This article needs additional citations for verification .(July 2015) |
A musical saw, also called a singing saw, is a hand saw used as a musical instrument. Capable of continuous glissando (portamento), the sound creates an ethereal tone, very similar to the theremin. The musical saw is classified as a plaque friction idiophone with direct friction (132.1) under the Hornbostel-Sachs system of musical instrument classification, and as a metal sheet played by friction (151) under the revision of the Hornbostel-Sachs classification by the MIMO Consortium. [1]
Other instrument | |
---|---|
Other names | Saw, Singing Saw |
Classification | Idiophone |
Hornbostel–Sachs classification | 132.1 (Friction idiophone with individual plaque) |
Timbre | Somewhat like the human voice. |
Related instruments | |
Sound sample | |
[The musical saw is] a flexible handsaw played by holding the handle between the knees and bending the blade while bowing along the flat edge. The musical saw is found in the folk music of Russia and rural America, and is a popular vaudeville instrument. [2]
The saw is generally played seated with the handle squeezed between the legs, and the far end held with one hand. Some sawists play standing, either with the handle between the knees and the blade sticking out in front of them. The saw is usually played with the serrated edge, or "teeth", facing the body, though some players face them away. Some saw players file down the teeth, which makes no discernable difference to the sound. Many –especially professional –saw players use a handle, called a Tip-Handle or a Cheat, at the tip of the saw for easier bending and higher virtuosity.
To sound a note, a sawist first bends the blade into an S-curve. The parts of the blade that are curved are damped from vibration, and do not sound. At the center of the S-curve a section of the blade remains relatively flat. This section, the "sweet spot", can vibrate across the width of the blade, producing a distinct pitch: the wider the section of blade, the lower the sound. Sound is usually created by drawing a bow across the back edge of the saw at the sweet spot, or sometimes by striking the sweet spot with a mallet.
The sawist controls the pitch by adjusting the S-curve, making the sweet spot travel up the blade (toward a thinner width) for a higher pitch, or toward the handle for a lower pitch. Harmonics can be created by playing at varying distances on either side of the sweet spot. Sawists can add vibrato by shaking one of their legs or by wobbling the hand that holds the tip of the blade. Once a sound is produced, it will sustain for quite a while, and can be carried through several notes of a phrase.
On occasion the musical saw is called for in orchestral music, but orchestral percussionists are seldom also sawists. If a note outside of the saw's range is called for, an electric guitar with a slide can be substituted. [3]
Sawists often use standard wood-cutting saws, although special musical saws are also made. As compared with wood-cutting saws, the blades of musical saws are generally wider, for range, and longer, for finer control. They do not have set or sharpened teeth, and may have grain running parallel to the back edge of the saw, rather than parallel to the teeth. Some musical saws are made with thinner metal, to increase flexibility, while others are made thicker, for a richer tone, longer sustain, and stronger harmonics.
A typical musical saw is 5 inches (13 cm) wide at the handle end and 1 inch (2.5 cm) wide at the tip. Such a saw will generally produce about two octaves, regardless of length. A bass saw may be over 6 inches (15 cm) at the handle and produce about two-and-a-half octaves. There are also musical saws with 3–4 octaves range, and new improvements have resulted in as much as 5 octaves note range. Two-person saws, also called "misery whips", can also be played, though with less virtuosity, and they produce an octave or less of range.
Most sawists use cello or violin bows, using violin rosin, but some may use improvised home-made bows, such as a wooden dowel.
Musical saws have been produced for over a century, primarily in the United States, but also in Scandinavia, Germany, France (Lame sonore) and Asia.[ citation needed ]
In the early 1900s, there were at least ten companies in the United States manufacturing musical saws. [4] These saws ranged from: familiar steel varieties or premium, gold-plated saws worth hundreds of dollars. However, with the start of World War II the demand for metals made the manufacture of saws too expensive and many of these companies went out of business. By the year 2000, only three companies in the United States –Mussehl & Westphal, [5] Charlie Blacklock, [6] and Wentworth [7] –were making saws. In 2012, a company called Index Drums started producing a saw that had a built-in transducer in the handle, called the "JackSaw". [8]
Outside the United States, makers of musical saws include Bahco, makers of the limited edition Stradivarius, [9] Alexis in France, [10] Feldmann [11] and Stövesandt [12] in Germany, Music Blade in Greece and Thomas Flinn & Company in the United Kingdom, [13] based in Sheffield, who produce three different sized musical saws, as well as accessories.
