Tschangi

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Tschangi , also changi, čangi ( Georgian ჩანგი ), is a horizontal angle harp that is played in the Georgian mountain region of Svaneti, especially to accompany songs and round dances. The tradition of the only remaining harp in the Caucasus region goes back to pre-Christian times.

Origin and Distribution

Tschangi illustration by Gottfried Merzbacher 1901

The name changi ( čang-i ) with the Georgian noun ending –i corresponds to the Persian word chang ( čang ) for an angle harp that was played in Iranian music in the Middle Ages and was known with the spelling çeng in the Ottoman Empire . In pre-Islamic times, harps on the Arabian Peninsula were called sanc, cang or similar in Arabic . Like the Indian harps ( hindi canga ), they have long since died out. The instrument and the name spread by India only live on in the Burmese bow harp saung gauk . The only other bow harp still preserved in the South Asian cultural area is the waji in eastern Afghanistan . The twelve-string harp kingir- kobuz ( kyngyr kopuz ), which survived among the Balkars and Karachayers , has just as much a musical niche .

The 14-string harp aijuma ( aiumaa, ayumáa ) in Abkhazia is no longer in use. It rested on the right knee of the musician, who plucked the strings with the index and middle fingers of both hands and accompanied epic songs about historical or mythical heroes. Here, as with the other Abkhaz instruments, the influence of Georgian music is evident. The ten to twelve-string duadastanon-fandir of the Ossetians used to be played exclusively by men. All these Caucasian angle harps including in Western Siberia by the chanting and Mansi played tor-SAPL yukh (in Selkups pyngkyr ) resting on the knees of the player with the short strings from him.

The word čang ( chang ) occurs several times - together with other borrowings from Persian - in the Georgian national epic The Warrior in a Tiger Skin , which Shota Rustaveli wrote in the 12th century. For example in one list čangsa, barbitsa da nasa, “harp, lute and flute”, which sound with joy. The combination sačang-dapeni , literally “harp and drum” generally means “music” and is a symbol of joy and solemnity, whereby dapeni with dap-i , a frame drum, which is called daira in Persian , and dabdabi , the earlier name of the Cylinder drum doli related. Because of its design, the harp is also called shimekvshe , "broken arm" in Svaneti .

In literary sources, in addition to tshangi , the terms ebani and knari appear for Georgian harps . What the latter instruments looked like is not known. A connection is seen between ebani and the word bani . This is the name of the deep drone , which is placed under the melody voices in a three-part polyphonic choir. This drone can either be produced by a singer or an instrument, for example the lowest string of the West Georgian long-necked lute chonguri . Bani is said to be etymologically connected with the Greek to buni , as the Roman historian Flavius ​​Josephus described an ancient Egyptian harp in the 1st century AD. The word knari has been mentioned since the early Middle Ages. It may be related by name to a South Indian stick zither ( vina ). Then a root word would be used, from which Sanskrit kinnara ("to sound"), Arabic al-kinnāra for a rare early Islamic lyre and the so-called David's harp kinnor are derived.

The origin of the harp's developmental history is the hunting or musical bow with one string. The earliest known harp is on a clay tablet from the end of the 4th millennium BC. From Mesopotamia . In cuneiform texts , the generic name for harps is GIŠ ZAG-SAL. Francis W. Galpin traced the Assyrian zak'k'al and the later names for harps ( Pashtun ) tshangal and generally tshang ( čang ) back to this. Harps with the name Tschang are thus supposedly etymological to the Sumerian harps, but are not necessarily adoptions of the same design. According to the playing position - with the short strings away from the body - the angle harps in the Caucasus are associated with the oldest illustration of a harp, dating from 3300–3000 BC. In Megiddo on the eastern Mediterranean in a stone of the pavement.

The Assyrian angle harps were used in the 1st millennium BC. Models for the "steppe harps" widespread in Central Asia, which are so named after the landscape and the use by nomadic people who breed cattle. The Pasyryk harp from the 4th century BC, uncovered as a grave in a high valley of the Altai . BC with five strings belongs to this type of harp. According to archaeological finds, angle harps were already widespread in the Caucasus in pre-Christian times and are among the oldest traditional string instruments there. At the village Bambebi close Uplisziche in central Georgia, a 6.5 centimeter piece of gray clay was found that the 7./6. Century BC Is dated. It shows a seated musician playing a harp. In 1877, near Stepantsminda (formerly Kazbegi) on the Georgian military road , the Russian archaeologist GD Filimonov unearthed around 200 objects that have become known as the Kazbegi treasure. Below was a small bronze figure of a musician from the 6th century BC. BC, who is obviously holding an angular harp in his hands that resembles the Svanetian type in every detail. This speaks for a common musical past of Svaneti in the west and the Chewsuretia region in the east of Georgia. The changi has been recorded in Svaneti since the 4th century AD.

