AUSTRIA Austria’s taste for the Bohemian bock REVIVAL IN CENTRAL EUROPE S a birthday surprise for his mother, Maria Theresia, Archduchess of AAustria and Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, Empress of the Holy Roman Em- pire and wife of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I (who reigned 1745–65), the future Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II recruited 300 bagpipers to play in front of Schönb- runn Castle in Vienna, having first arranged themselves in the form of a giant monogram: the letter ‘T’ for ‘Theresia’. “It’s significant that in the 1760s you were able to find 300 pipers in the area of Vienna,” said Michael Vereno, a player of the Austrian bock. “It’s something that was not possible 100 years later.” At the beginning of the 20th century, al- though there is evidence that hurdy gurdies survived, bagpipes seem to have no longer been played in Austria. But when Michael Vereno was growing up in Salzburg, he did hear bagpipes. “I remember someone playing the pipes — I don’t know if he was Scottish or not, just that I adored this instrument. Bagpipes fascinated me.” He began pestering his mother, Helga, with his desire to play bagpipes. “She teaches English and French at a tour- ism school in Salzburg and a pupil of hers, a student from Pakistan, told us he could get us very cheap bagpipes,” he said. “He brought us a set of Pakistani pipes for about 700 Austrian Photo: Mike Paterson schillings, around 50 Euros, and they didn’t MICHAEL VERENO… “My grandmother is work. “But it interested me so much that I wanted from Bohemia, my father’s family is from to bring this instrument to sound.” Then Austrian television began promoting a Hungary so basically you can say I am the show called Glückskind (‘Lucky Child’), invit- average product of the Habsburg Empire. ing children between seven and 12 years of age to submit a wish and the show would ensure And many Austrians, I would say, have a selected wishes came true. “I didn’t believe in this stuff,” said Michael Vereno, “but my grandmother from Bohemia and a grandfather mother wrote to them about her little boy who from Hungary, or the other way round...” PIPING TODAY • 32 AUSTRIA wanted to learn to play bagpipes and would German bagpipes, which were more like the a short-lived republic. In 1934, its right wing have to go to Scotland in order to learn… and Flemish bagpipes, which were also played in government adopted a Fascist constitution and, it worked.” Austria. in March 1938, German troops occupied the A 10 year-old Michael Vereno, his mother “During the Baroque, bagpipes in France country. Only in 1955 did Austria regain full and a television team were soon on an aircraft became very highly refined… look at the Ba- independence from the post-war Allied occupy- bound for Scotland. “They took us to Tain in roque musette, for example, that became a sort ing powers (Britain, France, the United States Dornoch where I met Duncan MacGillivray of model for the Northumbrian smallpipes. In and the Soviet Union) and, in 1995, it became who, I later learned, was a very famous piper Austria and the German-speaking countries, a member of the European Union. and had played with the Battlefield Band,” he this sort of refinement never happened; the Bohemia, its name originating from the said. “I learned the bagpipes I had were useless bagpipe remained a very rural instrument but culturally assimilated Celtic Boii tribe, now and we got an instrument from Logan Pipes the nobility liked the sound.” accounts for what is essentially the western two in Inverness. Percy Scholes’ The Oxford Companion to Mu- thirds of the Czech Republic, and is home to 60 “We got to Scotland for two weeks each sic includes the observations of Georg Philipp per cent of the republic’s 10.3 million people. summer for several years and I learned a little Telemann (1681-1767), a leading composer of Germany is to the west, Austria to the south, bit of technique from Duncan and then from the German Baroque, about the popularity of Poland to the northeast and Moravian region Bobby MacRae. the Polish bagpipe in Prussia: “I have heard as of the Czech Republic to the east. “Then one day, I accidentally sat on my pipes many as thirty-six bagpipes and eight violins After Habsburg rule, Bohemia was incorpo- and broke the blowstick.” together,” Telemann wrote. “It is unbelievable rated into Czechoslovakia. Its German-speaking A friend in Vienna told the Verenos about a what extraordinary musical fancies the bagpipe Sudeten borderlands were annexed by Nazi bagpipe maker, Stefan Widhalm, in Vienna and and violin players introduced when they were Germany in 1938 and then Bohemia was they went