Tschang (harp)

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Vertical angle harp. Sassanid floor mosaic in the palace of Shapur I in Bishapur , around 260 AD. Iranian National Museum

Tschang , Persian چنگ, DMG čang , Turkish çeng , Arabic al-ǧank ( ṣanǧ ), is a historical vertical angle harp that was used in the Arab world until the 16th century, in the Iranian highlands from around 1900 BC. Was played until the 17th century AD and in Turkey until the beginning of the 18th century. At the beginning of the development there were bow harps in Mesopotamia based on the model of one around 3400 BC. Chr. Arising cylinder seal -Abdrucks of Chogha Mish . During the Elamite Empire in the west of today's Iran until the 6th century BC. Large ensembles with heavy vertical angle harps were popular. Towards the end of the Sassanid Empire (224–642), smaller angle harps, which were easier to transport, took their place. In the following Islamic period they belonged to the courtly musical instruments of classical Persian and Turkish music in Persia and the Ottoman Empire . In the heyday of Persian miniature painting from the 13th to the 17th century, harps were depicted numerous and in different variants, while their musical use was already declining. These illustrations and an epic storytelling tradition have ensured the continued fame of the Oriental and Central Asian harps. For almost all of history, the Near Eastern harps have been women's instruments.

In the musical traditions from Anatolia to Central Asia , angle harps lasted much longer than elsewhere. After the disappearance of the vertical angle harps in Ottoman Turkey, harps with the sound box in a horizontal position have survived in a few niche cultures in the Caucasus to this day, especially in the form of the Georgian changi . The disappearance of harps that once existed in many Asian countries is explained by their fragile construction, which makes tuning the strings difficult, and the proliferation of lute instruments . These are easier to handle and have a larger range.

origin

Bow harps

Blind harper with an ancient Egyptian deep-floor harp. Burial chamber of the night , around 1400 BC Chr.

The musical bows are at the beginning of all stringed instruments . On the way to the bow harp, its laterally attached resonance body was integrated into the support rod and more were added to the single string. On a clay tablet from the Uruk period at the end of the 4th millennium, the oldest image of an arched harp with three strings is preserved. Wilhelm Stauder reproduced the corresponding ideogram with the Sumerian sound value BALAG, which in earlier times probably meant musical instruments in general. With the addition of giš, “wood”, GIŠ.BALAG for a stringed instrument to distinguish it from BALAG or KUŠ.BALAG for an hourglass-shaped drum . The Akkadian word for harp was sammû .

The bow harps known from ancient Egypt from the same time ( Egyptian generally b.nt, bent, benet, Coptic voina ) can be roughly divided into four groups according to their chronological order. From the flat-bottom harp of the Old Kingdom with a shovel-shaped sound box and an average of six strings, the more curved deep-ground harp ( dzadza ) developed in the New Kingdom (1550-1070 BC ), in which the neck grows almost at right angles out of a spoon-shaped sound box. The number of strings was increased to 10 to 13, in rare cases to 19. This form has been preserved to this day in the neighboring countries to the south, for example as ennanga in Uganda and as kundi among the Azande in central Africa . Derived from the ancient Egyptian word, dzedze, nsenze, zezi or similar means stringed instruments in many African languages ​​(where sansa denotes a lamellophone ). There is also a larger than man-sized type of harp ( benet in the narrower sense) with mostly 12 to 16 strings, as found in the grave of Ramses III. (1221–1156), and as the last Egyptian bow harp in the Ptolemaic period, a new type that was curved in the shape of a crescent moon and was played standing on edge on a stool.

Imprint of a cylinder seal from Tschogha Misch , 3300-3100 BC Lower illustration: drawing of five fragments from unfired clay. Height of the harp player in the music scene about 1.5 centimeters. University of Chicago Oriental Institute

The early Bronze Age settlement of Megiddo on the eastern Mediterranean coincided with the 1st Dynasty in Egypt and Uruk in Mesopotamia . The most productive layers of the find are in the period between 3500 and 2800 BC. Dated. In the small town in what was then Canaan , the influences of both neighboring cultures combined. In addition, some independent cultural phenomena appear here for the first time. This includes a triangular framed harp that was probably identifiable in the hands of a woman and was found in a group of 20 incisions on floor stones. This from the time between 3300 and 3100 BC According to Joachim Braun, the image of a stringed instrument, which originated in BC, precedes the previously known images of Cycladic frame harps by 1000 years and is said to represent the oldest known forerunners of the chang and angle harps in the Caucasus . Braun draws a typological connection to the angle harp tor-sapl-yukh , which was played by the West Siberian chants and Mansi until the beginning of the 20th century , the free ends of which are connected by a strut. However, such an interpretation is not generally accepted, other authors want to recognize a harp or a lyre with caution .

