Swirka

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Swirka ( Bulgarian свирка ), also Svirka, svirche, svorche, Píšťalka, cafára, cévnica, owtscharska swirka (овчарска свирка, "German flute"), a one-piece's beak flute or Endkantenflöte (rand blown longitudinal flute ), which in the Bulgarian folk music is played. It is a traditional shepherd instrument after the more well-known, three-part length flute kavál without a mouthpiece and is mainly played in folk dance music. Swirka is the general Bulgarian name for flute , which also includes variants of kavál (a Turkish name), and for pipe .

Origin and Etymology

The swirka belongs to a group of simple straight flutes which are known as shepherds flutes from the Balkans to Anatolia to Central Asia and whose appreciation is based on folk legends. Among the Romanian flutes ( fluier ), the long caval and the tilincă , a very old form of flute without finger holes, belong to the shepherd's flutes. The tradition of the shepherd's flutes with and without a mouthpiece extends from Anatolia (Turkish kaval , Kurdish bilûr ), Armenia ( blul ) and Arab countries in the Middle East ( schabbaba ) to Central Asia ( tulak and tüidük ). In paintings on church walls in Romania from the 16./17. A shepherd playing a flute often appears in biblical scenes from the birth of Jesus.

Etymologically , the word swirka is related to the Serbo-Croatian svirala (свирала, plural svirale ), the common name for beak flutes in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, which are among the shepherd flutes. In Bosnia , svirala also refers to a longitudinal flute without a mouthpiece. Related are Serbo-Croatian sviralischte ("pipe stick ") and sviraljka ("wind instrument"). The verb belonging to the Bulgarian swirka is swirja (свиря, "to whistle"). Swirel (свирель) is a Russian beaked flute played in pairs. Curt Sachs (1930) considers the Serbo-Croatian svirala with the originally comprehensive meaning "wind instrument" and the German word schwegel to be originally related . Schwegel, schwägel or schwigel is a one-handed flute in German literature of the 16th and 17th centuries . The word comes from the Old High German suegala and is probably related to the Latin sibilo . Sviriti ( svirjati, svirati ) with the meaning "to whistle" is Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian) and means (in the equivalents to this day) also generally playing a musical instrument. In the Old Church Slavonic Codex Suprasliensis from the beginning of the 11th century, folk musical instruments are mentioned, including the flute svireli and the fiddle gusla .

Swirka , or more precisely owcharska swirka , the “shepherd's flute”, and the wind instrument pishtalka (or the whistle swirka pishtjalka ), formerly made from a plant pipe, were the first musical instruments that children learned in the country. Referring to the related verb swirja, "I play", swirka as a flute in the hand of a shepherd boy could also be translated as "toy". Flutes and all other folk musical instruments were and are - with a few exceptions - only played by boys and men in Bulgaria. Swirka funijka is a toy funnel made of plastic; other word compositions - such as sportna swirka , " whistle " - stand for different types of pipes.

A small, 27 centimeter long bone flute with six finger holes, which was found at Panagyurishte and is dated to the 12th century or earlier, is considered to be the forerunner of today's Bulgarian shepherd's flutes. Until the beginning of the 20th century, the swirka was made from the bone of a black vulture ( Aegipius monahus ), whose name is karta in the Pirin region . That is why the flute is called karta there.

Design and style of play

The swirka is a 25 to 50 centimeter long, one-piece tube made from a plant stem (like elder ) or made of wood with an inner diameter between 10 and 15 millimeters. The tube is open at both ends. In the case of a flute made of plant cane and with a mouthpiece, this is a stalk knot; the opening cut behind it is inclined inwards at the lower edge where the air flow breaks. In the case of an end-edge flute, the play tube is pointed at the open end. The musician holds the flute a little to the side and directs the airflow through the lips, shaped like a whistle, against the sharp edge of the pipe. Young elder branches ( Sambucus nigra ), branches of manna ash ( Fraxinus ornus ), other easy-to-work types of wood or reeds are used for self-made flutes . Handcrafted flutes are made of plum wood , dogwood or hornbeam wood .

The six finger holes are placed in the far half of the game tube so that the first finger hole is exactly in the middle. Some flutes also have a thumb hole below the first finger hole. The index, middle and ring fingers of both hands each grip three finger holes. The instrument produces a diatonic major scale with a two octave range. The upper octave is created by overblowing . It is possible to produce more chromatic tones by half closing the openings . Adults use slightly longer flutes with the root g of the first octave, while small children play with shorter flutes whose root is tuned to the c or d of the upper octave in the adult flute.

