Fwd: Re: Music to the Child Ballads

[Brett Williams]

You wrote: 
>
>Re: Grey area
>> I define grey-area in this sense as 'possibly within the Society's
>> period, but conclusively unprovable either way".  For example, the 
>> song  
>> ciorstan
>
>I want to go off on a tangent you brought up-
>
>I have seen documents that conclude the fretted dulcimer gets
>its roots from a 18th century instrument (the name escapes me
>now) which was developed in Germany.  According to this
>research there is no grey area about the fretted dulcimer;
>there is no record of them prior to the 18th century ancestors.
>
>If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd love to know where to
>look it up.  

That all depends on one's model for its ancestors. If one goes back to 
the root of the zither family, there's the monochord-- used by 
Pythagoras 5th Century BCE to set the scale intervals Western music is 
based upon. Is there any conclusive proof that the scheitholt 
(Germany), hummel (Low Countries/Belgium), langeleik/langspil 
(Sweden/Norway) and/or epinette des Voges (France) suddenly sprang into 
the peasant population of so many Western European countries 
spontaneously in the 18th Century? Is it likely that it didn't evolve 
from *something*? Since we're talking about a peasant instrument, I'm 
cynically unsurprised there's not a lot of documentation out there that 
proves or disproves its origin and chronology.

Until Jean Ritchie started touring in the 1950's, the zither and its 
many cousins were utterly unknown in the British Isles. She said that 
the English, Irish and Scots pretty much greeted her with delighted 
surprise ("What in the world is *that*?), whereas on the continent 
people nodded at her dulcimer and said that their old folk had 
something a lot like that back on the wall at home. The French 
epinettes she saw were strung with brass wire.

I happened to be in a music store about a week ago (buying a new 
dulcimer, long sad story omitted of a stolen instrument with a happy 
ending) and leafed through one of the fretted dulcimer instruction 
books while I was waiting for the shop to install a set of strap 
buttons.  In one of 'em (I don't remember which one), a number of 
pictures of very old epinettes and scheitholts (date unknown or 
unasserted) found in the Appalachians is displayed, and the current 
location of same is mentioned-- a museum in Virginia, I think. That 
night was very clouded in emotion and I was looking very quickly. The 
author asserted the theory that the Appalachian fretted dulcimer 
evolved from these instruments. I view this author's assertion as very 
weakly supported by concrete fact other than the obvious ones of 
existence of the old instruments.

Michael Praetorius' Syntagma Musicum (1619) has an illustration 
depicting the 'music of the spheres' showing a single stringed 
instrument that looks remarkably like a straight-sided dulcimer 
(epinette or langspil if you will) merely lacking the 'drone' strings. 
Where did Praetorius' woodcut artist get his model? When did the frets 
on the scheitholt, etc. get extended into the drones, and why, since 
the predominant playing style is to ignore the potentiality of those 
notes? I don't know that there are conclusive answers to these 
questions.

So, I believe the dulcimer is about as period to the Society's purposes 
as a steel or nylon strung guitar. It is capable of producing period 
music, just like a nylon-strung harp or nylon-strung 'classical' 
guitar.  A form of it was around in period, but the proof is 
inconclusive.

>And what about them bowed psalteries?
>

Good question. Dunno-- don't play one. :)


>I'll shut up now.
>
>Chriemhilt von Regensburg
>

Naah-- great question. And besides, this list is far too quiet!

ciorstan