Instruments: Where can I get one of these?...

Subject: RE: Instruments: Where can I get one of these?...
From: Joe Offer
Date: 02 Jan 18 - 01:38 AM

The Wendemuseum has this article on the Schalmei:

A Sound like No Other: The Schalmei
Posted on August 21, 2008        by The Wende Museum

Looking as if it could usher in the Last Judgment, this musical instrument actually plays a rather amiable part in the history of the GDR. Schalmei (shall-my) bands were formed in factories, communities, schools and paramilitary garrisons, and they also competed under the auspices of the FDJ on the regional and national level. If there is a contemporary heartland for the Schalmei since the Wende, it is the region of former East Germany called “Vogtland”, in the southwest corner of Thuringia near Plauen or Gera where the Schalmei tradition is still very much alive in smaller towns.

In any other context, the “Schalmei” (French chalumai, English shawm) is a completely different instrument: a woodwind forerunner of the modern oboe tracing back to the Middle Ages. How the name came to be applied to two such unrelated instruments is not clear, but this otherworldly German cousin to the military bugle is also called a Martin’s Trumpet (named for the inventor Max Martin who is also remembered for the tü-ta tü-ta still used as a horn on emergency vehicles in Germany). Where this novel instrument initially caught on was in the Saarland, that disputed coal-mining territory (Think: World War I) on the French border. Roving Schalmei bands made up of unemployed war veterans in the 1920s accompanied their socialist songs with instruments of different sizes and registers. Erich Honecker’s father is known to have played in a Schalmei band when Erich (born 1912) was a small child.

Because of this leftist ancestry, the Schalmei was a natural for adoption in the GDR. The Wende Museum now owns five of them, small, medium and large. Volunteers? The stentorian outdoor sound of a Schalmei orchestra is not quite like anything else.

Subject: RE: Where can I get one...
From: GUEST,keberoxu
Date: 01 Jan 18 - 02:41 PM

They look like the punch-line to somebody's joke ...
wonder what the joke was?

Subject: RE: Where can I get one...
From: Mo the caller
Date: 01 Jan 18 - 02:36 PM

So can someone translate that , in the price. Does it mean what it does in English - if so they AREN'T cheap.

Subject: RE: Where can I get one...
From: BobL
Date: 01 Jan 18 - 04:03 AM

I came upon them by accident on the U-Bend - can't remember how, now - and thought they might make an interesting addition to a Morris band. Trouble is they're diatonic instruments in the key of C: to get one in G or D I would need to have it retuned, buy extra reeds or place a special order. Or maybe splash out on one of the chromatic instruments.

Subject: RE: Where can I get one...
From: leeneia
Date: 31 Dec 17 - 06:32 PM

Yes, thanks, Bob. I'd never even heard of these before.

Subject: RE: Where can I get one...
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 30 Dec 17 - 09:35 PM

wot fun! thanks for posting the links.

Subject: RE: Where can I get one...
From: Ernest
Date: 30 Dec 17 - 02:15 PM

Accordding to this site History (in German) they were invented in 1900. First orchestras were founded in 1913, they became popular in the late 20´s,often with communist societies, therefore forbidden by the Nazis in 1933 and again popular in East Germany...

Subject: RE: Where can I get one...
From: Jack Campin
Date: 30 Dec 17 - 01:47 PM

They're common on German EBay.

Subject: RE: Where can I get one...
From: meself
Date: 30 Dec 17 - 01:46 PM

Those sound great. Are they a new invention, or something old that's new again?

Subject: RE: Where can I get one...
From: Ernest
Date: 30 Dec 17 - 01:32 PM

Here

Subject: RE: Where can I get one...
From: Long Firm Freddie
Date: 30 Dec 17 - 01:28 PM

Here.

They're not cheap!

LFF

Subject: Schalmei a.k.a. Martin Horn
From: BobL
Date: 30 Dec 17 - 12:43 PM

Where can I get one of these instruments?