Seljefløyte

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Seljefløyte ( Norwegian , "willow flute"), even Seljeflöte is, in the strictest sense a long, side-blown nuclear fission flute of willow bark or plastic without finger holes in the Norwegian played folk music. Corresponding flutes are known in Sweden as sälgflöjt and in Finland as pitkähuilu ("long flute"). According to a hypothesis from the 1920s, which is hardly supported today, the natural tone series of the seljefløyte, which belongs to the overtone flutes , is said to have shaped the melodic structure of Norwegian folk music.

In addition, seljefløyte in Norway, like sälgpipa in Sweden and pajupilli in Finland, stands for short, lengthways blown willow flutes or pipes, which are usually made from tree bark as children's toys in spring.

Origin and Distribution

Flutes have probably been around in Europe since the Paleolithic . Longitudinally blown, fingerhole-free notched flutes, in which the air flow hits the cutting edge of a notch on the upper edge (edge ​​flute) or on the side of the pipe (core gap flute), are in their simplest and oldest type short pipes that produce only one sound, but a relative one wide range of shapes. This spectrum ranges from the quill of an ostrich feather , which is blown over the edge and is closed at the bottom, to bamboo pipes in Southeast Asia with a round notch at the top, to vascular flutes made from a fruit bowl. In the case of transverse flutes, the blow hole is almost always near one end so that the entire length of the music tube can be used for sound generation. In addition, simple transverse flutes with a central blowhole and two open ends or one open and one closed end are known. An unusual example of this is the Indian surpava . One of the world's rare flutes without finger holes is the ludaya made in Uganda from a flower stem . It is played in a similar way to the seljefløyte .

In prehistoric times, people learned to use overtones to make music through blowing experiments with plant tubes. In addition to the playing technique of producing overtones with a flute using higher blowing pressure, several tubes, each producing only one fundamental tone, were also bundled into pan flutes in a very early period . The oldest Scandinavian find of a magnetic slit flute without finger holes is a three centimeter long stone age bone tube in a stone box in Falköping, Sweden . It was probably used to imitate a bird's call while hunting. The bone find possibly served as a separate mouthpiece on a longer plant stem.

The Macclesfield Psalter from East Anglia (East England) is an illuminated manuscript that was probably created between 1325 and 1335 and has been recognized for its exceptionally high-quality illustrations since it became known to the professional world in 2004. The straight long trumpet is the most common of the musical instruments shown. Furthermore, beak flutes are shown, which were probably played as a one-handed flute together with the tabor (cylinder drum). On two pages ( ff. 187 v and 188) a man blows an overtone flute held in his right hand, the lower end of which he closes with the index finger of his left hand. The tube appears to be made of tree bark, while light wood emerges in the area of ​​the injection opening. The description of the flute corresponds exactly to the seljefløyte , with the two images in medieval manuscripts being unique or at least extremely unusual.

Today overtone flutes in Europe are mainly used in the folk music of the Slavs in Eastern Europe. Examples are the koncovka made from an elder branch in Slovakia, the tilincă in Romania, the kalyuka in Russia and the csilinko in Moldova . Willow flutes without finger holes, which are played as overtone flutes, are known from the Polish part of the Tatra Mountains . With a length of around 30 centimeters, they have a sliding hollow piston that can be closed at the end, with which the pitch can also be changed.

Egil Storbekken blows the wooden Naturtrompete lur . Recording for a film in Alvdal , August 1963

In many regions, it was customary to make willow pipes for children in spring, when the bark can be easily removed from the wood. A small pipe made of willow bark is among the Sorbs tulawa in Estonia sörmlik in Poland szyposz in Hungary szipóka , Russia sipow and Serbia sipovka . In the Baltic States , these willow pipes that produce only one tone are known as pajupill, svilpe, svelpïte, düda and švilpu . An old Bavarian name for a children's flute with finger holes made from willow bark is Felerpfeife or Felwerpfeife .

