 Kemane from Pharasa | |
| Classification | Composite chordophone: 321.322.71 (Box lute played with a bow) |
|---|---|
| Musicians | |
| Giorgos Polyntzaklis | |
Kemane of Cappadocia or Cappadocian lyra is named a large lyre of the Cappadocian Greeks, in Anatolia. [1]
It has six main strings, as well as six sympathetics. It has been evolved from the Byzantine lyra.
The Kemane has six main strings tuned in fifths or fourths, as well as six sympathetic strings (strung in parallel with the other strings and not on their own, improving the sound of the instrument). They are either on the same pitch, or an octave higher than the main strings. Kemane means violin in Turkish. It has a bottle-shaped body, short neck or "μάνικο" (maniko, lit. sleeve), a fingerboard, similar to the Pontic Lyra or the Black Sea Kemence, but the pegbox, also known as "καράβολο" (karavolo) is the same as the violin and the pegs are placed sideways. It has two sticks on the insides, functioning as soundposts, named "ψυχές". (lit. souls) The sympathetic strings are placed underneath the fingerboard, pass from holes inside the bridge and tied underneath the tailpiece. It is played like the Kemence, on the virtuoso's leg. Notes are played using the finger on the top on the string, instead of the nail on the string's side, as it does on pear-shaped lyras. Like all lyras of the Eastern Mediterranean, it is based on the byzantine lyra. [2]
The construction is similar to the other lyras, often with the same materials, the wood for the body, neck and pegbox is hard and single-piece, (eg mulberry),while the soundboard uses soft types of wood (eg fir or Lebanese cedar) . The bow or "τοξάριον" (toxarion) used to be curved, like an arch, with hair made out of male horse tail, while nowadays the violin bow is also used. [2]
The cello ( CHEL-oh), properly violoncello ( VY-ə-lən-CHEL-oh, Italian pronunciation: [vjolonˈtʃɛllo]), is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G2, D3 and A3. The viola's four strings are each an octave higher. Music for the cello is generally written in the bass clef, with tenor clef, and treble clef used for higher-range passages.
The violin, sometimes known as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular use. The violin typically has four strings, usually tuned in perfect fifths with notes G3, D4, A4, E5, and is most commonly played by drawing a bow across its strings. It can also be played by plucking the strings with the fingers (pizzicato) and, in specialized cases, by striking the strings with the wooden side of the bow.
String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner.
The gadulka is a traditional Bulgarian bowed string instrument. Alternate spellings are "gǎdulka", "gudulka" and "g'dulka". Its name comes from a root meaning "to make noise, hum or buzz". The gadulka is an integral part of Bulgarian traditional instrumental ensembles, commonly played in the context of dance music.
The fingerboard is an important component of most stringed instruments. It is a thin, long strip of material, usually wood, that is laminated to the front of the neck of an instrument. The strings run over the fingerboard, between the nut and bridge. To play the instrument, a musician presses strings down to the fingerboard to change the vibrating length, changing the pitch. This is called stopping the strings. Depending on the instrument and the style of music, the musician may pluck, strum or bow one or more strings with the hand that is not fretting the notes. On some instruments, notes can be sounded by the fretting hand alone, such as with hammer ons, an electric guitar technique.
The kamancheh is an Iranian bowed string instrument used in Persian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Kurdish, Georgian, Turkmen, and Uzbek music with slight variations in the structure of the instrument. The kamancheh is related to the rebab which is the historical ancestor of the kamancheh and the bowed Byzantine lyra. The strings are played with a variable-tension bow.
A Baroque violin is a violin set up in the manner of the baroque period of music. The term includes original instruments which have survived unmodified since the Baroque period, as well as later instruments adjusted to the baroque setup, and modern replicas. Baroque violins have become relatively common in recent decades thanks to historically informed performance, with violinists returning to older models of instrument to achieve an authentic sound.
Bowed string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by a bow rubbing the strings. The bow rubbing the string causes vibration which the instrument emits as sound.
The rebab is the name of several related string instruments that independently spread via Islamic trading routes over much of North Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Europe. The instrument is typically bowed, but is sometimes plucked. It is one of the earliest known bowed instruments, named no later than the 8th century, and is the parent of many bowed and stringed instruments.
Kemenche or Lyra is a name used for various types of stringed bowed musical instruments originating in the Eastern Mediterranean, particularly in Armenia, Greece, Iran, Turkey, and Azerbaijan. and regions adjacent to the Black Sea. These instruments are folk instruments, generally having three strings and played held upright with their tail on the knee of the musician. The name Kemenche derives from the Persian Kamancheh, meaning merely a "small bow".
