Sigma Alpha Iota

SAI Pan Pipes Winter 2016

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PAN PIPES • WINTER 2016 • sai-national.org 22 E J K O P A WORLD OF MUSIC By jayne i. Hanlin Ever since Dr. Aurelia Hartenberger went to a garage sale in 1973 and discovered a $50 rotary-valve flugel horn — complete with pigtail lead-in pipe enabling the player to change key — she has been buying and collecting musical instruments. Now valued at about $1,000, it is one of many instruments in the collection. Her most recent acquisition, though not old, is a serpentine pedalphone. In January 2014, the Hartenbergers donated 2500 instruments to e Sheldon in St. Louis, MO. Our local SAI alumnae chapter recently toured three rooms of their current exhibition, "A World of Music: Africa, Asia, and Latin America." If you flew to our fair city for the SAI National Convention, you may have noticed another one of their exhibits, "Wonderful Winds." Located just before the baggage area in the main terminal at Lambert Airport are six glass cases with instruments, including a colorful zampoñas (Bolivian panpipes), from the Sheldon's Hartenberger World Music Collection. Of their donation, approximately 1,500 are classified as instruments of World Music and the remaining 1,000 are classified as traditional instruments of European and American Art. is avid collector told me how thrilling it is that there are approximately 200 photos of her instruments included in the second edition of the five-volume set of e New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments published in 2015 (Laurence Libin, editor). Quite an honor indeed! I asked what was involved in the maintenance of these many instruments. "Climate control, especially humidity," she replied, "then temperature. And no dust." e Sheldon has an excellent facility for their storage. As a woodwind player herself, Dr. Hartenberger knew the importance of keeping humidity between 40-60% so that instruments made of boxwood and ivory wouldn't crack. On the other hand, humidity can be detrimental to brass instruments because moisture tarnishes the silver. So previously she used to enclose them in plastic bubble wrap and store them in Ziploc bags. An ethnomusicologist, Dr. Hartenberger does not identify her instruments as strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion but rather as chordophones, aerophones, idiophones, membranophones, and electrophones. Used by organologists, this Hornbostel-Sachs classification system groups instruments by what generates their sound. For example, in a chordophone, stretched strings vibrate and produce sound when they are plucked, strummed, or struck. An idiophone (such as a bell or gong) produces sound when the object itself vibrates. On our tour, she pointed out some instruments that were anthropomorphic (decorated with human forms) and others that were zoomorphic (having forms of animals). My favorite instrument was an armadillo charango (a type of lute). Shaped like half an egg, the Andean guitar was traditionally made from an armadillo shell. FROM FLUGEL HORN TO SERPENTINE PEDALPHONE The AmAzing hArTenberger World music collecTion of hisToricAl insTrumenTs Dr. Aurelia Hartenberger photos A Metzler-Serpent Horn from the 1700s. A World of Music A World of Music

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