Short octave

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Depiction of Johann Bap. Sambers the short octave , in: Continuatio ad manductionem organicam , Salzburg 1707, p. 144, Fig. VII.

The short octave is a form of the keyboard that was widespread from around 1500 to the nineteenth century . The major octave - the lowest on many keyboard instruments - is not completely provided with semitones: at the left end of the keyboard, some keys have been “left out” for economic, musical and technical reasons. The distribution of the lowest notes on the keys is then not gradual, analogous to the visual impression, but mixed. There are several types of short octaves, with those on C and GG being widely used.

to form

The short octave with C / E

Key-tone assignment for the short octave on C / E

The best known and most common form of the short octave is the one on C / E. This designation, which has become common internationally, means that the note C is on the E key. The optical deceptive impression is that the instrument appears to start with E. In reality, however, the key E sounds the tone C, and the upper keys F sharp and G sharp sound the notes D and E. → See the illustration of the tone / key assignment for the short octave on C / E.

The semitones C sharp / D flat, D flat / E flat, F sharp / G flat and G sharp / A flat are omitted, and the key sequence is chromatic only from A onwards . The manual and pedal keyboards designed in this way have the tones CDEFGABHc, ascending from the lowest key.

In the course of the invention of the so-called harpsichord cromatico , on which one could play more than the semitones usual up to then with the help of broken upper keys in spite of the then usual mid-tone tuning, one began to build broken upper keys for the short octave on normal instruments in Italy around 1600: The upper keys were divided into two with D / F sharp and E / G sharp, and you could still play D and E on the front half and F sharp and G sharp on the back half (i.e. the tones that can also be seen visually). This is called a broken short octave .

Italian virginal with a short C octave, Anonymous, 1st half of the 17th century. - Berlin, Museum of Musical Instruments

The short C-octave was common in the 16th and early 17th centuries for all types of keyboard instruments, i.e. on organs , organ positives , shelves , claviorgana , harpsichords , virginals , clavichords, etc. It remained so with organs until the 18th century, and occasionally also beyond, z. B. in Austria. Almost all harpsichords and virals of the famous Ruckers family were equipped with a short octave before they were mostly rebuilt and expanded from the late 17th century onwards (in French this is called ravalement ). As an example of organ building in North Germany, instruments with short octaves by Arp Schnitger have been preserved in Eunum , Faro , Pellworm , Ochsenwerder and Godlinze ; On them, among other things, the compositions from the area of ​​the North German Organ School can be adequately represented. The organ-building dynasty of the Egedacher , of which the organs from Zwettl , Vornbach , Münsteuer and a few others with short octaves are preserved, can be taken as an example of organ building in southern Germany .

In the case of keel instruments such as harpsichord or virginal, the range of instruments began to be expanded downwards from the 17th century, first to include the missing chromatic tones, and later to include additional bass notes. The first instruments with a continuous chromatic range in the bass from C and even with lower notes must have existed in England, because the surviving music of John Bull , Giles Farnaby , Thomas Tomkins and Orlando Gibbons occasionally requires low notes up to AA. Such instruments from this heyday of English virginal music have not survived.

The short octave with GG / H

[7]
Harpsichord with a short G bass octave, Anonymous, Spanish (?) (Or German?), Around 1700 (?). Museu de la Música, Barcelona (BCN 8966).

In the course of the expansion of the range of keel instruments in the 17th century, a short GG octave also appeared. In this case, the visual impression is that the instrument seems to start with BH in the bass and then rise chromatically upwards. In truth, there is a low GG on the apparent HH key, and AA and HH are on the apparent upper keys for C sharp and D flat. The lowest octave of such instruments is (in tones): GG-AA-HH-CDEF-F sharp-G. This octave could also be broken, so it had two notes on the broken upper keys for C sharp and D flat: Front AA / back C sharp, and front HH / back D flat.

The short G octave was quite common: in the 17th century it was normal for French harpsichords and spinets, and also appeared in Italian harpsichords, in keel instruments of the Flemish Ruckers' successor Couchet, and in northern Germany in the early 18th century. The origin of the anonymous harpsichord shown in the musical instrument museum in Barcelona is not exactly clear: it could be Spanish, but it also has German features.

