Mirliton
Mirliton (French) is a membranophone stimulated by air movement , of which three variants are distinguished according to the type of sound generation:
- With the singing drums , which are mainly used today as children's toys ( air trunks ) , a thin membrane located on a hollow body is made to vibrate by singing or speaking through an opening, which changes the sound of the voice.
- Free Mirlitons do not need a hollow body because the membrane is stimulated directly by the air flow, as in comb-blowing or blowing over a leaf.
- On the resonance bodies of musical instruments, especially on African xylophones and flutes , diaphragms attached over small holes amplify and change the sound.
Singing drums
The different shapes of the small, flute-like effect instruments, which are called air trunks or rolling whistles as children's toys, are made of paper, wood or plastic. If someone speaks or sings into the mouthpiece, a membrane starts to vibrate and gives the sound of the voice a peculiar nasal timbre. The housing acts as a resonance body and has a sound-enhancing effect. Mirlitons are tubular hollow bodies or other shaped vessels with an opening covered by a membrane.
The English name for a special form of singing drums made of metal or plastic is kazoo . Singing drums were ancient cult instruments in many parts of Africa and Asia, with which the human voice could be transformed into that of an otherworldly spirit being in order to connect with it. Their existence can be inferred from the specimens preserved in folk music and as children's toys in some places.
With aerophones , the sound is generated by breaking a stream of air on an edge ( flute ), a vibrating plate ( reed instrument , also on a tongue ) or with the lips ( brass instrument ) and causing it to vibrate. The membrane of a Mirliton is set in motion by a stream of air like the reed of a wind instrument , but according to the Hornbostel-Sachs system, singing drums are not part of the aerophones, but like percussion drums belong to the membranophone, because the sound primarily originates elsewhere and only on the membrane the sound is changed.
Europe
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Mirliton was known in Europe as the onion flute , French flûte à l'onion , also flûte eunuque, English eunuch flute . In his work, the French music theorist Marin Mersenne (1588–1648) created Harmonie universelle: Contenant la théorie et la pratique de la musique from 1636/37, in which he carried out acoustic-physical calculations and classified the musical instruments , a typical Mirliton for his time under the name chalumeau eunuque (" Chalumeau of the eunuchs"). The notes sung into hole B come out reinforced at the funnel. The near end is covered with a membrane, over which a cap with sound holes is pulled off in the figure. The recognizable finger holes should make the instrument look like a flute. However, this did not affect the pitch, but only to a certain extent the sound.
A wooden tube has a thickening at the end, which is closed by a thin membrane comparable to an onion skin. Late 19th century an improved version came such Ansingtrommeln with a bell of brass Zobo were called to the market (English zobo flute or zobo horn ). The Mirliton became popular as an industrially manufactured noise device for children and as a joke item at fairs. A similar acoustic effect can be achieved by blowing over a comb.
A typical self-made Mirliton occurs in the southern Italian region of Calabria as a children's toy. A soft stalk of sedge is cut at the near end directly at the ovary and at the far end just before the next knot. An oval opening cut into the side of the stalk at the near end served as a blowhole. The far end is covered with a tied leaf, an onion peel or the shred of a napkin as a membrane.
Old names for Mirlitons in Switzerland are Strählorgeli and Düderli . In 1883, the French toy manufacturer Romain François Bigot invented bigophones, known as bigophones , that were inexpensive to manufacture made of zinc in the form of brass instruments with a side hole covered by a membrane. Varinette were similar instruments that were popular in the 1920s.
Tchaikovsky named a movement of his Nutcracker Suite (1892) composed for flutes danse des mirlitons .
