Musical Clubs

 

A musical instrument is a satisfying recreation
for anyone of any age to take up.
After all, it is called
playing music.
 

 

 

 

 

Joining a band or orchestra
offers an even more rewarding experience
of playing on a team.

 

 

 

 

But for the ultimate musical gratification
nothing beats playing your instrument
with other musicians who play the same instrument.
It's just pure fun.

 

When you read as many old newspapers as I do
it doesn't take long to discover
that in the late 19th and early 20th century
people loved to join clubs.
There were clubs for every kind
of political, fraternal, religious,
occupational, and recreational  interest,
and music was equally represented
by countless amateur choirs, bands, and orchestras.

 

One special type of social club
that became very popular in the 1900s
was designed specifically for enthusiasts
devoted to one particular musical instrument.


Today I present a small medley of these musical clubs
that featured unusual musical instruments.
 

 

 

My first photo is an instrumental club on a German postcard of 16 men and 2 women with various string instruments, but predominantly zithers. With nine zither players and only two violinists this is an ensemble that loves to strum. Of course I'm defining what I call a musical club very broadly as I suspect these musicians are probably a private club run by the man seated center, third from right, who is holding a conductor's baton. He is the music professor and these are his string students.

A zither belongs to the psaltery line of string instruments. It has many metal strings attached to a shallow box with four or five strings stretched over a fretted fingerboard and the other strings tuned in a scale like a harp. It is played either on the player's lap or on a table. There are two types pictured in this group. The concert zither has between 29 to 38 strings, with 34 or 35 being most typical. The Alpine zither has 42 strings with a curved extension that supports the longer lower bass strings. 

Alpine Zither
Source: Wikipedia

The postcard was mailed on 12 February 1915 from Remscheid, a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, east of the Rhine River near Düsseldorf, Germany. We can only speculate how many of the men would be called up for military service in the next three years. Did they pack a zither in their soldier's kit?

 

 

 

 

 To demonstrate the beautiful sound of the zither
here is a quartet that performed at
the Saitenstrassen music festival in 2021.
This festival of traditional Germanic music
is held in the alpine communities
of Mittenwald, Krün and Wallgau
in the Upper Isar Valley of Bavaria.
The unusual instrument played by the man at the back right
is a Viennese contraguitar or Schrammel guitar
which has extra bass strings like the zither
which gives it a harp-like sound.

 

 

 * * *

 

 

 

The next group comes from a photo postcard that was never mailed but conveniently identifies the group and date on a printed caption. They are the Concertina "Edelweisss" zu Hormersdorf  1908.  As their name suggests this ensemble features six concertina players in what is otherwise a brass band. The 19 men are posed outdoors and wear a kind of formal Sunday best suit that suggests they are giving a concert. I think they look more like an amateur group than professional and again I'm stretching the definition of a club to include bands that promoted one type of instrument. Hormersdorf is a former municipality in the district Erzgebirgskreis, in Saxony, Germany now part of the town Zwönitz. One man seated center has no instrument, unless we count the beer keg in front of him, but he wears a broad sash which I think indicates he is a civic official of the town.  

 

The concertina is a free-reed musical instrument similar in sound to a harmonica but using bellows to provide the air that vibrates the reeds. It belongs to the accordion family and there are many different types of squeeze box instruments that were developed independently by English and German makers in the early 1800s. The English concertina is constructed as a six-sided "box" while the German design is a larger and made as a square "box". Both systems have buttons on both halves of the instrument that activate the reeds, but the arrangement of pitches is very different. 

 

The instrument used by the Edelweiss band are called Chemnitzer concertinas which were developed in Chemnitz, the third-largest city in the German state of Saxony, which is about 13 miles north of Hormersdorf. The reeds are made of steel instead of brass and there are two different notes, sometimes more, that sound independently when the bellows are compressed or extended. The Chemnitzer type concertina became popular in America too and is still found in Polka dance bands. 

 

 

For the past 44 years
concertina enthusiasts
from around the country
flock to Pulaski, Wisconsin
for the Pulaski Polka Days.
Here is a short video of about 50 concertina players
who participated in the 2021 concertina jam in Pulaski.
It captures the passion people have for their favorite instrument
and the great fun it provides to players of all ages.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

This  postcard features 40 men, all holding the same kind of string instrument. They are identified in the caption on the front as C. H. Böhm's Waldzither-Verein. The musicians are neatly arranged in some outdoor park or garden with a large banner that has the faint letters of Böhm and an image of a Waldzither. It resembles a mandolin but looks nothing like the tabletop zithers played by the first musical club. The name and location of the postcard publisher is printed along the bottom edge: Kunstverlags-Anstalt Roepke & Woortman, Hamburg. The postcard also has a postmark of 31 January 1903 from Hamburg, Germany.