Design

Two Tschangis in the State Museum of Georgian Folk Songs and Musical Instruments in Tbilisi

The changi has a narrow resonance body, rounded at the bottom, made of a hollowed-out block of wood, which ends at the top with a thin, flat wooden ceiling. Fir or pine are often used. The body forms an isosceles open triangle together with the neck, which extends at right angles or at a slightly acute angle. The strings are attached to the sound box on a string support, which runs in the form of a longitudinal wooden stick under the ceiling and transfers the string vibrations to it. In one of the instruments shown, the string support is visible above the ceiling and is fixed with cross bars. Five or six holes drilled in the ceiling in a circle made of darker, inlaid wood are supposed to improve the sound quality. At the neck, the strings end on wooden pegs on the side with which they can be tuned. In the past six to seven strings made of twisted horsehair were common, today it is usually nine, eleven or twelve nylon strings in diatonic tuning. The tone sequence with six strings is: f - g - a - h - c1 - d1, with seven strings e - f - g - a - h - c1 - d1. Up to three strings are plucked as chords at the same time. The musician plays the changi standing vertically on his knees.

Style of play

The changi is preferably played by women to accompany round dances and songs that men or women perform as soloists. Instead of the harp, they are accompanied by a long-necked lute, chuniri , which is just as characteristic of Svanetian culture , and more rarely both instruments at the same time. In the latter case, the chuniri often follows the singing voice in unison and the changi plays accompanying chords. The melodies played on chuniri and changi are usually transcriptions of the choral singing associated with round dances. Traditional Georgian folk music ensembles are generally based on the interplay of two instruments. Besides chuniri and changi , chonguri and the drum doli or the lute panduri and the frame drum daira are typical. In Svaneti, regional singing styles of Georgian polyphony with complex-parallel melody lines predominate. The pitch space is usually narrow and hardly covers more than a third or fourth . All songs have short stanzas.

A round dance that men perform every year at the end of July in the village of Kala is aimed at the fertility goddess Kvirike. All three voices produce semi-vowel consonants in a special way . The same songs are performed with this singing technique without the round dances and accompanied by chuniri and changi .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ T. Beradze, K. Topuria, B Khorava: A Historical-Geographic Review of Modern Abkhazia. (PDF; 3.3 MB) p. 44, website of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation
  2. ^ Joseph Jordania: North Caucasia . In: Thimothy Rice, James Porter, Chris Goertzen (Eds.): Garland Encyclopedia of World Music . Volume 8: Europe. Routledge, New York / London 2000, pp. 857, 859, 863
  3. ↑ Yuri Sheikin: Russian Federation. II. Traditional music. 3. Siberian peoples. (v) Instruments. (d) Chordophones. In: Grove Music Online , 2001
  4. ↑ Farshid Delshad: Georgica et Irano-Semitica. Studies on the Iranian and Semitic loanwords in the Georgian national epic "The warrior in a panther's skin". (Ars poetica. Writings on literary studies 7; PDF; 3.1 MB) Deutscher Wissenschaftsverlag, Baden-Baden 2009, pp. 96, 156, ISBN 978-3-86888-004-5
  5. ^ Jordania, in: Garland Enzyclopedia, p. 839.
  6. ^ Wilhelm Stauder: The music of the Sumer, Babylonier and Assyrer. In: Bertold Spuler (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Orientalistik. 1. Dept. The Near and Middle East. Supplementary Volume IV. Oriental Music. EJ Brill, Leiden / Cologne 1970, p. 174
  7. ^ Francis W. Galpin: The Music of the Sumerians and their Immediate Successors, the Babylonians and Assyrians. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1937, pp. 24, 29, ISBN 978-0521180634
  8. ^ Joachim Braun: The Earliest Depiction of a Harp (Megiddo, late 4th mill. BC): Effects on Classical and Contemporary Cultures . In: Ellen Hickmann, Ricardo Eichmann (Hrsg.): Studies on music archeology I. String instruments in an archaeological context. (Orient-Aräologie, Volume 6) Verlag Marie Leidorf, Rahden / Westfalen 2000, p. 7
  9. ↑ Ziegler, MGG, Sp. 1277
  10. ↑ Vera Chikhladze: Musical instruments discovered in Georgia through archaeological excavations. In: Gela Gamkrelidze (ed.): Iberia - Colchis. Researches on the Archeology and History of Georgia in the Classical and Early Medieval Period. Georgian National Museum, Tbilisi 2015, p. 164
  11. ↑ Manana Shilakadze: On Regional Style in Georgian Instrumental Music / Svaneti /. (PDF; 28 kB) In: Rusudan Turtsumia, Joseph Jordania (Ed.): Second International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony. International Research Center for Traditional Polyphony of Tbilisi State Conservatoire. Tiflis 2006, pp. 396–401, here p. 399
  12. ↑ Changi . ( Memento of October 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Open Museum. State Museum of Georgian Folk Songs and Instruments
  13. ↑ Ziegler, MGG, p. 1278
  14. ↑ Dolidze, Hannick et al. a .: New Grove, p. 672
  15. ↑ Nino Makharadze Kalandaze-: On one pecularity of Articulation in Georgian Polyphonic Singing.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 220 kB) In: Rusudan Turtsumia, Joseph Jordania (Ed.): Second International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony. International Research Center for Traditional Polyphony of Tbilisi State Conservatoire. Tiflis 2006, pp. 340-349, here p. 341@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.polyphony.ge