Koboz

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Hungarian koboz

Koboz , Hungarian and Romanian cobză , is a plucked lute that in Hungary , Romania and Moldavia Republic is played and, like the Arab 'ūd back bent because of its peg box to the angled neck lutes counts. A form and name related lute instrument in Ukraine is called kobsa ( Ukrainian кобза ).

origin

Koboz and cobză belong to a series of Eastern European and Central Asian names for lute instruments that go back to an Old Turkish origin ( kobus, qūbūz, qopuz ). So called plucked Langhals sounds, strings, and further in Central Asia in several Turksprachen Maultrommeln ( Temir Komuz ). Modified names for Central Asian string instruments are kobys , the Kazakh bowl-neck lute, and komuz , a plucked long-necked lute in Kyrgyzstan. According to Curt Sachs (1915), the slim shape of the komuz was the model for several related Arabic sounds, which came as qanbus in Yemen and as gambus in some Islamic areas of the Malay Archipelago .

The oldest type of lute without an attached long neck, dating back to the 8th century BC. Is dated is known from the Iranian highlands . From it the Persian short-necked lute barbat developed , which in the 7th / 8th century assumed the shape known today from the Arabic ʿūd with a bulbous body made of lamellas. Short-necked sounds of this type reached Eastern Europe from the Eastern Mediterranean. A Greek source around 800 AD mentions a lute called kobuz with seven frets and three to five strings. Cobuz was the name of a string instrument that was widespread in Romania in the 16th and 17th centuries and has now disappeared. It is mentioned in historical sources and in folk poetry.

A term for Ukrainian sounds at that time was kobsa ( kobza ). According to illustrations from the 16th to 18th centuries, kobsa was understood to mean different types of lutes: short-necked lutes carved from a block of wood or glued from lamellas, such as the Romanian cobză, and long-necked lutes of the tanbūr type . At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ukrainian kink neck lute disappeared. Reconstructed lutes are occasionally played again in folk music today. Furthermore, completely different musical instruments used to be called kobsa , for example the bagpipes (Romanian cimpoi ) and the hurdy-gurdy . In Polish kobza stands for a lute and the pronounced koza for a bagpipe. The Moldovan shepherds who were in contact with the Poles adopted this word for both instruments. In Hungary, bagpipes were gradually replaced by orchestras with stringed instruments from the beginning of the 19th century.

The word koboz has been used in Hungarian since 1237, although the shape of the musical instrument of that time is not known. In the 17th century the koboz was widespread among the Hungarians. The cobză is possibly the oldest Romanian string instrument. The forerunners of the Romanian cobză are shown on wall paintings from the 16th century in various churches. In Romanian sources from that time on, the term làută appears, which at that time probably generally referred to lute instruments including the cobză and which today stands for violins in some regions. A religious script of the Wallachian ruler Neagoe Basarab (1481–1521) mentions a lute called làută , as does the chronicler Mateu Strikovski in the 16th century. In particular, làutăs and cobzăs were played together with harps ( arfe ) at the royal houses. Thus, the lute and the cobză could also be understood as different instruments. According to pictures, they had a similar pear-shaped body. According to a source from 1652, a lute player was someone who played the lute or violin.

Church of the Vorone Monasteryț . Middle of the lower field with King David playing the lute .

On the outer west wall of the church of the Voroneț monastery from 1547, the Last Judgment can be seen over the entire area . On the best-preserved depiction at the Moldau monasteries of that time, David sits in the lower field, a little to the right of the middle, plucking a kink-necked lute whose shape is very similar to today's instrument. Above right an angel blows the long trumpet bucium (name and shape related to the Roman bucina ). The oldest fragmentary representation of the Last Judgment can be found at the church of Crișcior in Transylvania from the 14th century. The motif of the Last Judgment with the seated King David holding his lute horizontally in front of his upper body occurs in several Romanian churches in Wallachia in the 16th and 17th centuries. It is a modification of the biblical theme, adapted to the Romanian tradition, according to which David actually plays a "harp" ( kinnor ). Typical of the paintings on the churches in the Vltava is the scene of the prodigal son celebrating festivities in rural surroundings, with groups of singers, musicians and dancers performing. The musicians play the violin, cobză and trumpet. The neck of the lute shown appears a little longer and thinner than that of today's cobzăs .