The International Musical Saw Association (IMSA) produces an annual International Musical Saw Festival (including a "Saw-Off" competition) every August in Santa Cruz and Felton, California. An International Musical Saw Festival is held every other summer in New York City, produced by Natalia Paruz. Paruz also produced a musical saw festival in Israel. [14] There are also annual saw festivals in Japan and China.
A Guinness World Record for the largest musical-saw ensemble was established July 18, 2009, at the annual NYC Musical Saw Festival. Organized by Paruz, 53 musical saw players performed together. [15]
In 2011 a World Championship took place in Jelenia Góra/Poland. Winners: 1. Gladys Hulot (France), 2. Katharina Micada (Germany), 3. Tom Fink (Germany). [16]
Caroline McCaskey became the first person to play the American National Anthem with a saw at a Major League Baseball game (Oakland Athletics’ Coliseum) on June 6, 2022. [17]
People notable for playing the musical saw.
German actress and singer Marlene Dietrich, who lived and worked in the United States for a long time, is probably the most famous person who played the musical saw.[ according to whom? ] When she studied the violin for one year in Weimar in her early twenties, her musical skills were already evident. Some years later she learned to play the musical saw while she was shooting the film Café Elektric in Vienna in 1927. Her colleague, the actor and musician Igo Sym, taught her how to play. In the shooting breaks and at weekends both performed romantic duets, he at the piano and she at the musical saw. [38]
Sym gave his saw to her as a farewell gift. The following words are engraved on the saw: "Now Suidy is gone / the sun d’ont [sic!] / shine… / Igo / Vienna 1927" [39] She took the saw with her, when she left for Hollywood in 1929 and played there in the following years at film sets and Hollywood parties. When she participated in the United Service Organizations (USO) shows for the US troops in 1944, she also played on the saw. Some of these shows were broadcast on radio, so there exist two rare recordings of her saw playing, embedded in entertaining interviews. 1. Aloha Oe [40] 2. other song [41]
This section needs additional citations for verification .(July 2018) |
Beginning from the early 1920s composers of both contemporary and popular music wrote for the musical saw. One of the first was Franz Schreker who included the musical saw in his opera Christophorus (1925–29) where it is used in the séance scene of the second act. [42] Other early examples include Dmitri Shostakovich: he included the musical saw, e.g., in the film music for The New Babylon (1929), in The Nose (1928), [2] and in Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1934). Shostakovich and other composers of his time used the term "Flexaton" to mark the musical saw. "Flexaton" just means "to flex a tone", in which the saw is flexed to change the pitch. Unfortunately, there exists another instrument called Flexatone, so there has been confusion for a long time. [43] Aram Khachaturian, who knew Shostakovich's music, included the musical saw in his Piano Concerto (1936) [2] in the second movement. Another composer was the Swiss Arthur Honegger, who included the saw in his opera Antigone in 1924. The Romanian composer George Enescu used the musical saw at the end of the second act of his opera Œdipe (1931) to show in an extensive glissando –which begins with the mezzo-soprano and is continued by the saw –the death and ascension of the sphinx killed by Oedipus.
The Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi wrote a part for the saw in his quarter-tone piece Quattro pezzi per orchestra (1959). German composer Hans Werner Henze took the saw to characterize the mean hero of his tragical opera Elegy for young lovers (1961).
Other composers were Krysztof Penderecki with Fluorescences (1961), De natura sonoris Nr. 2 (1971) and the opera Ubu Rex (1990), Bernd Alois Zimmermann with Stille und Umkehr (1970), George Crumb with Ancient voices of children (1970), John Corigliano with The Mannheim Rocket (2001).
Composer Scott Munson wrote Clover Hill (2007) for saw and orchestra, Quintet for saw and strings (2009), The World Is Too Much with Us for soprano singer, saw and strings (2009), Ars longa vitas [ sic ] brevis for saw and string quartet (2010), 'Bend' for saw and string quartet (2011) many pieces for jazz band and saw (2010–2013), Lullaby for the Forgotten for saw and piano (2015), and many movie and theater scores containing the saw.