Asia
In Turkey , the singing drums, which are used as children's toys, are named after the musical instruments they are supposed to remind of, such as kaval (end-blown shepherd's flute), düdük (a beaked flute ) or generally mızıka , where mızıka means “military band” and the composition is ağız mızıkası harmonica . A zırıltı (Turkish “babble”, “chat”) or nârek (possibly from Arabic nāra , “scream”) consists of an approximately 20 centimeter long reed or elder branch open on both sides with a 2 × 3 near one end Centimeter large hole is cut. The end there is sealed with wax paper. The player holds his lips to the side opening and speaks short chopped off syllables ("di, di, di ...") into it. In the Turkish shadow play Karagöz, the zırıltı served as a signaling instrument at the beginning of the performance and noisily accompanied the appearance of predators or monsters.
The nyastaranga used in India and Bangladesh is a 40 to 50 centimeter long, slightly conical brass tube in the shape of a trumpet, i.e. with an outwardly curved bell. Below the upper opening, which looks like a mouthpiece, there is a constriction in the tube, which is covered by a thin membrane. The player holds two of these instruments called " throat trumpet " to his throat while he makes a humming noise or sings. The vibrations are transmitted to the membrane and are amplified by the tube. Because the tiny membrane can hardly be seen, the nyastaranga was often wrongly called a "trumpet" in the literature.
Africa
In the same form, only made from a tubular bone, Mirlitons originally served sacred purposes in Africa, for example as ritual instruments in the cult of the dead or when invoking personified ancestral spirits . Mages used Mirlitone because they had to change their voices to contact otherworldly beings. A voice distorter could also convey the messages of the spirit present in the ritual. In the dodo obsession cult in northern Nigeria, the invisible dodo spirit spoke to the initiated men from a cult house built especially for him with a voice distorter made from a calabash . According to a description from 1934, the Bafia in Cameroon produced Mirlitone from human tubular bones or from leopard bones for similar purposes, one end of which they covered with a cocoon of a spider glued on with wax . Such Mirlitons were only allowed to be used by adult males or medicine men and had to be carefully hidden from uninitiated. Instead, boys sang into an elephant grass stem that had two openings cut into the side: a blowhole and a hole covered with a membrane. Mask dancers of the West African Senufo speak in a Mirliton during the ritual for a deceased who is wrapped in a blanket on the floor and want to get in contact with him while at the same time gently stroking him with a fly whisk. The Idoma in central Nigeria change the sound of their voice with the bird-bone Mirliton ɔgakwú , which is provided with a spider cocoon. There are similar instruments in southern Nigeria.
An adoption of elements of the colonial British marching music in the traditional music of Malawi led to the march music ensembles called malipenga (singular lipenga ) or mganda . Boys began to recreate the British drums and wind instruments with their humble capabilities in the mid-20th century. Instead of the trumpets and horns, they used elongated calabashes, at the end of which they cut an opening and covered it with a spider cocoon. The Mirliton's name, lipenga , means "horn". The neo-traditional malipenga ensembles developed under the Tonga later also became popular with the Tumbuka .
In the 1950s, a guitar style influenced by Portuguese folk music was popular in Angola and Mozambique . The singers accompanied their stories about everyday life on the guitar and at the same time blew a musengere called Mirliton. In the Kivu region in eastern Congo , the Nyanga use two Mirlitone called kabiri and nyakimpiriiti, which are particularly sacred. During initiation rituals, men sing and speak hastily and inarticulate into the Mirlitone, so that the words become incomprehensible and only tones can be heard. The kabiri represents the leading, male, spiritual being of the ritual, while the nyakimpiriiti is an approximate female equivalent. In terms of sound, a deep voice contrasts with a high-pitched screeching.
After the end of the First World War , music and dance ensembles emerged in Malawi and neighboring countries in southeastern Africa, based on British military brass bands that marched in parades, most of which performed in white clothing in the style of colonial uniforms. They are called boma , named after the colonial administration buildings Boma . With the ensemble formation Malipenge Boma in Malawi, calabash Mirlitone ( malipenga , singular lipenga ) replace the European trumpets of the military bands as melody instruments. They are complemented by drums and singing voices. The calabashes come in two sizes: The high-pitched calabashes consist of a small, thin calabash curved like a horn with an open front end, a rear end closed with a spider cocoon and a side blow hole next to it. The large, deeply sounding horns are sung at the rear end of the pipe and have no Mirliton. The calabash trumpets and the choir alternately produce the melody, while the dancers move in military-like formations with exaggerated, mannered poses.