In addition to the not clearly possible assignment of the various names for musical instruments to one type of instrument in historical texts - cobză, koboz, kobuz, kopuz, kăpusch, kăputz or kaput - there is also the uncertain relationship to the instrument caetera , of which it is at least certain that it is a string instrument how the violin must have been. The Romanian ethnomusicologist Tiberiu Alexandru compares the aforementioned lute instruments and the caetera with the Serbian gusle , which is widespread in the Balkans. In Romania, the bowed bowl-neck lute gusle was an instrument of epic singers in accordance with its current function in the Balkans. In the 17th century, the plucked lutes seem to have lost their importance as a leading melodic instrument to strings and other instruments. So the cobză was degraded to the accompaniment of the melody instrument and "lute player" became another word for violin player.

Design

Romanian cobză

The Hungarian koboz and the identical Romanian cobză have a deep-bellied pear-shaped body (Romanian burduf or bîrdan ), which consists of five to six longitudinally glued lamellas made of sycamore or walnut wood . In the flat ceiling (Romanian faţă ) of spruce wood are sawn into a number of small sound holes in a symmetric pattern. The short, wide neck (Romanian gît ) made of dark hardwood ends at a pegbox (Romanian cuier ) that is bent backwards at almost a right angle . From the lateral hardwood pegs or a tuning mechanism , the strings lead over a flat bridge in the lower area of ​​the top to a tailpiece ( cordar ) made of a hardwood strip , which is located directly behind the bridge.

The kink neck lute is strung with eight or twelve gut or metal strings, which are arranged in four choirs of two or three strings each. In choirs consisting of two strings, one string, called burdoi or burduni (plural burdoaie ) in Romanian, can be thicker than the other and tuned an octave lower, with three strings of a choir two strings thicker and one octave lower. Apart from regional deviations, the strings are usually tuned to d – a – d – g in fifth and fourth intervals . The strings are plucked with a goose quill. To avoid scratches on the ceiling from plucking, a hardwood plate or a leather strip is glued under the strings at this point. The koboz in Hungary and the cobză in Romania have no frets , in contrast to the cobză in the Republic of Moldova, where the cobză usually has twelve frets. The city of Reghin is the Romanian center of violin making. Cobzăs are also made there.

How to play and spread

The stage actor Matei Millo (1814-1896) plays a Romanian cobză in the role of the famous Romanian Cobză player and singer Barbu Lăutaru (Vasile Barbu, 1780-1858). Photo by Carol Szathmari around 1860.

The name of the professional folk musician lăutar (plural lăutari ), who is mostly Roma in the Balkans, is derived from the old Romanian word for lute instrument, làută . Until the first half of the 20th century, Lăutari played the cobză mainly in the regions of Muntenia (Great Wallachia), Transylvania , Moldova and Bukovina . Today the lute has become rare everywhere. In Oltenia (Little Wallachia) in south-western Romania it was replaced by the guitar ( chitară ), elsewhere by the dulcimer: in Hungary the cimbalom and in Romania the țambal . Other string instruments that are played in folk music ensembles today are the zither , the harp, the long-necked lute tambura and in a special ensemble an instrument called gardon the size of a cello or a (self-made) double bass, which is used percussively to accompany the melody-leading violin ( vioara ) becomes.

