Tschonguri

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Tschonguri , also chonguri, čʽonguri ( Georgian ჩონგური ), is a four- stringed plucked bowl-neck lute , which is used in western Georgia to accompany polyphonic songs. The chonguri is predominantly a women's instrument; With its body glued together from chips , it is slightly larger than the three-stringed lute panduri made from a block of wood in eastern Georgia, which is mostly played by men. The best-cultivated Georgian string instrument has its own playing tradition.

origin

Georgian folk musician with chonguri and frame drum daira , 1908

The oldest long-necked lutes in the Caucasus region are related to the music tradition of the Near East and to the culture of the Central Asian nomads. In the historical region of Choresmia , numerous terracotta statuettes from the 4th century BC were found. Found to 4th century AD, which are about ten centimeters tall and represent musicians. Some hold lute instruments in the playing position with their necks sloping downwards, which are seen as the direct forerunners of today's dombra in Kazakhstan , the komuz in Kyrgyzstan and the topschur in the Altai , i.e. regions with a nomadic tradition that extends to the present day.

The East Georgian panduri , with its body hollowed out of a block of wood, is an older type of lute, as it was first seen in the 8th century BC. Appeared on Elamite clay figures and became the starting point for the pear-shaped archetype of the Persian lute barbat , the shape of which has spread widely in Asia and which has been preserved in the Kyrgyz komuz and the Yemeni qanbus , among others . In the early Islamic period (in the 7th / 8th centuries) completely different lutes developed with a deep-bellied corpus glued from strips of wood. The earliest clear reference to the novel corpus shape can be found in the 10th century in the collection of Arabic writings on science and philosophy entitled Ikhwān al-Ṣafaʾ . This type of lute did not arrive in Europe until the 12th century.

In the Georgian national epic The Warrior in the Tiger Skin , which Shota Rustaveli wrote in the 12th century, there are some names of Georgian musical instruments that come from Persian . The medieval Persian angular harp chang is in Svaneti more than tschangi known trumpet buki goes over the Persian to Arabic buq back, today's drum doli was formerly dabdabi, of Persian Dabdab while the stringed instrument also stated there barbitsa (of Persian barbat ) from Georgia has disappeared.

The panduri has been known by name in Georgia since the 10th century, the name Tschonguri only since the 18th century, and its design in Georgia is a development based on the panduri . Tschonguri appears several times in Persian sources in the second half of the 17th century. The entry in the Russian-Georgian dictionary of the Georgian scholar David Chubinashvili (1814-1891) from 1848 reads "Tschonguri (Persian), a small saz with four or five strings, balalaika ."

After a short treatise on music that Ioane Bagrationi wrote between 1817 and 1820, there was a Georgian lute chonguri with six frets, two white strings and one yellow and one short zili string. An instrument of the same name of the Shiite Kizilbasch is said to have had more frets, a third type of lute is said to have been called Tschanguri . In the 19th century, instruments from the oriental region were called chongur in Georgia. In Armenia there was a fretless, with a plectrum played tschongur even tschungur, tschenkiur or chang with four metal strings, two of which were yellow and two bright. Its pear-shaped body was decorated with mother-of-pearl inlays . The shape of the chonguri is closely related to the Azerbaijani long-necked lute çoğur ( chogur, chogur ) with three bundles for two or three steel strings, which is also known in the country under the Turkish name saz and is used as an instrument of the epa singer ( ashyq ) compared to the classical tar is on the decline. The chungur in Armenia and Dagestan denotes a string lute in both countries today.

The language root of tschonguri is tschang . Francis W. Galpin called chang or Tschank as a shortened Persian forms of Arabic and Pashtun tschangal ( čangal ), which he attributed to the ancient Babylonian rectangular harp with oblique strings in spätbabylonischer time zaggal was pronounced. A clay tablet from the 7th century BC. BC shows an Elamite orchestra with a harp, Assyrian zak'k'al. The word contains the basic meanings of “wood”, “straight”, “upright” and probably refers to a type of harp with more vertical strings. It is probably a simplified character representation of the older Sumerian word ZAG-SAL.

Design

Three museum chonguris with a solid wooden body

The bellied body of the tschonguri consists of seven to ten wooden slats two to three millimeters thick, which are bent over a shape and butt-glued together. As with the panduri , the body ends with a straight underside, the outline is pear-shaped when viewed from above and more bulged in the middle than with the panduri . The neck and pegbox are made from the same wooden stick and give the instrument a total length of about 100 centimeters. The types of wood used are mulberry , walnut and spruce. Regional forerunners of today's Tschonguris with a massive, spade or pear-shaped body can practically only be seen in museums. In contrast to the unadorned other Georgian stringed instruments, the flat wooden ceiling is decorated with a pattern of small round sound holes, inlays made of darker wood or mother-of-pearl.

