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Concertina Philosophy...


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Discussing MIDI-concertinas in various threads I started thinking... There was the wish to produce inexpensive concertinas, so that every child could get one!?!?

 

But would I really want my child ( I don't have one ) to play concertina??

 

At the age of six I started off with the recorder, piano at eight and guitar at ten. When I was 16 I discovered folk-music. It was the late Ted Furey who taught me my first Irish tune! After that I worked my way through any possible kind of acoustic music ( blues, skiffle, bluegrass, 12-string guitar picking, morris, trad Irish, Scottish,Shetland, French etc. ) and the related instruments ( I had well over 80 different ones when was a student ). Somehow I got stuck on the English concertina. But why?

 

By now I play almost anything on it ( tango, balkan, musette, classical, jazz, klezmer etc... ), but nothing feels or sounds quite right, simply because none of it was written for the concertina. And the nineteens century salon-music that was written for the concertina doesn't appeal to me.

 

Ok, the concertina is a cute little instrument that can easily be carried around and played without tuning. I usually mention that amongst the blind the one-eyed is king. Especially over here on the continent I'm usually the best concertina player around - simply because I am the only one!

 

So I think that I would let my child learn violin or clarinet, because they are very versatile for almost any kind of music!?

 

On the other hand, had I put the same amount of effort and practise into the concertina that would be required to be good on violin or clarinet, I would most likely be really good on the concertina!?!?

 

And may be my child would not listen to his father and run off with one of the Aeolas after all...

 

 

 

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well, I believe we should get children interested in music, not necessarily in a particular instrument. My nephew (you know him, you allowed him to perform in Proitz a few years ago) had decided for himself that he wanted to play the piano accordeon at the age of five, and has stuck with it so far (in fact, he's pretty good by now at age 17). Although there was a family predisposition to music, noone had put pressure on him or nudged him to take on music, let alone any particular instrument. It was his own choice, and any attempt to get him interested in another instrument would probably have blocked his love to music instead of strengthening it.

 

If I had children, I'd want them all to be practitioning musicians, but with different instruments and different genres (ideally they would all be multi instrumentalists).

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I think most parents, especially if they were not very musical themselves, would be happy if their child had the opportunity and was keen to learn to play a concertina, be it a cheap or a quality instrument. As such parents and child they wouldn't even have a concertina philosophy and it would be wrong to try to steer the child toward another instrument. If the child was gifted they may graduate to other instruments later on, but hopefully they would still play a concertina sometimes.

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It's pretty normal for musicians to play multiple instruments with each one focused on a different purpose, maybe some aimed at private understanding and others at public performance. A lot of players of melody instruments also play keyboards: the cellist Steven Isserlis learns new cello pieces on the piano because he can get the drift faster that way. I know one virtuoso Scottish piper who uses the recorder in a similar way (he's a good enough recorder player that he could go public if he wanted).

 

It's also quite normal for people to play music in different genres, and for cultures to maintain traditions of wildly different kinds of music simultaneously. Thousands of people get together every week in England to perform atonal serialized music in unstandardized non-diatonic scales, to the largest audiences any kind of acoustic music gets, without even thinking about it.

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.... Thousands of people get together every week in England to perform atonal serialized music in unstandardized non-diatonic scales, to the largest audiences any kind of acoustic music gets, without even thinking about it.

 

I'm hoping I'm not the only one that doesnt understand this sentence? :)

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Tango, Balkan, musette, klezmer, etc., don't sound "quite right" on concertina, but it's not because repertoire wasn't written for it. A huge percentage of folk music was not "written" period, let alone for a specific instrument. It is because the concertina-reeded voice timbre is not heard as matching those genres well---Is that strictly cultural conditioning? Sure. Cultural conditioning can change, but there is no incentive for it to change regarding these genres, since accordion is vastly more versatile and useful for playing them, as well as vastly less expensive. I don't mean, premium accordions aren't super-expensive. But unlike concertinas, fast, responsive, and playable non-premium accordions can be had quite inexpensively, with more notes, more lung power, more different sounds to be had, and bass/chordal apparatus that allows the box to be a simple melody instrument or an entire band with the flip of a switch. If fast, responsive, very playable concertinas were available at similar prices, the musical possibilities they offer in such a small package, even though less than in an accordion, would probably be irresistible to enough charmed and delighted people for them to get that cultural niche. But that is not going to happen any time soon.