The swirka is widespread throughout Bulgaria, it is used to accompany folk dances and folk religious customs. The Bulgarian folk dances ( horo ) are usually lively round dances and are based on uneven beats (around 5/16 and 7/16 bars). They are stylistically subdivided into regions and used to be part of entertainment in the village squares on Sundays and public holidays. The singing tradition, like agriculture, is a domain of women, even if in the past men who were mainly engaged in livestock farming also sang songs. The songs sung are at the center of Bulgarian folk music. Instrumental music used to be judged on whether it sounded as beautiful as the singing voice, which is expressed in the idiom: kawalat swiri, gowori ("when the flute plays, it speaks"). Village folk music was a part of everyday life and was performed by amateurs alongside work, in all kinds of community activities and especially at annual festivals.

Four main wind instruments belong to the folk music played by amateurs: The best known is the long shepherd's flute kavál, an obliquely blown end-edge flute with seven finger holes. In addition to the swirka, the vertically blown, short beaked flute dudúk , also a traditional shepherd's instrument, is played. Then there is the bagpipe gajda .

Today there are swirkas made of metal that serve as children's toys. Children used to make various wind instruments themselves, namely the pischtjálka-swírka , a pipe made from a stalk of grain or the stem of a pumpkin leaf ( Cucurbita pepo ). Pischtjálka was also the name of a three to four centimeter long pipe made of rolled, fresh willow bark, which produced a deep, croaking sound by blowing over the beveled edge. Another shepherd's instrument is the double flute dwojanka , which forms a group with similar double flutes in the region and of which simpler forms made of straw exist (other names are píska and glásnica ).

literature

  • Vergilij Atanassov: Svirka . In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments . Vol. 4, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 662
  • Stoyan Petrov, Magdalena Manolova, Donna A. Buchanan: Bulgaria . In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Vol. 4, Macmillan Publishers, London 2001, pp. 569-583
  • Christo Vakarelski: Bulgarian folklore. De Gruyter, Berlin 1969, pp. 194f, ISBN 3-11-000266-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anca Florea: Wind and Percussion Instruments in Romanian Mural Painting. In: RIdIM / RCMI Newsletter, Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring 1997, pp. 23–30, here p. 29
  2. ↑ Svirala . In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 4, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 662
  3. ^ Curt Sachs : Real Lexicon of Musical Instruments and at the same time polyglossary for the entire field of instruments. Julius Bard, Berlin 1913, p. 366
  4. ↑ Svirel . In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 4, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 662
  5. ^ Curt Sachs: Handbook of musical instrumentation. (1930) Reprint: Georg Olms, Hildesheim 1967, p. 306f
  6. ^ Franz von Miklosich : Etymological dictionary of the Slavic languages ​​with consideration of the other Indo-European languages ​​and dialects; with addenda and an index of words that do not appear as subject headings. Braumüller, Vienna 1886, p. 331
  7. ↑ Christo Vakarelski: Bulgarische Volkskunde, 1969, p. 201
  8. ↑ Ivan Kachulev: Gadulkas in Bulgaria. In: The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 16, May 1963, pp. 95-107, here p. 95
  9. ↑ Timothy Rice: May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1994, p. 44
  10. ↑ a b Bulgaria. In: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, p. 571
  11. ↑ Vergilij Atanassov: The Bulgarian folk musical instruments. A system in words, images and sound. (Ngoma. Studies on folk music and non-European art music) Musikverlag Emil Katzbichler, Munich / Salzburg 1983, pp. 144, 167
  12. ^ Stoian Petrov: Bulgarian Popular Instruments . In: Journal of the International Folk Music Council , Vol. 12, 1960, p. 34
  13. ↑ Vergilij Atanasov: Children's Musical Instruments and Musical Playthings in Bulgaria. In: The World of Music, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Children's Music and Musical Instruments) 1987, pp. 68-85, here p. 75
  14. ↑ Lada Braschowanowa: Bulgaria. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Material part 2, Bärenreiter, Kassel 1995, col. 258–267, here col. 262
  15. ↑ Christo Vakarelski: Bulgarische Volkskunde, 1969, p. 194