Re: Jankowski Tsimbls

[Joshua Horowitz <horowitz...>]

-- Budowitz Home Page: http://www.merlinms.dircon.co.uk/budowitz/

> Jankowski's instruments:... this is another sound for the revivalist
> toolbox which may be just as "authentic" as some of the others, and may point
to
> regional diversity.  Also helps inform us as to what tsimbalists did in
> ensemble, solo, or duet playing given the limitations/capacities of the
> instrument they had.

It's even smaller than "regional." The sound changes from one tsimbl to the
next, not only from one maker to the next, or from one region to the next.
The range of sounds of Jewish tsimblists in the 19th century must have been
incredibly broad. I actually used 3 different tsimbls on my different CD's:
Bessarabian Symphony used a smaller metallic "Ukrainian style" one (actually
made in Austria), Mother Tongue and Alicia Svigals' Fidl CD actually used my
own design, taken from 3 systems (Belarus, Ukrainian and 18th Century
central Europe and made in Germany by Alfred Pichlmaier) and Wedding Without
A Bride uses a mid-sized pedal tsimbl with a heavier sound, which I had made
by Nagy Akos in Budapest. The sounds and styles on all 3 should be
different. Even with all this discussing, I still want to avoid the term
"authentic." The closer we get to understanding the history of klezmer music
(and other folk musics) the more it seems we are confronted with each
player's individuality, which is the main determining factor in style. We
could say that Beethoven and Mendlessohn were both composers who composed in
the "classical" German style. Whereas they both make use of similar
techniques of composing, their results and styles were vastly different. So
you can say the same about folk music players, the main difference being
that their music has not been the subject of dessective analysis in music
schools, so the stylistic differences have never been considered. We don't
have enough Klezmer tsimbl players on record, so we can't even begin to talk
about style, except by analogy. That means we can look at other players and
instruments from their regions and make some tentative guesses as to how
klezmer tsimblists might have sounded.

If you want to get a chunkier sound on Jankowski's instruments, you can
place cotton cloth through the strings and play with longer, heavier, cotton
or wool wound sticks. No prob. You can even place erasers and dimes between
the courses and get a Cowell-esque "prepared tsimbl" sound if you want. Or
you can get the thing to sound like a gamelan orchestra. I had written a
sitar variation into one of my variations but took it out because I though
the idea was too trite. If you have hard sticks (mine have thick, hard
leather on the striking surface), you can lightly brush the stick onto the
string after you hit it to get a buzzing effect, which, with some practice,
sounds just like a sitar. Andre Hajdu approached me some years ago about
writing me a piece for the tsimbl, but hasn't yet done it yet. There are
lots of possibilities in the instrument, and even a small corpus of scores
(notwithstanding Stravinsky and Kodaly, but pieces from Leo Wiener, Georg
Aranyi-Aschner and lots of German, Hungarian and Romanian composers, not to
mention Irani composers).

Mr. Jankowski's own playing was geared toward playing Polkas and the like.
Lots of major key tonalities and an accompanying style which used a lot of
dampening, making the bass notes go: doo-up, doo-up, doo-up, doo-up. On the
old klezmer recordings you don't hear that effect, which, as I said before
is mainly possible when you have dangerously short sticks. The whole Belarus
school of tsimbl playing today uses a lot of hand-dampening. Since we don 't
have any recorded examples of early Belarus klezmer tsimbl playing, it's
impossible to say whether Jews used the technique, or even those hammers. In
general, though hammers have gotten longer. Even hammers which I've seen for
mid-sized Hungarian cymbaloms in instrument museums had shorter hammers in
the 19th century. Long hammers, large instruments and foot pedals go
together. With longer hammers, you can reach the high strings easier without
bending over and getting permanent back problems, but you can no longer
dampen the string you have just hit, because your hand is so far away it
with a long stick. So this goes hand in hand (no pun intended) with foot
pedals which can do the dampening for you. Ironically, long hammers have
become common even for short small instruments today, which looks funny, but
lots of people use them.

Josh
  

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