The midwinter horn, in Dutch midwinterhoorn and in various dialects of Low German Middewinterhorn, Mittewinterhorn, Mirrewinterhorn, Midwinterhorn and Mittwinterhorn, also known as the dewertshorn and adventshorn (Advent horn), is a wooden natural trumpet traditionally blown at the Christmas season in areas of the Netherlands and nearby parts of North Germany.
A midwinter horn is about 1.3 m (4 ft) long, although they vary in size and are said to have become longer in modern times. They are made from slightly curved tree trunks of, for example, alder (said to be the traditional material), birch, or willow, which are cut in half lengthwise, hollowed out until the walls are about 1 cm (half an inch) thick, and then rejoined. The halves are either glued together, clamped at intervals with metal rings or automotive clamps, or, traditionally, bound with willow or bramble withies or split rushes, and traditionally the horn is dipped in water to seal cracks and then played wet; water is usually also poured down the instrument immediately before playing. [1] A mouthpiece, usually made of elder wood, is added; [2] this is cut at a slant, like that of the Celtic carnyx, and the horn is played laterally. [1] In the early twentieth century, wooden midwinter horns were replaced by sheet metal horns, made in sections to achieve the desired curve, but still with a wooden mouthpiece; the folklore revival displaced these modern instruments. [1]
Unlike the similar but larger alphorn, the midwinter horn is held in the hands when played, rather than rested on the ground. It is traditionally held over water, supposedly for amplification although the shape of the curve and the angle at which the instrument is held make this ineffective. [1] Approximately eight notes can be produced, but since they vary between instruments, midwinter horns are not played together. [2]
The playing of wooden horns at midwinter is an old tradition on either side of the Dutch-German border that has been revived in recent years in, for example, the County of Bentheim in Germany and Twente in the Netherlands. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Playing midwinter horns is now practised as an announcement and celebration of Christmas: the horns are sounded from the beginning of Advent (late November or early December) to Epiphany (6 January). [1] [2] Many villages and town neighbourhoods in the border region have groups of midwinter horn players, who sound their instruments one after the other. The tradition in Gelderland and Overijssel has been listed as a national heritage tradition of the Netherlands on the Nationale Inventaris Immaterieel Cultureel Erfgoed . [7]
The first recorded mention of the midwinter horn dates to 1815, [7] but the tradition is generally thought to derive from Germanic Yule custom, both to summon help and to repel evil spirits. The Indiculus proscribes the sounding of horns along with the playing of bells as Saxon heathen methods of warding off bad weather. [8] The playing of ox horns in Friesland has been shown by excavations to date back a thousand years; the custom survived, on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, in parts of West Twente until the end of the 19th century and was revived in Markelo in 1988. [9] The region is a Catholic enclave within overwhelmingly Protestant areas, and the horns may well have been blown to warn neighbouring farmers of danger; during the German occupation of the Netherlands in the Second World War, they were used to signal the approach of a patrol. [1] However, the folklorist J. J. Voskuil saw the midwinter horn as deriving not from Germanic paganism but from medieval nativity plays depicting horn-blowing shepherds, and argued that the modern tradition was new folklore having more to do with regional identity than with the pagan past. [10]
The alphorn or alpenhorn or alpine horn is a labrophone, consisting of a straight several-meter-long wooden natural horn of conical bore, with a wooden cup-shaped mouthpiece. Traditionally the Alphorn was made of one single piece, or two parts at most, of the wood of a red pine tree. Sometimes the trees would bend from the weight of snow in winter, and this caused them to have the larger and bent mouthpiece at their ends. Modern Alphorns are sometimes made from three distinct parts that can be attached together: this is to make them easier to transport by car, or even to carry them by hand, and today they are more frequently made from the wood of a spruce tree or fir tree. The alphorn is used by mountain dwellers in the Swiss Alps. Similar wooden horns were used for communication in most mountainous regions of Europe, from the Alps to the Carpathians. Alphorns are today used as musical instruments.
The clarinet is a single-reed musical instrument in the woodwind family, with a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell.
The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica include diatonic, chromatic, tremolo, octave, orchestral, and bass versions. A harmonica is played by using the mouth to direct air into or out of one holes along a mouthpiece. Behind each hole is a chamber containing at least one reed. The most common is the diatonic Richter-tuned with ten air passages and twenty reeds, often called the blues harp. A harmonica reed is a flat, elongated spring typically made of brass, stainless steel, or bronze, which is secured at one end over a slot that serves as an airway. When the free end is made to vibrate by the player's air, it alternately blocks and unblocks the airway to produce sound.