The oldest images of bow harps in Iran remained on cylinder seals from 3300 to 3100 BC. They were excavated in Chogha Misch in the western Iranian province of Chuzestan from 1961 to 1978 by the Oriental Institute . The small sound fragments could be put together to form an orchestra image. The presumably female main character sits on the right. A servant stands facing her, holding a milk jar for her in his hand, while four musicians also seated are shown opposite. A musician plays a four-stringed bow harp, the figure below is beating a drum standing in front of it on the floor, further to the left a musician is blowing a horn, and behind it the singer holds a hand behind his ear, as oriental singers still do today, such as the Kurdish ones Do Dengbêj . It is the oldest known ensemble that accompanies a singer with a string instrument, a wind instrument and a drum. The large mug in the middle and the scene on the right make it clear that the music group is performing at a religious festival. Further images of bow harps come from Schahr-e Suchte (3000–2300 BC) in the east and south-east of Iran.

In the rock grottoes of Bhimbetka in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh , paintings have been preserved that date from the Mesolithic (older than 5000 BC) to historical times. In addition to numerous depictions of animals, these include scenes from the Bronze Age of ritual dances with harp players and standing drummers. According to the descriptions in the Vedas , the same line-up as in Tschoga Misch - bow harp, flute, drum and song - was in the 1st millennium BC. Commonly used in ancient India to accompany dancers. The most common Sanskrit name for bow harps was vina . Literary evidence is the Brahmanas (before the 6th century BC), according to which the harp is said to have had "a hundred strings" ( satatantri ). In the first centuries AD, stick zithers and long-necked lutes appeared under the name vina , while the bow harps disappeared from India towards the end of the first millennium. They have only survived on the fringes of Indian cultural influence, the best known is the saung gauk in Myanmar, while the waji is rarely played in their retreat in northeastern Afghanistan.

Angle harps

Ancient Egyptian angle harp of the Third Intermediate Period (1075–652 BC)

The period of use of bow harps in India was short compared to Egypt and Mesopotamia, and angle harps never became indigenous to India. These have changed around 1900 BC. Developed simultaneously in Mesopotamia and Egypt and gradually replaced the bow harps. The early angle harps consisted of a resonance box with a hole at one end, through which the string support rod was usually inserted at a right angle. The last known image of a bow harp is probably a cylinder seal that was created shortly after the Ur-III period (20th / 19th century BC). The Sumerian harps of the transition phase (around 2000–1750 BC) between the three-stringed early bow harps and the angle harps, which are mostly only available as small representations on unrolled seals, are difficult to interpret and are accordingly carefully described as bent-bow harps. They were obviously held in the vertical with the resonance body and had a segment of a circle set at an obtuse angle, so that an arc shape with a clear kink in the middle results. Such a very small harp from Ur around 2540 BC. BC had four strings. The player holds her far from him with outstretched arms. The kink is even clearer on a harp of the same type from the 1st Dynasty of Ur (around 2500–2350 BC) on a cylinder seal imprint showing animals playing music. Seven animals move on their hind legs towards a lion sitting on a throne. A donkey carries a harp on which four strings are depicted, but seven sound-pegs above the neck. In fact, it is very likely a seven-string instrument, in which the missing three strings had to be omitted from the illustration for reasons of space.

Images of equally small harps from Šuruppak and Tell Agreb show five to six strings. The always male players hold their instruments on their left shoulder while standing and pluck the strings with their right hand. These small portable harps of the 3rd millennium were new to Mesopotamia, they were probably introduced by nomads because they were easier to transport.

Four types of angle harps were distinguished in ancient times:

  • Vertical angle harps as in Sippar with the resonance body held upwards and a horizontal string carrier to which the strings are tied with cord windings or (and additional) pitch pegs. They could be large or small and easier to carry. Numerous examples are known from the Amarna period (14th / 13th century BC) in Egypt, when small models appeared that were played by women. This right-angled harp remained a women's instrument during the New Kingdom .
  • Smaller horizontal angular harps that appear on the reliefs of Assyrian palaces from the 9th to 7th centuries BC. BC had nine strings compared to the simultaneous vertical angle harps with 20-30 strings.
  • Angled harps, the legs of which were inclined at an acute angle of up to 45 degrees and
  • especially large standing harps in Egypt.

During the Assyrian era , the angle harp must have been the most respected musical instrument. The ideogram representing an angle harp with the sound value ḪUL and the meaning “to cheer”, “joy” and “cheerfulness” is possibly related to the use of the harps at large festive events and refers to their popularity. The earliest real angle harp (with four strings) is a clay figure from Sippar on the Euphrates from 1900 BC. In the 2nd millennium the cultural focus shifted to Elam in western Iran. The initially small Elamite angle harps were used in the 1st millennium BC. BC larger, as can be seen on a metal bowl from Arjan in western Iran (650 BC or 620–580 BC). A festival is shown in five rows around the bowl, with two large vertical angular harps, a lyre, wind instruments and a long-necked lute in the upper row.