Other forms of short octaves

A short octave that occurs exclusively on southern German-Austrian instruments is particularly complicated: for example, an anonymous harpsichord from 1696, a harpsichord by Chr. Panzner (Vienna 1747), and a harpsichord by Leydecker (Vienna 1755). This Austrian short octave is a combination of the short C octave plus several z. Partly broken special keys for the low notes FF, GG, AA and HH. There is also music that can only be played on such special instruments: the so-called Rossignolo and other works by Alessandro Poglietti , and some early works by Joseph Haydn .

In the 17th and 18th centuries, there were simpler forms of short octaves than those mentioned previously in many harpsichords and other keel instruments in all European countries. Very often a few additional keys have simply been added at the bottom of a normal chromatic range. B. to sizes such as: (FF), GG, AA, HH, C to c '' ', or GG, AA to d' '' etc. Until the 1770s, English harpsichords from Shudi or Kirkman had a 5- Octave range FF – f '' ', but in the bass without the low F sharp.

origin

The history of the short octave goes back to the time when the organ and keel instruments, such as harpsichord and virginal, changed from an F instrument to a C instrument and a C was added to the F as the lowest note below. With the beginning of the modern era, the keyboard shape with the short octave in the bass of keyboard instruments was already widespread and represented a further development that remained standard for centuries - unlike the treble of keyboard instruments, which was gradually expanded.

Until the 18th century, musicians could hardly or not at all use the bass tones C sharp / D flat, D flat / E flat, F sharp / G flat and G sharp / A flat due to the vocal systems of that time. In the normal mid-tone tuning ( 1 ⁄ 4 point), which was particularly widespread in the 16th and 17th centuries and was in use for organs even longer, only the semitones c sharp, e flat, f sharp, g sharp and b flat exist; the tones of d flat, d flat, a flat or a sharp in the 1 ⁄ 4 -point-mean-tone tuning are their own tones that could not be used on a normal keyboard anyway (hence the invention of the above-mentioned harpsichord cromatico with broken upper keys).

Even Johann Sebastian Bach used the C sharp in only six compositions in his entire organ work.

advantages

The complete omission of these unusable or hardly used tones made it possible to save material. In organ building in particular, doing without four of the largest pipes per register meant enormous savings in expensive tin . In addition, the design of the prospectus became more aesthetic, since the pipe arrangement was not uniformly stepped, but instead resulted in a curved pipe course / veil board course through whole-tone spacings that merged into semitone spacings .

The short octave in the manual was in line with the musical practice of the time, because it made fingering easier for cadence-based bass playing and made decimals in the left hand possible. Well-known compositions for it can be found z. B. in the Apparatus Musico Organisticus from the year 1690 by Georg Muffat : 12 toccatas and three variation works for organ. A famous example of harpsichord or virginal is a chromatic passage in the third part of the Pavana and the Galiarda dolorosa by Peter Philips (1593; Fitzwilliam Virginal Book , No. LXXX and LXXXI), which can only be fingered with a short octave.

19th century

The first negative comments on the short octave came from traveling organ virtuosos like Adolf Friedrich Hesse and Joseph Proksch . Similar to Paganini's violin and Liszt's piano, these organists made their first concert tours. In doing so, they were mostly confronted with a different type of organ and could not or did not want to adapt themselves or their literature (→ organ landscape ). For these traveling organ virtuosos, a large pitch range based as much as possible on the piano was particularly important (→ standardized console ). B. as a standardized sound of the instruments.
Almost at the same time, the key characteristics were abandoned by eliminating "old" vocal systems , and with it the introduction of the equal temperament and equal rights for all keys. The demand for the largest possible expansion of the range of the organ's keyboard, both in the bass ( "without" a short octave ) and in the treble (range up to g 3 ), is understandable in this logic, the defamation of the conventional bass range as "short" became commonplace.