 

BTW, tango, Balkan, musette, and klezmer sound great on high-quality accordion-reeded concertinas. Including or perhaps especially, high-quality baritone accordion-reeded concertinas.

Edited by ceemonster
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Ok, lets rephrase the philosiphical question: why do we play concertina and not one of the many other instruments??

 

Please convince me that I am doing the right thing;-)

Edited by conzertino
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Perhaps like any relationship it is as much a case of initial infatuation followed by long term habitiuation ?

 

A handy little box, portable organ, that can be pressed into service for many types of music , even when it is a 'jack of all trades but master of none'.

 

Like yourself , I have played many different instruments but in the end I come back to the faithfull little squeezebox that my hands know their way around.

 

Given all the difficulties of obtaining a really good one there are the benefits of longevity , easy maintenance and lack of encomberance, a chearfull tone and non threatening aspect.

 

These days the Concertina is 'different' , it invokes surprise and comments from others... perhaps it makes us feel different too, a centre of attraction for a few moments ?

 

For myself; I enjoy playing concertinas but I would not go so far as to presume that I ,or anyone else, is 'doing the right thing'.

Edited by Geoff Wooff
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I love the fact that with the concertina that you don't have to be good to get it to sound pretty, I'm only learning the concertina a few months now, but I did try various other traditional instruments like the fiddle, saw a lovely man busking on Grafton St, I asked him about the violin, we had the chats and tea, even tried the violin, but for the violin to sound nice you have to be really good to achieve this,

 

but oh my gosh, pick up a concertina for the first time, it can sound oh so so beautiful to the ears try a couple of chords and it makes the heart smile. I love the fact it's small and neat, I can just sit in my comfy chair, have lots of tea and happily practice.

 

Also, starting out, the return on practice time is great, you can spend 10 minutes on a concertina and you'll get somewhere.

 

My goal for learning the concertina is to eventually have enough tunes and technique to be able to busk on Grafton St. or Ennis, it's the dream :)

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But would I really want my child ( I don't have one ) to play concertina??

 

[snip]

 

So I think that I would let my child learn violin or clarinet, because they are very versatile for almost any kind of music!?

Philosophically speaking, I think we shouldn't be thinking of a choice between concertina, violin and clarinet. We should at least extend the set of alternative instruments to include theremin, electric guitar, theorbo, krummhorn, cornett, harpsichord ...

 

Because the concertina is not just an alternative mainline instrument, like those in the modern symphony orchestra. Like the recorder and viol in a Renaissance consort, it is part of a musical culture that had a beginning and an end in the past. And on the other hand, the concertina lacks the innovativeness of the theremin and the broad demoscopic basis ot the e-guitar. Its most effective use today is in recreating the effect of the popular and light classical music of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

 

Of course the Anglo concertina specifically is part of various folk-music subcultures. But I wouldn't urge a child to take it up unless her or she were into that kind of scene. For instance, I had sea-songs in mind when I took up the concertina as a youth.

 

"Modern concertina", if I may put it that way, is to my mind the exploration of the timbre, range and capabilities of the instrument, and then its use in some form of music that it lends itself to - including original music by the players themselves. In this respect, the concertina is not an instrument for a child to learn music on - it is an instrument that a person who already has practical and theoretical knowledge of making music can pick up and express him or herself with.

 

Both my children learned an Instrument at music school: the daughter piano, the son trombone. They had the free choice - not whether to take music lessons, but on what instrument, after the obligatory recorder at school. They both got a lot out of it, although my daughter is now first and foremost a singer (like myself!). Both are quite at home in musical genres that call for their instrument - classical and band music, respectively. I'm the folksy multi-instrumentalist of the family, and that is a good thing. Strategically speaking, children and parents should occupy differernt hills.

