Bandoneon

Subject: Tech: Bandoleon
From: Blue Mama
Date: 30 Jun 06 - 01:26 PM

Greetings,

Has anyone out there played or owned a bandoleon. If so what kind of music do you play on it and how are the notes arranged?

Seems like an 'interesting' instrument.

BM

Subject: RE: Tech: Bandoleon
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 30 Jun 06 - 01:56 PM

Do you mean one of these? A kind of square, diatonic concertina made in former East Germany and very popular in Argentina for tangos?

I think it's usually called a bandonéon. Eliza Carthy has one.

Subject: RE: Tech: Bandoleon
From: Leadfingers
Date: 30 Jun 06 - 06:00 PM

As Countess Richard said - THE instrument for Tango bands in Argentina

Subject: RE: Tech: Bandoleon
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 30 Jun 06 - 06:25 PM

I think the Halifax Folklore Centre has a restored one on display, a very interesting and rare instrument. If you want more information you can write or call them, the Luthier is very knowledgable.   
1528 Brunswick St.
Halifax, Nova Scotia
B3J 2G2
Tel: [phone]

Yours, Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: Tech: Bandoleon
From: Bill D
Date: 30 Jun 06 - 07:02 PM

I owned one for many years. It was German made, and said "Concertina" on it in silver, with Mother-of-Pearl inlay. I am not really a player, so I traded it for a pickup truck.

These have a wide variety of keyboards, from 70 or so to 105 or so buttons (mine had 96, I believe), so fingerings get 'interesting'. Alistair Anderson told me that they are played in Chicago at Polish dances a lot. There used to be a manufacturer there Star Concertina, but is seems they have closed.

Subject: RE: Tech: Bandoleon
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 30 Jun 06 - 07:05 PM

Bandoneons have an extremely strange button layout that takes years to get used to.

They do have an amazing sound though. The enormous bellows expansion is like nothing else, you can hear it in the phrasing of players like Astor Piazzolla.

I once flipped through a book about Argentinian tango that had a great anecdote about them. A celebrated tango player requested that he should be buried with his bandoneon. After complying, his friends had second thoughts: how *could* they waste such a beautiful instrument? So they went down to the graveyard and dug him up to recover it.

Subject: RE: Tech: Bandoleon
From: Bill D
Date: 30 Jun 06 - 07:24 PM

in the original format, the keys and the music notation was done in strange symbols...perhaps because there were so many keys. There were stars and asterisk like things and symbols I don't even know names for.

I remember that one appeared in a WWII movie where a small girl played one in a German concentration camp....I forget the name now.

A friend of mine has one (smaller keyboard) in blue "mother-of-toilet seat" plastic.

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 30 Jun 06 - 09:23 PM

The original factory was 'liberated' and removed by the Russians. The original workers still live in the town, and the empty building still stands.

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 05:49 AM

Sid Kipper used to play a tremelodeon.

eric

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: GUEST,squeezeme
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 10:18 AM

Bill D, I think you may be confusing the bandoneon with the chemnitzer, a similar, but not quite the same, keyboard or sound. The bandoneon usually only has 2 sets of reeds tuned an octave apart, whereas the chemnitzer normally has 3 or 4 sets. It is the latter which is played predominantly in the mid west of the USA amongst Eastern European migrants and their descendents.

MC

By the way, apologies to any purists/pedants; I know there is an accent over the last letter e of bandoneon, but my computer refuses to comply!

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 10:52 AM

all I know is, mine was German made and looks very much like various pics of bandoneons I found online.

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 11:16 AM

My link (above) to an instrument with six rows of buttons bearing strange symbols is one made in Chemnitz (later Karl-Marx-Stadt in the former German Democratic Republic province of Thuringia) where I have visited the very factory which by then had been made over to the manufacture of carpets.

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: Stefan Wirz
Date: 02 Jul 06 - 03:21 AM

The Bandoneón (or Bandonion, not Bandoleon as in the thread heading) has been 'invented' by Heinrich Band (born and died in Krefeld, Northrhine-Westfalia, Germany [BTW: my town of birth ;-]) by enlargening the (54 tones) of the German Concertina (or Konzertina) to 64, later even 88 and 100 tones.
More info (in English) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandone%C3%B3n
Even more about the history of that instrument (in German!) at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandoneon, where there's also an article about Heinrich Band (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Band)
Stefa

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 02 Jul 06 - 06:19 PM

Thanks, Stefan. The Bandoneon goes back a lot further than the GDR. It used to be one of the instruments of choice of German Socialist workers, who formed bandoneon orchestras as part of their spare time cultural activities. These bands then provided a good loud sound for Mayday demonstrations and the line. A very few of them still exist, I believe.

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 02 Jul 06 - 07:17 PM

Yes the bandonéon (or chemnitzer if you like) does go back earlier than the GDR. That's why I said the one in my illustration was made in Chemnitz which later became Karl-Marx-Stadt after the GDR was founded.

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 02 Jul 06 - 07:39 PM

So, can we PLEASE have the thread title spelling corrected?

