DULCIMER
Korean yanggum (hammer dulcimer), circa 1910. (Collection of Shlomo Pestcoe)
The English term dulcimer, a fusion of the Latin word dulce (sweet) and the Greek word melos (song), serves as the name for two completely different instruments: the hammer dulcimer and the Appalachian mountain dulcimer.
HAMMER DULCIMER
Hammer dulcimer is an open-string zither played with two hammers. The instrument is found in various forms throughout the Near and Middle East, Europe and Asia: santur (Iran, India and the Arab nations), santouri (Greece), cimbalom (Hungary), hackbrett (Austria, Germany and Switzerland) and yangqin (China) are but a few examples. Despite differences in tunings systems and playing styles, most variants of the dulcimer feature a large, shallow, trapezoid body with the strings stretched out horizontally, in courses (pairs, sets) of two - five strings each, across raised wooden bridges.
Considered to be an ancestor of the piano, the exact origins of the hammer dulcimer are lost in the mists of history. Up until recent times, it was widely believed that it was mentioned in the Bible do to an erroneous English translation of the Greek word symphonia (an early bagpipe-like instrument), which in itself was a mistranslation of the original Hebrew nevel (harp).
Another popular theory contended that the instrument originated in Persia. However, new evidence suggests that the santur did not emerged there until the 1600s, most likely imported from Turkey. Scholars now believe that the most likely candidate for the birthplace of the dulcimer is Byzantium (Turkey), probably in the 10th century of the Common Era (CE).
The dulcimer first made its appearance in Western Europe sometime in the early 15th century. It appears that Germany and the Alpine regions were the first major centers of the instrument, though there were also references to it in England, Italy and France, as well as Poland, Bohemia and Hungary (the birthplace of the modern cimbalom, a large orchestral dulcimer invented around 1870 by Jozsef V. Schunda, as improvement on the cimbal, a smaller folk instrument).
By the 1600s, the popularity of the dulcimer was widespread through Western Europe and Scandinavia. Over the course of the 17th century, it spread, likewise, through the lands within the Ottoman Empire's sphere of influence, including the Balkans and Eastern Europe, where the dulcimer was primarily played by Christians and Jews rather than Muslims, and to India as well.
Late in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), the dulcimer reached the Guangdong province in south China. The Chinese dubbed it yangqin, "the foreign string instrument." By the 18th century, the yangqin had become a major instrument in Chinese classical and folk music forms. From China, it spread throughout Asia, where the yangqin was absorbed into local music traditions and modified to become the yoochin (Mongolia), yanggŭm (Korea), khim (Thailand) and so on.
APPALACHIAN MOUNTAIN DULCIMER
The Appalachian dulcimer is a fretted zither with a long narrow body, typically in the shape of a slender figure-eight or oval teardrop, and three to four strings. Another name for the Appalachian dulcimer is the lap dulcimer, because it's traditionally played laid flat across the player's lap. The player frets the strings with her/his fingers or a thin little dowel stick called a "noter" and strums the strings with a pick traditionally made from the quill of a turkey feather. In rare cases, the instrument was played with a violin bow like the Icelandic langspil, a related fretted zither.
Some time in the late 18th century, the Appalachian dulcimer evolved from the scheitholt and kratz-zither, fretted zithers of the Pennsylvania Germans who migrated to Appalachia, the mountainous regions of Kentucky, Virginia, the Carolinas and Tennessee. It's descended from the various fretted zithers found throughout Northern and Central Europe and Scandinavia, such as the German scheitholt (the ancestor of the Alpine zither), the Dutch hummel, the Danish and Swedish humle, the Norwegian langeleik, the Hungarian citera and the French épinette des Vosges.
-- Shlomo Pestcoe