The cornett, cornetto, or zink is a wind instrument that dates from the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods, popular from 1500 to 1650.
A lur, also lure or lurr, is a long natural blowing horn without finger holes that is played with a brass-type embouchure. Lurs can be straight or curved in various shapes. The purpose of the curves was to make long instruments easier to carry and to avoid directing the loud noise at nearby people.
The ney, is an end-blown flute that figures prominently in Egyptian Music, Persian music, Turkish music, Jewish music and Arabic music. In some of these musical traditions, it is the only wind instrument used. The ney has been played continually for 4,500–5,000 years, dating back to ancient Egypt, making it one of the oldest musical instruments still in use.
The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B♭ (while the alto is pitched in the key of E♭), and written as a transposing instrument in the treble clef, sounding an octave and a major second lower than the written pitch. Modern tenor saxophones which have a high F♯ key have a range from A♭2 to E5 (concert) and are therefore pitched one octave below the soprano saxophone. People who play the tenor saxophone are known as "tenor saxophonists", "tenor sax players", or "saxophonists".
Twente is a region in the eastern Netherlands. It encompasses the most urbanised and easternmost part of the province of Overijssel. Twente is most likely named after the Tuihanti or Tvihanti, a Germanic tribe that settled in the area and was mentioned by the Roman historian Tacitus. The region's borders are defined by the Overijssel region of Salland in the northwest and west, the German County of Bentheim in the northeast and east and the Gelderland region of the Achterhoek in the south.
Horagai are large conch shells, usually from Charonia tritonis, that have been used as trumpets in Japan for many centuries. The instrument, which has served a number of purposes throughout Japanese history, has been given a number of Japanese names depending on its function. Special schools still teach students to play the traditional music associated with the conch.
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Clarion is a name for a high-pitched trumpet used in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It is also a name for a 4' organ reed stop that produces a high-pitched or clarion-like sound on a pipe organ in the clarion trumpet's range of notes.
The bucium is a type of alphorn from Romania and Moldova. The word is derived from Latin bucinum, originally meaning "curved horn", an instrument used by the Romans. The word is a cognate with English "bugle".
The mouthpiece of a woodwind instrument is that part of the instrument which is placed partly in the player's mouth. Single-reed instruments, capped double-reed instruments, and fipple flutes have mouthpieces while exposed double-reed instruments and open flutes do not. The characteristics of a mouthpiece and reed can play a significant role on the sound of the instrument.
The chromatic trumpet of Western tradition is a fairly recent invention, but primitive trumpets of one form or another have been in existence for millennia; some of the predecessors of the modern instrument are now known to date back to the Neolithic era. The earliest of these primordial trumpets were adapted from animal horns and sea shells, and were common throughout Europe, Africa, India and, to a lesser extent, the Middle East. Primitive trumpets eventually found their way to most parts of the globe, though even today indigenous varieties are quite rare in the Americas, the Far East and South-East Asia. Some species of primitive trumpets can still be found in remote places, where they have remained largely untouched by the passage of time.
The birch trumpet is a type of natural trumpet made of spruce covered with birch bark, known in Norway, Sweden, Finland, England, Denmark, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and Estonia. Even cruder and less durable versions were made of plain birch bark. They are associated with the early European Chalet culture, where it was presumably used to intimidate predators, frighten supernatural enemies, and convene council meetings.
Christmas is celebrated throughout December and traditionally until St. Knut's Day on January 13. The main celebration and the exchange of gifts in many families takes place on Christmas Eve, December 24. The Feast of St. Lucy, a high point in the Swedish Christmas season, is celebrated during Advent, on December 13.
A horn is any of a family of musical instruments made of a tube, usually made of metal and often curved in various ways, with one narrow end into which the musician blows, and a wide end from which sound emerges. In horns, unlike some other brass instruments such as the trumpet, the bore gradually increases in width through most of its length—that is to say, it is conical rather than cylindrical. In jazz and popular-music contexts, the word may be used loosely to refer to any wind instrument, and a section of brass or woodwind instruments, or a mixture of the two, is called a horn section in these contexts.
Nafir, also nfīr, plural anfār, Turkish nefir, is a slender shrill-sounding straight natural trumpet with a cylindrical tube and a conical metal bell, producing one or two notes. It was used as a military signaling instrument and as a ceremonial instrument in countries shaped by Islamic culture in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. In Ottoman, Persian and Mugulin miniatures, the nafīr is depicted in battle scenes. In Christian culture, it displaced or was played alongside of the curved tuba or horn, as seen in artwork of about the 14th century A.D.
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