Chaya Czernowin used the saw in her opera "PNIMA...Ins Innere" (2000) to represent the character of the grandfather, who is traumatized by the Holocaust.
There are further Leif Segerstam, Hans Zender (orchestration of "5 préludes" by Claude Debussy), and Oscar Strasnoy (opera Le bal).
Russian composer Lera Auerbach wrote for the saw in her ballet The Little Mermaid (2005), in her symphonic poem Dreams and Whispers of Poseidon (2005), in her oratorio "Requiem Dresden – Ode to Peace" (2012), in her Piano Concerto No.1 (2015), in her comic oratorio The Infant Minstrel and His Peculiar Menagerie (2016) [44] and in her violin concerto Nr.4 "NyX – Fractured dreams" (2017).
Canadian composer Robert Minden has written extensively for the musical saw. [45] Michael A. Levine composed Divination By Mirrors for musical saw soloist and two string ensembles tuned a quarter tone apart, taking advantage of the saws ability to play in both tunings. [46] [47]
Other composers for chamber music with musical saw are Jonathan Rutherford (An Intake of Breath), [48] Dana Wilson (Whispers from Another Time), [49] Heinrich Gattermeyer (Elegie für Singende Säge, Cembalo (oder Klavier), [50] Vito Zuraj (Musica di [ sic ] camera (2001)) [51] and Britta-Maria Bernhard (Tranquillo). [52]
The celesta or celeste, also called a bell-piano, is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. It looks similar to an upright piano, albeit with smaller keys and a much smaller cabinet, or a large wooden music box (three-octave). The keys connect to hammers that strike a graduated set of metal plates or bars suspended over wooden resonators. Four- or five-octave models usually have a damper pedal that sustains or damps the sound. The three-octave instruments do not have a pedal because of their small "table-top" design. One of the best-known works that uses the celesta is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from The Nutcracker.
Music of Lithuania refers to all forms of music associated with Lithuania, which has a long history of the folk, popular and classical musical development. Music was an important part of polytheistic, pre-Christian Lithuania – rituals were accompanied by music instruments and singing, deeds of the heroes and those who didn't return from the war were celebrated in songs.
Renée Lynn Fleming is an American soprano and actress, known for performances in opera, concerts, recordings, theater, film, and at major public occasions. A recipient of the National Medal of Arts, Fleming has been nominated for 18 Grammy Awards and has won five times. In June 2023, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts announced that Fleming would be one of the five artists recognized at the 2023 Kennedy Center Honors, which she received in December 2023. Other notable honors won by Fleming have included the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur from the French government, Germany's Cross of the Order of Merit, Sweden's Polar Music Prize and honorary membership in England's Royal Academy of Music. Unusual among artists whose careers began in opera, Fleming has achieved name recognition beyond the classical music world. In May 2023, Fleming was appointed by the World Health Organization as a Goodwill Ambassador for Arts and Health. On April 9, 2024, Penguin Random House published Fleming's anthology Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness, a collection of essays about the health benefits of music and the arts, by scientists from leading research institutions, practitioners, educators, arts leaders, musicians, artists and writers.
The flexatone or fleximetal is a modern percussion instrument consisting of a small flexible metal sheet suspended in a wire frame ending in a handle. Used in classic cartoons for its glissando effect, its sound is comparable to the musical saw.
Portia May White was a Canadian contralto, known for becoming the first Black Canadian concert singer to achieve international fame. Growing up as part of her father's church choir in Halifax, Nova Scotia, White competed in local singing competitions as a teenager and later trained at the Halifax Conservatory of Music. In 1941 and 1944, she made her national and international debuts as a singer, receiving critical acclaim for her performances of both classical European music and African-American spirituals. White later completed tours throughout Europe, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.
Kaija Anneli Saariaho was a Finnish composer based in Paris, France. During the course of her career, Saariaho received commissions from the Lincoln Center for the Kronos Quartet and from IRCAM for the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the BBC, the New York Philharmonic, the Salzburg Music Festival, the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, and the Finnish National Opera, among others. In a 2019 composers' poll by BBC Music Magazine, Saariaho was ranked the greatest living composer.