The panduri has strings made from sheep intestine, the chonguri made from silk thread. As a major difference to the East Georgian lute, the Tschonguri lacks the frets. Three strings run from the floor over a flat bridge placed in the middle of the top to the lateral vertebrae at the end of the neck that is bent backwards. A fourth shorter string ends at a peg halfway up the fingerboard. It is called zili , which is derived from the Persian word zīr , which has also been found in Turkish as zil teli for “highest string”. The counterparts for zili in West Georgian dialects are tsvrili ( Guria ), perdi ( Imeretia ) and mechipashe ( Mingrelia ). In an Arabic treatise on music from the 10th century, zīr denotes one of the strings of the kink- necked lute oud , and the term zil in the Armenian language comes from the Persian language via zir .

Moods

The three most common tunings are pirveli ("the first") and the most widespread ( chveulebrivi , "usual"): f - a - c1 - f1, meore ("the second"): f - a - c1 - e1 and mesame ( “The third”): f - g - c1 - g1. The moods f - a ♭  - c1 - e and f - b ♭  - d1 - f1 were also mentioned. In the Guria region, the second tuning is also called ashobili (dialect form of moshvebuli , “free”, “released”), and accordingly the lowest (least tensioned) string is called moshuei or bhoshi . The highest of the long strings is called mskhirpane (derived from ganskhipva , "high tension") and the middle one is called shuamoshobili (literally "the middle one is loose") and dzilmoshobili . The other names for the strings are based on the regional importance of the instrument in musical harmony. Damtsqebi or "the one that begins" means the first string in Guria, as does molaparake , "the one that speaks". Guria in the middle string is modzakhili and Imereti momdzakhilebeli , "the second voice".

Like the lowest string bani (literally "flat roof", here "bass"), the deep drone is also called, which is generally underlaid with the melody in a polyphonic choir and can be produced by a singing voice or an instrument. The stringed instruments ebani and knari are known from literature , of which there are no longer any images. Ebani is etymologically related to bani , which is seen in a historical connection with Greek to buni . This is how the Roman historian Flavius ​​Josephus described an ancient Egyptian harp in the 1st century AD .

The unusual fourth string zili is said to have developed under the influence of the four-part singing, according to which it takes on the role of a high drone. Other correspondences for this high accompanying voice are in the three-part singing krimanchuli ( yodelling ) or gamqivani (yodelling in high voices) and in the four-part singing shemkhmobari . Such references are discussed because musical thinking based on Georgian polyphonic singing has had an impact on the construction and playing of the secondary musical instruments. The relationship to four-part singing is not secured, however, as this only occurs in the western Georgian harvest songs naduri (the system of voluntary and unpaid community work is called nadi ), which is neither accompanied by a chonguri nor performed instrumentally.

The zili string is always struck without shortening. In the standard tuning, its pitch is an octave above the lowest string and sounds like a chord with it. No other Georgian stringed instrument has an octave doubling (and thus the name zili ). In many songs, however, the fourth string is not used.

Style of play

The Russian postage stamp from 1990 shows a chonguri in the middle and, from left to right, the angle harp changi , bagpipe gudastviri , frame drum daira , flute salamuri and panpipe larchemi .

The chonguri is mainly played by women in western Georgia ( Guria , Mingrelia , Imereti , Adjara ), especially in the flatter areas, for song accompaniment or as a soloist. The strings are struck with the fingers in both directions (strumming) or plucked individually, while the zili string produces a high drone tone.

In the 19th century, folk music ensembles consisted of two instruments: the panduri usually played with the daira frame drum , while the chonguri played with the doli cylinder drum . There were instrumental trios only in the oriental music of the Sazandar ensembles in Tbilisi , the only larger cast was the Mtskobri military ensemble with several metal trumpets ( bukis ). Since Western instruments came into the country at the beginning of the 19th century, the Georgian string instruments have increasingly been replaced by the guitar in urban popular music. In the second half of the 19th century in Imereti with the Kutaisi cultural center, new folk songs were created from the melodies of operas and Russian romantic romance. There the chonguri was occasionally replaced by the Russian seven-string guitar. From the 1930s there was a revival of folk music under new auspices, according to the ideology of the Georgian Soviet Republic . In place of the old traditions anchored in religion, the revolutionary leadership gave praise songs, which came along in a musically simpler guise. The purely vocal music took a back seat to new instrumental styles. Large orchestras emerged using traditional instruments. According to the new demand, these were built in different sizes up to the bass range.

