bavarikon4UManuscripts of Traditional and Popular Dance and Light Music from Franconia
The music archive occupies a central position within the individual collection areas. It contains several thousand handwritten and printed booklets, part books and sheet music with instrumental utility music (dance, concert and light music) from around 1790 to the present day. The collection consists mainly of bequests by regional musicians and orchestras and contains special musical features from the region as well as beyond. It represents local traditions of music making, in some cases even personal styles of music making, and also includes activities directed at the cultivation of folk music. The dissemination of individual music titles, dance fashions and instrumentation habits is thereby documented.
The selection for bavarikon focuses on dance music. At least since the middle of the nineteenth century, the style of dance music in town and country was influenced by the models of military brass bands and of dance salon orchestras. The sources of instrumental folk music in many Franconian regions can only be ascertained with the advent of this dance music. Most bands could perform both as "brass bands" (with brass and woodwind instruments or as a pure brass band) and as "string orchestras" (mixed instrumentation of woodwind, brass and string instruments). The selected examples of sheet music reflect this ability, the musical level as well as the modes of instrumentation and the regional preferences.
In Middle Franconia and parts of Upper Franconia the practice of improvisation is still widespread today. The books of melodies created by the musicians serve less as a model than as a reminder. In these books, parts of dances were noted in batches to be freely combined in form and sequence during improvised play.
>> This collection is part of the holdings of the Forschungsstelle für fränkische Volksmusik (Research Centre for Franconian Folk Music).