Jeanine Tesori, known earlier in her career as Jeanine Levenson, is an American composer and musical arranger best known for her work in the theater. She is the most prolific and honored female theatrical composer in history, with five Broadway musicals and six Tony Award nominations. She won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center, the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for Caroline, or Change, the 2015 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Fun Home, making them the first female writing team to win that award, and the 2023 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Kimberly Akimbo. She was named a Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist twice for Fun Home and Soft Power.
Rachel Mary Berkeley Portman is a British composer who made history in 1996 for being the first female composer to win an Academy Award for the Best Original Score, for Emma. She was also nominated twice, for the soundtracks of The Cider House Rules (1999) and Chocolat (2000). She was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2010, and is an honorary member of Worcester College, Oxford. She has composed more than one hundred scores for film, television and theatre, and has collaborated with the BBC on several projects, including an opera based on The Little Prince and a choral symphony called The Water Diviner.
Brigitte Fassbaender, is a German mezzo-soprano opera singer and a stage director. From 1999 to 2012 she was intendant of the Tyrolean State Theatre in Innsbruck, Austria. She holds the title Kammersängerin from the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and the Vienna Staatsoper.
Natalia Marisa Oreiro Iglesias is a Uruguayan actress, singer, songwriter, model, television presenter and fashion designer. She began her career in telenovelas but since 2008 she has switched to work primarily in films. Oreiro has worked on social awareness shows and events for organizations like Greenpeace and UNICEF, the latter of which designated her as ambassador for Argentina and Uruguay in September 2011.
Alice Shields is an American classical composer. She is one of the pioneers of electronic music, and is particularly known for her cross-cultural operas.
Natalia 'Saw Lady' Paruz is a New York City-based musical saw player, bell ringer, busker and film maker. She was the founder and director of the annual Musical Saw Festival in New York City and ran it for 11 years. She also organized the musical saw festival in Israel. She was a columnist of the 'Saw Player News' and a judge at international musical saw competitions. She was also a judge for Music Under New York and for Little Island at Pier 55.
Lori Laitman is an American composer who has composed multiple operas, choral works, and over 300 songs.
Emani Sankara Sastry, was a renowned Veena player of Carnatic music.
Another Earth is a 2011 American science fiction drama film directed by Mike Cahill and starring Brit Marling, William Mapother, and Robin Lord Taylor. It premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival in January, and was given a limited theatrical release on July 22, 2011, by Fox Searchlight Pictures. The film earned two nominations at the 38th Saturn Awards for Marling's performance and for Cahill and Marling's writing. The critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes calls it slow paced but soulful.
Geeta Novotny is an American singer, actor, writer and columnist. As a classical singer, Novotny has performed principal roles nationally with opera companies and symphony orchestras at Carnegie Hall, the American Ballet Theatre, the Metropolitan Opera, the Los Angeles Opera and the Aspen Music Festival. Novotny has sung lead vocals on film soundtracks and has a career as a principal stage and film actor. She is also a project leader and roster artist for the charitable organization Sing For Hope. Novotny is an artist on the David Lynch Foundation Music Online Record Label.
The ondes Martenot or ondes musicales is an early electronic musical instrument. It is played with a keyboard or by moving a ring along a wire, creating "wavering" sounds similar to a theremin. A player of the ondes Martenot is called an ondist.
Sabrina Peña Young is an American composer and percussionist.
Women in Music play many roles and are responsible for a broad range of contributions in the industry. Women continue to shape movements, genres, and trends as composers, songwriters, instrumental performers, singers, conductors, and music educators. Women's music, which is created by and for women, can explore women's rights and feminism. Women in music impact and influence creativity, activism, and culture.
Another Earth (Music from the Motion Picture) is the score album to the 2011 film of the same name directed by Mike Cahill. The score is written and composed by former LCD Soundsystem band members, Phil Mossman and Will Bates, and produced by Lucy Alper. Although, they had credited Bates' music production company Fall On Your Sword for the soundtrack. The score was released by Milan Records on July 19, 2011, three days before the film's release.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)