Psalmodicon

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A psalmodicon (also psalmodicon , salmodicon ) is a string instrument ( chordophone according to the Hornbostel-Sachs system ) which has its origin in the Scandinavian countries Norway, Sweden and Finland. It was used primarily for sacred music and preferred to profane instruments such as the violin and wind instruments.

The instrument was considered to be simple and cheap to manufacture and easy to learn.

The invention is mostly assigned to the pastor Johan Dillner (1785–1862), but this is doubted by many places. It is undisputed that Dillner contributed a lot to the spread of the instrument and wrote a lot of literature on it.

construction

A string made of cord, gut or steel was stretched over a bridge (stringed instrument) and a saddle (stringed instrument) on a box-shaped resonance body (mostly simple boards) with a simple mechanism .

Below the string there was a kind of “fingerboard” in the form of a sawtooth-shaped bar, which made it possible to grasp semitones (chromatic gradations). 20-25 steps were common.

The string could be plucked or made to sound with a bow (string instrument) .

For practical use, the steps in the “fingerboard” were marked with numbers or letters (often with glued paper), which were assigned to the words of a song (psalms). In this way, the player could play, hear and sing the melody assigned to the text without knowing the notes.

In addition to the original single-string form, two- and three-string instruments were also used, which could have additional sympathetic strings.

Psalmodicon with [bow (string instrument)]

Similar instruments

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  • Svenskt musikhistoriskt arkiv (1974): The psalmodicon was also used in Finland, in Estonia, and by the Scandinavian immigrants in North America. Diluter's pupil and colleague, Lars Paul Esbjörn, who emigrated from Sweden to America in 1849, took with him both instruments.
  • Francis William Galpin (1937): A Textbook of European Musical Instruments: Their Origin, History and Character. Williams & Norgate, Limited. - The Norwegian and Swedish Psalmodikon, of somewhat the same outline, was introduced by Johan Dillner (c. 1810) for accompanying the Church hymn-singing; it has one melody string of gut and eight sympathetic strings of metal.