Date/Time
Date(s) - 07/12/2014
2:00 pm
Location
Sigal Museum
Category(ies)
“Music, Dance, and Instruments of the Pennsylvania Germans,” Keith Brintzenhoff
“This presentation is a program of the Pennsylvania Humanities Council supported in part by National Endowment for the Humanities. The Pennsylvania Humanities Council, a nonprofit organization, inspires individuals to enjoy and share a life of learning.” FREE
Keith Brintzenhoff – schoolteacher and performer – will keep feet tapping as he sings, plays, and dances through a lively repertoire of Pennsylvania-German music. Founder of the Kutztown Folk Music Society, music advisor to the Kutztown Pa-German Festival, performer, Brintzenhoff sketches the regions in Germany from which Pennsylvania German families emigrated (the Pfalz or Palatinate, regions along the Rhine), noting that William Penn’s own mother was German and thus explaining Penn’s recruitment of honest, reliable German farmers as settlers in North America. The migrants brought some of their music with them and developed other forms when they were here. Music performed on holidays, sung to and by children, at courting and marriage, during work (schnitzing and applebutter cooking) – all permeated their lives. They sang songs from the motherland, songs they heard in English and translated into German, songs with English melodies but entirely different German words, and songs they created themselves. They played them on church organs and on a multitude of instruments. Brintzenhoff will demonstrate some of those instruments from simple rhythm sticks and kazoo, Jew’s harp and nose flute, to the more familiar guitar, harmonica, banjo, Pennsylvania German zither, mountain dulcimer, and autoharp. This presentation is a program of the Pennsylvania Humanities Council supported in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Pennsylvania Humanities Council, a nonprofit organization, inspires individuals to enjoy and share a life of learning