Published: May 24, 2006 12:00 am            

Old-fashioned dulcimer music: How sweet the sound

CNHI News Service

TAHLEQUAH -- Every year in May, the folks in Coshocton, Ohio, hold their "Dulcimer Days" celebration, dedicated to the stringed instrument best known for its use in Appalachian folk music.

Strangely enough, they don't celebrate Dulcimer Days in Mosul, Iraq. But they could.

Mosul is in what used to be Nineveh, Assyria. And it's there that archaeologists have found one of the earliest graven images of a dulcimer player.

"It looks a lot like the one I play," said Barbara Gibson, who plays both the mountain and hammered variations of the dulcimer. "Both instruments came from the Middle East with the Crusaders. They brought them into Scotland and Ireland, and from there they came to the Americas."

Although it may be considered a folk instrument, the hammered dulcimer was actually the basis for a more genteel instrument: the piano.

"I used to teach piano," said Gibson. "And whenever I hear myself recorded, playing the hammered dulcimer, it sounds like a piano to me."

Gibson took up the hammered dulcimer about three years ago when her husband, Fred, first heard one being played.

"I heard the sound of it," he said. "And I said, 'You're going to play one of those.'"

She's got two of them now -- one with 23 strings, and the other with 31 strings. As the name implies, they're played by "hammering" on the strings with wooden mallets.

The mountain dulcimer, however, is a little simpler. But as with the hammered dulcimer, the decision to play one was made for Barbara.

"I started playing the mountain dulcimer years ago, when my sister decided I was going to play mountain dulcimer," she said. "I think she needed someone to play along with."

The mountain dulcimer -- also known as the Appalachian dulcimer, the lap dulcimer, the Kentucky dulcimer, and the hog fiddle -- only has three strings, usually tuned to "fifths," which consist of a root note and the fifth note of its scale.

"There isn't really one standard tuning for a mountain dulcimer," said Gibson. "But a lot of people use what we call the 'parent tuning,' D, A, D."

According to Carl Farinelli, the "old" way of playing a mountain dulcimer was to fret only one string (one of the D's in the parent tuning) with a wooden "noter" while letting the other two strings "drone," thus imitating the style of sacred vocal music.

But as 20th century popular music began to change the way singers and musicians harmonized, dulcimer playing followed, and now it's not uncommon to see dulcimer players fretting all three strings.

"I grew up around dulcimers in Booger County, Ark. -- I believe the official name is Madison County...," said Farinelli.

"The way it was explained to me by my adopted granny is that, in olden times, the dulcimer was supposed to have two different shapes. If it was played in church, it had to be shaped like a fish, and have soundholes shaped like a circle representing eternal life, a cross representing the crucifixion, or a triangle representing the Trinity."

The secular dulcimer was more feminine, with an hourglass shape, and soundholes shaped like a circle or a heart.

The name "dulcimer," said Farinelli, actually comes from "dulce," the Latin word for "sweet" (and the root of the female name "Dulcinae").

So dulcimer means something like, "sweet music," which seems appropriate, considering that, at least in England, and most likely in the Appalachians as well, it was used to woo would-be lovers.

"There was a double-necked version of the dulcimer that had a neck coming out of each end of it, and it was called a 'courting' dulcimer," said Farinelli, adding that a luthier he once apprenticed with made such instruments based on plans he got from England.

Evidently, a young man would take a courting dulcimer over to his potential girlfriend's house, and they'd sit outside and play it together -- not to see if they could harmonize, but to prove to her parents that his intentions were honorable.

"The young man would play on one neck, and the young lady would play on the other," said Farinelli. "And as long as her parents could hear both parts playing, they knew they didn't have to go out and check on them."

Eddie Glenn writes for The Tahlequah Daily Press.

        

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