Palwei

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Palwei ( Burmese ပလွေ "flute"), also palwe, palweh ( pulwe, pillui , from Proto- Lolo -Burmanish * p-lwe , Pwo- Karen pilpal  ), is a longitudinally blown bamboo flute that is mainly played in chamber music in Myanmar . According to the type of sound generated by an outer core gap , the palwei belongs to the band flutes (English ring flutes ), the main representative of which is the suling in Indonesia , whereas a side hole on the palwei that creates a Mirliton effect is a connection to some East Asian longitudinal and Flutes and khlui to the Thai core- gap flute .

Origin and Distribution

Classical Mahagita singing in Myanmar. The female singing voice is accompanied by the bamboo xylophone pattala , alternatively by the bow harp saung gauk . Both instruments are occasionally supplemented by a palwei . Watercolor from 1897.

An influence of Indian and Chinese music on the area of ​​Myanmar has been recognizable since the first millennium . For example, from the 2nd century BC. Bow harp ( vina ) depicted on Indian sculptures and reliefs, probably with the spread of Buddhism from India to Myanmar, where it appears on a relief among the Pyu in the middle of the 7th century , and on to the Khmer empire in present-day Cambodia. Indian bow harps are depicted there in the capital Angkor on reliefs at the Bayon built at the beginning of the 13th century . Although transverse flutes often appeared on Indian temple walls as early as the 1st millennium, they are absent in Angkor. Instead, in addition to Indian bow harps and some lute instruments, there are also representations of transverse flutes at the Buddhist sanctuary Borobudur (early 9th century) on the Indonesian island of Java .

In the Pyu capital Sri Ksetra , which flourished from the 5th to the 7th centuries , brick remains from Buddhist monasteries and stupas were uncovered. Among the excavated bronze figures were several Buddhas , Bodhisattvas and Vishnus making music, one of which played a flute, a drum and a cymbal . Two other characters are identified as a dancer and a clown. The earliest written reference to the Burmese music is a Chinese chronicle of the Tang Dynasty (617-907), which reported a troupe of 35 musicians and dancers from Pyu, which the court of the Chinese emperor in the year 801/802 Chang'an guested . The musical instruments mentioned include a two crocodile zithers ( mí-gyaùng ), three mouth organs ( hnyin ), both of which belong to instrument families widespread on the Southeast Asian mainland, a lute with a Naga head, a lute with a cloud-shaped neck, and five rod zithers Calabash resonators, four flutes and six drums. Only a few longitudinal flutes are depicted in ancient India and to this day only appear regionally in folk music. India did not produce pan flutes either . In contrast, the name hsiao in China has stood for a longitudinally blown bamboo flute since the Han dynasty (207 BC - 220 AD) and probably also for a pan flute until the Tang dynasty. Since the 12th century, xiao has referred to a bamboo flute with five finger holes, a thumb hole and at least two side holes at the lower end, as well as other regional longitudinal flute types made of bamboo. The two holes on the side and the Mirliton hole near the uppermost finger hole connect the xiao with the palwei and the khlui played in Thailand and Cambodia , which belongs to the core gap flutes because of the way it produces sound. Other flutes with Mirliton are the transverse flute dizi (or di ) with six finger holes, which has been played since the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) , the long Korean bamboo transverse flute daegeum , which is mentioned as one of three flutes in the United Silla Empire (668–935) is and is still part of court music and folk music in Korea today, in Vietnam the flute sáo or địch ( cai on dic, derived from the Chinese di ) and the flute limbe in Mongolia .

In the Javanese suling and the palwei , the sound generation is based on the principle of the outer core gap: The blown air is directed to an opening cut into the pipe wall above the growth node , which acts as a core gap. The vibrating air gets back into the play tube through a pushed-on ring (band) made of a plant fiber. In the Javanese suling , this band is right at the top of the flute. Suling band called flutes are also in other regions of Indonesia and the Muslim communities on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao spread. In some places in Indonesia the tape flutes are named with the name bansi , introduced from India , for example among the Minangkabau in western Sumatra ( bansi ), in parts of the province of Aceh in northern Sumatra ( bangsi ) and in the province of Kalimantan Barat ( bangsi ). One of several names for tape flutes on the Indonesian island of Flores is feko .

In addition to the Indonesian tape flutes and the palwei, there are also outer core gaps on bamboo flutes in the rare double transverse flutes , in which the player blows in the middle of an internode into a bamboo tube and the air is blown over core gaps on both sides, creating two tones at the same time. Such a double flute is the surpava in the western Indian state of Maharashtra and the warue bua, the ethnological literature in 1900 according to the to Vanuatu belonging Island Pentecost occurred in the Pacific.