 

The Waldzither (which translates as "forest zither") was a late 19th century German improvement on the medieval cittern. It has 9 metal strings set in five courses with the lowest pitch on a single string. The bridge of a Waldzither is made of glass or metal and I believe the neck is hollow to give it more resonance. The tuning mechanism at the head of the neck uses a fine screw adjustment rather than traditional pegs.

 

 

The Boehm Waldzithers were made beginning with the founding of the factory in 1897 until it closed in 1942 during the war. I suspect that membership in Herr Böhm's club included a number of his workers, but evidently the Waldzither became such a popular instrument in Germany that there were efforts, (probably supported by Böhm) to make it the "national instrument" of Germany. Sadly the Waldzither never achieved that kind of status as it has largely disappeared except for a few preserved instruments. In fact I would not have been able to learn about the Böhm company until I found this short demonstration video on YouTube this week.

Here is a video of Björn Kaidel
playing a beautiful melody on a Waldzither that was made
around 1925 by the same "C.H. Böhm Company" of Hamburg, Germany
whose instruments are pictured on my postcard.

* * *

 

 

 

 Since last weekend's story,
The Turner Clubs of Old Wien,
was about Austrian Turn-Verein or Gymnast Clubs.

I can't resist including this next postcard
of a Club of Clubs.
Indian clubs to be precise.

 

 

This group of 43 young women and two men are all dressed in matching uniforms (the girls not the men) that make them look like students or a church choir. But this is what passed for women's athletic wear in 1900. At the top is a caption: Dámský Odbor Sokola Domažlického or the Domazlice  Women's Sokal Union. The language is Czech and the place Domazlice, is a small town that is now in the Plzeň Region of the Czech Republic, but in July 1902 when this postcard was mailed, it was in Austria. 

The young ladies belong to the Czech equivalent of a German or Austria Turnverein or gymnast club. Along the floor in front of the women are various wooden clubs used in pairs for rhythmic calesthetic exercises. These Indian clubs originated on the India subcontinent, hence their name, and were once a common strength conditioning equipment used in gym clubs by both men and women. In researching this card I was surprised to find many videos on YouTube of modern practitioners of this discipline with a large number from India.

The group is called a Sokola which in Czech means "Falcon" for it's patriotic connotation. Though these Czech gyms followed the same idea for physical training, the Czech Sokol movement, which was founded in Prague in 1862, included more intellectual and moral guidance through lectures, discussions and even military training in support of Czech nationalism. Membership was open to all ages and eventually, as evident in this postcard, women were admitted too. The Sokol training centered on marching drills, fencing, weightlifting and large mass team exercises like this group of women. 

 

The movement's emphasis on national pride led to other Slavic cultures in the Austrian empire starting their own gym clubs. By the 1900s there were Sokols in Slovakia, Poland, Croatia, and other ethnic  areas of Central Europe that were ruled by monarchs of a different historic culture. The Czech Sokols, like the German Turnverein movement, was brought to America by immigrants who established gym clubs and used them to sustain their national traditions. The political power of the Sokol gym clubs was a serious concern for both monarchs and fascists. During the rise of Hitler, the Sokols were shut down, and later in the communist era they were banned too.

 

 

 I can't find any reference to this
but I feel sure that
Indian club exercises at the Czech Sokol
included music
since music has always been a Czech tradition.
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.

 

 

 

 

Here is a delightful short film
from the Library of Congress archives
entitled: "Hyde Park School, room 2".
It shows a group of American school children
performing an exercise with Indian clubs.
It was filmed in Kansas City, Missouri on April 18, 1904
by cameraman, A. E. Weed for the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.

 

 

This next clip is too good to pass up.
It is a short film made in 1952
of Phoebe Pegram Swinging Indian Clubs.
The details on this YouTube video explain it best.

Phoebe Pegram arrived at the State Normal and Industrial School (now UNCG) in 1892. She studied "physical culture" (now physical education or kinesiology). By her fourth year, she had mastered the Indian clubs (it was said she was better than any of the instructors!) and was asked to join the teaching staff for the next two years.  When Phoebe came back to campus in 1952 for a class reunion, she was in her 80s but still willing to show off her mastery of the Indian clubs. She's wearing the black wool bloomers used in the physical culture classes when she was a student and teacher.

 

 

 

The clip was digitized from a film housed in the University Archives Film Collection, Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, University Libraries, at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC.

 

 I think Phoebe Pegram understood
that when you learn a skill well
you gain a lifetime of fun.

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where there are always lessons
to be learned in an old photo.