Middle and South America
In various areas of Mexico , hunters used simple tubular mirlitons to imitate animal sounds and attract game. A lure instrument for animals in Mexico is called gamitadera (from Spanish gamo , "deer"). The tube was made of reeds or animal bones, one end of which was closed with a membrane. People were singing through a hole in the side. In the state of Guerrero , a dried bat wing was usually used as the membrane, otherwise animal intestines.
The Central American Miskito know a turu-turu called Mirliton three centimeters long, which consists of two pieces of reed surrounded by beeswax with a bat wing inserted between them.
Free Mirlitone
Comb-blowing creates effect noises when the breathing air is blown against the finest possible teeth of a comb and the membrane made of thin paper, tinfoil or plastic foil, which is folded over both sides of the comb. The player holds the comb against his lips while singing or speaking. The simplest form of a free Mirliton is a leaf held in front of your mouth.
The Ottoman travel writer Evliya Çelebi (1611 - after 1683) mentions a "comb wind instrument" with an Arabic name, from which it can only be assumed that it refers to a comb with paper. An early illustration of a comb blower in Italy can be found in the work Gabinetto armonico pieno d'instrumenti sonori ("Showcase of musical instruments") from 1723 by the Italian Jesuit priest and naturalist Filippo Bonanni . The position and size of the comb are not shown realistically, perhaps to better show the teeth of the comb.
In Cambodia , the free Mirliton slekk consists of a thick tree leaf. The player folds the sheet lengthways, holds it between his lips and blows against the folded edge. The slekk is usually played solo for entertainment, less often in the popular vung phleng kar orchestra , which plays ( kar ) at weddings . In addition to the slekk , this ensemble includes a singer, the double reed instrument pey prabauh , the stab zither kse diev , the three-stringed tubular violin tror Khmer , the two-string plucked chapey dang veng , the beaker drum skor arakk and the cymbals chhing .
Young people from the Miao and related ethnic groups living in southern China blow over a leaf called cugenao (Chinese muye ) to imitate the human voice in a high- pitched , clear tone. In the process, melodies arise with which young men want to express feelings of love and wait for a reaction from the girls. A holly leaf ( ilex ) or another firm fresh leaf is used. The sheet, folded in half, should be about 5.5 inches long and 2.2 inches wide. Plastic wrap can be a substitute. The cugenao can be used solo or with other instruments. The Miao often use it to intone love songs ( courtship songs youfang ) or drinking songs. If young men in the province Wenshan festivals or private parties cugenao can sound s, them sitting girl over and play along with Jew's harps .
The Chokwe in Angola have ritual masks that belong to the initiation school ( mukanda ) of the boys and may only be used in a separate enclosure during the initiation period. The cocoon of a certain spider ( candawuli ) is attached behind the mouth opening of some wooden masks (plural makisi , also the name of the male mask wearer ). This Mirliton ( lundandji ) consists of a calabash neck covered with a spider membrane and alienates the voice. Thereby it expresses for the initiators that the voice of a spirit can be heard. Different masks produce a whistling wind noise, a honking sound or - in the case of a mask representing a domestic pig - a trembling sound.
Membrane on musical instruments
Furthermore referred Mirliton the taped with a paper-thin membrane opening at the resonance bodies of percussion, wind and stringed instruments. The membrane is stimulated by air vibrations inside, which increases the volume and changes the sound. Such membranes, consisting of a spider cocoon or cigarette paper, are typical of the calabash resonators of African xylophones , such as the balafon or valimba , and are also found on some stringed instruments such as the kerbsteg zither mvet . Before the performance, the xylophone player checks the correct tension of the glued-on Mirlitone, as the drummer adjusts the skin tension on the lacing or by heating his drum if necessary.
