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

Since the earliest notations of traditional music in the Wechsel region, none of the collectors has ever differentiated between measures in triple (3/4) and duple metre (2/4) as far as yodels and yodel-songs are concerned. In its academic approach of traditional music the present publication applies this axiom as a musical standard for the first time. As anywhere else the yodels, yodel-songs, quatrains and dances are dominantly in the triple metre (3/4) of Ländler / Steirer, though quite a number of them show the duple metre (2/4) of Polka. In combination with different formal concepts (yodel alternating with verse-line, yodel simultaneous with verse-line, changing of metre within a single piece of music) this results in astonishing melodic singularities. Historical notes and musicians notebooks show besides the rare Deutscher and the Polka the Ländler / Steirer as dominating type of dance in the Wechsel region until the World War I. Thousands of Ländler-melodies filling hand-written music notebooks were played for all occasions be it traditional farmers festivities like celebrating the end of harvesting, of threshing or Freimusik (free music) in the local inn in all kinds of different instrumental constellations. From the violin to the clarinet, from the wind instruments a souvenir of the home-coming military musicians to the Styrain diatonic harmonika, also in the Wechsel region the melodic sound of dance has changed. Johannes Leopold Mayers allusion to Wittgensteins famous dictum Wovon man nicht sprechen kann ... Whereof one cannot speak, ... thereof fits a yodel? hints at verbalizing erotic allusions by linking melody and yodel-syllables. Johann Riegler, chairman of the Molzegg pasture cooperative, reflects on farmings future. Summaries in English, French and Italian as well as in the languages of the former crown lands of the monarchy today EU-member states (Croatian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Rumanian, Slovak, Slovene, Ukrainian) draw the attention to the cultural turnstile Wechsel and give access to the content of both volumes.