Simple wind instruments made from curved or rolled bark were common almost worldwide and were often used as signaling instruments by hunters. Wooden trumpets made from two halves are often wrapped in birch bark after joining. In Lithuania , shepherds used a natural trumpet called trubá , which corresponds to the Scandinavian alphorn lur (plural lurer ) made of spruce wood with a birch bark wrapping. In Norway this bark trumpet is called neverlur and in Sweden Näverlur . In the 19th century, hunters in the English county of Oxfordshire used a whit-horn to hunt deer on Whit Monday . The whit-horn (also may-horn ) was a conical tube wound from soft birch bark with a separate double reed and was blown together with a single sound-producing willow pipe.

All Norwegian flute types have a core gap. The Norwegian single-tone pipes made of bark or bone were used by hunters to imitate animal sounds. Apart from the flutes, the wooden trumpet lur and a goat horn (in Norway bukkehorn ) with finger holes and a heteroglottic (separate) single reed , hardly any traditional wind instruments have survived. The introduction of the clarinet in the middle of the 18th century encouraged the Norwegians to copy it themselves or to make simpler forms of single- reed instruments similar to the Finnish mankeri from wood . Most of them are now in museums. A unique Scandinavian wind instrument made from a green plant stem which, like the willow flute, only has a lifespan of a few days, is the fadno, handed down from the seeds .

Design

Short end-blown seljefløyte

Simple pipes for children are made from a juicy branch of willow in the spring wherever sal willows grow. A branch 10 to 15 centimeters long is cut at an angle as a mouthpiece and a notch is made on the opposite side. Shortly before the other end, the bark is cut all around, tapped lightly with the knife handle and peeled off by carefully turning and pulling. A short piece of the removed branch is flattened lengthways for the wind tunnel and reinserted as a recorder head. The player pushes the remaining branch into the bark tube from the other side, so that a flute is created that is closed at the bottom, the tone of which can be changed within certain limits by the position of the inserted branch.

Unlike these short willow flutes, which are also found in Scandinavia, the seljefløyte traditionally consists of an average of 60 centimeters long willow bark tube. The branch used must not have any side shoots. The production is done by hand like the short willow pipes. First of all, a notch is made as a cutting edge about ten centimeters from the upper end of the seljefløyte, which is blown from the side , then the bark is cut about five centimeters above and pulled off the branch. The branch is shortened to about ten centimeters at the end that remains in the hand, so that the piece pushed back into the bark reaches into the opening of the cutting edge. Before this happens, the branch piece is flattened halfway along its length for the wind tunnel. The attached end piece redirects the air blown in from the side at a right angle and guides it to the cutting edge. The lower end of the willow cane remains open. The player can produce an ascending series of natural tones by increasing the blowing pressure. By alternately opening and closing the lower end with his finger, eight to ten or more notes can be played. The fundamental tone is difficult to produce; the overtones from the second to the fifteenth must be used for this.

Flutes made from willow bark or other tree bark can only be made in spring and early summer, preferably in mid-May, when the wood and bark are most juicy. Even if the flute is kept fresh under water when not in use, it can only be kept for a few days (one to two weeks). A dried out bark makes the instrument unplayable. That a game tradition in spite of the short annual time of use seljefløyte able to establish itself, there may be on the musical relationship between her and the other Naturtoninstrumenten bukkehorn and lur ( neverlur ), which in the case of lur name to the Bronze Age lur back.

The tradition of willow bark flutes is still alive today in Norway. Therefore, in order to be able to make music all year round, seljefløyte made of plastic ( PVC pipe) were introduced in the 1960s . The plastic tube is wrapped in printed paper to give it the appearance of bark. The Norwegian folk musician and composer Egil Storbekken (1911–2002), who also introduced the tussefløyte , a Norwegian variant of the recorder, is considered to be the inventor of the plastic seljefløyte .