The hourglass-shaped drum mukupela is one of the traditional insignia of the heads of the Chokwe in Angola . In earlier times, mikupela (plural of mukupela ) were only struck to announce a war, and also when a ruler was inaugurated or died. The loud sound of the drum comes from a short piece of a calabash neck, which is covered with a spider cocoon and stuck in a hole in the wooden body.
The most famous instrument in Central and South America with a Mirliton is the marimba . Traditionally, a spider cocoon was glued on with beeswax; in Nicaragua , dried pig intestines are now commonly used for this xylophone.
The historic gourd trumpet Zumbador the Mixtecs had a Mirliton. In Mexico's indigenous Pame family, who belong to the Otomangue language family, the mitote flute is equipped with a cobweb membrane. The pame flute is 35 to 55 centimeters long and consists of a reed ( carrizo ) with four finger holes. A spider cocoon is glued to another hole in front of the lower end with wax.
Archaeological finds suggest that there were beaked flutes with Mirlitons in the Hueta culture (800–1200) in Costa Rica in pre-Columbian times . Two zoomorphic clay flutes, 12 and 14 centimeters long, had an opening at the far end that must have been covered with a Mirliton.
Mirlitones are found on two flutes in East Asia : the Chinese bamboo flute dizi , which has six finger holes and a hole called mokong , which is covered with a bamboo or paper membrane, and the daegeum , a similar long flute from Korea . In China, the membrane (Chinese di-mo ) usually consists of either the thin inner skin of a bamboo cane ( ju-mo ), a slightly thicker inner layer of a reed ( lu-mo ) or occasionally an onion skin. If necessary, a thin plastic sheet will also work. Different liquids available in the kitchen with a certain adhesive force or the glue on postage stamps are used as adhesives. Mirlitone also own the Korean bamboo flute daegeum and junggeum , the Korean bamboo flute tungso and the Thai khlui flute .
A transitional form between singing drums that change the sound of the voice and flutes that produce their own sound are ocarinas (vessel flutes) in the Nigerian state of Plateau , which are made from the peel of Oncoba spinosa , a tree belonging to the willow family. The player blows over the upper hole and, by covering two more holes with his fingers, can produce three to four tones with imprecise intervals. The ocarina is used by hunters as a signaling instrument or to entertain themselves outside with music. In a variant, one of the holes in the shell is taped over with a spider cocoon. The player can either speak or blow into the ocarina.
A separate group of wind instruments - not membranophones - are the membranopipes , in which a membrane stretched over an opening, when excited by a stream of air, periodically lets air through the opening , as in a reed instrument , so that the air vibrations in the downstream tube make a sound to produce.
literature
- Beatrice Mary Blackwood, Henry Balfour: Ritual and Secular Uses of Vibrating Membranes as Voice-Disguisers. In: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 78, No. 1/2, 1948, pp. 45-69
- Roberto Velázquez Cabrera: Ancient Aerophones with Mirliton. In: Arnd Adje Both, Ricardo Eichmann, Ellen Hickmann, Lars-Christian Koch (Eds.): Studien zur Musikarchäologie VI, Orient-Archäologie Volume 22. ( 5th Symposium of the International Study Group on Music Archeology at the Ethnological Museum, State Museums Berlin, September 12–23, 2006 ) Verlag Marie Leidorf, Rahden / Westf. 2008
- Mirliton . In: Sibyl Marcuse : Musical Instruments: A Comprehensive Dictionary. A complete, authoritative encyclopedia of instruments throughout the world. Country Life Limited, London 1966, p. 340
- Laurence Picken : Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey. Oxford University Press, London 1975, pp. 161-168
Web links
- Mirliton (eunuch pipe (copy)). Europeana (illustration of a historical German Mirliton)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jeremy Montagu: Origins and Development of Musical Instruments. Scarecrow Press, Lanham 2007, p. 6
- ↑ 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica / Eunuch Flute. wikisource
- ↑ Kwintet on Value: The rise of the Zobo brass instruments.
