The sambuca (also sambute, sambiut, sambue, sambuque, or sambuke [1] ) was an ancient stringed instrument of Asiatic origin. The term sambuca is also applied to a number of other instruments.
The sambuca (also sambute, sambiut, sambue, sambuque, or sambuke [1] ) was an ancient stringed instrument of Asiatic origin. The term sambuca is also applied to a number of other instruments.
The original sambuca is generally supposed to have been a small triangular ancient Greek harp of shrill tone., [2] probably identical with Phoenician : sabecha and Imperial Aramaic : סַבְּכָא, romanized: sabbǝkhā, the Greek form being σαμβύκη or σαμβύχη [3] or σαβύκη. [4]
Eusebius wrote that the Troglodytae invented the sambuca, [5] [6] while Athenaeus wrote that the writer Semus of Delos said that the first person who used the sambuca was Sibylla, and that the instrument derives its name from a man named Sambyx who invented it. [7] Athenaeus also wrote that Euphorion in his book on the Isthmian Games mentioned that Troglodytae used sambuca with four strings like the Parthians. [8] He also add that the Magadis was an ancient instrument, but that in latter times it was altered, and had the name also changed to that of the sambuca. [9]
The sambuca has been compared to the siege engine of the same name by some classical writers; Polybius likens it to a rope ladder; others describe it as boat-shaped. Among the musical instruments known, the Egyptian enanga best answers to these descriptions, which are doubtless responsible for the medieval drawings representing the sambuca as a kind of tambourine, [10] for Isidore of Seville elsewhere defines the symphonia as a tambourine. [3]
The sabka is mentioned in the Bible (Daniel 3 verses 5 to 15). In the King James Bible it is erroneously translated as "sackbut". [3]
During the Middle Ages the word "sambuca" was applied to: [3]
In an old glossary article on vloyt (flute), the sambuca is said to be a kind of flute: [11]
Sambuca vel sambucus est quaedam arbor parva et mollis, unde haec sambuca est quaedam species symphoniae qui fit de illa arbore. |
Isidore of Seville describes it in his Etymologiae as: [12]
Sambuca in musicis species est symphoniarum. Est enim genus ligni fragilis unde et tibiae componuntur. | The sambuca is in the symphonia family of musical instruments. It is also a kind of softwood from which these pipes are made. |
In a glossary by Papias of Lombardy (c. 1053), first printed at Milan in 1476, the sambuca is described as a cithara, which in that century was generally glossed "harp": [3]
Sambuca, cytherae rusticae. | Sambucas, simple harps. |
In Tristan und Isolde (bars 7563-72) when the knight is enumerating to King Marke all the instruments upon which he can play, the sambiut is the last mentioned:
Waz ist daz, lieber mann? | What is this now, you free man? |
A Latin–French glossary [13] has the equivalence Psalterium = sambue. During the later Middle Ages sambuca was often translated "sackbut" in the vocabularies, whether merely from the phonetic similarity of the two words has not yet been established. [3]
The great Boulogne Psalter (11th Century) contains many fanciful instruments which are evidently intended to illustrate the equally vague and fanciful descriptions of instruments in the apocryphal letter of Saint Jerome, ad Dardanum ("to Dardanus"). Among these is a Sambuca, which resembles a somewhat primitive sackbut without the bell joint. In the 19th Century it was reproduced by Edmond de Coussemaker, Charles de la Croix and Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, and has given rise to endless discussions without leading to any satisfactory solution. [3]
Fabio Colonna created the pentecontachordon, a keyboard instrument which he called a sambuca. [14] [15]
Isidore of Seville was a Hispano-Roman scholar, theologian, and archbishop of Seville. He is widely regarded, in the words of 19th-century historian Montalembert, as "the last scholar of the ancient world".