Voices to the short octave

In 1777 Wolfgang Amadé Mozart played on his city ​​trip (1777–1781) on the organ of the Augsburg Barfüßerkirche , which had been built by Johann Andreas Stein with an expanded major octave, and said: [...] we came to the choir. I began to Præludiren, then he laughed, then a fugue. I think so, he said, that they like to play orgl; Whom you play like that - - from the beginning the pedal was a little strange to me because it wasn't broken. it started c, then d - e, in a row. But Beÿ is D and E above, like Eb and F # here. but I got on straight away. [...];

In addition, in a letter of April 16, 1789 to his wife Constanze , he referred to the short octave when he met Johann Wilhelm Häßler at the Silbermann organ in the Dresden court church : [...] Now people here believe because I come from Vienna that I don't even know this taste and this way of playing. - So I sat down at the organ and played. - Prince Lichnowskÿ (because he knows Häßler well) persuades him to play with great difficulty; - the force of this Häßler consists on the organ in feet, which, because the pedals go step by step, is not so great an art; Incidentally, he only learned harmony and modulations from old Sebastian Bach by heart, and is not able to properly execute a fugue - and has no solid game - so he is by no means an Albrechtsberger . [...]

Johann Evangelist Schmidt said in an organ finding in 1803 that the organ of the Collegienkirche in Salzburg [...] was of a [...] limitation that can no longer be found in any part of Germany. Everywhere the manuals have over four octaves in range, only here the so-called short octave is still common; the half tones between cd (= C sharp and D sharp are missing) and in most organs also F # and G # (= F sharp and G sharp missing). At a time when the composers only presented their works in 6 or 8 keys and did not choose a midrange for the tonnica, the short octaves were easily enough: but now that there are musicians from 24 keys, it sounds so meager to hear, where the bass (foundation) is lacking. [...].

literature

  • Otto Biba : Interrelationships between organ building and organ music in the Austro-Habsburg core countries from the 17th to the 19th centuries. In: Hubert Unverricht: Music of the East. 9th anthology of the JG Herder research center. Bärenreiter, Kassel / Basel / London 1983, pp. 17–27.
  • Otto Biba: The short and the broken major octave - a historical review. In: Das Orgelforum, No. 1, May 1998, pp. 41–43.
  • Edward L. Kottick: A History of the Harpsichord. Indiana University Press, Bloomington (Indiana) 2003. (Eng.)
  • Edward L. Kottick, George Lucktenberg: Early Keyboard Instruments in European Museums. Indiana University Press, Bloomington / Indianapolis 1997. (Eng.)
  • Grant O'Brian: Ruckers - A harpsichord and virginal building tradition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge u. a. 1990.
  • Edwin M. Ripin, Howard Schott, John Koster, Denzil Wraight, Beryl Kenyon de Pascual, Grant O'Brian u. a .: Harpsichord. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , 2nd edition. 2001, pp. 4-44.
  • John Henry van der Meer : harpsichord, clavizitherium, spinet, virginal. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG) , subject part, vol. 2. Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel / J.-B.-Metzler-Verlag, Stuttgart 1995, pp. 487-528.
  • Johann Baptist Samber : CONTINUATIO AD MANDUCATIONEM ORGANICAM, that is: continuation of the manduction or hand-guidance for playing the organs; Johann Baptist Mayr seel. Wittib and son , Salzburg 1707.

