The hammered dulcimer (also called the hammer dulcimer) is a percussion-stringed instrument which consists of strings typically stretched over a trapezoidal resonant sound board. The hammered dulcimer is set before the musician, who in more traditional styles may sit cross-legged on the floor, or in a more modern style may stand or sit at a wooden support with legs. The player holds a small spoon-shaped mallet hammer in each hand to strike the strings. The Graeco-Roman word dulcimer ("sweet song") derives from the Latindulcis (sweet) and the Greek melos (song). The dulcimer, in which the strings are beaten with small hammers, originated from the psaltery, in which the strings are plucked.[1]
Hammered dulcimers and other similar instruments are traditionally played in Iraq, India, Iran, Southwest Asia, China, Korea, and parts of Southeast Asia, Central Europe (Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Czech Republic, Switzerland (particularly Appenzell), Austria and Bavaria), the Balkans, Eastern Europe (Ukraine and Belarus), and Scandinavia. The instrument is also played in the United Kingdom (Wales, East Anglia, Northumbria), and the United States, where its traditional use in folk music saw a revival in the late 20th century.[2]
History
The santur, a type of hammered dulcimer, originates from the Middle East. The earliest evidence comes from Assyrian and Babylonian stone carvings dated to 669 BC, showing the instrument being played while hanging from the player's neck. This instrument was traded and travelled to different parts of the Middle East. Musicians modified the original design over the centuries, yielding a wide array of musical scales and tunings. The original santur was likely made with wood and stone and strung with goat intestines. The Babylonian santur was the ancestor of the harp, yangqin, harpsichord, qanun, cimbalom and hammered dulcimers.[3]
In Western Europe, a hammered dulcimer first appears in textual and iconographic sources from the early 15th century.[4]
Strings and tuning
Major scale pattern on a diatonic hammered dulcimer tuned in 5thsAn early version of the hammered dulcimer accompanied by lute, tambourine and bagpipeThe Salzburger hackbrett, a chromatic version
A dulcimer usually has two bridges, a bass bridge near the right and a treble bridge on the left side. The bass bridge holds up bass strings, which are played to the left of the bridge. The treble strings can be played on either side of the treble bridge. In the usual construction, playing them on the left side gives a note a fifth higher than playing them on the right of the bridge.
The dulcimer comes in various sizes, identified by the number of strings that cross each of the bridges. A 15/14, for example, has 15 strings crossing the treble bridge and 14 crossing the bass bridge, and can span three octaves. The strings of a hammered dulcimer are usually found in pairs, two strings for each note (though some instruments have three or four strings per note). Each set of strings is tuned in unison and is called a course. As with a piano, the purpose of using multiple strings per course is to make the instrument louder, although as the courses are rarely in perfect unison, a chorus effect usually results like a mandolin. A hammered dulcimer, like an autoharp, harp, or piano, requires a tuning wrench for tuning, since the dulcimer's strings are wound around tuning pins with square heads. (Ordinarily, 5mm "zither pins" are used, similar to, but smaller in diameter than piano tuning pins, which come in various sizes ranging upwards from "1/0" or 7mm.)
The strings of the hammered dulcimer are often tuned according to a circle of fifths pattern.[5][6] Typically, the lowest note (often a G or D) is struck at the lower right-hand of the instrument, just to the left of the right-hand (bass) bridge. As a player strikes the courses above in sequence, they ascend following a repeating sequence of two whole steps and a half step. With this tuning, a diatonic scale is broken into two tetrachords, or groups of four notes. For example, on an instrument with D as the lowest note, the D major scale is played starting in the lower-right corner and ascending the bass bridge: D – E – F♯ – G. This is the lower tetrachord of the D major scale. At this point the player returns to the bottom of the instrument and shifts to the treble strings to the right of the treble bridge to play the higher tetrachord: A – B – C♯ – D. The player can continue up the scale on the right side of the treble bridge with E – F♯ – G – A – B, but the next note will be C, not C♯, so he or she must switch to the left side of the treble bridge (and closer to the player) to continue the D major scale. See the drawing on the left above, in which "DO" would correspond to D (see Movable do solfège).
The shift from the bass bridge to the treble bridge is required because the bass bridge's fourth string G is the start of the lower tetrachord of the G scale. The player could go on up a couple notes (G – A – B), but the next note will be a flatted seventh (C natural in this case), because this note is drawn from the G tetrachord. This D major scale with a flatted seventh is the mixolydian mode in D.
The same thing happens as the player goes up the treble bridge – after getting to La (B in this case), one has to go to the left of the treble bridge. Moving from the left side of the bass bridge to the right side of the treble bridge is analogous to moving from the right side of the treble bridge to the left side of the treble bridge.
