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Marin Mersenne's Harmonie universelle, published at
Paris in 1636, shows four double-bore, double-reed wind instruments
that are neither dulcian nor bassoon, though vaguely similar to
both. Modern critics of Mersenne have yet to agree on such basic
issues as what size the instruments are, how many joints they
have, and what they are to be called. A close examination of Mersenne's
hitherto neglected Harmonicorum libri (1635) dispels many
ambiguities and unlocks details that have gone unnoticed in the
much-examined illustrations.
In my paper, a brief comparison of key passages in the French
and Latin texts will lead to far-reaching conclusions. Evidence
suggests that
1. Mersenne's proto-bassoons are directly descended from larger
sizes of hautbois, or shawm; the disposition of keys and
tone holes and the bore linkage derive from the extended-bore
shawm, and not the dulcian.
2. Two of the instruments are now recognizable as bisected shawms,
thus clarifying Mersenne's previously inscrutable "two-part"
terminology.
3. Mersenne's third instrument is a later development, a one-piece
instrument in which the anonymous maker has taken pains to improve
performance while retaining aspects of the outer, shawm-like appearance
of the first two instruments.
4. In the fourth proto-bassoon, a further refinement of the design,
the maker grappled with design problems that were soon to give
rise to the bassoon's wing joint, an ingenious, low-tech solution
that is essentially unimproved more than three centuries later.
5. Louis XIII, an accomplished musician who greatly admired the
shawm players he heard in Poitou, brought Poitevins and their
traditional instruments, including the basse de hautbois de
Poitou (another bassoon ancestor) to Versailles, where they
encountered Norman makers, long credited as reformers of the baroque
woodwinds.
6. The shawm was closely identified with the French court, to
the point that the king himself may have intervened to oversee
its preservation and development.
Mersenne's instruments, genealogically distinct from the dulcian,
represent the known French precursors of the bassoon. Louis XIII
and certain Poitevin makers appear to deserve significant credit
for the morphology of the baroque bassoon, and thus for the basic
shape of the modern bassoon.
Since the days of Brian Boru (10th century) the harp has symbolised
Ireland at her highest achievement, and its players and patrons
were respected members of the nobility. In the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, music was the only productive labour for
those suffering a physical ailment (this includes peasants and
those with noble roots). It is at this time that travelling pipe
and fiddle players started to become more prominent. This new
lower class strand of musicians (including some harpers) took
on many aspects of the old tradition (in conception). The travelling
tradition changed relatively slowly compared to Ireland's dramatically
altered power displacement and social restructuring.
The intention of this paper is to explore the importance of the
harp tradition as part of the Irish identity. The main scope of
the paper covers the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I begin
with a brief description of the harp tradition before the eighteenth
century. This will cover the noble associations and practices
that connected the harp to aristocratic culture. By the seventeenth
century, Ireland was a colony undergoing many changes, but these
changes did not interfere with the transference of many past associations
of the noble tradition of harp playing to other travelling musicians.
Instead of pursuing music as a satisfying pastime, these musicians
used the profession to earn their means of subsistence. Although
the people involved in the music making had limited resources,
accounts of the musicians' practices when visiting the "peasantry"
resemble the practices of a well-off musician visiting an established
circuit of prominent gentry families. This paper will point to
the similarities of contemporary accounts and draw attention to
their resemblance to an idealised notion of the travelling musician
consistent with an Irish identity conceived by the national intelligentsia.
The Ærophor-or Ton-Binde-Apparat (legato device)-was
an apparatus that allowed the wind-player to sustain his tone
indefinitely by supplementing his normal supply of breath. The
player pumped artificial air into his mouth via foot-operated
bellows and tubing; whilst that from the lungs was being replaced,
the player could breathe through the nose. Thus the air-stream
remained uninterrupted, and the player could produce sustained
tone or brilliant passage work (including staccato passages) for
an indefinite period of time. The device was seen both as a means
of enabling artistic effects to be achieved that would otherwise
be impossible, as well as a means for lessening strain.
Its inventor Bernard Samuels (b. 1872) was a professional flute-player
in Germany who regularly played with the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra.
Between patenting his device in 1911 amd 1915, he demonstrated
it widely in Germany, Boston and New York, securing enthusiastic
testimonials on both sides of the Atlantic from leading wind players,
conductors and musicians. Richard Strauss duly prescribed it in
his Sinfonia domestica and Festliches Praeludium. However,
the Ærophor was to prove yet another casualty of World War
I.
Thanks to rare source-material from Germany (Fritz Marcus archive)
and the U.S. (America's Shrine to Music Museum, graciously supplied
by Margaret Downie Banks), it is possible at last to document
this fascinating "might-have-been" of early twentieth-century
wind history.
This paper explores the place of the Yanagawa shamisen
(three-stringed plucked lute) in traditional Japanese music in
terms of its tradition, revival and identity. The instrument represents
the type of shamisen (or sangen) that was first
introduced to Japan in the sixteenth century, and it is in this
capacity that its present position will be examined.
Since the shamisen's introduction to Japan, the instrument
has undergone several changes as it has been transmitted through
a number of performance genres in different regions and social
contexts. Even though a common structure is shared by each of
these instruments, a variety of shamisen types are found
today, each with its own unique characteristics of construction,
performance practice, and repertoire. It is these differences
among the instruments which give them their own unique identity
within their performance genre.
The Yanagawa shamisen is today one of the smallest genres
of shamisen in Japanese music. The paper will survey the
form of the instrument in relation to other instrument types in
order to explore its link with tradition, revival and identity.
As an instrument of traditional Japanese music, the Yanagawa
shamisen is examined in terms of how it has been revived in
recent years and how its form can not only influence the reconstruction
of music styles, but also stand as a powerful object which helps
construct tradition and establish identity.