Hofbauer: Old-Berlin Traditional Organ, The Historic Tanzbaer, The Modern Tanzbaer and The End of Music Rolls
By Robbie Rhodes
This article is a translation from "Mechanische Orgelwelt aktuell" ("Mechanical Organ World News"), 7th year, Nr. 7/8, a commercial "public relations" journal published by the manufacturer. Many thanks to Claus Kucher for typing the German text of this article and sending to us. I have translated it and had some local German Americans check my work. I hope you find it interesting.
Robbie
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Orgelbaumeister Hofbauer GmbH
Postfach 2317
D-37013 Goettingen
Tel. 0551/71001 - Fax 0551/7703351
Part 1, Old-Berlin Traditional Organ
Part 2, The historic Tanzbaer
Part 3, The modern Tanzbaer
Part 4, The End of Music Rolls
- - - - Part 1.
"The Old Berlin Traditional Organ -- Built in Goettingen"
from: "Mechanische Orgelwelt aktuell", 7th year, Nr. 7/8
The pinned-cylinder opens and closes the valves purely mechanically, the micro-box electromechanically. Therefore both of these types of organs are the same, with the crank generating the air pressure for sound production, and so the micro-box organ can be correctly described today on the basis of it's voicing as the newly-built Old Berlin Traditional Organ.
Hofbauer's Zauberfloete [magic flute]
There's another equivalence to this "technically conditional identicality": the magic-flute, indigenous to the Berlin tradition -- with the typically smoky character of the pan-flute -- is deliberately reused in the Hofbauer instruments.
Another aspect is the appearance: with most of today's music organ manufacturers the visible pipes are ordered in a pyramid. In Bacigalupo organs and at Hofbauer the pipes of the "Harmonipan" organs are arranged "as the organ-pipes", in a line from the smallest to the biggest. In trumpet-organs there is also a visual similarity: the perspective-view arrangement of three fields, characteristic of Bacigalupo [*], is also found at Hofbauer.
So the most important components of the Old Berlin Traditional Organ -- air supply, voicing, appearance and music-- are today combined again in the Hofbauer organ, and one can claim, with justification, that in Goettingen the Old Berlin hurdy-gurdy tradition continues.
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* Bacigalupo - "A name like music"
The Bacigalupo clan was a leading manufacturing group. Originally from Italy, the family immigrated to Berlin, and over several generations brought the Berlin hurdy-gurdy industry to world fame.
- - - -
Part 2.
"The Dancing-Bear: an instrument for all events"
from "Mechanische Orgelwelt aktuell", 7th year, Nr. 7/8
The historic Tanzbaer [Dancing-Bear]
Once again a self-playing accordion causes a sensation. It was this instrument after which the Hofbauer instrument was named: the "Tanzbaer", built by the firm A. Zuleger of Leipzig. It was provided, in part, with punched-paper control, and built for approximately 80 years
It took lots of intelligence to solve the problem of the music transport. Whereas in a crank organ the twisting motion was already existing, and so had only to be connected to the paper transport (in cylinder organs with a cord, in music-roll organs with a belt), in an accordion you can't get a turning motion.
With the accordion the left arm and hand are fully occupied opening and closing the bellows, so it was obvious: move this action to the right hand. So a lever was installed outside on the right, so that closing the right hand in a fist would move the lever.
The up-and-down motion of the lever was transferred inside the instrument via two links, where a ratchet-and-pawl mechanism rotated a shaft which was connected by a gear-train to the music transport and a fairly heavy flywheel, which was responsible for keeping the music running smoothly in the proper direction.
It required a lot of skill to generate the cranking movement without any speed fluctuation, especially since the right hand had to coordinate with the left hand for air-pressure production.
As complicated as this description sounds, that's just how complicated was the operation! Therefore it's no wonder that, after the production of the Tanzbaer in Leipzig was shut down in 1930, nobody has been concerned with present-day production of this instrument -- except for master organ builder Hofbauer.
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Part 3.
The modern Tanzbaer [Dancing Bear]
After the development of the micro-box technology led the hurdy- gurdy to entirely new shores, it appeared quite meaningful to apply the new technology to awaken new life in the Tanzbaer tradition.
Many organ operators had thought of purchasing the Tanzbaer only for use as an organ substitute or "stop-gap". When the hurdy-gurdy presents a problem because of size or weight -- e.g., transporting it in a tour bus or an airplane -- that's when one wants a Tanzbaer.
However, there's no need for traveling hurdy-gurdy players to be squashed like this! The Tanzbaer is quite beautiful and complete, and is everywhere a welcome alternative to hurdy-gurdy music.
Although it has relatively modest loudness with respect to the hurdy-gurdy, in small social gatherings it encourages "Singing and Swaying". If the player moves across the area while playing, in no time at all the guests will follow in the most beautiful Polonaise! ... The sound mixture from real flutes and reed voices has a strong fascination, and is well received by the audience. At the same time it's especially very interesting that the micro-boxes of the 37-key hurdy-gurdy could be all utilized in the 40-key Dancing-Bears.
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Part 4.
"Hofbauer music-roll organs find no more buyers -- an era comes to the end."
The renaissance of the hurdy-gurdy was inaugurated with the modest production of standardized music-roll organs in the Seventies. Even before that a half-dozen different models were built that found buyers throughout the world.
At this time the music-roll was the best possible data memory for these instruments. To be sure, there was already modern data memory {magnetic core}, but for the hurdy-gurdy it was inappropriate because of size and weight.
The crucial breakthrough was the development the micro-chip. This tiny memory-medium was immediately recognized in Goettingen, and incorporated as the forward-looking new product for the mechanical music-area. In comparison to the music roll system it is feather- light, needs hardly any space, and has precision and a huge capacity. It was first of all fitted to the organs equipped with the music roll technologies, which now can operate just the same equipped with this new data-memory.
Beyond the obvious advantages of this new technology there was the possibility of making new and dynamic music recordings. So the mechanical music is not only quantitative, but especially leads to new horizons of quality.
There is nothing more to improve in music-roll technology. Just as the music-roll is superior to the cylinder as a data-memory, so were its limits also quickly recognized in Gottingen. While the music- roll organ, to be sure, preceeded the hurdy-gurdy renaissance, it is however wholly inappropriate to carry this movement for many generations further, because way too little music exists, and on top of that it's mathematically arranged.
Based on this realization, we at Orgelbaumeister Hofbauer drew the line and completely curtailed production of the music-role organs. For many years we had allowed ourselves at the luxury of preserving both organ types, but there were no customers who specifically wanted this old data-memory. They all "jumped upon" the micro-box, because the advantages were quite clear. For two years it was impossible to sell even one single music-roll organ in Germany, and so with a heavy heart we had to abandon it for continuing progress, and realign Firma Hofbauer.
To be sure we in Goettingen are a bit sad about it, that we had to separate from the much-loved "child", but the grief isn't as great as it might be, because of our excitement about the new world - not quite yet under control - into which the mechanical organ is being drawn.
[End of the Hofbauer story.] |
(Message sent Wed 21 Aug 1996, 03:51:32 GMT, from time zone GMT-0700.) |
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