The whole pattern can be shifted up by three courses, so that instead of a D-major scale one would have a G-major scale, and so on. This transposes one equally tempered scale to another. Shifting down three courses transposes the D-major scale to A-major, but of course the first Do-Re-Mi would be shifted off the instrument.
This tuning results in most, but not all, notes of the chromatic scale being available. To fill in the gaps, many modern dulcimer builders include extra short bridges at the top and bottom of the soundboard, where extra strings are tuned to some or all of the missing pitches. Such instruments are often called "chromatic dulcimers" as opposed to the more traditional "diatonic dulcimers".
The tetrachord markers found on the bridges of most hammered dulcimers in the English-speaking world were introduced by the American player and maker Sam Rizzetta in the 1960s.[7]
In the Alps there are also chromatic dulcimers with crossed strings, which are in a whole tone distance in every row. This chromatic Salzburger hackbrett was developed in the mid 1930s from the diatonic hammered dulcimer by Tobi Reizer and his son along with Franz Peyer and Heinrich Bandzauner. In the postwar period it was one of the instruments taught in state-sponsored music schools.[8]
Hammered dulcimers of non-European descent may have other tuning patterns, and builders of European-style dulcimers sometimes experiment with alternate tuning patterns.
Hammers
The instrument is referred to as "hammered" in reference to the small mallets (referred to as hammers) that players use to strike the strings. Hammers are usually made of wood (most likely hardwoods such as maple, cherry, padauk, oak, walnut, or any other hardwood), but can also be made from any material, including metal and plastic. In the Western hemisphere, hammers are usually stiff, but in Asia, flexible hammers are often used. The head of the hammer can be left bare for a sharp attack sound, or can be covered with adhesive tape, leather, or fabric for a softer sound. Two-sided hammers are also available. The heads of two sided hammers are usually oval or round. Most of the time, one side is left as bare wood while the other side may be covered in leather or a softer material such as piano felt.[citation needed]
Several traditional players have used hammers that differ substantially from those in common use today. Paul Van Arsdale (1920–2018), a player from upstate New York, used flexible hammers made from hacksaw blades, with leather-covered wooden blocks attached to the ends (these were modeled after the hammers used by his grandfather, Jesse Martin). The Irish player John Rea (1915–1983) used hammers made of thick steel wire, which he made himself from old bicycle spokes wrapped with wool. Billy Bennington (1900–1986), a player from Norfolk, England, used cane hammers bound with wool.
Variants and adaptations
A piano
The hammered dulcimer was extensively used during the Middle Ages in England, France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain. Although it had a distinctive name in each country, it was everywhere regarded as a kind of psalterium. The importance of the method of setting the strings in vibration by means of hammers, and its bearing on the acoustics of the instrument, were recognized only when the invention of the pianoforte had become a matter of history. It was then perceived that the psalterium (in which the strings were plucked) and the dulcimer (in which they were struck), when provided with keyboards would give rise to two distinct families of instruments, differing essentially in tone quality, in technique and in capabilities. The evolution of the psalterium resulted in the harpsichord; that of the dulcimer produced the pianoforte.[9]
Around the world
Tuning of a hammered dulcimer (southeastern Slovenia)
Versions of the hammered dulcimer, each of which has its own distinct manner of construction and playing style, are used throughout the world:
The word dulcimer refers to two families of musical string instruments.
The piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, through engagement of an action whose hammers strike strings. Most pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, representing each note of the chromatic scale as they repeat throughout the keyboard's span of seven and a quarter octaves. There are 52 white keys, known as “naturals”, and 36 black keys, known as “sharps”. The naturals repeat a pattern of whole steps and half steps unique to any given starting note. These patterns define a diatonic scale. The 36 sharps repeat a pattern of whole steps and minor thirds, which defines a pentatonic scale.
Zithers are a class of stringed instruments. Historically, it could be any instrument of the psaltery family. In modern terminology, it is more specifically an instrument consisting of many strings stretched across a thin, flat body, the topic of this article.
A psaltery is a fretboard-less box zither and is considered the archetype of the zither and dulcimer. Plucked keyboard instruments such as the harpsichord were also inspired by it. Its resonance box is usually trapezoidal, rectangular or in the form of a "pig's head" and often richly decorated.
The short octave was a method of assigning notes to keys in early keyboard instruments, for the purpose of giving the instrument an extended range in the bass range. The rationale behind this system was that the low notes F♯ and G♯ are seldom needed in early music. Deep bass notes typically form the root of the chord, and F♯ and G♯ chords were seldom used at this time. In contrast, low C and D, both roots of very common chords, are sorely missed if a harpsichord with lowest key E is tuned to match the keyboard layout. A closely related system, the broken octave, added more notes by using split keys: the front part and the back part of the (visible) key controlled separate levers and hence separate notes.