Horizontal angle harp with nine strings on an Assyrian relief in Nimrud. Model for the Caucasian harps and the Central Asian "steppe harps"
Vertical angle harps on an Assyrian relief in Nineveh. Model for the medieval Persian harps

The horizontal Assyrian angle harps, as they are found in the northwest palace of Nimrud around 870 BC. And at the southwest palace of Niniveh from the 7th century BC. BC are shown, had nine strings. The men shown in side view strike the strings with a long plectrum in their right hand. The string carrier and the small strings are on the side away from the body. In contrast to the vertical harps, the horizontal harps were compact and robust enough to be transported on horses. Presumably Scythians who had served in the Assyrian army brought such harps from Mesopotamia with them when they returned to their Central Asian homeland. From the 5th century BC there owned Because of their large distribution region in the Eurasian steppe from the Black Sea to the Chinese border region Xinjiang, the instruments generally known as “steppe harps” have five strings. The Pasyryk harp from the 4th century BC, excavated in a high valley of the Altai . Chr. Has been preserved enclosed in a block of ice. During the Han dynasty (25–220 AD), the vertical angle harp came to China under the name shu konghou , where it was played until the Song dynasty (960–1279). It later reached Japan with the spread of Buddhism through Korea ( konghu ). The Japanese kugo was probably only in use between the 8th and 10th centuries.

A the tchang similar precursor is the vertical angle Elamitic harp of 7-8. Century BC Chr. From Kul-e Farah with a rounded resonance body, which is at an acute angle to the string carrier. In Iran the number of strings increased from four (1900 BC in Sippar) to seven (Kul-e Farah) to 14-21 on large harps on Assyrian reliefs from the 7th century BC. BC, for example on " Assurbanipal's garden festival relief" at the north palace of Niniveh (645–635). The garden festival relief shows Assurbanipal at a banquet table in the garden of his palace on the occasion of his victory over the Elamites with five angle harp players. On the second relief of the palace an ensemble with seven vertical and two horizontal angle harps can be seen. The musicians leave the defeated Elamite city of Madaktu . 200 years later, the Greeks took over the harps from the Assyrians.

During the Seleucid rule (around 320–63 BC) all harps were variants of the vertical angle harps that differed only in the shape of the resonance body. In the pictures, the harp is always played by a woman. Terracotta figures show women holding their harp with both hands at the bottom of the string support, with the resonance body protruding vertically upwards past the side of the head. Some players wear curly hair with flowers in them or a headdress over their hair. These vertical angle harps, including the chang , were held close to the body with the sound box and the small strings.

Sassanid king Bahram with his harpist Azade on a gazelle hunt. Fragment of a Minai bowl from Kashan , 13th century

The harps of the Greek influenced Parthians from the middle of the 2nd century BC. Although they are similar to the Greek models, it is unclear whether there is a direct connection between them. In Greece there was from the 5th century BC AD vertical angle harps, the resonance body of which protruded from the string support at right angles or at an obtuse angle, widened towards the top and ended in a bow. The harps held close to the body with the short strings formed the basis for the creation of a virtuoso Greek art music. While from the 3rd century BC BC the influence of Hellenistic Greece in the form of Graeco-Buddhist fine arts can be seen in Bactria in the east of the Parthian Empire, Greek rule had little effect on the music and the musical instruments used there. A musician on the sculpture frieze of the Buddhist sanctuary of Airtam (near Termiz in southeast Uzbekistan) from the 2nd century AD, belonging to the Bactrian culture , holds an angular harp with a vertical, upwardly widening resonance box on her left shoulder. The string carrier goes off the sound box at an acute angle. The strings are plucked with both hands without a pick. In Bactria the limit of distribution of the Central Asian angle harps was compared to the Indian bow harps of Gandhara .

During the Sassanid Empire (224–642), harps were very popular in music at the royal houses and probably also with the general population. The Persian poet Firdausi (940 / 41–1020) describes in his semi-mythical heroic epic Shāhnāme an incident from the life of the Sassanid king Bahram V (r. 420–438), who was known for his extraordinary hunting skills and for his musical flair . The ruler rides on a dromedary, which is adorned with gold and silver stirrups and a precious saddle cloth, on the hunt for gazelles. Behind him sits his harpist Azade, referred to by Firdausi as čangzan , who makes demands on him that cannot be met, such as how to hunt three gazelles. The famous hunter uses a two-headed arrow to shoot both horns from the head of a billy gazelle. He kills three animals with arrows and a sling and finally also the malicious Azade by trampling her and her harp with the dromedary. The story is an example of the retention of a cultural tradition even after the conversion to Islam around 700. It was depicted many times in the fine arts and is a popular motif for miniature paintings and ceramics from the 13th century.