Design

The most commonly played palwei consists of a bamboo tube about 25 centimeters long with a growth knot a few centimeters from the upper open end. An oval hole is cut in the pipe wall exactly above the node. A tape wound over the hole, which traditionally consists of a vegetable fiber and in modern flutes of a photo film strip fixed with a rubber band, directs the blown air through the slot at the edge of the growth node and back into the play tube. The flute has seven equally spaced finger holes on the top and one thumb hole on the bottom. Between the blow-in opening and the first finger hole there is another circular hole, slightly offset to the side, which is covered with a membrane made of an onion skin or a spider's cocoon. Similar mirlitons from spider webs create a buzzing secondary sound in calabash resonators on African xylophones and on some African string instruments. This palwei is tuned to the root g 1 . Their tuning corresponds to the shorter version of the double reed instrument hne galeì (or hne kales ).

A flute that is 35 centimeters long and tuned to the key c 1 a fifth lower is the palwei-gyì . Its mood corresponds to the lower variant hne-gyì ( hne ci or hne kris ). The range of all instruments is two octaves . There is also the rare long flute wun-tha-nú palwei . In addition to the standard flutes with seven finger holes, there are also some flutes with six or four finger holes.

Style of play

Musical instruments from Myanmar that are not part of any ensemble in this compilation. From left: double reed instrument hne , flute palwei , two bow harps saung gauk , trogxylophone pattala and right behind the bamboo chopping fork walet-hkok .

The double reed instrument consists of a conical wooden tube and, like the palwei, has seven equidistant finger holes and one thumb hole. Its loud, penetrating sound, which is typical for bowling oboes, makes the hne suitable for outdoor ensemble music . The two sizes of the hne and the palwei are tuned equally so that the quieter flute can take over the part of the reed instrument in chamber music performances and especially for vocal accompaniment. Hne players usually carry a pair of palwei with them, which they exchange for their pair of cone oboes according to the musical requirements. The cone oboe, flute, violin and singing voice produce long, persistent tones which, according to some Burmese writings on music, which possibly go back to ancient Indian sources, are considered "female", in contrast to the short, "male" tones of percussion instruments.

What is described as the music of Myanmar is mainly the music of the Bamar (Burmese), who as a titular nation make up a good two thirds of the country's population. The classic orchestra of the Bamar for outdoor performances is the hsaing waing , in which one or two cone oboes are used in addition to various percussion instruments (gong and drums). In hsaing waing, these are the only melody instruments that produce sustained tones. The hsaing waing orchestra plays on ceremonial and general festive occasions, including to accompany the Burmese puppet theater yoke thé . The large tumbler drum ozi is only used in rural regions .

For chamber music, which can be heard at small-scale concerts, on the radio and on television, either the saung gauk bow harp or the bamboo xylophone pattala ( pat-talà ) are used to accompany the singing voice , sometimes amplified by a palwei . Modern styles are accompanied by a piano (Burmese sandaya ), a violin (Burmese tayaw , which has replaced obsolete native strings) or a guitar. The chamber music songs form the classical song genre Mahagita ( Pali , "great song", Burmese thachin gyi ), the most important composer of which is Myawaddy Mingyi U Sa (1766-1853). Ko Kyaut Sein and his ensemble recorded a very unusual instrumental interpretation of the Mahagita song Khine pan zon ("many flowers") in Yangon in 2000 . In this piece, a humpback gong circle kyi waing , a pattala as a metallophone with iron bars, a bamboo xylophone pattala , six double-headed barrel drums arranged in a row, chauk lon bat , a short and a long cone oboe hne , a palwei and siwa , a clock Combination of hand cymbals ( si ) and a small rattle ( wa ), which are always struck together by a musician.

The Shan and the smaller minority peoples in the mountain regions have their own musical styles and use their own musical instruments. So having Kachin in the far north in addition to about 37 centimeters long bamboo flute longitudinal sumpyi with six finger holes nor the special centrally blown bamboo flute htu ren without finger holes, which is attested to a great age. The htu ren was previously used by the Kachin to accompany harvest songs, work songs for pounding rice and shepherd songs.

