Post by Dick Glasgow on Jun 25, 2007 20:19:21 GMT 1
Check out this fascinating article about how easy it is to make your own Scheitholt.
Making a ScheitholtHere's an extract, just to whet your appetite:
Making the Scheitholt
(A Medieval Musical Instrument)
by Ellen Kuhfeld
Music is a pleasant thing, and playing an instrument can easily increase the pleasure; but the discipline of learning the more common instruments can be forbidding. Fortunately, the instruments of the mountain zither family – descendants of the instructional monochord - have the very scales and harmonies built into their form. The player need only learn to put the notes in sequence.
The earliest zithers are closest in construction and concept to the ancestral monochord. Michael Praetorius' Syntagma Musicum (1618) has an illustration of the German scheitholt, an early mountain zither. In Praetorius' day, such instruments were known over most of Europe. Panum states that there is no doubt of its medieval origin. The modern American version is the Appalachian dulcimer.
As a folk instrument, the scheitholt is easy to make and to play: a wooden box with a soundhole and strings, and provisions for tuning and fretting those strings.
The scheitholt in its many incarnations has had an enormous range of shapes, sizes, and tunings. What follows is appropriate for a scheitholt, and is taken from one I constructed. (The dimensions are scaled from Praetorius' illustration as given in Bessaraboff's appendix; and are appropriate for readily-available dimensions of wood.) If you happen to have wood of different dimensions, or want an instrument of another size, things scale up and down quite well. Here are lists of the materials and tools you will need.
Making a Scheitholt
(A Medieval Musical Instrument)
by Ellen Kuhfeld
Music is a pleasant thing, and playing an instrument can easily increase the pleasure; but the discipline of learning the more common instruments can be forbidding. Fortunately, the instruments of the mountain zither family – descendants of the instructional monochord - have the very scales and harmonies built into their form. The player need only learn to put the notes in sequence.
The earliest zithers are closest in construction and concept to the ancestral monochord. Michael Praetorius' Syntagma Musicum (1618) has an illustration of the German scheitholt, an early mountain zither. In Praetorius' day, such instruments were known over most of Europe. Panum states that there is no doubt of its medieval origin. The modern American version is the Appalachian dulcimer.
As a folk instrument, the scheitholt is easy to make and to play: a wooden box with a soundhole and strings, and provisions for tuning and fretting those strings.
The scheitholt in its many incarnations has had an enormous range of shapes, sizes, and tunings. What follows is appropriate for a scheitholt, and is taken from one I constructed. (The dimensions are scaled from Praetorius' illustration as given in Bessaraboff's appendix; and are appropriate for readily-available dimensions of wood.) If you happen to have wood of different dimensions, or want an instrument of another size, things scale up and down quite well. Here are lists of the materials and tools you will need.
Making a Scheitholt