Hunting scene in Taq-e Bostan . Boats with harpists surround the Sassanid king, who has just killed two boars.

After the Assyrian period, towards the end of the Sassanid rule around 600 AD, the horizontal angle harps, which are depicted on the rock reliefs of Taq-e Bostan , once again briefly blossomed . On both side walls of the cut in the rock Ivan a hunting scene is illustrated. On the right side is King Chosrau II (r. 590–628) hunting boars in a boat and bows his bow with which he kills two boars. The player of the horizontal angle harp was the only musician who was allowed to take a seat in the royal boat. It is surrounded by other boats in which musicians play vertical angle harps next to each other.

The vertical harps in Taq-e Bostan's escort boats represent the new type of lever harp that appeared in the 6th century. With her, the resonance box is extended downwards by a rod on the back and one on the front. The string carrier is attached at right angles to these two bars, which gives this connection a higher bending moment. In the first centuries AD, angle harps came to China via the Silk Road . Similar lever harps from the 8th century were preserved in the Shōsōin treasury , which belongs to the Buddhist temple complex Tōdai-ji in the Japanese city of Nara . Some of the musical instruments collected there are believed to have come from China. This type of harp is predominantly depicted in the medieval Persian paintings.

etymology

Francis W. Galpin (1937) traces the Assyrian word for harp, zak'k'al , back to the Sumerian symbol ZAG-SAL ("fame, honor"). A tablet from the 7th century BC. BC commemorates the restoration of the city of Babylon and its temples, which was celebrated with singing and the use of zak'k'al . The sign also includes the meaning "wood". The Arabic čangal ( tschangal ) goes back to zak'k'al , which in Persian was shortened to čang ( tschang ) or čank .

The word chang was used in Persian to refer to various objects with claws and claws as well as to arched elements and was also a collective term for a number of different musical instruments in Central and Southeast Asia. From chang is probably Burmese saung ( "Harp") on behalf of the Burmese arched harp Saung derived (specified as gauk , "bent"). In Persian and Pashtun ( čangal ) there is the further meaning “fingers outstretched like a claw”, a pictorial description that refers to the position of the harpist's hand when striking the strings. In pre-Islamic times harps on the Arabian Peninsula were called sanc, cang or similar in Arabic , and canga in India .

In the 12th century at the latest, the word chang reached the Caucasus , where it referred to a small horizontal angle harp, which is still played in Georgian with the noun ending -i as changi in the mountainous region of Svaneti . Tschang appears several times in the Georgian national epic The Recke in the Tiger Skin , which Shota Rustaveli wrote in the 12th century. The enumeration of changsa, barbitsa da nasa, speaks of “harp, lute and flute”, which can be heard at a festival for joy. The combination satschang-dapeni , literally "harp and drum", generally stood for "music" as a symbol for joy and solemnity, whereby dapeni with dap-i , a frame drum also imported from Iran, which is called daira in Persian , and dabdabi , related to the earlier name of the cylinder drum doli .

Kopuz is a Central Asian lute, chang-kopuz referred to the same metal mouth harp in Central Asia, in the Afghan music simply as chang is known, suggesting Pahlavi means "hook". In the Maqam tradition of Bukhara , the dulcimer chang belongs to a chamber orchestra.

Since the 7th century, the Arabic borrowing ǧank ( dschank ) referred to the harp adopted in medieval Arabic music. The model adopted from Iran was called ǧank ʿaǧamī and was usually represented as an acute-angled harp with a vertical resonator. An Arabic author from the early 10th century thought cymbals were a Persian invention. Its general name in early Arabic literature, ṣanǧ ( sandsch , plural ṣunūǧ ), probably also comes from the Persian ( zang ), at the same time ṣanǧ was a term for the Arabic harp that occurs less often than ǧank . The Arabic-Persian word context for harp was preserved in a corrupted form in the name of the Nuristani bow harp waji , which today only exists in a few remnants .

distribution

Arabic music

In the pre-Islamic period ( Jāhiliyya ), musical entertainment was primarily a matter for women. Singing girls ( qaina, Pl. Qiyān , etymological descendants of the biblical Cain ) entertained the guests in wine taverns. According to a verse by the poet al-Aʿshā Maimūn ibn Qais (around 570–625), besides the drinking cup, the temptations there included the harp and the singing of the girls. Other pre-Islamic Arabic string instruments were kirān (a lute instrument whose name could be derived from kinnor ), barbaṭ , the other lutes muwattar and murabbaʿ (probably with a flat, rectangular body) and mi sowiezafa (plural maʿāzif , zither or psaltery ?).