Etymologiae, also known as the Origines ('Origins'), usually abbreviated Orig., is an etymological encyclopedia compiled by the influential Christian bishop Isidore of Seville towards the end of his life. Isidore was encouraged to write the book by his friend Braulio, Bishop of Saragossa. Etymologiae summarized and organized a wealth of knowledge from hundreds of classical sources; three of its books are derived largely from Pliny the Elder's Natural History. Isidore acknowledges Pliny, but not his other principal sources, namely Cassiodorus, Servius, and Gaius Julius Solinus.
Athenaeus of Naucratis was an ancient Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourishing about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD. The Suda says only that he lived in the times of Marcus Aurelius, but the contempt with which he speaks of Commodus, who died in 192, implies that he survived that emperor. He was a contemporary of Adrantus.
Hermesianax of Colophon was an Ancient Greek elegiac poet of the Hellenistic period, said to be a pupil of Philitas of Cos; the dates of his life and work are all but lost, but Philitas is supposed to have been born c. 340 BC.
A T and O map or O–T or T–O map, also known as an Isidoran map, is a type of early world map that represents world geography as first described by the 7th-century scholar Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636) in his De Natura Rerum and later his Etymologiae (c. 625)
Symphonia is a much-discussed word, applied at different times to the bagpipe, the drum, the hurdy-gurdy, and finally a kind of clavichord. The sixth of the musical instruments enumerated in Book of Daniel, Daniel 3, translated "dulcimer" in the 17th-century King James Bible; in all probability it refers to the bagpipe.
A trigonon is a small triangular ancient Greek harp occasionally used by the ancient Greeks and probably derived from Assyria or Egypt. The trigonon is thought to be either a variety of the sambuca or identical with it.
The barbiton, or barbitos, is an ancient stringed instrument related to the lyre known from Greek and Roman classics.
The epigonion was an ancient stringed instrument, possibly a Greek harp mentioned in Athenaeus, probably a psaltery.
Monopods were mythological dwarf-like creatures with a single, large foot extending from a leg centred in the middle of their bodies. The names monopod and skiapod (σκιάποδες) are both Greek, respectively meaning "one-foot" and "shadow-foot".
In antiquity, the term desultor or in Greek apobates (ἀποβάτης) and metabates (μεταβάτης) has been applied to individuals skilled at leaping from one horse or chariot to another.
In ancient Greek religion, an orgion was an ecstatic form of worship characteristic of some mystery cults. The orgion is in particular a cult ceremony of Dionysos, celebrated widely in Arcadia, featuring "unrestrained" masked dances by torchlight and animal sacrifice by means of random slashing that evoked the god's own rending and suffering at the hands of the Titans. The orgia that explained the role of the Titans in Dionysos's dismemberment were said to have been composed by Onomacritus. Greek art and literature, as well as some patristic texts, indicate that the orgia involved snake handling.
The nevel, nebel, was a stringed instrument used by the Phoenicians and the Israelites. The Greeks translated the name as nabla.
The Troglodytae, or Troglodyti, were people mentioned in various locations by many ancient Greek and Roman geographers and historians, including Herodotus, Agatharchides, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Pliny, Josephus, Tacitus, Claudius Aelianus, Porphyry.
Poems by Julius Caesar are mentioned by several sources in antiquity. None are extant.
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.
Fabio Colonna was an Italian naturalist and botanist.
The magadis was an ancient Greek musical instrument, possibly a Greek harp or Lyre. It is usually believed to be a stringed instrument similar to a psaltery or harp, though some earlier sources like the translated fragments of Posidonius discuss arguments that it may have been a woodwind. Modern scholars have mostly accepted the string instrument classification while noting that the evidence from ancient texts "falls well short of proving it." Scholars believe the word may be Lydian in origin.
The V-in-squaremap is a highly schematic type of mappa mundi in use in Europe during the Middle Ages. It is based on and usually found in conjunction with the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville.
The psalterion is a stringed, plucked instrument, an ancient Greek harp. Psalterion was a general word for harps in the latter part of the 4th century B.C. It meant "plucking instrument".