The Appalachian dulcimer is a fretted string instrument of the zither family, typically with three or four strings, originally played in the Appalachian region of the United States. The body extends the length of the fingerboard, and its fretting is generally diatonic.
The trapezoidal yangqin is a Chinese hammered dulcimer, likely derived from the Iranian santur or the European dulcimer. It used to be written with the characters 洋琴, but over time the first character changed to 揚, which means "acclaimed". It is also spelled yang ch'in. Hammered dulcimers of various types are now very popular not only in China, but also Eastern Europe, the Middle East, India, Iran, and Pakistan. The instruments are also sometimes known by the names "santoor" and "cymbalom". This instrument had an influence on the Thai classical instrument, known as Khim (ขิม).
An eight-string guitar is a guitar with eight strings, or one more than the Russian guitar's seven. Eight-string guitars are less common than six- and seven-string guitars, but they are used by a few classical, jazz, and metal guitarists. The eight-string guitar allows a wider tonal range, or non-standard tunings, or both.
The Gravikord is a 24 string electric double bridge-harp invented by Robert Grawi in 1984, which is closely related to both the West African kora and the mbira. It was designed to employ a separated double tonal array structure making it possible to easily play cross-rhythms in a polyrhythmic musical style in a modern electro-acoustic instrument. The Gravi-kora is a similar instrument, also developed by Grawi, which is tuned identically to a traditional 21 string kora.
The khim is a stringed musical instrument derived from the Mesopotamian or Persian Santur. It is similar to the Hammered Dulcimer or Cimbalom. This khim was introduced to Thailand from China, where a similar instrument is called yangqin, and introduced to Laos and Cambodia from Thailand later. It is played with two flexible bamboo sticks with soft leather at the tips to produce a soft tone. This instrument can be played by either sitting down on the floor with the khim on the floor, or by sitting on a chair or standing while the khim is on a stand. The khim produces a bright and expressive sound when played. It is made of wood, with brass strings that are laid across the instrument. The Australian-born musician and vocal artist Lisa Gerrard specialises in the use of a khim hammered dulcimer, featuring its music on several albums and performing with the instrument live on tour.
The yanggeum is a traditional Korean string instrument. It is a hammered dulcimer. Unlike other traditional Korean instruments, the yanggeum has metal strings. It is played by striking the strings with a bamboo stick. Yanggeum means a stringed instrument of the West (yang). The yanggeum is also called seoyanggeum or gura cheolsageum. The origin of the yanggeum is based on a South asian instrument called the santoor. The Chinese introduced it into Korea in the 18th century. Its body is flat and trapezoidal, with seven sets of four metal strings. The right hand strikes the strings with a thin bamboo strip.
Salterio is the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese term for either of two types of zither: the hammered dulcimer or psaltery.
Sam Rizzetta was a hammered dulcimer player, builder, and designer originally from Chicago, had lived in Inwood, West Virginia.
The string drum or Tambourin de Béarn is a long rectangular box zither beaten with a mallet. It is paired with a one-handed flute with three finger holes, similar to a pipe and tabor. It has also been called tambourin de Gascogne, tambourin à cordes in Catalan, Pyrenean string drum, ttun-ttun in Basque, salmo in Spanish, and chicotén in Aragonese. It was known in the middle ages as the choron or chorus.
Teochew string music or Chaozhou xianshi is classed as a type of sizhu music although it typically uses stringed instruments only. It is found in northeastern Guangdong and parts of Fujian and also in regions with overseas Teochew populations, such as Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and the United States. The Chaoshan region of Guangdong, bordering on Fujian and comprising the cities of Chaozhou, Shantou and Jieyang, forms its own cultural sphere. Teahouses often accompany with Chaozhou music.
Damping is a technique in music for altering the sound of a musical instrument by reducing oscillations or vibrations. Damping methods are used for a number of instruments.
The santur, is a hammered dulcimer of Iranian origins.
The Indian santoor instrument is a trapezoid-shaped hammered dulcimer, and a variation of the Iranian santur. The instrument is generally made of walnut and has 25 bridges. Each bridge has 4 strings, making for a total of 100 strings. It is a traditional instrument in Jammu and Kashmir, and dates back to ancient times. It was called Shatha Tantri Veena in ancient Sanskrit texts.
Gifford, Paul M. (2001), The Hammered Dulcimer: A History, The Scarecrow Press, Inc. ISBN0-8108-3943-1. A comprehensive history of the hammered dulcimer and its variants.
East Anglian Dulcimers(ongoing historic research by John & Katie Howson about dulcimer players and makers from Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex, UK.)
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