(from medieval Ger. rusch, also Middle High Ger. rus: ‘reed’, ‘cane’, and pfeife: ‘pipe’; Dut. rietpyp, rytpyp).
A word used in the late medieval period in Germany and the Low Countries for woodwind instruments, particularly the shawm both with and without a wind cap. It was sometimes used by non-musicians – in town or court accounts, for example – where musicians might have used specific instrument names. An order for instruments placed by the Nuremberg town council in 1538 mentioned ‘a large Bommart and associated Rauschpfeiffen’; the use of the word here suggests other sizes of Pommer (shawm). Following their delivery, however, the instruments were itemized as ‘a large pumhart, a vagant, two tenors and two altos … three small pumhart’, recorders, flutes and cornetts; this implies that ‘Rauschpfeiffen’ refers to woodwind instruments in general. Further evidence supporting this interpretation is supplied by a similar order from the Prussian court at Königsberg in 1541. The same conclusion may be drawn from Virdung’s illustration of a small recorder with four finger-holes which he calls ‘russ pfeif’.
One of Hans Burgkmair’s woodcuts (1512–19) for Triumphzug Maximilians (published 1526) shows wind-cap shawms, which are referred to in the accompanying text as ‘Rauschpfeiffen’; the Baden-Baden court inventory of 1582 used the same term in a context suggesting wind-cap shawms.( seeHabsburg, fig.2) With the exception of these two cases, however, there are no instances of the use of ‘Rauschpfeife’ to refer specifically to wind-cap rather than open-reed shawms. On the sole basis of Triumphzug Maximilians, Sachs believed that ‘Rauschpfeife’ was a specific name for the wind-cap shawm, and he applied it to the set of instruments of that type in Berlin (Staatliches Institut für Deutsche Musikforschung), which are now identified as examples of the Schreyerpfeife. The word is also applied to an Organ stop.
See also Wind-cap instruments.
VirdungMG
H. Burgkmair: Triumphzug Maximilians (Augsburg, 1526/R; ed. S. Appelbaum as The Triumph of Maximilian I, 1964)
C. Sachs: ‘Der Name Rauschquinte’, ZI, xxxiii (1913), 965
C. Sachs: Real-Lexikon der Musikinstrumente (Berlin, 1913/R)
G. Kinsky: ‘Doppelrohrblatt-Instrumente mit Windkapsel’, AMw vii (1925), 253–96
E. Nickel: Der Holzblasinstrumentenbau in der Freien Reichsstadt Nürnberg (Munich, 1971)
B.R. Boydell: The Crumhorn and other Renaissance Windcap Instruments (Buren, 1982)
BARRA R. BOYDELL