Sampling the surface of a glacier. There is increasingly denser firn between surface snow and blue glacier ice.

Firn from South Cascade Glacier, 80x magnified.

Firn field on the top of Säuleck, Hohe Tauern

Firn (from German Firn with the same meaning, cognate with for) is partially compacted névé, a type of snow that has been left over from past seasons and has been recrystallized into a substance denser than névé. It is ice that is at an intermediate stage between snow and glacial ice. Firn has the appearance of wet sugar, but has a hardness that makes it extremely resistant to shovelling. Its density generally ranges from 550 kg/m³-830 kg/m³ and can be often found underneath the snow that accumulates at the head of a glacier.

Snowflakes are compressed under the weight of the overlying snowpack. Individual crystals near the melting point are semiliquid and slick, allowing them to glide along other crystal planes and to fill in the spaces between them, increasing the ice's density. Where the crystals touch they bond together, squeezing the air between them to the surface or into bubbles.

In the summer months, the crystal metamorphosis can occur more rapidly because of water percolation between the crystals. By summer's end, the result is firn.

The minimum altitude that firn accumulates on a glacier is called the firn limit, firn line or snowline.

References[link]

• USGS Glossary of Selected Glacier and Related Terminology
• Fundamentals of Physical Geography

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Naftule Brandwein, or Naftuli Brandwine, (1884–1963) was a Jewish clarinetist and influential klezmer musician.

Early life[link]

Brandwein was born in Przemyslany, Poland-Galicia (now Ukraine), into a family of klezmer musicians, part of the Stretiner Hasidic dynasty founded by Rabbi Yehuda Hirsch Brandwein of Stratin. His father Peysekhe played violin and was an improvising wedding poet (badkhn); of his thirteen sons, Moyshe played violin, French horn, and valve trombone, Mendel played piano, Leyzer played drums, and Azriel played cornet; Azriel became Naftule's first music teacher, and had a lasting impact on his playing.

Emigration to the United States[link]

In 1908 Brandwein emigrated at the age of nineteen to the United States where he quickly became a star of the 78 rpm record era, proclaiming himself the "King of Jewish Music". Thus, he was considered to be among the first wave of American klezmer artists, those trained in the Old World, as opposed to the second generation who learned their skills in America. Between 1922 and 1927, he cut twenty-four records, first as a member of Abe Schwartz's orchestra, and then as a solo artist after 1923.

Style[link]

Brandwein was known as much for his colorful personality as for his musical talent, often playing with a neon sign, reading "Naftule Brandwein Orchestra", around his neck, and with his back facing the audience, to conceal his fingering tricks. He also wore plugged-in Christmas lights as part of his costume on several occasions, which once shorted out when he perspired too much, almost electrocuting him. His wild style incorporated not only the influence of Jewish music, but also flourishes of Greek, Turkish, and Gypsy music. His warm and lively playing style would constantly jump up and down the scale and express itself in trills, slides and other ornamentation; he is often contrasted to the other famous klezmer clarinettist of his time, Dave Tarras, who had a more conservative but nonetheless very talented playing style.

Decline[link]

Brandwein was notoriously unreliable, unable to read music, and possessed of a reputation as a nasty drunk. He even supposedly played private shows in backrooms for the largely Jewish contract killing gang Murder, Inc..

His career soured from the mid-1920s onward, as demand for his traditional approach to klezmer music waned; he made his last recording in 1941 and lived out his final years in relative obscurity, playing in the Borscht Belt.

Legacy[link]

While he did not live to witness the resurgence of interest in klezmer that began in the mid-1970s, his legacy has been revived by a new generation of klezmer musicians, who cite him as a key source of inspiration. The intricate traditions of klezmer music are not well preserved in sheet music, and his recordings are one of the main sources people look to for the "original" klezmer style.

Recordings[link]

• 1997: King of the Klezmer Clarinet

External links[link]

• Klezmer Shack entry

References[link]

• Henry Sapoznik, liner notes for King of the Klezmer Clarinet.