Suka (string instrument)

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Suka . Reconstruction by the Polish violin maker Andrzej Kuczkowski in the early 1990s.

Suka is a historical prank lute that was used in Polish folk music until the end of the 19th century and, in terms of design and playing style, probably comes close to the Polish violin mentioned by Martin Agricola in the 16th century . The three or four-string suka , like the medieval southern European rebec, was played in a vertical position. Another forerunner of the suka is a fiddle excavated near Płock , made with simple means , which is dated to the middle of the 16th century.

Since the 1990s there have been individual efforts to introduce a suka reconstructed with four strings into a new kind of Polish folk music.

origin

Rebec

An Arab musician at the court of King Roger II of Sicily plays a pear-shaped string lute in an oriental style, leaning vertically on his knee. Fresco in the Capella Palatina , Palermo, mid-12th century

The oldest known illustrations of bowed string instruments in Europe date from the 10th century and come from the Near East. From the east they were spread across the Byzantine Empire , where the depiction of a two-string, pear-shaped lira (or lyra ) on a Byzantine manuscript dated around 1000 is considered a possible model, and with Islamic expansion they reached the Iberian Peninsula from the south . The word rebec , which is related to Arabic rabāb , was understood to mean two types of string instruments: The rebec , which was probably created under Arabic influence in Spain, has a long-oval body with a rounded bottom, two or more rarely three strings, lateral pegs and a two-part top, the lower part of which is made of parchment and in the upper part is made of wood.

The second rebec type, which was much more widespread in Europe, has a pear-shaped body that was made from a single piece of wood together with the short neck, one to five strings that lead to a peg plate with front pegs and a top made of wood. This second type includes some of the Southeast and Eastern European folk musical instruments still played today, such as the Cretan lyra , the Bulgarian gadulka , the Montenegrin guslice and the Russian gudok . While the former, Spanish- Moorish type was played resting on the knee and pointing diagonally upwards, the musicians usually placed the European rebec inclined downwards against the shoulder, chest or neck. While the European, horizontal playing posture prevailed for pear-shaped and elliptical strokes, larger fiddles with a waisted body and in Islamic-influenced areas (cf. the fresco in the southern Italian Capella Palatina , mid-12th century) also made small pear-shaped lutes perpendicular to the knee or played between the knees. This resulted in two different bow postures: the vertical fiddles held between the knees ( da gamba ) were stroked with the underhand grip (fist below the bow stick as with the double bass), the roughly horizontal instruments ( da braccio , "on the arm") with the Overhand grip (bent hand over the bow stick as on the violin).

In addition to the older French form of the name rebebe , the string lute was called rubeba ( rubebe ), Italian ribebe and English rebeck from the 13th to the 16th century . Other names of this rebec type are different spellings of lyra / lire, as well as German geige , French guigue and Italian / Spanish giga , which appeared from the 12th century . Fiddles with a body made up of back, sides and top appeared around 1300 at the earliest. Until the 15th century, pear-shaped and oval lutes were also depicted. In the 16th century this type took over the lateral vertebrae from the Arabic rabāb .

In the 13th and 14th centuries, three to five-string fiddles were popular, with a pine wood top glued to the mostly oval body made from a block of wood. The back and top of these roughly violin-sized instruments are flat. They have C-shaped sound holes and a wide neck that is level with the ceiling. After the old French word vielle, many , these instruments were called from the 15th century French viole or vyolon , English vyell, Italian viola, Dutch vedel and later German fiddle . One of the oldest images of an early violin that already has f-sound holes but not yet the typical retracted ribs is a wall painting in Ferrara dated around 1508 . From the 1560s onwards, the violin was roughly given its current shape.

The grip technique of the left hand was dependent on the playing posture. With the European rebec , as with the violins and most European lute instruments, the strings were shortened by pressing down with the fingertips onto a fingerboard to create a melody. Fretboards can be seen on images from France at the beginning of the 12th century. In contrast, with the southern European (oriental) rebecs, the strings were grasped from the side with the fingernail , i.e. touched with the top of the nail up to the nail fold.

Polish violin

Polish violin. Wall painting around 1530 in the Trinity Church in the village of Grębień in the Łódź Voivodeship , Poland. The only illustration of a fiddle from the 16th century in Poland.