A violin consists of a body or corpus, a neck, a finger board, a bridge, a soundpost, four strings, and various fittings. The fittings are the tuning pegs, tailpiece and tailgut, endpin, possibly one or more fine tuners on the tailpiece, and in the modern style of playing, usually a chinrest, either attached with the cup directly over the tailpiece or to the left of it. There are many variations of chinrests: center-mount types such as Flesch or Guarneri, clamped to the body on both sides of the tailpiece, and side-mount types clamped to the lower bout to the left of the tailpiece.
The lira da braccio was a European bowed string instrument of the Renaissance. It was used by Italian poet-musicians in court in the 15th and 16th centuries to accompany their improvised recitations of lyric and narrative poetry. It is most closely related to the medieval fiddle, or vielle, and like the vielle had a leaf-shaped pegbox with frontal pegs. Fiddles with drone strings are seen beginning in the 9th century, and the instrument continued to develop through the 16th century. In many depictions of the instrument, it is being played by mythological characters, frequently members of angel consorts, and most often by Orpheus and Apollo. The lira da braccio was occasionally used in ensembles, particularly in the intermedi, and may have acted as a proto-continuo instrument.
The tambur is a fretted string instrument of Turkey and the former lands of the Ottoman Empire. Like the ney, the armudi kemençe and the kudüm, it constitutes one of the four instruments of the basic quartet of Turkish classical music. Of the two variants, one is played with a plectrum and the other with a bow. The player is called a tamburî.
The Byzantine lyra or lira was a medieval bowed string musical instrument in the Byzantine Empire. In its popular form, the lyra was a pear-shaped instrument with three to five strings, held upright and played by stopping the strings from the side with fingernails. The first known depiction of the instrument is on a Byzantine ivory casket, preserved in the Bargello in Florence. Versions of the Byzantine lyra are still played throughout the former lands of the Byzantine Empire: Greece, Crete, Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Croatia, Italy and Armenia.
The Cretan lyra is a Greek pear-shaped, three-stringed bowed musical instrument, central to the traditional music of Crete and other islands in the Dodecanese and the Aegean Archipelago, in Greece. The Cretan lyra is considered to be the most popular surviving form of the medieval Byzantine lyra, an ancestor of most European bowed instruments.
A tromba marina, marine trumpet or nuns' fiddle, is a triangular bowed string instrument used in medieval and Renaissance Europe that was highly popular in the 15th century in England and survived into the 18th century. The tromba marina consists of a body and neck in the shape of a truncated cone resting on a triangular base. It is usually four to seven feet long, and is a monochord. It is played without stopping the string, but playing natural harmonics by lightly touching the string with the thumb at nodal points. Its name comes from its trumpet like sound due to the unusual construction of the bridge, and the resemblance of its contour to the marine speaking-trumpet of the Middle Ages.
The rawap or rubab is an Eastern Iranian fretted plucked long-necked stringed instrument also used in folk music by residents of the Uyghur autonomous region of Xinjiang, Western China. The history of the instrument dates back to the Ancient Iran including modern Tajikistan and spreading in the 14th century to Turkic cultures including southern Xinjiang. It is an instrument of the Tajiks also used in Uzbekistan. It's particularly associated with Tajik music and culture including Tajiks of Bukhara and Samarkand.
The Kemençe of the Black Sea is a Greek and Turkish traditional musical instrument. It belongs to the category of stringed bowed musical instruments. It has three strings, usually tuned to perfect fourths, usually tuned B-E-A. It is the pre-eminent musical folk instrument of the Greeks of Pontus. It seems to have been invented during the Byzantine years, between the 11th and 12th centuries. The instrument is made of different types of wood.
The classicalkemenche, Armudî kemençe or Politiki lyra is a pear-shaped bowed instrument that derived from the medieval Greek byzantine lyre.
The quinton is a bowed musical instrument, in use mostly in France in the 18th century. It takes its name from the fact that, in ensembles, it played the quinta vox or quintus. Another derivation of the name may be from the number of strings and for consonance with violon. By the same name it is sometimes denoted the pardessus de viole, an originally six-stringed instrument of the family of the viols, since the pardessus lost one string and adopted the same tuning of the quinton. However, while the pardessus is viol-shaped, the quinton is violin-shaped.