In the Umayyad and early Abbasid periods (7th / 8th centuries), the harp adopted by the Sassanids does not seem to have been particularly widespread. The Iranian-born author Ibn Ḫurdāḏbih († around 912) wrote one of the first treatises on the music of the Orient and described the musical instruments of the time with imaginative decoration. He traced their origins back to some of the mythical figures mentioned in the Old Testament . According to this, Matūšalaḫ invented the ʿūd , one of his numerous grandchildren, Lamech (in the Arabic tradition Lamak) invented the drum ṭabl and his son Jubal invented the lyre kinnor . According to Ibn Ḫurdāḏbih, the introduction of the first flute ( ṣaffāra ) goes back to the Kurds , while the Persians are said to have invented reed instruments and the harp čang only later . In al-Masʿūdī (around 895–957) the maʿāzif go back to Ḍilāl (the biblical Zilla ). Maʿāzif was also the generic term for stringed instruments with unabridged strings, i.e. harps, zithers and lyres . According to this representation, the Arabs themselves did not produce their own musical instruments. In fact, the Arabs took over after the conquest of Sassanidenreichs in the 7th century from the Iranian music the lute tanbour (Arabic ṭunbūr ), the double reed surnāy , the harp (Arabic ǧank ) and later the plucked lute Rubab .

In his “Great Book of Music” ( Kitāb al-Mūsīqā al-kabīr ) the philosopher and music theorist al-Farabi (around 870–950) mentions various string instruments that require a separate string for each note. One has 15 diatonic , another 25 chromatically tuned strings. A difficult-to-identify illustration in al-Farabi's work is a šāh-rūd , which he distinguished from the harp ǧank . This instrument, introduced in Samarqand at the beginning of the 10th century, was probably not a harp, but a form of zither or arch lute .

Abū Hanīfa (699–769), Mālik ibn Anas (around 715–795) and other Islamic legal scholars of the 8th and 9th centuries declared singing ( ghināʾ ) and the use of musical instruments as sin. At most, the ḥudāʾ , the mumbled or sung verses of the camel drivers, were allowed. The instruments used by professional musicians appear in the prohibited lists, including the sounds ʿūd, barbaṭ and rabāb , the harp and the flute nāy , because they have been associated with the enjoyment of wine and gambling. Regardless of this, there were still fans of this pre-Islamic music. According to the Kitāb al-Aghānī ("Book of Songs") by Abū l-Faraj al-Isfahānī (897–967), Ibn Muḥriz († around 715), son of a guard from Persia of the Kaaba in Mecca , was due to illness Leprosy forced to live as a traveling musician. He must have been one of the most famous musicians and was nicknamed " ṣannaǧ (harp player) of the Arabs".

Arabic harps were rarer than Persian ones. Among the instruments with unshortened strings, the miafzafa was the most widespread in the Abbasid period and was used to accompany singing, as it is called in the Kitāb al-Aghānī . The harp was comparatively less common. The singer played the harp himself, otherwise he was accompanied by a wind instrument, ʿud or tanbur . In Kitaab al-Aghani no string instruments are mentioned, these seem to have been thus used only in folk music.

No harps have survived from the entire Arab-Islamic period. In the case of the traditional illustrations, it is therefore not clear to what extent the painters used real harps as a model or reproduced traditional representations in an imaginative way. The medieval Arabic harp depictions mostly show a vertical angled harp with an acute-angled string carrier. Such a diatonic-tuned Iranian angle harp ( ǧank ʿaǧamī ) with 34 strings is shown as a construction drawing in the Kitāb al-adwār ("Book of Cycles") from the 13th century by the music theorist Ṣafi al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Muʾmin. The resonance body ( munḥanā, "curved back") ends at the top in a round bird's head and is extended below the string support by a short leg ( dasta ). The tracing back of the bird's head motif to ancient Egyptian models cannot be clearly proven; it could also have been adopted from China. The entire instrument is richly decorated with vegetative ornaments, which probably corresponded more to the current art of ornament than the harps were actually decorated in that way. On a miniature in the manuscript Kašf al-humūm ("Elimination of Worries"), which was probably written by an author named Saʿid al-Dīn († 1304) living in Mamluk Egypt, the number of strings is about one for illustrative reasons A dozen, while the text states that some harps have up to 100 strings.

A second type of harp, called derank miṣrī (“Egyptian harp”), was apparently less well known . On a wood carving from the 11th century in an Egyptian palace, one of the figures plays a rectangular frame harp (or box zither), which, unusually, was strung with strings on both sides of a board that served as a sound box. Mamluk court culture included elaborately staged festivals with shadow theaters ( Karagöz ) imported from China and concerts in which female singers ( qiyān ) performed and, according to numerous illustrations, the musicians played lutes and harps.

Harps completely disappeared from Arabic music in the 16th century. A few harps have survived in folk music only on the southern fringes associated with African culture. These include the ardin played by women in Mauritania , the only preserved angle harp in Africa; as well as the bow harps, which probably came up the Nile to East Africa in the 1st millennium .

