User:Jacqke/History of stringed instruments

History of stringed instruments

Evidence available to piece together the history of stringed instruments

Linguistics

Written records dealing with the early history of stringed instrument are sparse. A few important records have come to researchers attention in recent years, and they have caused controversy. One record appears to tell how to tune an early lute in fourths and fifths. Another, the Hurrian Hymns which date to c. 1400 b.c., is an attempt at writing down music. Whether the claims made for these ancient records is true, their example illustrates some of the difficulties in saying something definitive about the early history.

One of the difficulties concerns language. Being able to read in foreign languages, to compare them to one another, looking to piece together meanings has allowed linguists to rewrite what was common knowledge. Prior to the Hurrian Hymns, historians had made firm statements that harmony did not exist before the Greeks invented it. The belief was expressed in 1841 by William Dauney; Dauney said that "From the best information we can collect, it is most likely that the science of harmony or counterpoint is a modern European invention; that it was unknown to the ancients, and that it is equally unknown even in the present day, in all countries to which European instruction has not extended. The native music of the east, therefore, must be considered as purely melodic, and not intended to be adapted to harmony, in our sense of the term." Language changed that, along with mathematics in translating Hurrian Hymns tablet, according to Richard Dumbrill who made a translated version. The Hurrian Hymn tablet had been discovered in 1955, and several "world renowned experts" tried to translate it, but not completely. The tablet was difficult for experts to decipher the text, partly because of damage to the tablet, partly because the document used "conventions" as complex as any language today. One linguist, Professor Kilmer, found the tablets to contain lists of numbers, which others were able to make sense of as music, notes for a nine-stringed sammûm (a harp or lyre). Her work made it possible for others to finish the translation. The tablet did not just contain a 3400 year old melody; it contained harmony. This was previously considered impossible, as experts had deemed that harmony did not exist before the Greek Delphic Hymns, which were also considered the world's oldest written music. Furthermore, the tablets were important, because they showed the existence of musical scales and musical notation, 1000 years prior to the Greek Pythagoras invented them in European legend.

• iconography
• linguistics and mathematics
• families of instruments across distance

Strings make distinct pitches

• Middle Eastern theories
  • understanding of string length to pitch
  • Gods related to string pitches
  • numbers of strings become instrument names (tar, guitar, sitar, quinterne)
  • harps and lyres
  • strings along a board, stings divided, pitches change on each side of divide
    • new gods with increased available pitches

Exchange between east and west

• Silk Road
• sailors

Survival of early forms in Africa

• lutes
• harps
• These may be new creations of Africans, not just holdovers of early technology
  • evidence, the use of new materials in the instruments, fishing lines, plastics

Creation of monochord instruments

• Europe
• Asia
• Africa

Dulcimers

• used east and west
• strummed and picked
• attributes of harps and of lutes
  • strummed with fixed notes
  • Pressed to board to divide string into notes

Lutes

Middle East

• Birthplace of lute family, long and short
• tamborines and lutes merge for hide soundboard/banjo
• Sailors visit India, southeast Asia, China

Short Lutes

Europe

• Portuguese and Spanish sailors distribute lutes around world (examples Brazil, Philippines, Madeira Islands)
• importation of lutes into Europe
  • From Middle East and Egypt, stick lutes
  • Pandura
    • Styles of Pandura, roman, greek, egyptian
• Influx of new lutes with Muslims

• history of Lute

Strictly speaking the work lute refers to the European instrument, descended from the Arab ud, developed in the Renaissance. More broadly, the lute and the Chinese Pipa and Arab ud all are close cousins, developed from instruments used in 2nd Century A.D. Gandhara, today Kandahar in Afghanistan.

• Lutes developed everywhere independently and interdependently
  • Spain, Germany, Italy, France all involved in developing
  • Other European countries also develop, such as cobza
  • Spain and Portugal, Andalusia, from Gittern to guitar
    • different flavors of guitar, lute, bandurria
    • export to Europe
  • Spain France, Germany, Italy, from Gittern to Mandore and Baroque Mandolin
  • Italy from mandore to Mandolin

Africa

• Stick Lutes

China, Japan

• Gandhara, Bactria, Pipa and Biwa
• similar features to instruments found in Middle east
  • short lute shape, barbat
  • shape of sound holes

Southeast Asia

• connection to India
• connection to Middle Eastern Sailers
• like Africa, has forms that seemed to have survived in isolation
• old forms improved locally

Long Lutes

• origin in Middle East
• 3000 years of history
• Tanbur and rabab families
• widespread distribution along silk road
• Forms that have remained stable for a long time
• Increased sophistication
  • Sympathetic strings
  • multiple sound chambers
  • multiple materials for sound board
  • materials for strings change, new materials adopted, nylon strings, metal strings

Bowed instruments

• Europe a home for bowed instruments
• Spike fiddles, Middle east, Africa, the Orient
• Folk fiddles shaped like lutes
• bowed versions of tanbur, sato, rubab

References

• THE ARCHAEOMUSICOLOGY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST Richard J Dumbrill
• Real-Lexicon der Musikinstrumente, Curt Sachs
• The History of Musical Instruments (1940) Curt Sachs
• The Rise of Music in the Ancient World (1943), Curt Sachs

External links

• www.example.com