Psaltery
The psaltery , psalter or psaltery is the original form of the zither and dulcimer , and harp , virginal or harpsichord and clavichord were also inspired by it. Its resonance box is mostly trapezoidal, rectangular or in the shape of a pig's head and is often richly decorated.
etymology
The Latin psalterium is derived from ancient Greek ψαλτήριον, psaltērion , and stood for different stringed instruments in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, so that the meaning of the word in the sources at that time can only be understood in the context of the text. The Greek name goes back to psallo (ψάλλω, "[plucking a string]", "playing on a stringed instrument"). In ancient times, psaltērion referred to a relatively rare, vertical angle harp , not a more common lyre as suggested . A lyre (usually kithara ) was probably played by female musicians called psaltria . In the 2nd century BC The Aramaic word psanĕttērîn for harps , which goes back to psaltērion , is used in the list of instruments that the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar around 600 BC. In occupied Jerusalem ( Dan 3.5 EU ). In Babylonian and Persian this corresponded to the word pisanterin .
The original form of this type of instrument are Asian tubular bamboo zithers (example guntang ), from which board zithers developed, which have been used in China since at least the 2nd millennium BC, corresponding to the guqin type . BC gave. An ivory box was found in the palace of Nimrud in Mesopotamia , believed to be a Phoenician work from the 9th century BC. Applies. Two musicians are engraved on it, holding rectangular stringed instruments in their hands and plucking the presumably eight strings with their fingers. The old name in Akkadian is uncertain, it can perhaps be deduced from a bilingual on a clay tablet from the Greek period (middle of the 3rd century BC), on which there is an invocation to Ištar . This contains the Akkadian word SA-LI-NE-LU, which, according to Francis Galpin (1937) means a string instrument with (presumably) several strings that are plucked with a pick or with fingers. Except for this ivory find, however, no box zithers have been documented in Babylonian times. In contrast, in the New Assyrian Empire of the 7th century BC BC horizontal large angular harps. Before that in contrast to the plucked, vertical angle harps chang were played with mallets. For them the name psanĕttērîn should have applied. The style of playing with mallets probably passed from these instruments to the later psalteries.
On the one hand , psaltērion became in the Orient - closest pi-santir ("small santir ") - Persian and Arabic santir , today santur for the Iraqi and Persian dulcimer. Furthermore santir / sintir in Morocco another name, the box-necked lute Gimbri . The following are derived from the Latin psalterium (plural psalteria ): Old High German psaltari, saltari, salteri, saltâre, Middle High German psalter, salter, psalterje, salterje and New High German (the or that) psalter .
history
The origins of the psaltery go back to the oriental cultural area, where the Persian percussion instrument santur and the Arabic plucked instrument kanun developed as related musical instruments. A precursor with a triangular body has been known since the 5th century under the Latin names nabulum (hence the name nabla in mathematics) and decachordum . In the early stages of the development of European instruments in the first half of the 13th century, as numerous illustrations show, it must have been a basic stringed instrument.
The body shape of the psaltery is varied, it appears as a simple triangle, in the so-called pig's head shape, as a semi-trapezoid, trapezoidal and square. The latter form had a keyboard as early as 1404 and was further developed into the harpsichord and clavichord (which Heinrich-Arnold von Zwolle called the second type of dulce melos ).
No little confusion among the visual artists of the time caused the innovation, now plucking held with fingers or plectrum, the Psalter as the dulcimer (in Zwolle to beat with chopsticks first type of Dulce Melos called). Some of them depict the player with chopsticks, but retain the psaltery strings that are much too close together.
Giovanni Maria Canario in Rome around 1649 received special praise for his virtuoso psaltery playing. The revival of the Psaltery as Salterio in Italy since around 1700 is a very curious phenomenon in terms of instrument history. Although it is clearly set up as a dulcimer with its alternating string choirs , it was almost exclusively plucked using penne ( ring picks ).
Another, albeit much younger, variant of the psaltery is the bowed psaltery . It is not plucked or hit, but rather struck with a bow . The swing zither was a psaltery played in England in the 18th and 19th centuries with a long rectangular or wing-shaped body. When plucking, the zither was moved back and forth to create a special floating sound.
The Psalter is sung about in the spiritual song Praise the Lord, the mighty King of Honor .
See also
literature
- James W. McKinnon, Nelly Van Ree Bernard, Mary Remnant, Beryl Kenyon De Pascual: Psaltery (sawtry). In: Grove Music Online
Web links
- www.psalter-musik.de
- Martina Dreisbach: An instrument that nobody knows. In: FAZ.net . January 10, 2014.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ulrich Michels: dtv-Atlas zur Musik , Volume 1, p. 35. dtv, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-423-03022-4
- ^ Francis W. Galpin: The Music of the Sumerians and their Immediate Successors, the Babylonians and Assyrians. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1937, p. 36
- ↑ Joachim Braun: Biblical musical instruments. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Material part Volume 1, Bärenreiter, Kassel and Metzler, Stuttgart 1994, Sp. 1503–1537, here Sp. 1529
- ^ Franz Xaver Wöber: The Minne Rule by Eberhardus Cersne from Minden, 1404 with an appendix of songs . Wilhelm Braumüller, Vienna 1861, p. 245 : reverse derivation
- ↑ See Santur .
- ^ Curt Sachs : Handbook of musical instrumentation . Breitkopf and Härtel, Wiesbaden 1920; 2nd edition: Georg Olms, Hildesheim 1967, p. 137
- ^ David Crombie: Piano. Evolution, Design and Performance , London 1995, ISBN 1-871547-99-7 , p. 8.
- ↑ Johann Gottfried Walther : Musical Lexicon [...]. Wolffgang Deer, Leipzig 1732, p. 132
- ↑ masculine according to Duden-online