiked violins, the instrument was played sitting on the floor and held vertically in front of the body. Today the musician sits on a chair and places the stinger outside of the left knee on the corner of the chair or (with a support plate) above the knee on the thigh. With around three octaves, the range corresponds to that of a violin. The horse hair of the bow is stretched more or less with the fingers during the game, depending on the desired sound.

A kamantsche belongs to practically every orchestra in Iranian music . Classical compositions, the melodies ( radif ) of which unfold within a dastgah (a modal sequence of tones that is comparable to the Indian raga or the Azerbaijani mugham ) are, apart from the kamantsche as further main instruments, with the plucked long-necked lute tār , the box zither santur , the Longitudinal flute nay and percussion instruments listed. The Afghan music of the big cities was strongly influenced by the Iranian classical music until the beginning of the 20th century, which is why some Iranian musical instruments including the kamantsche can also be found there. In the north, however , the two-string dambura , which is related to the Central Asian dombra , is predominant.

The poet Masʿud Saʿd Salmān (1046 - around 1121), who was born in Lahore and wrote in Persian, mentions the plucked rabāb , the kamānča, the angular harp čang , the plucked short-necked lute barbat and the longitudinal flute nay as entertainment musical instruments . From Persian miniature painting and from its greatest exponent Behzād (1460–1535) numerous court music scenes in which a spit violin is depicted have come down to us. The Kamancheh was from the 19th century to the early 20th century in the oriental-influenced music of the Georgian capital Tbilisi known. There they played epic singers ( aschugi ) as an alternative to the saz and the Georgian plucked chonguri together with the frame drum daira .

Well-known Kamantsche musicians were or are Musā Kalimi (musicians at the court of Nāser ad-Din Schāh ), Choschnavaz (around 1850), Musa Kaschi, his student Baqer Chan, Isma'il Chan and his son Isma'il Zadeh, Rokneddin Mokhtari (Rokneddin Khân) (1887–1971), Ali Asghar Bahari (1905–1995), who represented a new style introduced around 1950, the Iranian Kurd Ardeshir Kamkar (* 1962), member of the Kamkars group , and Kayhan Kalhor (* 1963), too Kurde, Saeed Farajpouri (* 1961), student of Hossein Alizadeh and member of his orchestra, and Rahmatollah Badi'i (* 1936), who became known as a violin player and concertmaster. The Iranian composer Hossein Alizadeh (* 1951 in Tehran) premiered the composition New Work for Kemancheh and String Quartet in New York's Carnegie Hall in 2006 .

literature

  • John Baily : Music of Afghanistan: Professional Musicians in the City of Herat . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988, pp. 14 and 18 f.
  • Jean During: La Musique iranienne. Tradition et evolution. Edition Recherche sur les Civilizations, Paris 1984, pp. 75–81.
  • Jean During, Zia Mirabdolbaghi, Dariush Safvat: The Art of Persian Music . Mage Publishers, Washington DC 1991, ISBN 0-934211-22-1 , pp. 44 and 110-117.
  • Kamānča. In: Encyclopædia Iranica
  • Nasser Kanani: Traditional Persian art music: history, musical instruments, structure, execution, characteristics. 2nd revised and expanded edition, Gardoon Verlag, Berlin 2012, pp. 166–169.

Web links

Commons : Kamantsche  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nasser Kanani: The Persian Art Music. History, instruments, structure, execution, characteristics (Mussighi'e assil'e irani). Friends of Iranian Art and Traditional Music, Berlin 1978, p. 21
  2. ↑ Jean During, Zia Mirabdolbagh (1991) 110th
  3. ↑ Ilyas Üstünyer: tradition of the Ashugh Poetry and ashughs in Georgia. In: IBSU Scientific Journal, 3 (1), 2009, pp. 137-149, here p. 144
  4. ↑ Jean During, Zia Mirabdolbaghi (1991) 160th
  5. ↑ Editor's text on: Arshad Tahmasbi: Works by Rokneddin Khan .
  6. ^ Ali Asghar Bahari. A very great Master of Radif and Kamancheh. Iran Chamber Society
  7. ↑ Kayhan Kalhor own website
  8. ↑ Biography of Rahmatollah Badiyi. Parisa Badiyi