Gföller Marsch - MVSR5517 | Music

Gföll is part of the municipality of Unken, which is located in the district of Zell am See in the border triangle of Salzburg, Bavaria and Tyrol. The name of the village - the term "Gföll" means "slope" - already gives information about its particularly remote location. Music has always been made in Gföll - not based on sheet music, however, but played by ear.

In the 1920s, a Bohemian itinerant musician came to the region. So-called "Böhm Ludwig" became aware of the musical talent of the people in Gföll and founded the "Gföller Musi" in 1924. The instrumentation consisted of a clarinet, a trumpet, a trombone, a "Roanl" (harmonica) and an accordion. They played on various occasions in village life. As before, music was always played from memory.

Georg von Kaufmann, a cross-country skier and mountaineer born in Munich in 1907, was a great friend and promoter of local German-Austrian folk music. He enthusiastically reported: "The Gföllers only play local music and they play it with such verve and precision that it is uniquely stirring. They succeed in playing the second or third voice instinctively and out of their unerring musical feeling, without them knowing which voice they are playing at all." Kaufmann - at that time forester of the Bavarian Forestry Office - gradually devoted himself to writing down the pieces played by the "Gföller Musi". He summarised these in his "Rotes Notenbüchl" (red sheet music book). One of his favourite pieces was the "Halbe fünfe Marsch", which was immortalised in his notes as the "Gföller Marsch" in 1953.