Mey (wind instrument)

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Mey is a woodwind instrument with a very large double reed that is played in Turkish folk music . The slim cylindrical shape of the playing tube without a bell can be mistaken for a flute . The Asian short to the group oboe scoring mey has a soft and silent, in the deep tones of a clarinet is like sound and especially for solo play and for small ensembles.

Origin and Distribution

An ancient forerunner of the reed instruments is the Greek aulos . The monaulos (with a play tube) had eight finger holes and two holes on the bottom, one for each thumb. According to the travelogues of the Ottoman writer Evliya Çelebi , the mey was known in Istanbul in the 17th century . Çelebi wrote belban of a wind instrument , which corresponds to the name balaban for today's short oboe with eight to nine finger holes in Azerbaijan and Iran . The Kurds refer to the identical instrument as dûdûk , the Armenian national instrument is also called duduk and the Georgian duduki . The Asian Kurzoboen family is spread as far as China ( guan ) , Korea ( piri ) and Japan ( hichiriki ) . The second thumb hole is also found on some Armenian and East Asian instruments.

The name mey is derived from the Persian nay-i-balaban or nayçe-i-balaban . Nay (Arabic / Persian) means "pipe" and denotes a longitudinal flute that is widespread throughout the Orient, which is called ney in Turkey because of its pronunciation , -çe is an appended diminutive, so "small pipe". The mey , which was phonetically modified by ney , probably serves to better distinguish the oboe from the flute.

Design

The play tube ( mey or gövde , "body") is preferably turned from plum wood (erik) . Other types of wood are walnut , mulberry , apricot , beech , acacia and olive . At usually 30 centimeters, the tube is somewhat shorter than that of the better-known Turkish cone oboe zurna . The main differences to the loud and shrill-sounding zurna , however, are not the length, but the missing bell and the oversized reeds (kamiş) , which are a good 10 centimeters long , which are responsible for the mey's dark, soft sound . At the upper end of the pipe there is a neck thickened up to twice the circumference into which the two reeds made of reeds or a similar water grass are inserted. The inner diameter of the approach is 10 to 20 millimeters. A flat round ring (kiskaç) holds the reeds together; with about two thirds of their length they protrude freely swinging beyond the ring. Their length varies between 8 and 15 centimeters with a 2 to 4 centimeter width at the end. The ring consists of two curved softwood sticks that are tied together at the ends. This ring can be moved for fine tuning. The reeds are held about one centimeter between the lips and not completely put into the mouth as with the zurna . This creates a tone with a variable and expressive tone that can be brought into a stronger vibrato by moving the jaw quickly . When not in use, a cap ( aǧizlik ) protects the reeds.

The smallest and best-known design with a length of 30 centimeters is called cura mey ( cura , “small”). There is also the orta mey (“medium”) with a length of 35 and the ana mey (“mother”) with a length of 40 centimeters. The outer diameter of the play tube is 20 to 25 millimeters for all three sizes, the inner diameter is approximately 10 millimeters throughout. The first finger hole was measured 11 centimeters from the upper end of an ana mey , 10 to 12 centimeters is common, depending on the manufacturing company. At 3 to 3.5 centimeters, the hole spacing is significantly larger than that of the zurna or the bagpipe tulum, which is known on the eastern Turkish Black Sea coast . The finger holes have a diameter of 6 millimeters.

Style of play

With seven finger holes on the top of the playing tube and a thumb hole at the bottom, the range is one octave . The lowest note is about a fourth below that of an equally long zurna. Three fingers of the left hand serve the near holes, the fingers of the right hand the distant holes. The left thumb covers the lower hole. The front phalanges of the fingers are laid flat, when playing with partially only half-closed finger holes, a chromatic scale can be reproduced. The lowest note of the longest mey is B ♭ , the orta mey has a range from d to d 1 and the small cura mey from g to g 1 .

The mey is played by experienced musicians with circular breathing and only rarely overblown . Its traditional distribution focus is in the east of Turkey, where it is used solo, alternately with sung folk songs or in small ensembles in some regions. If the free rhythmic uzun hava melodies are played by the mey , their otherwise wider pitch range adapts to the limited possibilities of the instrument.

In connection with the state promotion of the national “Turkish” music culture from the beginning of the 20th century, the previously little-known mey also reached a wider audience through radio broadcasts in the 1960s . During this time, the naming classification into three different sizes arose. Most mey players also perform with the zurna on other occasions , with the louder zurna in conjunction with the frame drum davul forming its own type of dance song. The two are the Turkish variant of the combination of drum and a double reed instrument of the surnai type, which is widespread in Asia . The combination of mey and davul , on the other hand, does not normally occur. If, as an exception, a mey and davul player make music together, the drummer renounces his sticks and hits the davul with his hands, holding it horizontally with his knees like the beaker drum deblek . Deblek and the kaval flute are the most important traditional instruments of the nomads in Turkey. The mey is rhythmically accompanied by the frame drum def .

Usually two short oboes play together, one setting the melody and the other accompanying with a drone (dem) . In modern chamber music, the mey is particularly suitable for the improvised instrumental interlude ( taksim ) .

literature

  • Christian Ahrens: Instrumental musical styles on the Eastern Turkish Black Sea coast. A comparative study of the game practice of davul-zurna, kemençe and tulum. Commission publisher Klaus Renner, Munich 1970, ISBN 3-87673-002-3 .
  • Songül Karahasanoǧlu: Mey. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 3, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 456
  • Songül Karahasanoǧlu, Gabriel Skoog: Innovative Neglect: Contextual Divergence and the Development of the Mey in Turkey. In: The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 64, March 2011, pp. 201-207, 195
  • Laurence Picken : Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey. Oxford University Press, London 1975, ISBN 0-19-318102-9 , pp. 475-481.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karahasanoǧlu, Savaş
  2. ↑ Picken, p. 478.
  3. ↑ Kurt Reinhard : Playing technique and music of the Turkish short oboe mey. In: Studia instrumentorum musicae popularis. Stockholm 1979, pp. 111-119, here p. 114.
  4. ↑ Ahrens, 1970, p. 36.