Persian music

Three musicians with a vertical angle harp, spiked violin ( kamanča ) and frame drum. Persian miniature in a work by the poet Muhammad 'Assar († 1377) of Tabriz , 1523

From the 7th century onwards, the čang was one of the most popular musical instruments in the Orient, alongside the kink-necked lute barbaṭ (later ʿūd ), the dulcimer anqā , the zither qānūn , the Persian string lute ghichak , the reed flute nāy , the double-reed flute dūnāy , the double-reed instrument mizmār , the frame drums daf and dāira and the kettle drums ṭabl and naqqāra . In addition to the vertical angle harp Cang there was in the 10th century, especially in Khorasan , the horizontal angle Persian harp van , the spiked fiddle kamanča that hourglass Cuba and the goblet drum dunbaq . Wind instruments for loud music outdoors were added. The harpist Farrūhī († 1020) at the court of the Ghaznawid conqueror Mahmud of Ghazni praised the cultivated musical culture: "Harps sound in the middle of the green, singers sing their divine songs."

After the Mongolian Ilkhan from Central Asia brought Iran under their rule in the 13th century, they took over existing traditions like the Arabs before and developed a preference for the harp. Firdausi's Shāhnāme and the Chamse (“Five” Jewels), a collection of five epics by the poet Nezāmi , were provided with book illustrations that offered ample opportunity to depict harps. In Haft Peykar (“The Seven Portraits”) Nezāmi tells another story of the Sassanid ruler Bahram V. It is about Bahram's marriage to seven princesses from seven countries. Every weekday he visits a different woman in her pavilion, which is each painted with a different color. In the pictures, the couple sits in front of the entrance and is entertained by musicians, including harp players, or the princess tells a story to the ruler in the pavilion.

The harps were usually part of quiet court chamber music. They are always vertical angle harps with a slightly curved resonance body that tapers towards the top; In the miniatures from the 14th century to around 1600, the upper end is designed in numerous variations as a stylized bird's head. These models, which were particularly widespread in western Iran and Iraq, had a rounded resonance body. A type played in the east ( Afghanistan and Uzbekistan ) with an angular resonance body and a straight top can be distinguished from this in the illustrations from the 16th century . The music theorist Darvish Ali Changi (c. 1550-1620), who was named after the harpist, was referring to the latter instrument, who lived at the court of the Janid dynasty (Astarchanids, 1599–1785) in Bukhara. His work Risalei Musiqi is a valuable source for Central Asian music theory and practice. Ali Changi described the harp as the queen of all musical instruments, although it is unclear to what extent it was still used in his time (although it was the most common throughout the 16th century musical instrument represented in Persian illustrations) was widespread.

The writing about music Kanz at-tuḥaf ("Treasury of Gifts") , written by the otherwise unknown Ḥasan Kāšānī in Isfahan , dates from around 1435 . The work makes a valuable contribution to Persian music history, because it describes in detail the construction of nine musical instruments and classifies them into two groups. The “perfect” musical instruments include the plucked ʿūd and rubāb , the string laešak ( ghichak ), the double reed instrument mizmār and the blown flute pīše ( pisheh ). With the stringed instruments gathered in this group, the strings can be shortened on a fingerboard, with the "imperfect" musical instruments, the strings cannot be shortened. The author classifies the čang as the most “perfect” instrument in this group , the other “imperfect” ones are the dulcimer nuzha ( nozheh, double number of strings like the kanun ), the zither kanun ( nīme-ye nuzha, “half nuzha “) And moghnī , a lute- like string instrument without a fingerboard. The criteria for such a classification are not given. The reason why the author still puts the open string instruments under the wind instruments is probably due to their lower ability to imitate the human voice. It has been regarded as the purest and most perfect musical instrument since the classification of musical instruments by al-Farabi.

In the 15th century, the Central Asian poet Ahmadi had seven string instruments compete against each other in a poetic genre called munāzere (“controversial poem ”) in Chagatai , including the Mongolian box zither yatugan , the Indian stab zither kingra ( kinnari- vina ) and the long-necked tanbur . The poet Fuzuli (1498–1556) brought the six instruments tanbur, ʿūd, qānun, čang, ney (reed flute) and deff (frame drum) together in such a literary dispute . This line-up resulted in an ensemble in which each instrument was clearly audible from the harmony.

The Persian poet Ibn Ghaybī († 1435) described the shape of the čang in detail . He stated the length of the resonance box as 109 centimeters and the length of the string support as 81 centimeters. 24 or 25, with some instruments 35 goat hair strings were adjusted by metal tuning rods ( mālawī ). The ceiling of the sound box was made of animal skin. The harps were played with the fingers of both hands.

