ALPINE YODELLING

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 May 1937, Page 10

ALPINE YODELLING

HOW IT BEGAN

1 Anyone hearing Austrian folk music ! is impressed by its close relation to - yodelling. That, without doubt, is one of its sources. And experts say folk music is one of the chief sources of I Austria’s classic music. I The Viennese believe, furthermore, 1 that Austrian classical music is the ’ best the German race has produced and German music is claimed to be ' the best in the world (sdys a writer, in the ‘Christian Science Monitor’). Alpine milkmaids it is averred, started yodelling. These young people are often lonely. Each spring they leave their villages and go high up ini the Alps to “summer homes” called' alms, with their fathers' herds. A I | grandpa may go along to look after them. 1 Such little groups of hardy youth re-1 main in their picturesque isolation j half a year at a time. During the time the young people keep watch in the mountains they like to call to one another. The folks of one “alm” shout to those of another; those from one pasture cry to their friends across the valley. They also shout to themselves just to hear their voices revcberate from a score of distant cliffs. When one sings in the Alps every peak takes up the refrain, so that a single voice becomes a chorus. You might say each alm has its own “yell.” If you hear a melodious stream of “o-le-o-’s” you know it’s from the Schmidt alm; the “ou-dul-dee-ou's are the Meyer’s specialty. That, in the course of time, became yodelling songs without words, shrill, high, rapidly rising and falling, liquid sound, shouts, and humming. And from the Alps it spread to neighbouring districts.