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Titus Lantos

Traveling musicians
transcription:
Hanns Koren described well why the West Styrians provide the best music groups. He said it was very simple. The glassmakers in Bärenbach in the glass factory came from Bohemia, Bohemian musicians. The miners who went into the tunnels in Lankowitz, Köflach and so on came from Slovenia, the people of Upper Carniola. - Upper Carniola musicians, Bohemian musicians and Alpine songs on top of that, this triumvirate simply ensured that the West Styrians still have the best music groups. Yes, that's the feeling. That's how it developed. Now I've read up, for example in Upper Austria, the Upper Austrian country people, they were also traveling musicians and they came from the Erzgebirge, that is the area between Germany and Bohemia, Erzgebirge. At times the miners were unemployed, the tunnels were closed or something, then they had to go on a journey, and what did they do? They played music. They took the violins that were made in the Erzgebirge. Why? Because mountain spruces grow there in the Ore Mountains, as well as in the area north of Lake Como, where mountain spruces also grow. There were the Stradivarius, Amati and so on. I need mountain spruce because mountain spruce is a sound wood. It has such fine teeth that you can hardly see any structures, they are so close together. And that means that a spruce tree that is perhaps ten centimeters thick is actually a hundred years old. It's growing so slowly. And because it grows so slowly, it has such tight structures and is a soundwood. And I can only create violins where there is a tonewood. The violin makers went around there, in the Ore Mountains as well, and came over to Upper Austria with the violins and played the country music there. And the Upper Austrian country folk then traveled by ship down the Danube to Vienna and invented the waltz there. They played in the suburbs. The Strauss and the Lanner and so on also made their first attempts in the suburbs, in the inns. And these country folk slowly became waltzers in Vienna. The Viennese waltz is hard to describe anyway. A Japanese man wanted to ask a Viennese violinist: "How do you do a waltz?" Says the violinist: "You Japanese count: 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 and we count 1, 2 and then maybe 3." (Laughter) Those are the vibrations that are in there. And that was also created by the traveling musicians.