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  • Tárogató: A Folk Instrument With a Contemporary Sound
  • Laurie Radford
Esther Lamneck : Tárogató: A Folk Instrument With a Contemporary Sound Compact disc, 2001, Roméo Records 7212; available from Roméo Records; telephone (+1) 917-613-8865; electronic mail info@romeorecords.com; Web www.romeorecords.com/.

Viewed in a broader historical and global context, the small legion of mechanical instruments to which we now confine most music-making activities, especially in the western world, is a surprisingly limited and comparatively impoverished sampling of the rich and diverse sound-making technologies that have been invented, refined, and adopted in musical practice and cultural ritual over many millennia. Recent ethnomusicological research, and a growing interest in an increasingly global view of music-making (read: the "market" for world music), has led to the rediscovery, and in certain cases, resurrection, of some of the wind, string, and percussion instruments that have fallen by the wayside over time. The recording Tárogató: A Folk Instrument With a Contemporary Sound offers an opportunity to hear a little-known Eastern European wind instrument expertly played and given renewed attention by a selection of contemporary composers.

The modern tárogató is a single reed, wooden wind instrument with a conical bore. Its fingering is similar to that of the oboe and the resulting non-tempered scale is associated with a long tradition of improvisation. Its origins are likely in the Middle East where, centuries ago, "tárogató" referred to a double reed instrument often called an Eastern oboe or Turkish pipe. The soloist on this recording, Esther Lamneck, plays a version of the tárogató built in the latter part of the nineteenth century in Budapest.


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Almost no written music for the instrument exists due to its adoption as a folk instrument integral to improvisational traditions. Seven new pieces ranging from solo improvisations to works with electronics and signal processing are offered on this disc. The composers approach the tárogató with varying degrees of reverence for its past and curiosity about its future. Many of them draw upon the improvisational character of the instrument and its performance tradition while several treat it simply as a unique wind instrument with which to sound the voice of their musical inclinations.

Through a Glass (1986) by Dary John Mizelle was the first work commissioned by Esther Lamneck for the [End Page 84] tárogató. It is a plaintive, haunting solo work employing a modal scale that brings out the "rich dark tones and piquant bright timbres of the instrument's unique non-tempered tuning." Lithe ornamentation and raspy repeated pitches permeate the graceful arch of the work's design. Robert Rowe provides a fitting continuation of this reflective quality apparently so characteristic of the instrument in his work Shells (1992). Here the tárogató is paired with a computer running the composer's interactive environment, Cypher. The tárogató's leaps, slides, and rapid gesticulations are paired with ostinato reactions and accompanying drones and counterpoint as Cypher listens to the instrument's performance and joins in with a variety of textural and timbral contributions. There are several very successful passages in the work where a balance is reached between the respective contributions of the tárogató and Cypher, and the final moments of the work find Cypher effectively shadowing the restrained, descending melodic lines of the wind instrument.

The short work Ah Kishinev Subotica (1993) by Robert Cogan marries the tárogató's distinct timbre with more recently developed contemporary wind techniques including multiphonics, multiple trills, use of the instrument's extreme registers, and simultaneous singing by the performer. This little gem summons up a sense of organic sound-making via the marriage of breath and this instrument. Alfonso Belfiore's Tra le Cose Tenute [Among the Things Remembered] from 1995 combines pre-recorded electroacoustic materials with an open form score for the tárogató player. The performer selects at random various notated materials for performance and subsequently triggers changes to the dynamic and registral character of the prerecorded audio materials through an interactive computer system. The tárogató, suspended atop undulating bells, punctuating cymbals, and rumbling drones...

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