Dichord
The dichord, dichordon, or dichordium (from Greek δί-χορδος , 'with two strings') generally describes a simple instrument that was already known in ancient times. It consists of a board with two strings and, like the monochord, was used as a teaching aid and to determine intervals and pitches. Later it takes on the shape of the Trumscheit , square at the bottom, tapering towards the top. The term also meant various special sound generators.
Concept history
In the early 3rd century Clement of Alexandria wrote about an instrument also called dichord, which the Assyrians had invented:
"Jam vero alia quoque gens, Cappadoces, primi invenerunt id, quod Nablium appellatur, quemadmodum Assyrii quoque Dichordon."
"Another, different nation, the Cappadocians, invented the instrument called Nabla and the Assyrians invented the dichord in the same way."
Charles Burney's guess
Charles Burney interpreted a hieroglyph that appears several times in the inscription on the Obelisco di Montecitorio from the Field of Mars in Rome as a musical instrument, although only the outline of the sign can be recognized. He saw in it a two-stringed instrument with a neck, which resembled the Colascione and called it dichord. If it only has two strings, its neck should point out that a large number of notes can be played with it. For example, if the two strings were tuned a fourth apart, you would get a heptachord , i.e. seven tones. In his work A General History of Music , he cited this among other sources as evidence that the ancient Egyptians had a distinct musical culture long before the Greeks.
Johann Nikolaus Forkel wrote a little later in 1788 that the figure was very similar to the Colascione and there was a possibility that “this ancient people could have had a real kind of scale very early on”, but saw this earlier with regard to all other forms Instruments as unlikely.
Until well into the 20th century it was believed that the instrument described by Burney was "the only ancient fingerboard instrument", the real name of which has just not yet been determined. Curt Sachs connected the tanbur with the alleged ancient instrument, which he called Nofre and noted that the instrument appeared very often on wall paintings and was used as a hieroglyph for the word "good". However, he stated: “The latest research by Loret has shown that this symbol does not represent a tan door, but a rudder; This eliminates the identification of the name Nofre with the Tanbür. ”The editor of an edition of Burney's work, Frank Mercer , noted in the 1930s that it was actually a tamboura or nofre as the Egyptians call it.
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The eminent Egyptologist Alan Gardiner published his Egyptian grammar in 1927, which contains the Gardiner list of the most important hieroglyphs. He gave the symbol for the phonogram nfr 'good' the number F35 and called it "(cattle) heart with trachea". It was subsequently recorded in Unicode as U + 13124 Egyptian Hieroglyph F035 .
Spearman's dichord
A special dichord is the instrument developed by Charles Spearman to carry out a psychological measurement method in which a test person is supposed to try to differentiate between tones that are generated by the experimenter using this dichord without the test person being able to see him.
supporting documents
- ^ Franciscus Blanchinus: De tribus generibus instrumentorum musicae veterum organicae dissertatio. Rome 1742, p. 26 full text in the Google book search - to Tab. IV fig. 3: “ Dichordum, ex eodem anaglypho. Dichordum nominat Sopater, apud Cœlium Rhodiginum lib. 9 cap. 4 & Pyctidem, see Pactidem vocat. Retulit Athenæus lib. 4. cap. 24. Dichordon Assyriis tribuitur a Clemente Alexandrino Stromat. ”Volume 1. p. 307.
- ↑ Dichordĭum . In: Heinrich August Pierer , Julius Löbe (Hrsg.): Universal Lexicon of the Present and the Past . 4th edition. tape 5 . Altenburg 1858, p. 116 ( zeno.org ).
- ^ Hermann Mendel (Ed.): Musical Conversations Lexicon. An encyclopedia of the entire musical sciences. R. Oppenheim, Berlin 1873 - Dichord Volume 3, p. 151 ( archive.org ) - Monochord Volume 7, p. 168 ( archive.org ).
- ↑ In Burney's General History of Music (1776) accompanying text: "Egyptian musical instrument of two strings represented on the broken obelisk in the Campus Martius at Rome" - the obelisk was still broken at this point.
- ^ Charles Burney: A General History of Music Band I (2nd edit. 1789), with critical and historical notes by Frank Mercer, Harcourt Brace and Co, New York 1935, pp. 170–171 ( archive.org ) - Plate I, P. 390 ( archive.org ).
- ^ Johann Nicolaus Forkel: General History of Music I. Schwickertscher Verlag, Leipzig 1788, p. 83 §§ 24-25 ( full text in the Google book search or archive.org ).
- ↑ Dichórd . In: Brockhaus Konversations-Lexikon 1894–1896, Volume 5, p. 261.
- ^ Curt Sachs: Real Lexicon of Musical Instruments . Julius Bard, Berlin 1913, p. 273 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
- ^ Charles Burney: A General History of Music Band I (2nd edit. 1789), with critical and historical notes by Frank Mercer, Harcourt Brace and Co, New York 1935, p. 170 (note).
- ↑ Mary Collins, James Drever: A First Laboratory Guide in Psychology. Third edition, revised, Methuen & Co, London 1949, p. 50 - “To obtain the threshold for pitch discrimination 1) for a low note, 2) for a high note by the Method of Limits” ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).