Martin Agricola mentions this old way of playing in Musica instrumentalis deudsch (1545) when he refers to the “Polish violins and small hand violins”: “and rürn them with the negles”. According to Agricola, the “Polish violins” correspond to the “small one-band violins”, by which he means the usual rebec . They differ only in the technique used by the Poles to grip the fingernails. In addition to Agricola, other sources from the 16th and 17th centuries mention the Polish violin . Michael Praetorius in Syntagma musicum (1619) describes the “ Violen de bracio ” as “Polish violins ” because the instrument or the musicians playing it could have come from Poland.

It is unclear whether Praetorius himself used both names (incorrectly) for the same instrument or whether he only mentioned the naming that was common at the time. In any case, in the 16th century Sebastian Virdung (in Musica tutscht and pulled out , 1511), Hans Gerle (in Musica teusch, on the instruments of the large and small Geygen, also Lautten, 1532) and Martin Agricola understood violins by the term "violins" as well as the larger violas, where they marked the difference with "large" and "small" violin. Agricola distinguished from this in 1545 the “Polish violins” as a third type, of which, however, no images have survived. Besides playing with fingernails, the fretless instrument is known to have three strings and, in a bass version, four strings. The Polish violin was made in Poland in the 16th century by several violin makers, including Mateusz Dobrucki (1520–1602), Bartlomiej Kiejcher (1548–1599) and Marcin Groblicz the Elder (around 1540 - around 1609), who worked in Krakow .

Fidel from Plock

Reconstruction of the excavation find called Fidel von Płock from the 16th century with six strings.

Also from the 16th century is a simple fiddle that was unearthed in 1985 during archaeological research near Płock in central Poland. The well-preserved find is of particular importance for music-historical research, since otherwise only the wall painting in the Church of Grębień, dated around 1530, gives an indication of the shape of village fiddles in Poland at that time. The fiddle was probably strung with three (or four) strings, all of which were bowed with the bow at the same time. On the basis of Martin Agricola's description of the Polish violin , the strings of this fiddle may also have been shortened with the fingernails. A woodcut by Jakub Kazimierz Haur (1632–1709) from Kraków from 1693 shows how the fiddle might have been played. It shows musicians standing in a row playing in a Polish pub. The violinist holds the instrument vertically in front of his upper body with one hand on his neck. A leather strap over the shoulder to carry the violin cannot be seen. As a result, he must have held the neck fairly tight, so that he could only change the pitch after a certain time. Probably the fiddle accompanied the singing, flute and bagpipe-playing ensemble with a rhythmic drone . This representation of a Polish folk music ensemble with a vertically played fiddle, the only one for the 16th and 17th centuries, has parallels in Russian woodcuts showing musicians with the bowl-neck lute gudok . The same cast can be seen on one of these woodcuts. The gudok was also played in a vertical position until it disappeared in the mid-19th century, usually supported by a seated musician on one knee. This playing posture, which used to be associated with the fingernail grip technique, connects the gudok with other bowl-neck lutes that are still used today: the Bulgarian gadulka , the South Slavic gusle , the guslice (also known as lirica ) and the Cretan lyra . The mentioned strokes share a tradition in connection with traveling singers and folk entertainers, who were called Skomorochen in Russia .

In Poland, this game tradition only lasted in the southeastern parts of the country, the settlement area of ​​the Russians , until the end of the 19th century. The there suka ( Polish "bitch") called Fidel 1888 was on a musical instrument exhibition in Warsaw to see. The only reliable description of the suka is a report on this exhibition by the ethnographer and musicologist Jan Karlowicz (1836–1903). The article includes detailed drawings by the painter and archaeologist Tadas Daugirdas (1852–1919). Wojciech Gerson (1831–1901), a well-known Polish painter, made further drawings of the suka in 1895 . The shape of the suka can be reconstructed from this. It represents the longest surviving tradition of the Polish violin .

Design

Fidel from Plock

Viola bastarda with a third round sound hole under the strings. Illustration in Michael Praetorius, Syntagma musicum , 1619.
Two mazanki with bows from Zbąszyń , western Poland.

