WeXel... Secular Songs, COMPA 22/2-1

In mid-16th century the Flemish botanist at the court of emperor Maximilian II., Carolus Clusius, took interest in the alpine flora of the WeXel-region at the border of the arch-duchy of Austria and the duchy of Styria. A century later the Tyrolean cartographer Georg Matthäus Vischers map Styriae Ducatus Fertilitsimi Nova Geographica Descriptio Fertilissima (1678) documents the cultural WeXel landscape. The earliest notations of traditional music in the Wechsel region date from the beginning of the 19th century. More detailed collections start with the Österreichisches Volksliedunternehmen (Austrian Traditional Music Company) under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture and Teaching in 1904. The vision of 30 volumes in german, 20 in slave and 10 in roman language, in total 60 volumes falls victim to World War I. In 1993 Gerlinde Haid (1943 2012) and Walter Deutsch (*1923) initiate COMPA (Corpus musicae popularis Austriacae) the Encyclopedia of traditional Austrian music in a selected choice. In 2013 twenty years later an encyclopedia of 22 volumes documents Austrian traditional music from the historical and actual point of view. The most recent COMPA 22 /2 WeXel oder Die Musik einer Landschaft WeXel or The music of a landscape is dedicated to the traditional music of the Wechsel region (Lower Austria and Styria). After Part 1 Das Geistliche Lied Religious Music (2014) presenting the songs in the farm-house of the deceased during the two- night corpse-watch at the bier, part 2 documents Das Weltliche Lied: Jodler, Jodler-Lied, Gstanzl und Tanz Secular Music: Yodel, Yodel-Song, Quatrain and Dance. A short historical and geographical description of the Wechsel, which contrary to the Semmering, the balcony of the Viennese, and Reichenau, the resort of the court had always been the turnstile of the crown-lands is followed by a documentation containing a selection of orally-transmitted yodels, yodel-songs and quatrains from a landscape full of musical pecularities, transported and handed over from generation to generation by autonomous singers and musicians. Academically-documented material from the turn of the 19th century until today resulted in a body of traditional music interpreted in the typical way of the local singers and musicians. For many of the yodels from the WeXel region there are no parallels in other musical regions, they are unmatched, they are unique. A number of songs collected in the Wechsel region are documented in other regions as well, yet following an innate / natural local tradition a yodel finalizes the song, for some of the songs there is no evidence at all, though it is remarkable that many well-known, popular yodel-songs were first notated in the Wechsel region.