Re: whither the zither

[Paul M. Gifford <PGIFFORD...>]

Owen Davidson <owend (at) tp(dot)net> wrote:

> According to whose definition must a "true" zither have frets? As I
> understand its definition, a zither is a musical instrument consisting
> of strings stretched over a sound box, which would include not only the
> fretted concert zither, but the psaltery, kanun, gusli, kankles,
> kantele, kuokle, the koto, and any number of other oddments including
> the autoharp (which, the good Mr. Oscar Scmidt notwithstanding, is
> actually a mechanized gusli and may have been a Russian invention).

I suppose the Sachs-Hornbostel system uses "zither" as a kind of 
cross-cultural classification ("box zither," "trough zither," "board 
zither"), but it's Germanocentric and ignores the historical 
development of each instrument.  Thus the guitar, violin, and banjo 
are lutes, in that sense. If Wolf had asked if klezmorim used the 
lute, would "violins" satisfy that question?

The autoharp, guitar-zither, zittern, etc., and the other patent 
instruments from the late 19th century and early 20th centuries were 
developed by Germans and clearly were derived from the concert 
zither, which had developed multiple open strings and was very 
popular at the time. They just dropped the fretted melody strings. 
So, from a cultural and historical point, you could consider them 
part of the zither cultural family.

The medieval psaltery may have had some connection to the qanun, but 
it survives only in Mexico, as a dulcimer hybrid developed in Italy 
in the 17th century, called _salterio_. But it had a separate 
identity from the zither (the psaltery survived in Germany until the 
late 18th century and with the Pennsylvania Dutch into the 19th).  By 
the way, although people confuse 18th-century salterios for 
dulcimers, they were exclusively plucked, as are some (hammered) 
dulcimers in England today. 

The Russian gusli and the Baltic kankles/kantele have ancestors which 
have been excavated at 12th-century (or so?) sites at Novgorod and 
Danzig and seem to show that they derive from wooden lyres. But the 
almost extinct gusli of the Volga River peoples (Chuvash, etc.) seems 
to derive from the medieval Byzantine psaltery. The koto and qin of 
the Far East evolved separately. 

> Since definitions and classifications have a way of broadening and
> overlapping, let me add that the kanun is also a membranophone, in that
> its bridges rest not on the soundboard, but on little squares of skin
> set into the soundboard.

True, but it's an 18th-century development (see Zev Feldman's book on 
Turkish music for documentation). The rare survivors of the 16th-
century Persian kanun, the kalun of Xinjiang and the 
svaramandala/kanuna of Punjab, are played with a finger pick on the 
right hand and an iron bar in the left to make ornaments and 
accidentals, etc., and the bridge rests on wood.

Paul Gifford

 > Carol Freeman wrote:
> > 
> > Paul M. Gifford wrote:
> > 
> > > Joel Bresler <jbresler (at) ma(dot)ultranet(dot)com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > BTW,  a form of the zither, the kanun, was used fairly often in 
> > > > Sephardi 78s...
> > > >
> > > Although "zither" is used as a vague term for any instrument which
> > > has a lot of open strings, to my mind it should be defined as a
> > > fretted instrument played horizontally, most versions of which have
> > > open strings used for accompanying the melody, which is played on
> > > the fretted strings. Thus a kanun (or gusli, kankles, etc.) would not
> > > qualify as a zither.
> > 
> > Many people on the list may not know that a kanun is also substantially 
> > different
> > from a Western zither type instrument because it is constructed so one can 
> > play in
> > the various Turkish (or Arabic, on the larger, Arabic instruments) maqams or
> > microtonal scales.This makes it quite suitable for accompanying Sephardic 
> > songs from
> > Turkey and the South Balkans, many of which were traditionally sung in 
> > maqam.  Carol
> > 
> 
> 
> 

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