- ^ Antonello Ricci, Roberta Tucci: Folk Musical Instruments in Calabria. In: The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 41, October 1988, pp. 36-58, here p. 44
- ^ Sibyl Marcuse, 1966, pp. 53, 561
- ↑ Laurence Picken, 1975, pp. 164f
- ↑ Nyastaranga. Metropolitan Museum of Art (illustration)
- ↑ Nyastaranga. In: Sibyl Marcuse, 1966, p. 369
- ↑ Nyastaranga. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 3, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 616
- ^ BM Blackwood, Henry Balfour, pp. 50f
- Jump up ↑ Till Förster: Smoothing the Way of the Dead: A Senufo Rhythm Pounder. In: Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, (African Art at Yale) 2005, pp. 54–67, here p. 61
- ^ Roger Blench: Idoma Musical Instruments. In: Journal of International Library of African Music, Vol. 6, No. 4, 1987, pp. 42-52, here p. 47
- ↑ Gerhard Kubik : To understand African music . Lit Verlag, Vienna 2004, p. 310
- ^ Forgotten Guitars from Mozambique. Portuguese East Africa. 1955 '56 '57. Feliciano Gomes, Aurelio Howano & others . Field shots by Hugh Tracey . International Library of African Music, Rhodes University, Grahamstone, South Africa. CD 2003 (SWP 025), tracks 14, 15, 21
- ^ Daniel P. Biebuyck: Nyanga Circumcision Masks and Costumes. In: African Arts, Vol. 6, No. 2, Winter 1973, pp. 20-25 + 86-92, here p. 25
- ↑ Alfons Michael Duration : Tradition of African Wind Orchestras and the Origin of Jazz. (Contributions to jazz research, vol. 7) Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Graz 1985, p. 89
- ^ Roberto Velázquez Cabrera, p. 365f
- ↑ TM Scruggs: Miskitu. In: Dale A. Olsen, Daniel E. Sheehy (Eds.): The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. South America, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Volume 2. Garland Publishing, New York 1998, p. 660, ISBN 0-8240-4947-0
- ^ Henry George Farmer : Turkish Instruments of Music in the Seventeenth Century. In: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 1, January 1936, pp. 1–43, here p. 9
- ^ Filippo Bonanni : Gabinetto armonico pieno d'instrumenti sonori . Placho, Rome 1723 ( illustration panel XLII )
- ↑ Sam-Ang Sam, Panya Roongruang, Phong T. Nguyen: The Khmer People . In: Terry E. Miller (Ed.): The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Southeast Asia. Volume 4. Garland Publishing, New York 1998, pp. 169, 196
- ↑ Huanle de Miaojia. A happy Miao Family. (Ethnic Series) PAN Records, Leiden 1994 (PAN 2023CD), Bernard Kleikamp: Supplement to the CD, p. 4
- ↑ See Gerhard Kubik: Makisi nyau mapiko. Mask traditions in Bantu-speaking Africa. Trickster, Munich 1993, p. 88
- ^ Marie-Louise Bastin: Musical Instruments, Songs and Dances of the Chokwe (Dundo Region, Lunda district, Angola). In: African Music, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1992, pp. 23-44, here p. 30
- ↑ Gerhard Kubick: Central Africa. An Introduction. In: Ruth M. Stone (Ed.) :: Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume 1: Africa. Routledge, New York 1997, p. 673
- ↑ E. Fernando Nava: Otopame (Chichimec, Otomi, and Pame). In: Dale A. Olsen, Daniel E. Sheehy (Eds.): The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. South America, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Volume 2. Garland Publishing, New York 1998, p. 573
- ^ Roberto Velázquez Cabrera, pp. 363, 365
- ^ Alan Thrasher: The Transverse Flute in Traditional Chinese Music. In: Asian Music, Vol. 10, No. 1, University of Texas Press, 1978, pp. 92-114, here p. 96
- ↑ Laurence Picken, 1975, p. 166
- ^ Roger Blench: The traditional music of the Jos Plateau in Central Nigeria: an overview. 2005, p. 8f