Web links

Commons : Short octave  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ See: [1] , accessed September 4, 2017.
  2. ↑ See p. 4: [2] , accessed on March 11, 2017.
  3. ↑ John Henry van der Meer : harpsichord, clavizitherium, spinet, virginal. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG) , Sachteil, Vol. 2. Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel / J.-B.-Metzler-Verlag, Stuttgart 1995, pp. 487-528, here : P. 495.
  4. ↑ Edward L. Kottick: A History of the Harpsichord. Indiana University Press, Bloomington (Indiana) 2003, pp. 88f.
  5. ↑ The tenacity of the short octave is illustrated by the fact that in Austrian organ building, mechanical organs with the short octave in the pedal, which was later largely frowned upon, were built up to 1900. Otto Biba : Interrelationships between organ building and organ music in the Austro-Habsburg core countries from the 17th to the 19th centuries. In: Hubert Unverricht (ed.): Music of the East. 9th anthology of the JG Herder research center. Bärenreiter, Kassel / Basel / London 1983, pp. 17–27.
  6. ^ Grant O'Brian: Ruckers - A harpsichord and virginal building tradition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge u. a. 1990, pp. 40–41 (original scope), pp. 207–217 ( ravalement ).
  7. ↑ Edward L. Kottick: A History of the Harpsichord. Indiana University Press, Bloomington (Indiana) 2003, p. 240. Also in: Edward L. Kottick, George Lucktenberg: Early Keyboard Instruments in European Museums. Indiana University Press, Bloomington / Indianapolis 1997, p. 187. (In this publication the instrument is referred to as a mystery harpsichord , and the authors believe it has a “Saxon” rose on the soundboard).
  8. ↑ John Henry van der Meer : harpsichord, clavizitherium, spinet, virginal. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG) , Sachteil, Vol. 2. Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel / J.-B.-Metzler-Verlag, Stuttgart 1995, pp. 487-528, here P. 495 (images at the top of the page).
  9. ↑ John Henry van der Meer: harpsichord, clavizitherium, spinet, virginal. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG) , Sachteil, Vol. 2. Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel / J.-B.-Metzler-Verlag, Stuttgart 1995, pp. 487-528, here : P. 495.
  10. ↑ John Henry van der Meer: harpsichord, clavizitherium, spinet, virginal. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG) , Sachteil, Vol. 2. Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel / J.-B.-Metzler-Verlag, Stuttgart 1995, pp. 487-528, here : P. 495 (Italian harpsichords), p. 501 (northern German harpsichords 18th century), p. 505 (German spinets 17th century), p. 510 (harpsichords v. Couchet), p. 515 & 518 ( French harpsichords and spinets).
  11. ↑ Edward L. Kottick: A History of the Harpsichord. Indiana University Press, Bloomington (Indiana) 2003, p. 240. Also in: Edward L. Kottick, George Lucktenberg: Early Keyboard Instruments in European Museums. Indiana University Press, Bloomington / Indianapolis 1997, p. 187.
  12. ↑ John Henry van der Meer: harpsichord, clavizitherium, spinet, virginal. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG) , Sachteil, Vol. 2. Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel / J.-B.-Metzler-Verlag, Stuttgart 1995, pp. 487-528, here : P. 504.
  13. ↑ Edward L. Kottick: A History of the Harpsichord. Indiana University Press, Bloomington (Indiana) 2003, p. 344ff (with detailed illustration and explanation). Also: Edward L. Kottick, George Lucktenberg: Early Keyboard Instruments in European Museums. Indiana University Press, Bloomington / Indianapolis 1997, p. 5 ( Museum Carolino Augusteum , Salzburg), pp. 13–15 ( Kunsthistorisches Museum , Vienna), p. 39 ( National Museum Prague ).
  14. ↑ John Henry van der Meer: harpsichord, clavizitherium, spinet, virginal. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG) , Sachteil, Vol. 2. Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel / J.-B.-Metzler-Verlag, Stuttgart 1995, pp. 487-528, here : P. 504.
  15. ↑ Numerous different sizes or short bass octaves names: John Henry van der Meer: harpsichord, clavizitherium, spinet, virginal. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG) , Sachteil, Vol. 2. Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel / J.-B.-Metzler-Verlag, Stuttgart 1995, pp. 487-528, here : P. 495 (volumes Italian harpsichords), p. 500 (early German harpsichords), p. 501 (northern German harpsichords, 18th century), p. 505–506 (German spinets and virgins), p. 510 (harpsichords v . Couchet), p. 515 u. 518 (French harpsichords and spinets), pp. 518-520 (English harpsichords).
  16. ↑ Edward L. Kottick: A History of the Harpsichord. Indiana University Press, Bloomington (Indiana) 2003, pp. 369-370.
  17. ↑ Otto Biba: The short and the broken major octave - a historical review. In: Das Orgelforum, No. 1, May 1998, p. 41.
  18. ^ Salzburg, International Mozarteum Foundation: Letter from Wolfgang Amadé Mozart to his father. Augsburg on October 17, 1777. In: Mozart letters and documents. Online edition, [3]
  19. ↑ Mozart meant chromatic by this .
  20. ↑ See: [4] , accessed on March 11, 2017.
  21. ^ University archive Salzburg: University files No. 29. Quoted from Gerhard Walterskirchen: Organs and organ builders in Salzburg from the Middle Ages to the present. Contributions to 700 years of organ building in the city of Salzburg. Dissertation. Salzburg 1982, p. 118.