In the 18th century there were music groups that played one or two violins and the pan flute nai in addition to cobză . A historical photograph of a trio of panpipes, cobză and violin shows the cobză player standing in the middle with his instrument almost horizontally in front of his chest. Another musician from the Moldova region, who is depicted in a Hungarian book from 1943, holds the cobză while sitting on his left thigh, diagonally upwards. The koboz was mainly used to accompany vocals in an ensemble with flute ( fluier ) and violin at dance events, parties and weddings. The ensemble of the lăutari is called taraf (generally folk music ensemble ). For Roma musicians, a melody-leading violin and a rhythmically accompanying cobză form a typical entertainment orchestra , especially in the countryside in southern Romania. Due to the influence of the oriental music tradition from the time of the Ottoman rule, some musicians attach greater importance to the rhythm instrument than to the melody instrument.

North of the Carpathian Mountains, the epic singer is accompanied by the basic rhythmic beat of a guitar, a cobză or a portable cimbalom . Only when the singer pauses does a violin take over its melody for a short time. This happens in places where an interruption of the text appears sensible according to content criteria. Such an instrumental interlude is called a taxim (from Arabic taqsīm ). The violin can occasionally double the singing part. In addition to the violin, cobză and dulcimer, today's ensembles often include the accordion and double bass. They also play accompanying rhythm patterns. Just as the dulcimer ( cimbalom and țambal ) pushed the cobză into the background in the middle of the 20th century , today the dulcimer is often replaced by the accordion.

The Moldovan musician Violeta Zaplitnii plays her cobză with frets like a classical guitar in Chișinău .

literature

  • Tiberiu Alexandru, Boris Kotlyaryov: Cobză. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments . Vol. 1, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, pp. 604f
  • Gyula Hankóczi: Egy kelet-európai lantféle, a koboz . In: Ethnographia, XCIX, Heft 3/4, Budapest 1988, pp. 295–329

Web links

Commons : Koboz  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Commons : Cobză  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Curt Sachs : The musical instruments of India and Indonesia. At the same time an introduction to instrument science. Georg Reimer, Berlin 1915, p. 138
  2. ↑ Hans Hickmann: Ancient Egyptian Music . 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. 160
  3. ↑ Larry Francis Hilarian: The migration of lute-type instruments to the Malay Muslim world . Conference on Music in the world of Islam. Assilah, August 8-13 August 2007, p. 7
  4. ^ Sibyl Marcuse : Musical Instruments: A Comprehensive Dictionary. Doubleday, New York 1964, keywords Koboz and Kobus , p. 295
  5. ↑ Cobuz . In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments . Vol. 1, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 604
  6. ↑ Kobza . In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments . Vol. 3, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, pp. 186f
  7. ^ Valeriu Apan: Romania . In: Thimothy Rice (Ed.): Garland Encyclopedia of World Music . Vol. 8. Routledge, London 2000, p. 877
  8. ↑ Tiberiu Alexandru: Lauta . In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments . Vol. 3, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 265
  9. ^ Anca Florea: String Instruments in Romanian Mural Paintings between the 14th and 19th Century . In: RIdIM / RCMI Newsletter, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Research Center for Music Iconography, The Graduate Center, City University of New York) Fall 1994, pp. 54–65, here p. 59
  10. ^ Anca Florea: String Instruments in Romanian Mural Paintings between the 14th and 19th Century. In: RIdIM / RCMI Newsletter, Vol. 19, No. 2, 1994, pp. 55-57
  11. ^ Anca Florea: String Instruments in Romanian Mural Paintings between the 14th and 19th Century . In: RIdIM / RCMI Newsletter , Vol. 19, No. 2, 1994, p. 61
  12. ↑ Jack Zampin: The Romanian Cobza.
  13. ^ AL Lloyd: The Music of Rumanian Gypsies . In: Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 90th Session. 1963–1964, pp. 15–26, here pp. 16, 22
  14. ↑ Maria Zlateva Zlateva: Romanian Folkloric Influences on George Enescu's Artistic and Musical Development as Exemplified by His Third Violin Sonata. ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Dissertation) University of Texas, Austin 2003, pp. 59, 79 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lib.utexas.edu
  15. ↑ Latin Cobza Solo / Cinema Paradiso Theme / Violeta Zaplitnii / Live in Moldova. Youtube video