The excavated wooden parts of the Fidel von Płock belong to a coarse neck lute, the slightly asymmetrical shape of which refers to a self-made with simple tools and not to the production in a specialized workshop. After the individual components were found, the fiddle could have been damaged and then thrown away. The body, carved from a piece of wood, presumably black alder , with its angular outline only remotely resembles a violin. The concave, oval curved central bow on the rim of a violin are incised semicircles. The protruding frame corners customary on the violin are not imitated. At the lower end of the floor there is a short extension to which the strings were tied. At the top, the body merges into a broad, short neck with an approximately square vertebral plate. The total length is 57 cm and the body width 19 cm. The neck tapers slightly from 7 cm on the body to 6.1 cm on the vertebral plate, which is 11.6 cm wide. The vertebral plate contains six holes in which remnants of (anterior) vertebrae were still stuck. The two sound holes in the ceiling are C-shaped, but not exactly the same shape. A third opening in the shape of a small triangle is located in the middle in the upper area of ​​the ceiling. Ewa Dahlig (1994) considers this hole to be a holdover from plucked instruments (guitar) when the central sound hole was initially retained when the bow was introduced, in addition to the side C or f holes. Such a third hole is on the ceiling of the viola bastarda, which was in use around the same time (in the 16th and 17th centuries) . The broken bridge probably had a short foot and a wooden pin on the other side, which reached through a hole in the ceiling to the floor and took on the function of a sound post .

Such an asymmetrical bridge with a foot crossing the body was only found in Poland in the small three-stringed Fidel mazanki , which in the west of the country was mostly played by shepherds with a bagpipe. The mazanki had a flat body made from a piece of wood, which was very similar to the violin. Your playing posture was level. As with the violin, the neck ended in a pegbox with lateral pegs. The strings were tuned a fifth higher than the top three strings of the violin (a'-e "- b"). At the beginning of the 20th century, the mazanki was gradually replaced by the violin. There was also this type of bridge with a small bass lute ( basy ) in the area around Kalisz .

The replica of the Płock fiddle shown is covered with six strings based on the number of pegs that were once present. However, the position of the pegs makes it likely that there were only three or four strings. With six strings, three double choir strings would be the most likely arrangement. However, this would require a fingerboard because one finger cannot shorten two strings from the side at the same time. Rather, three strings should be considered, which were led from the upper vertebrae over the lower vertebrae acting as a saddle . The strings probably consisted of twisted sheep intestine and, since no tailpiece was found, were probably tied to the protruding extension with a leather strip.

Because of the flat curvature of the bridge, all strings could only be bowed at the same time. According to the reconstruction of the playing style, one melody string was shortened with the fingernails, the other strings provided a drone tone . A vertical position of the fiddle is likely because it is the most comfortable.

Suka

Suka. Watercolor by Wojciech Gerson, 1895.

Compared to Płock's fiddle, the suka represents a further development in the direction of the violin in some details of its shape. The body made of one piece of wood resembles a violin in outline, but the bottom is flat. The total length was 50 cm, with a body length of 36 cm. The f-holes in the top and the existence of a string support also represent an approximation of the violin. The neck is still as wide as that of the Płock fiddle , but set apart from the body. Three to four strings tuned to fifths lead to a peg plate with pegs that are parallel in a row and projecting forward. These come from the old Fidel tradition. The third hole under the strings of the suka is a large circle filled with a flower ornament in a wooden plate glued to the upper part of the top and the neck. At least one foot of the footbridge must have been extended to the base plate. In the drawing by Dowgird, a rectangular recess for a long foot of the bridge can be seen on the right F-hole. According to a watercolor by Wojciech Gerson (1895), however, the bridge was symmetrical and had two long feet, both of which were placed on the floor, so that no direct vibrations could be transmitted to the ceiling. The player held the instrument upright, either between the knees or slung over one shoulder on a ribbon that was tied to the head and lower extension of the instrument. The strings of the suka were shortened with the fingernails. The latter represents the essential commonality of the historical Polish fiddles.

During the communist rule in Poland , folk music was subject to state idiology and was standardized and directed through the performances of professional folk music groups. Old village traditions could only be maintained in a few niches. Since 1989 a new kind of folk music has emerged in the bourgeois cultural scene, which is part of the ethnic world music scene with a mixture of old Polish folk traditions and modern, occasionally electrically amplified musical instruments . The efforts to reappropriate the past folk music tradition also include the reconstruction of lost musical instruments and their playing with contemporary techniques.

