Musical Instruments

D

Lip-Vibrated Instruments

In the orchestral brasses and other lip-vibrated aerophones, the player's lips buzz against a cup- or funnel-shaped mouthpiece inserted in a conical or cylindrical tube. Broadly speaking, conical, wide-bore tubes characterize horns, whereas relatively cylindrical, narrow-bore tubes define trumpets (see Horn; Trumpet). The sounding length of the tube can be altered by means of fingered or keyed tone holes; by valves that open and close sections of tubing; or by a sliding telescopic section of tubing, as on the trombone. The cornetto and serpent, for example, have finger holes much like those of a recorder. The keyed trumpet and keyed bugle (see Bugle) became obsolete only when valves were widely adopted for brasses in the 19th century. See also Tuba.

In many aerophones, overblowing (drastically increasing the wind pressure) forces higher harmonics to supersede the fundamental pitch. A bugler, whose instrument is a tube of constant length, can thus play tunes by overblowing to produce various harmonics. Brasses of unvariable sounding length are called natural; they are limited to the notes of the harmonic series. As composers since the 1500s gradually made greater demands on trumpets and horns (which were originally outdoor signal instruments), instrument makers invented the key and valve mechanisms that enable the instruments to produce fully chromatic scales. Woodwinds, similarly, were fitted with complex key mechanisms. Such structural changes, however, necessarily affected the timbre; modern brasses, as well as keyed woodwinds, sound noticeably different from those of the early 19th century and before.

VII

Chordophones

Being of more recent origin than idiophones, drums, and winds, the chordophones are not universally distributed; they were virtually unknown in pre-Columbian America (before the 16th century). Chordophones differ widely in structure, but are all thought to have evolved from the archaic musical bow, which resembles a hunting bow and is played like a jew's harp. Because the sound of a vibrating string alone is extremely quiet, strings are almost always coupled to a resonator.

A

Zithers

In the zither group, the strings stretch side by side over a soundboard or sound box, and, with the exception of the Chinese qin (ch'in), communicate their vibrations to either by means of one or more bridges. The Japanese koto has movable bridges, one for each string. This revered zither, like the bridgeless qin, has an extensive classical repertoire. The Appalachian dulcimer (not the same as the hammered dulcimer) evolved in the late 19th century from northern European fretted zithers brought to America by immigrants. These folk zithers have melody strings passing over a fretted fingerboard, in addition to unfretted accompaniment strings.

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B

Keyboard Chordophones

Two zither-family instruments, the hammered dulcimer (see Dulcimer) and the medieval psaltery, are ancestors of keyboard chordophones such as the piano, clavichord, and harpsichord. The last two instruments were invented in the late Middle Ages (the late 14th and early 15th centuries) in conjunction with the emergence of multipart music. The piano, with its wider dynamic range, appeared about 1700. It largely replaced the hammered dulcimer in urban domestic use, and by 1800 it had superseded the quieter clavichord and harpsichord. The hurdy-gurdy, which is a fiddle with a keyboard of limited compass, has both melody and drone strings, sounded by a rotating circular “bow” of wood. It resembles the Swedish nyckelharpa, a keyed fiddle played with a conventional bow.

C

Harps and Lyres

Unlike zithers, which may be plucked, bowed, struck, or wind-sounded (the aeolian harp), true harps are almost exclusively plucked. Their many strings fasten directly into the resonator; no bridge is necessary. The frame of European harps consists of a sound box, a neck (called the harmonic curve), and a forepillar, roughly forming a triangle. Ancestral, non-Western harps such as the Myanmar saung lack the reinforcing forepillar; their angled or arched necks, therefore, cannot withstand extreme string tension. The African pluriarc has a separate neck for each string.

A modern concert harp has a pedal mechanism that alters the pitch of each string by one or two semitones, thereby producing a full chromatic compass although having only seven strings per octave. Simpler pedal and manual devices offered chromatic notes in 18th-century harps, but earlier chromatic harps (notably the Welsh telyn) had two or three rows of strings, each chromatic note having its own string. Although most European harps are strung with gut or synthetic cords, the massive Irish harp traditionally is wire strung. Once favored to accompany bards, the Irish harp became a patriotic symbol when its use was outlawed by English authorities. See Harp.

On lyres, the strings are anchored to a crossbar supported by two arms that extend from a box- or bowl-shaped resonator; they are coupled to the resonator by a bridge. Lyres are rare today outside Ethiopia; however, the Greek ancestor of the Ethiopian lyre was a popular instrument. The kithara was a large, wood-bodied concert lyre of ancient Greece; derivatives of its name were given to unrelated instruments such as the cittern and guitar. See Lyre.

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