XXVI Silesian Competition of Hunting Signalers "For the hounting horn of the Prince of Pszczyna

XXVI Silesian Competition of Hunting Signalers "For the Hounting Horn of the Prince of Pszczyna" this Saturday~02/09/2023. In connection with the music festival, we present a short history of plessówka for all lovers of tradition and hunting culture.

Pszczyna is an important place for European hunting culture, especially music and the idea of nature conservation, which is why it is often referred to as the cradle of hunting tradition. During the reign of the second prince of Pszczyna, Jan Henryk XI Hochberg von Pless, the Pszczyna estate was famous for its diversity, rich number and quality of species bred here, including bison, fallow deer, sika deer and even wapiti deer (for some time).

It was on the initiative of Jan Henryk XI Hochberg von Pless that the plessówka hunting horn was created, with its most popular form to this day. The motivation to create this instrument was the need to construct a smaller and lighter, more handy horn than the then commonly used, larger par forces, which were used in hunting with dogs on horseback. They were horns made of a pipe rolled several times, about 5 m long.

Plessówka was finally created in 1870 in Hirschberg's craft workshop in Wrocław. In practice, it is a coiled pipe, 172 cm long, whose acoustic qualities, carrying sound in the woods and its technical advantages (light weight and ergonomic shape) have ensured the idea of playing on it, a great bloom to this day. An important aspect was additionally systematizing and arranging the notation of sounds, which the duke ordered Rosner, a musician and bookseller from Pszczyna, to perform. He wrote down over 40 hunting signals, aimed at, among others, organization of hunting, occasional melodies as well as signals played to say goodbye to game on a pokocie and they were first published in 1878. Subsequent releases followed systematically, including in 1898 "Jagd-Signale und Fanfaren zusammengestellt und rhythmisch geordet von J. Rosner" in August Krummer's publishing house in Pszczyna. The instrument, native to the forests of Pszczyna, quickly gained popularity and is widely used in many countries of our continent. To this day, many signals are composed, adapted to cultural events in the field of hunting life.

It is also worth mentioning that Henrich Stölzel, a talented chamber musician of the prince of Pszczyna, made further improvements to the hunting horn with valves, creating a hunting horn. In this way, he obtained a good, strong and clean sound of the full and balanced scale with the possibility of playing in semitones. An interesting fact is that in 1905, the prince received from hunters, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the rule in Pszczyna, a jubilee plesa made of 800 silver. Unfortunately, the instrument disappeared from the castle in Promnica during the Third Silesian Uprising.

Text/Photo: Michał Makowski, Public Domain