 

Cheers,

John

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.... Thousands of people get together every week in England to perform atonal serialized music in unstandardized non-diatonic scales, to the largest audiences any kind of acoustic music gets, without even thinking about it.

 

I'm hoping I'm not the only one that doesnt understand this sentence? :)

 

 

Except peals of bells are seldom (if ever?) atonal. The intonation may vary wildly but I've never heard one that wasn't a diatonic scale.

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Ok, lets rephrase the philosiphical question: why do we play concertina and not one of the many other instruments??

 

Please convince me that I am doing the right thing;-)

I'm fond of saying that I don't know anyone "normal" that plays concertina. While that usually gets a chuckle from non-players and concerned looks from other players, my intent is not to paint players in an odd light. Rather, it seems to me that the people drawn to concertinas aren't seeking what I might call the conventional vanilla music experience.

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Ok, lets rephrase the philosiphical question: why do we play concertina and not one of the many other instruments??

 

Please convince me that I am doing the right thing;-)

This is quite a differnt question! For many of us, however, it is an invalid question. I, for one, play the concertina AND a few of the many other instruments.

 

What I can say in answer to your question is why I added the concertina to the (short!) list of instruments I already knew and enjoyed playing.

One reason was that I had childhood memories of the entrancing sound of the Triumph duet. I got my first concertina for sentimental reasons.

Another reason was that I have always had an affinity for ships and the sea, and the concertina is - rightly or wrongly - strongly associated with nautical music.

And what has kept up my interest in the concertina is the fact that it's a good accompaniment instrument for a singer like me who often has to perform solo. I'd have to be a pretty good guitarist to get my fingers round the melodic intros, outros and bridges that I can easily squeeze out of my Anglo or Crane.

 

Perhaps you could say that I need the concertina because none of my other instruments - banjo, guitar, Waldzither, mandoline, mouth organ, whistles, autoharp - allow me to cover all the bases.

 

For this reason, as I said before, I wouldn't recommend any of the above as a young person's entry portal to the vast Realm of Music!

 

Cheers,

John

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In the context of comparing to other instruments and MIDI controllers, probably the most distinctive thing about the concertina (and some accordions) is the 2 dimensional keyboard layout. This has allowed people to experiment with a variety of key layouts.

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.... Thousands of people get together every week in England to perform atonal serialized music in unstandardized non-diatonic scales, to the largest audiences any kind of acoustic music gets, without even thinking about it.

 

I'm hoping I'm not the only one that doesnt understand this sentence? :)

 

 

Except peals of bells are seldom (if ever?) atonal. The intonation may vary wildly but I've never heard one that wasn't a diatonic scale.

 

I was thinking the same thing. I've heard some music referred to as "free diatonic" music, that is, music that uses the notes of a diatonic scale, but not in a way that suggests any tonal center. The music was more rhythmically structured than these bell changes, but perhaps the phrase could apply here, too.

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Older peals weren't tuned to a diatonic scale, and as Dave says, the way the scale is used is not tonal - the permutational form means no note can be a tonal centre, and like Schoenberg's 12-tone system, every note is used equally often.

 

It would be interesting to know what tuning system is being described here:

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11080531/Bid-to-re-tune-18th-Century-church-bells-rejected-to-preserve-their-heritage.html

 

I've just been listening to Bartok's second vioin concerto - there is a passage in that where there is a 12-tone sequence but the music still sounds completely tonal. Bartok was dead chuffed with it and boasted that, in effect, he'd found a bug in Schoenberg's programme. Pitch set doesn't determine tonality, either way.

 

Anybody here tried playing a concertina tuned to an equitonic scale? I think some of the African ones may be set up that way.

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Anybody here tried playing a concertina tuned to an equitonic scale? I think some of the African ones may be set up that way.

 

The Hayden duet concertina is arranged in whole tone rows. As each row only covers 6 of the 12 semitones in an octave, they are arranged so that any pair of two neighboring rows covers the whole gamut. [Yes, for any of you medieval music theorists, the pun is intentional.]

 

Similarly, the chromatic button accordion is arranged in rows of minor thirds, with any three neighboring covering all the semitones.

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