A Tirolean village band festival
Jul 15, 2012 18:44:26 GMT
Post by patricklondon on Jul 15, 2012 18:44:26 GMT
A couple of weeks ago, I was in the Stubaital near Innsbruck, and was taken to a neighbouring village to see the parade of bands from villages round about.
The parade and festival took place around the village community hall, which also served as the fire station and primary school, and though obviously modern had the traditional window decorations that gave it an almost mediaeval air:
This being another in a series of very hot days, much of the heavier traditional uniform was safely parked on one side to begin with:
Meanwhile everyone fortified themselves in the beer and sausage tents, and caught up with friends:
Eventually everyone streamed off to the mustering point for the start of the parade, while the guests of honour mounted the temporary podium by the road. The formalities required the recital of quite a long list of people of consequence in regional and local government, and in the organisations promoting and supporting the bands, before the parade itself started. Apparently the federal Minister of Education is a member of one of the bands, but was away at some international conference. Fourteen bands in all paraded past, each preceded, Olympic-style, by a banner announcing who they were (some of them appeared to be competing for a "winsomest tots" award), and the ceremonial schnapps-bearers.
If I understood the parade announcer correctly, some of the bands date back to the late eighteenth century, and even villages with quite a small resident population can get together 40 or 60 people, of all ages, to join the band.
![]()
farm9.staticflickr.com/8023/7489357260_e1fb922097_z_d.jpg [/img]
Some stopped in front of the dignitaries to perform various marching manoeuvres (in one a particularly well-upholstered band member managed to catch his paunch on the traffic sign in the middle of the road, to everyone's amusement). Finally, the guests of honour were lined up behind the last band to march off in their turn, back to the park pavilion and the beer tents. Here there were more speeches, cheerfully ignored in the convivial re-fortification and general conversational catching-up, before bands gave a sit-down concert in the village pavilion: the only one we stopped to hear surprised me by playing some British music (one of Holst's military band pieces, and they played it very well too, though I didn't manage to capture that on my phone for the video):
The parade and festival took place around the village community hall, which also served as the fire station and primary school, and though obviously modern had the traditional window decorations that gave it an almost mediaeval air:
This being another in a series of very hot days, much of the heavier traditional uniform was safely parked on one side to begin with:
Meanwhile everyone fortified themselves in the beer and sausage tents, and caught up with friends:
Eventually everyone streamed off to the mustering point for the start of the parade, while the guests of honour mounted the temporary podium by the road. The formalities required the recital of quite a long list of people of consequence in regional and local government, and in the organisations promoting and supporting the bands, before the parade itself started. Apparently the federal Minister of Education is a member of one of the bands, but was away at some international conference. Fourteen bands in all paraded past, each preceded, Olympic-style, by a banner announcing who they were (some of them appeared to be competing for a "winsomest tots" award), and the ceremonial schnapps-bearers.
If I understood the parade announcer correctly, some of the bands date back to the late eighteenth century, and even villages with quite a small resident population can get together 40 or 60 people, of all ages, to join the band.
Some stopped in front of the dignitaries to perform various marching manoeuvres (in one a particularly well-upholstered band member managed to catch his paunch on the traffic sign in the middle of the road, to everyone's amusement). Finally, the guests of honour were lined up behind the last band to march off in their turn, back to the park pavilion and the beer tents. Here there were more speeches, cheerfully ignored in the convivial re-fortification and general conversational catching-up, before bands gave a sit-down concert in the village pavilion: the only one we stopped to hear surprised me by playing some British music (one of Holst's military band pieces, and they played it very well too, though I didn't manage to capture that on my phone for the video):