there to get the blowstick repaired playing whilst the dancers rested: any composer wholly occupied as a part of the “the German or replaced. “But he was not making Scottish who might care to note them down would in a Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia”. At the bagpipes,” said Michael Vereno. “He was mak- week have enough ideas to keep him supplied end of the Second World War, its German ing Renaissance bagpipes from the German for the rest of his life… All this proved later of speakers were expelled and it became a Soviet Renaissance and that was when I discovered service to me in many serious compositions.” satellite state. Since 1993, with the dissolution there were more than just Scottish bagpipes. Said Michael Vereno: “It was through of Czechoslovakia, has it been a part of the “People have thought I was driven into Germany and Bavaria, that this new bagpipe, Czech Republic. bagpiping by my mother. It was the other way which is easier to handle and easier to tune, While Austria’s official language is German, around. I was pulling her into all this music came to Austria and, during the 19th century, a number of regional dialects are spoken, and and she supported me, not least with money the Czechs adopted it. Until then, the Czechs Slovene and Croatian are recognized locally. for the instruments. were playing high-pitched mouth-blown bag- Austria’s population is a little under 8.5 mil- “She bought me a set of Renaissance bag- pipes. The old people in Bohemia called this lion. pipes and I began to learn. Then, in 1997, I got new instrument ‘n mecké dudy’ which means “Until nationalism arose 150 years ago, my first set of Bohemian pipes, which I learned ‘German bagpipes’ because it came from Ger- nobody would have thought that speaking were also the Austrian pipes.” man-speaking people. German was a reason not to feel oneself Bohe- Michael Vereno met and began taking les- “After the instrument got forgotten in the mian,” said Michael Vereno. “This feeling lasted sons with Rudi Lughofer, who had launched German-speaking countries, it was brought until the end of the Habsburg Empire. Then, the revival of the Bohemian bagpipes in Austria again out of Bohemia and became our ‘Bo- when Adolf Hitler took power in Germany and nearly 30 years previously. hemian’ bagpipes. But, originally, they had German nationalism was extreme in Germany “Rudi Lughofer always felt very close to the passed by way of the German-speaking people and Austria, the people in Egerland in western Czechs,” said Michael Vereno. “But he says he into Bohemia.” Bohemia wanted to be a part of the German loves and hates them — a feeling that many In Austria, these pipes certainly had their Third Reich, and that’s why the Czechs expelled Austrians have about the Czechs and that day. “So we have music like Leopold Mozart’s them after the Second World War. Czechs have about the Austrians.” Bauernhochzeit (‘Peasant Wedding’) — a piece “The Czechs expelled anyone, in fact, who Bellows-blown bagpipes originally entered for orchestra, bagpipes, hurdy-gurdy and was unwilling to declare himself or herself Austria from Poland, by way of the Slavic mi- dulcimer, a combination of rural and classical Czech or Slovak, and Hungarians were expelled nority culture of the Sorbs in eastern Germany, music,” said Michael Vereno. too. And this German-speaking Bohemian and came into use during the Baroque era. Until 1918, the interplay between the culture, which was playing bagpipes on a daily “During the Baroque in France, bagpipes cultures involved in these shifting bagpipe basis, died out. were welcomed at the Court of Versailles, and traditions was relatively unrestricted. They “The regions near the Czech border to the the German princes felt they needed something all were a part of the Habsburg Empire, a German-speaking countries were re-settled with equivalent. They got themselves Polish pipers,” dynastic hegemony that had lasted more than Czechs from eastern Czechoslovakia who didn’t said Michael Vereno. “Suddenly the Polish 600 years. belong there or feel at home there. Then, when bagpipes were very stylish and, during the 17th At the end of the First World War, however, they did feel at home, the Communists came century, they replaced the earlier mouth-blown the Empire was dissolved and Austria became and took everything from them, and it took a PIPING TODAY • 33 AUSTRIA long time until this situation normalised.” MICHAEL VERENO… “In Austria we don’t have a continuous Meanwhile, during the Cold War, for as long tradition that we can rely on as it was possible, Rudi Lughofer would drive and we have no records of the playing techniques used by 19th to Czechoslovakia.