The origin of the Persian chopping board santūr with 72 strings today is obscure. Its forerunner may have developed from a horizontal angle harp from the Assyrian period. The current form of the santur is first known from images from the 15th century. The work Chamsa by the Persian poet Nezāmi (1141-1209), which has been handed down in a manuscript from 1481, contains two miniatures showing women making music with a chang , a lute and a santur . According to the story, the musicians play for the Sassanid king Bahram V (ruled around 420 - around 438) and a princess. In one of the miniatures, the harp-playing slave girl Azada rides a camel with Bahram. The harp was often depicted on miniatures in chamber music ensembles by women or men during the Safavid period (ruled 1501–1722). The women depicted in the Persian miniatures who, in addition to the instruments mentioned, also play, sing and dance frame drums in front of the king or prince and the guests surrounding him, were probably not nobles, but generally low-ranking employees of the court.

As a possible explanation for the disappearance of the Winkelharp, Bo Lawergren (2003) refers to a little-known satirical poem by a certain Ahmadi, which he wrote in Persia or Transoxania in the first half of the 15th century . It is about a competition of eight personified string instruments that extol their own virtues at the expense of others. All the other instruments on the harp complain that it cannot keep the pitch and has to be tuned constantly. The harp replies that it is preferred to be played in the presence of kings. The latter may have been one reason why the angle harp, in view of its structural problems, lasted into the Safavid period. Because of its more solid construction, the box zither qānūn has an advantage over the angled harp and the lower number of strings with the same pitch range speaks for lute instruments like the ʿūd . After the classical Persian music had almost disappeared due to political unrest among the Qajars in the 18th century, the long-necked lute tar and the santūr gradually appeared instead of ʿūd and qānūn . From the second half of the 19th century, French military bands also came into fashion.

Ottoman music

Çeng at Mevlana Müzesi in Konya

In the 14th century, the Ottomans were essentially busy expanding and consolidating their empire and establishing an administration. A century later, after the conquest of Constantinople Opel in 1453, the desired sultan then, Herat replace as a cultural center. From there, from Baghdad , the Arab countries and from the capitals of the Iranian highlands came the influences for the development of Ottoman music , which was finally given an independent character from the 17th century. A description of the musical instruments played in Constantinople in the 15th century was similar to another by the Persian musician Abd al-Qadir († 1435) from Maragha in northwestern Iran.

From the 15th to the 18th century, the çeng harp, which is usually 24-string, was played in court music in the Ottoman Empire, especially within the harem . The women present at the performances except for the sultan belonged to the sultan's family or to the servants. The musicians performed instrumental pieces or accompanied a singing voice. In addition to the harp, their instruments were the string lute fasıl kemençesi , the pan flute miskal , frame drums ( dayra ) and the pair of kettle drums nakkare , while the dancers in the pictures of the 17th and 18th centuries mostly castanets ( çarpara ) instead of today's finger cymbals ( parmak zili ) held in their hands. With the exception of the pair of kettle drums used mainly in ceremonial (male) military music ( mehterhâne ), the instruments mentioned belonged specifically to dance music. Other string instruments played in court chamber music were the long-necked lute tanbur and kopuz and the Arabic zither kanun . The çeng was considered a “female” instrument from the 15th to 17th centuries and was apparently only played by women called çengi . The portrayed harpists on the miniature paintings reinforce this impression. The dancers in the houses were also called çengi . They were distinguished from the effeminate male dancers ( köçek ) who always performed outdoors.

In addition to this large harp ( açık hava çengi ) played while standing, there was a smaller version with around twelve strings ( kucak çengi ) that a seated musician held on his thigh. Both variants were played by men and women.

Çeng. Drawing by Melchior Lorck , 1576

The musician Ahmedoğlu Şükrullah, who lived in the first half of the 15th century, was one of the first to conduct an investigation into music in the Ottoman Empire, in which he mentioned nine musical instruments. According to his description, the harp has a long sound box made of a block of wood, which tapers towards the end and is slightly curved inwards like the neck of a horse. Apricot or cypress wood is used and gazelle skin is used as a cover. A wooden stick, to which the 24 to 25 strings are attached, runs centrally under the skin. They are tuned diatonic and are made of horse hair or silk. The player plucks with both hands with his thumb and forefinger. He was followed at the end of the 15th century by al-Lādhiqī, who listed 18 musical instruments.

In 1576, the Danish painter Melchior Lorck (around 1527 - after 1594), who had lived in Constantinople for four years in the 1550s, drew a çeng with over 30 strings. The strings are tied to tuning pegs arranged in two rows. Judging by other illustrations, this was a typical Ottoman type of fortification. The short strings were plucked with the left hand and the more distant long strings with the right hand.