Since the 1990s, the suka has been made again according to the old drawings, initially by the Polish violin maker Andrzej Kuczkowski. The violinist Zbigniew Butryn (* 1952) from Janów Lubelski began in 1993 as the first to play the instrument reconstructed with four strings. Independently of this, the musician Maria Pomianowska (* 1961) from Warsaw integrates the suka into her world music style. She performs with an international ensemble and plays the cello, sarangi and Mongolian horse head violin, among other things . A duo of Polish musicians Helena Matuszewska and Marta Sołek, who use a suka and a reconstruction of Płock's fiddle , is called InFidelis . The Warsaw Village Band is stylistically assigned to “hardcore folklore” and strives for a “third way” between traditional folk music and modern styles. You play the suka together with a hurdy-gurdy ( lira korbowa ), a dulcimer ( cymbały ), percussion and wind instruments. The songs are full of energy and even have a punk-like atmosphere.

Another Polish string instrument that was used in the Podhale region until the beginning of the 20th century and is now being reproduced again is the złóbcoki (also known as gęśliki ). This type had a long oval or tapered body made from a piece of wood, similar to Slovak gutter violins, and was upholstered with three to four strings tuned to the violin ( skrzypce ). The złóbcoki was preferred to be played as a soloist because of its soft tone. String instruments in Polish folk music the size of a violoncello with two to four strings, the body of which is often made from a piece of wood, are known as basetla or basy . They are only used for accompaniment. The maryna is a two-string bowed box bass in which the bow remains motionless while the instrument is turned sideways and at the same time struck with its spear on the floor so that the cymbals sound at the head end.

literature

  • Ewa Dahlig: A Sixteenth-Century Polish Folk Fiddle from Plock. In: The Galpin Society Journal , Vol. 47, March 1994, pp. 111-122

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Marianne Bröcker: Rebec. II. Description. In: MGG Online , November 2016 ( Music in the past and present , 1998)
  2. ^ Rubeba. In: Sibyl Marcuse : Musical Instruments: A Comprehensive Dictionary. A complete, authoritative encyclopedia of instruments throughout the world. Country Life Limited, London 1966, p. 448
  3. ^ Anthony Baines: Popular early forms . In the S. (Ed.): Musical instruments. The history of their development and forms. A symposium by sixteen authors. Prestel, Munich 1982, p. 227
  4. ^ Sibyl Marcuse: A Survey of Musical Instruments . Harper & Row, New York 1975, p. 472
  5. ↑ Fidel. In: Anthony Baines: Lexicon of Musical Instruments. JB Metzler'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 2005, p. 91
  6. ^ Curt Sachs : The History of Musical Instruments. Norton, New York 1940, p. 276 ( at Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ violin . In: Anthony Baines: Lexicon of Musical Instruments. JB Metzler'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 2005, p. 355
  8. ↑ Rainer Ullreich: Fidel. III. 1 . In: MGG Online ( Music in the past and present , 1995)
  9. ↑ Martin Agricola : Musica instrumentalis deudsch. First and fourth edition. Wittenberg 1528 and 1545. Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1896, p. 45v
  10. ^ Michael Praetorius : Syntagma musicum . Volume 2: De Organographia . Wolffenbüttel 1619, p. 44
  11. ^ Curt Sachs: Handbook of musical instrumentation . (1930) Georg Olms, Hildesheim 1967, p. 174
  12. ^ Peter Holman: Violin. I. The instrument, its technique and its repertory. 3. History and repertory to 1600. (iii) Dissemination. c. Germany and Poland. In: Oxford Music Online , 2011
  13. ↑ Ewa Dahlig, 1994, pp. 117-119
  14. ↑ Ewa Dahlig: Poland: In: Timothy Rice (Ed.): Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Vol. 8, Garland, London 2000, p. 705
  15. ^ Peter Cooke: The violin - instrument of four continents. In: Robin Stowell (Ed.): The Cambridge Companion to the Violin. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1992, p. 239
  16. ↑ Ewa Dahlig, 1994, p. 114
  17. ↑ Ewa Dahlig, 1994, p. 116f
  18. ↑ Ewa Dahlig, 1994, pp. 119f
  19. ^ Ann Hetzel Gunkel: Global Górale and Postmodern Polskość Polish Roots Music and the Post-Communist Recovery of Folk. In: The Polish Review , Vol. 57, No. 4, University of Illinois Press on behalf of the Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences of America, 2012, pp. 63-74, here pp. 66f
  20. ^ Eastern European and gypsy fiddle . Fiddling around the world
  21. ↑ InFidelis
  22. ↑ Ann Hetzel Gunkel, 2012, p. 72
  23. ↑ January Stęszewski: Poland. II: Traditional Music. 5. Instruments. In: Oxford Music Online
  24. ↑ Maryna. Polskie ludowe instrumenty muzyczne