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 02 Jul 06 - 08:33 PM

I guess we need to speak nicely to a MudElf for the title correction.

squeezeme: Bandoneon doesn't have 'e' (acute?) accent in Germon ... only in the Spanish of the Argentinian adopters of the 'Bandonéon' as their national tango instrument. (BTW: I get 'é' by holding down the Alt key whilst typing'0233' and 'è' is Alt 0232. If you know these 'Alt' codes, they are faster than trawling through 'Symbol' or 'Foreign' font boxes.)

In fact, I think Stefan Wirz has the German spelling correct: bandonion. Argentinian players ... and their local supporters may get stroppy when you don't pronounce (and spell) it in their Argentinian style - but I stick to the German original (pace Mary-Jane Field!).

Stefan Wirz: Notwithstanding the Wikipedia entry, I always understood that it was Arnold who invented the Bandoneon - as an extension of Uhlig's German Konzertina - and he then named it after his friend Heinrich Band - one of its first virtuoso players.

Regards,

Bob

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: GUEST, Topsie
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 03:49 AM

Where is the stress in the Argentinian pronunciation?
According to Spanish spelling rules, an accent would only be needed if the stress was on an 'o' - either one of them. If the stress is on the 'e', no accent is needed.

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: AKS
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 04:03 AM

It is on the latter o; bandoneón.

AKS

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: IanC
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 04:45 AM

Just a note. Bandoneons are not at all rare. Every day on Ebay there will be 2 or 3 for sale. Many in good condition, and with a starting price of 000s of Euros in a lot of cases.

:-)

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: GUEST,squeezeme
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 04:55 AM

Thanks, Bob, for the heads up on alt codes.

MC

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 05:29 AM

Even simpler, just keep a desktop folder into which you copy examples of all the accented characters you are ever likly to use and copy/paste them into your text.

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: pavane
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 07:44 AM

I found one in a Sunday market in Waterloo, near Brussels, a few years ago. I managed to get a tune out of it, but it needed a lot of repair, and the guy wanted far too much for it, I thought.

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 08:38 AM

That, sadly pavane, is too often the case with many musical instruments - they often become overpriced "collector's pieces", and the only people who thus can usually afford them, and can't play them, so they end up hung on a wall 'cause they look so nice and make me feel so cool having one'! I kid you not, my Symphonie was sold to me, cause the maker was pleased that I wanted it to PLAY it - he refused a much higher offer than what he asked me for from a guy who wanted to give it to his wife 'cause she liked music', and planned to hang it on the wall 'cause it looked too beautiful and delicate to play'!!!

They often also require an enormous amount of work (think money) to restore them to proper playability, often because they haven't been kept properly.

Free reed instruments (like piano accordions, etc) are often stored, not on the proper feet on the base (the chord buttons side), but 'side on' (they look prettier on the wall that way! I even see tham that way, not only in 2nd hand shops, but even new ones in 'music shops'!!!), which wrecks the leather valves, by gravity bending them out of shape, making the instrument unplayable.

Subject: RE: Bandoleon
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 10:08 AM

about characters and alt codes:

you can get most everything here http://www.theworldofstuff.com/characters/, then copy the HTML page to your PC as a file. I set it to open as part of my "session saver" in Opera and Firefox, so that it is always there.

OR...if you want to have a keyboard shortcut for the more common characters, get this little program, which gives you a fairly intuitive way to quickly access the common ones é ó ú ü...etc...

Subject: RE: Bandoneon
From: concertina ceol
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 05:38 PM

surely it should be "banned onion"

get a real concertina instead!

truth be told these things are not "folk" instruments and are played almost exclusively "on the pull" so it is hard to play anything with an english, irish or scottish rythmn. Then again if you want to play tango's.....

Subject: RE: Bandoneon
From: GUEST,Rowan
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 06:35 PM

As a player of "a real concertina" I also regard myself as extremely lucky enough to have and play an Alfred Arnold bandoneon (spelling as inside the case from the manufacturer). Its buttons are laid out in three rows, two of which are almost exactly as an anglo player with a Crabb in G and D would expect (diatonic push-pull etc) , except that they are in G and A. Lovely tone and not a misfunction anywhere. Knowing of my interest in learning to play melodeons and concertinas, a friend with whom I had done my Dip. Ed. gave me his grandfather's Alfred Arnold bandoneon (also the spelling in its case) which was known to have been brought to Australia in 1924 by said grandfather. Its pitch was and is in A=440 but its button layout is quite different. Each end has four rows of pearlshell buttons laid out as follows. The row nearest the player's wrist has twelve evenly spaced buttons, the next row has ten, with gaps between them so they are in 'pair, trio, pair, trio' groupings. The next row out is like the first and the row furthest out is like the second. Needless to say, it plays exactly like a piano keyboard (which is why I have great trouble trying to play it) but it seems to me to be the bandoneon equivalent of both the duet concertina and the free-base piano accordion. Take your pick.

Subject: RE: Bandoneon
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 07:38 PM

Please do NOT use that garbage from theworldofstuff.com to get foreign characters.

The only ones that are guaranteed to work are the "name code" ones. The others will fail on any other platform except Windows. On the browser I'm using at the moment, they *all* fail; not one of the no-namecode sample characters on their page renders according to their description.