The Ottoman travel writer Evliya Çelebi (1611 - after 1683) handed down the most detailed description of Ottoman music in his Seyahatnâme , in which he presented 76 musical instruments. He knew about the origin of the harp: “The çeng was invented by Pythagoras to comfort Solomon . The harp is a large instrument in the shape of an elephant's trunk. It has 40 strings and produces an amazing sound. Only a few can play it because it is a difficult instrument. ”Around 1660 Çelebi found only ten harpists in Constantinople. So he justifies the small number with the difficulty of playing the instrument. On the other hand, Çelebi put the number of lute players in the city at over 2000. In the 18th century, the feminine harp, which is considered to be soft, as well as other musical instruments of classical makam music, could no longer assert itself against the new influences that came primarily from the west. Louder-sounding instruments like the clarinet took their place.

In the course of the return to a musical tradition that was considered to be authentic, efforts have been made since the 1980s to reintroduce angle harps in new construction methods into Turkish music. The çeng in a new guise is a solid frame harp, the strings of which are tensioned on tuning mechanisms . The Turkish instrument maker Feridun Özgören and the American ethnomusicologist Robert Labaree developed such a model.

literature

  • Şehvar Beşiroğlu, Ali Ergur: Modern Disappearance and Postmodern Rebirth of the Çeng (Turkish Harp). (PDF; 7.8 MB) 5th Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology, “Music and its instruments”, Cité de la Musique, Couvent des Cordeliers, Musée du Quai de Branly, Paris, 26-29. October 2009, pp. 1-24.
  • Virginia Danielson, Scott Marius, Dwight Reynolds (Eds.): The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Vol. 6: The Middle East. Routledge, New York / London 2002.
  • Jean During, Zia Mirabdolbaghi, Dariush Safvat: The Art of Persian Music . Mage Publishers, Washington DC 1991, ISBN 0-934211-22-1 , pp. 101-105 ( The harp or chang ) and 250 ( Schahnameh illustration).
  • Henry George Farmer : Islam. Series: Heinrich Besseler , Max Schneider (Hrsg.): Music history in pictures. Volume III. Music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Delivery 2. VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1966
  • Henry George Farmer: A History of Arabian Music to the XIIIth Century. (First edition. 1929) Luzac & Company, London 1973 ( online at Internet Archive )
  • Francis W. Galpin: The Music of the Sumerians and their Immediate Successors, the Babylonians and Assyrians. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1937; 2nd unchanged edition: Strasbourg University Press 1955. (2010, ISBN 978-0-521-18063-4 )
  • Ḥosayn-ʿAlī Mallāḥ: Čang. In: Encyclopædia Iranica , December 15, 1990
  • Bo Lawergren: Harp. In: Encyclopædia Iranica, (2003) March 6, 2012
  • Bo Lawergren: The Rebirth of the Angular. (PDF; 5.5 MB) Early Music. 17, No. 2, summer 2011, pp. 26–31.
  • Bo Lawergren: The Beginning and End of Angular Harps. In: Ellen Hickmann, Ricardo Eichmann (Hrsg.): Studies on music archeology I. String instruments in an archaeological context. (Orient Archeology, Volume 6). Verlag Marie Leidorf, Rahden / Westfalen 2000, pp. 53–64.
  • Bo Lawergren: Angular Harps Through the Ages. A causal history. (PDF; 3.1 MB) In: Arnd Adje Both, Ricardo Eichmann, Ellen Hickmann, Lars-Christian Koch (eds.) Challenges and goals of musical archeology. Papers from the 5th Symposium of the International Study Group on Music Archeology at the Ethnological Museum, State Museums Berlin, September 19–23, 2006. (Orient-Archeology 22nd Studies in Music Archeology 6). Rahden / Westfalen 2008, pp. 261–281.
  • Bo Lawergren, Sylvia Sowa-Winter, Gerhard Kubik , Gretel Schwörer-Kohl: Harps. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . (MGG) Sachteil 4, Kassel 1996, Sp. 39–116.

Web links

Individual evidence

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  4. ↑ Hans Hickmann: Ancient Egyptian Music. In: Bertold Spuler (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Orientalistik. 1. Dept. The Near and Middle East. Supplementary Volume IV. Oriental Music. EJ Brill, Leiden / Cologne 1970, p. 158; Hans Hickmann: harp . In: Friedrich Blume (Ed.): The music in past and present . Volume 5. 1956, Col. 1522 f.
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  7. ↑ Pinhas Delougaz, Helene J. Kantor: Chogha Mish. Vol. I. The First Five Seasons of Excavations 1961-1971. Part 1: text. (PDF; 43.0 MB) Oriental Institute Publications, Vol. 101. The University of Chicago, Chicago 1996, p. 147 f.
  8. ↑ Veronika Meshkeris: Musical Phenomena of Convergency in Eurasian Rock Art. In: Ellen Hickmann, Ricardo Eichmann (Ed.): Studies on musical archeology I. String instruments in an archaeological context. (Orient-Archäologie, Volume 6) Verlag Marie Leidorf, Rahden / Westfalen 2000, p. 74; P. 83: Plate VII, fig. 5, 6
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