Style of play

Young seljefløyte player in a bucolic landscape. Oil painting by Christian Skredsvig, 1889

The seljefløyte used to be played mainly by shepherds in private circles. It is only since the flute has been available in permanent material that professional musicians have used it at concerts. Little is known about the musical use of the seljefløyte - like about Norwegian folk music as a whole - from the period before the mid-19th century. For the first time Ludvig Mathias Lindeman began in 1848, inspired by the Norwegian national romantic movement , to collect systematically folk songs. The next phase of Norwegian folk music research began around 1900. The professional interest in the seljefløyte was aroused in the late 1920s, after the music researcher Eivind Groven published his booklet Naturskalaen. Tonale lover i norsk folkemusikk, bundne til seljefløyte ("Natural tone scales . Laws of tonality in Norwegian folk music associated with the willow flute", 1927). Groven described the seljefløyte as an instrument used by mostly male shepherds. However, there are isolated cases of girls who tended sheep, played the flute and also took part in the other activities of the shepherd boys. However, as Ola Kai Ledang (1986) reports, it was unusual for women to wear and use the knife on their belt, which is a must for every man, which is why they could not make the seljefløyte themselves.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the mountain herding tradition declined due to mechanized farming and more modern livestock farming. With the type of livestock farming practiced since the Viking Age , the associated musical activities disappeared, which, in addition to playing the flute and the natural trumpets used as signaling instruments, also included special calls for communication. The former cultural environment of seljefløyte is history. Today's resurrection of seljefløyte for a new way of playing in concerts and its popularity with locals and tourists is thanks to the durable plastic, while neverlur and bukkehorn are still made from conventional natural materials.

Efforts at the beginning of the 20th century to understand the tonal laws of Norwegian folk music led the folk music researcher Erik Eggen (1877–1957) to examine the sound supply of the fretboard zither langeleik . In his dissertation from 1923 ( Scale study: studier over skalaens genesis på norrønt område ) he concluded that the two accepted scales of Norwegian folk music were essentially based on two harmonic series of natural tones. Eivind Groven also came to this conclusion in 1927, albeit not on the problematic basis of inaccurately tuned string instruments, but by analyzing the melodic courses of the seljefløyte , which resulted from their acoustic limits. His endeavor was to filter out similar melody structures from a large number of written folk songs in order to trace them back to the natural tone intervals produced by the flute. Even if Groven's hypothesis seems difficult to defend today, it exerted a considerable influence on Norwegian folk music research. Irregular intervals that did not fit into the system, such as the “neutral third ” (lying between a major third made up of four semitones and a minor third made up of three semitones), Groven simply passed over. In addition, old langeleik demonstrate an essential aspect of the tonality of Norwegian folk music: They know no semitones and instead produce an approximate three-quarter-tone step as the smallest interval.

The plastic seljefløyte has appeared in a new musical environment since the 1960s . On the one hand, it is played in the folk music and dance competitions kappleikar (singular kappleik ). These were introduced around 1900; Back then it was mainly ensembles with Hardanger fiddles or violins that played at regional competitions . The national folk music championships landskappleiken have been held annually since 1923. Today, there are next to folk dancing and acting performances competitive with fiddle, accordion , seljefløyte, langeleik, Jew's harp and vocal music ( kveding ). On the other hand, the seljefløyte has since been heard at public concerts and performances in schools, and their music is broadcast on the radio and distributed on sound carriers. The so popularized way of playing the seljefløyte goes back to the tradition passed down by Eivind Groven and the musician Marius Nytrøen (1896–1993) from the village of Vingelen in the Østerdalen region . Nytrøen was a farmer and learned the game of seljefløyte as a shepherd in his youth. Similarly, Eivind Groven from Lårdal in Telemark learned to play the flute as a child in the country.

The search for authenticity led a group of musicians in contemporary jazz to folk music from their home region, from which they adopt melodic and rhythmic elements or traditional instruments in a new kind of internationalized style, beyond the national romanticism of classical composers in Norway in the 19th century.