The most highly developed three-part polyphonic singing style was able to assert itself in Guria. As in Mingrelia, the Gurian chants are accompanied with virtuosity by a Tschonguri player. The string instrument either follows the singing voice in unison or creates an independent harmonic melody line through individual chords. The relationship between the song and the chonguri is expressed in the song titles, which are based on the string tuning. Each song is always accompanied by an instrument in the same mood. Changing them would distort the character of the song and end up creating a new song, even though the first and second moods differ by only one note.

The Guric lullabies ( guruli nana ) with Tschonguri accompaniment are of particular quality and were strongly influenced by Avxenti Megrelidze (1877–1953), a master of polyphonic singing. He arranged a lullaby in which, as an exception, several chonguris play together, taking on the role of lead singer, the two choir parts and the accompanying string instrument. One of the most influential Gurian choir singers was Kitsi Gegechkori (1886–1971). Many arrangements of Guru and also some Mengrel lullabies go back to him. His mother Eprosine Gabunia also sang and played chonguri . In addition to lullabies, harvest songs ( naduri ) and lyrical love songs are accompanied by a chonguri or panduri , previously also by the string chianuri and in Svaneti by the harp changi .

Lullabies ( nana ) and songs for healing rituals ( lavnana ) are based on the same melodic structures. With the magical content of the Lavnana chants, children can also be brought to rest. Polyphonic lavnanas with Tschonguri accompaniment are performed as lamentations at the elaborately staged funeral ceremonies. The participants in the memorial service call the dead, wake them up and sing them to sleep. This is done under the common assumption that the dead understand every word. In ancient Georgia, funerals were associated with fertility cults and the deceased ancestors were considered mediators between the living and the gods.

The Turkish musician Birol Topaloğlu combines Turkish and Georgian music in some of his compositions. In addition to the Turkish bagpipe tulum , he uses the chonguri and other Georgian musical instruments.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ FM Karomatov, VA Meškeris, TS Vyzgo: Central Asia . (Werner Bachmann (Hrsg.): Music history in pictures . Volume II: Music of antiquity. Delivery 9) Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1987, p. 66
  2. ^ Curt Sachs : The History of Musical Instruments. WW Norton, New York 1940, pp. 251 f.
  3. ↑ Harvey Turnbull: The genesis of carvel-built lutes. In: Laurence Picken (Ed.): Musica Asiatica 1. Oxford University Press, London 1977, p. 79; refers to Henry George Farmer : The Structure of the Arabian and Persian Lute in the Middle Ages. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1939, p. 45
  4. ^ Jordania, in: Garland Encyclopedia, p. 838
  5. ↑ Shilakadze, p. 455 f.
  6. ↑ Jean During: Chogur. In: Laurence Libin (Ed.): The Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 1, Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2014, p. 525
  7. ^ Jean During: Azerbaijan. In: Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 2. Macmillan Publishers, London 2001, p. 271
  8. ↑ Shilakadze, p. 455
  9. ^ Francis W. Galpin: The Music of the Sumerians and their Immediate Successors, the Babylonians and Assyrians. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1937, p. 29, ISBN 978-0521180634
  10. ↑ Atlas of Plucked Instruments: Middle East.
  11. ↑ Laurence Picken: Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey. Oxford University Press, London 1975, p. 16 f.
  12. ↑ Shilakadze, p. 455
  13. ^ Jordania, In: Garland Enzyclopedia, p. 839
  14. ↑ Shilakadze, p. 454 f.
  15. ↑ Dolidze, Hannik u. a .: New Grove , p. 677
  16. ^ Jordania, in: Garland Encyclopedia, p. 840
  17. ↑ Ziegler, MGG, p. 1277
  18. ^ Tamar Meskhi: On Georgian Traditional Music in the Soviet Period. 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. 499–507, here p. 501
  19. ^ Jordania, in: Garland Encyclopedia, p. 845
  20. ↑ Dolidze, Hannik u. a .: New Grove , p. 673 f.
  21. ↑ Tinatin Zhvania: Harmony of the Georgian Song and Chonguri Tunings. 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. 462–468, here p. 463
  22. ↑ Nino Kalandadze-Makharadze: The multipart Lyrical Cradle Song in Georgia . ( Memento from December 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 231 kB) polyphony.ge, 2010, pp. 183–197, here pp. 186–188
  23. ↑ Nino Kalandadze-Makharadze: The Funeral Zari in Traditional Polyphony times. 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. 166–176, here p. 166 f.