The Taungyo, a subgroup of the Bamar in eastern Shan State , play the tumbler drum ozi with humpback gongs and the bamboo beating fork walet-hkok (similar to the northeast Indian toka ) in a loud-sounding ensemble outdoors. In a quieter ensemble for entertaining music in closed rooms, they replace the drum beats with the centrally blown bamboo flute, corresponding to the door, tet woo . With this 80 centimeter long flute, a total of five tones can be produced by opening or closing the two ends with one finger.

literature

  • John Okell: Palwei . In: Grove Music Online , May 28, 2015
  • Ward Keeler: Burma . In: Terry E. Miller, Sean Williams (Eds.): The Garland Handbook of Southeast Asian Music . Routledge, New York 2008, pp. 199-221

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ pu-lwe . In: Curt Sachs : Real Lexicon of Musical Instruments . Julius Bard, Berlin 1913, pp. 300a, 308a.
  2. ^ David Bradley: Phonological Convergence Between Languages ​​in Contact: Mon-Khmer Structural Borrowing in Burmese. In: Berkeley Linguistics Society , Volume 6, 1980, pp. 259-267, here p. 264
  3. ^ Naw Veronica: The Phonology of Dermuha and a Phonological and Lexical Comparison Between Dermuha, Sgaw Karen and Pwo Karen . (PDF) Master thesis, Payap University, Chiang Mai 2011, p. 154
  4. ↑ Walter Kaufmann : Old India. Music history in pictures. Volume II. Ancient Music. Delivery 8. Ed. Werner Bachmann. Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1981, p. 36
  5. ^ Roger Blench: Reconstructing African music history: methods and results. (PDF) Safa Conference, Tucson, May 17-21, 2002, pp. 2–6, here p. 5
  6. ^ Jaap Art : Music in Java. Its History, its Theory and its Technique. (2nd edition 1949) 3rd edition edited by Ernst L. Heins. Volume 1. Martinus Nijhoff, Den Haag 1973, p. 107
  7. ↑ Michael Aung-Thwin: Burma Before Pagan: The Status of Archeology Today. (PDF) In: Asian Perspectives, Volume 25, No. 2, 1982, pp. 1–21, here p. 16
  8. ↑ Gretel Schwörer-Kohl: Myanmar. 3. History of musical instruments. In: MGG Online , 2016 ( Music in the past and present , 1997)
  9. ↑ Laurence Picken : T'ang Music and Musical Instruments. In: T'oung Pao, Second Series , Volume 55, No. 1/3, 1969, pp. 74–122, here p. 117
  10. ^ Alan R. Trasher: Xiao . In: Grove Music Online , 2001
  11. ^ Frederick Lau: Instruments: Dizi and Xiao. In: Robert Provine (Ed.): Garland Encyclopedia of World Music . Volume 7: East Asia: China, Japan, and Korea . Routledge, New York / London 2001, p. 183
  12. ↑ Robert C. Provine: Taegŭm . In: Grove Music Online , 2001
  13. ^ Carole Pegg: Limbe . In: Grove Music Online , 2001
  14. ↑ Margaret J. Kartomi, Andrew C. McGraw: Bangsi . In: Grove Music Online , January 13, 2015
  15. ↑ Andrew C. McGraw: Feko . In: Grove Music Online , May 28, 2015
  16. ↑ Cf. Kunz Dittmer: On the origin of the core split flute . In: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie , Volume 75, 1950, pp. 83-89
  17. ↑ Raymond Amman: Bua warue. In: Grove Music Online, September 22, 2015
  18. ^ John Okell, 2015
  19. ↑ John Okell: The Burmese Double-Reed “Nhai”. In: Asian Music , Volume 2, No. 1, 1971, pp. 25–31, here pp. 27, 29
  20. ^ Ward Keeler, 2008, pp. 204, 208
  21. ↑ Ko Kyaut Sein and Ensemble: Green Tea Leaf Salad (Flavors Of Burmese Music). CD Ethnic Series on Pan Records (PAN 2083), 2000, track 14
  22. ^ Walther Brath: Kachin Sound Instruments Within the Context of the Kachin Baptist Convention of Northern Burma: History, Classification, and Uses. (Master's thesis) Liberty University, 2013, pp. 55, 58f
  23. ^ Gavin Douglas: Performing Ethnicity in Southern Shan State, Burma / Myanmar: The Ozi and Gong Traditions of the Myelat . In: Ethnomusicology , Volume 57, No. 2, Spring – Summer 2013, pp. 185–206, here p. 205
  24. ↑ Gavin Douglas: Tet htet woo . In: Grove Music Online , May 28, 2015