The Scottish guitarist Ian Melrose occasionally plays seljefløyte in the Celtic-Scandinavian acoustic duo Kelpie . The Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek also used a seljefløyte for one track on the 2009 double CD Dresden - In Concert . Steinar Ofsdal (* 1948), Silje Hegg ( Blåmann Blåmann Group ) and Anne Sofie Linge Valdal ( Fribo Group ) are Norwegian flautists who also play seljefløyte .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter R. Cooke: “Ludaya”. A Transverse Flute from Eastern Uganda. In: Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council , Vol. 3, 1971, pp. 79-90, here p. 90
  2. ^ Anthony Baines: Woodwind Instruments and their History. Faber and Faber, London 1977, pp. 172-176
  3. ↑ Cajsa Lund: The Archaeomusicology of Scandinavia. In: World Archeology , Vol. 12, No. 3 ( Archeology and Musical Instruments ) February 1981, pp. 246-265, here p. 259
  4. ^ Jeremy Montagu: Musical Instruments in the Macclesfield Psalter. In: Early Music, Vol. 34, No. 2, May 2006, pp. 189-203, here pp. 199, 201
  5. ↑ Hermann Moeck : Origin and tradition of the core-gap flute of European folklore and the origin of the music-historical core-gap flute types. (Dissertation, Göttingen 1951) Reprint: Moeck Verlag, Celle 1996, p. 203
  6. ↑ Curt Sachs : Reallexicon of musical instruments, at the same time a polyglossary for the entire field of instruments . Julius Bard, Berlin 1913, pp. 352b, 368b, 401a ( at Internet Archive )
  7. ^ Valdis Muktupāvels: Musical Instruments in the Baltic Region: Historiography and Traditions. In: The World of Music, Vol. 44, No. 3 ( Traditional Music in Baltic Countries ) 2002, pp. 21–54, here p. 35
  8. ^ Curt Sachs, 1913, pp. 245b, 396b
  9. ↑ Whit-horn. BBC - A History of the World
  10. ↑ Anthony Baines, 1977, p. 192; Hélène La Rue: Whithorn. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments . Vol. 5, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 311
  11. ↑ See Bjørn Aksdal: “I saw it on the telly” - The history and revival of the Meråker clarinet. In: Musikk og Tradisjon, No. 30, 2016, pp. 81–105
  12. ↑ Alois Mauthofer: Instructions for building Weidenpfeifchen . May 1999
  13. ↑ 40 to 80 centimeters. An experimentally manufactured " Bassseljefløyte " can be around two meters long. See: Sveinung Søyland Moen, 2012, p. 33
  14. ↑ Seljefløyte . Youtube video (making a long seljefløyte )
  15. ↑ Reidar Sevåg, 2014, p. 463
  16. ^ Rachel E. Haug: An Introduction to Twentieth-Century Flute Music by Norwegian Composers: With Emphasis on Øistein Sommerfeldt and Publications by Norsk Musikforlag . (Dissertation) Ohio State University, 2015, p. 39
  17. ↑ Willow-bark flute. Egil Storbekken. Musical Instruments Museums Edinburgh
  18. ↑ Illustration of wrapped plastic flutes in: Sveinung Søyland Moen, 2012, p. 25
  19. ^ Reidar Sevåg, Jan-Petter Blom: Norway. II. Traditional music. 1. Sources, archives and anthologies. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , Vol. 18, Macmillan Publishers, London 2001, p. 60
  20. ↑ Ola Kai Ledang, 1986, pp. 146f
  21. ^ Reidar Sevåg: Neutral Tones and the Problem of Mode in Norwegian Folk Music. In: Gustaf Hilleström (Ed.): Studia instrumentorum musicae popularis III. (Musikhistoriska museets skrifter 5th Festschrift for Ernst Emsheimer) Musikhistoriska museet, Stockholm 1974, pp. 207–213, here pp. 208, 210
  22. ^ Bjørn Aksdal: Norway. V. Folk music. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Part 7, Bärenreiter, Kassel 1997, column 269
  23. ↑ Folkemusikalsk meistermøte i Operaen. Folkorg, November 26, 2014
  24. ^ Ola Kai Ledang, 1986, pp. 147, 149
  25. ↑ See Paul Austerlitz: Birch-Bark Horns and Jazz in the National Imagination: The Finnish Folk Music Vogue in Historical Perspective . In: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 44, No. 2, Spring-Summer 2000, pp. 183-213
  26. ↑ Jan Garbarek. Classical-music.com, November 17, 2009
  27. ↑ Kivlemøyane (Silje Hegg). Youtube video