… or, maybe, twangy resonance. In any case, the sound of a family of stringed musical instruments of varying appearance, but united by the quality of the sound they produce. Two of them historically situated in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, one in the Appalachian region of the US.
Together they are the topic of the remaining section of my 5/11 posting “Zimbalist, accompanied by Satie”. That first part was about the occupation noun zimbalist ‘player of a cimbalom / cimbal‘ (an instrument especially associated with Hungary and its capital Budapest, and the most muscularly twangy of the three instruments). The second part, yesterday’s posting “Zimbalistics”, was about the artistic family the Zimbalists (none of whom actually played any of these instruments, despite their family name). Today, I’m onto that instrument (also known as the hammer(ed) dulcimer) and its relatives the seriously twangy zither (especially associated with Austria and its capital Vienna) and the mid-twangy Appalachian / mountain dulcimer (not now associated with central or eastern Europe, whatever its ultimate origins might have been).
These three instruments then tail off into the more sonorous or plinky fiddle (as a folk instrument), banjo, and guitar. As a linguist I’m inclined to think of the twangy instruments as analogous to affricates and the sonorous / plinky instruments as analogous to fricatives (sonorous ones voiced, plinky ones voiceless), though I realize that these comparisons — a kind of synesthesia — might just confound many of you. (Ok, for me, cimbalom music is deep purple, zither music is bright orange, and mountain dulcimer music is a dark yellow. Your colors might vary.)
In any case today you’ll get YouTube videos that show you the instruments and let you listen to their wonderful twangs. I have a sentimental attachment to cimbaloms and zithers, from pleasant times spent in Vienna in years long gone; I’ve had to restrain myself from bombarding you with endless cimbal and zither performances. In fact, today’s presentation will be (again) compressed, under pressure of time.
The skinny from NOAD. Brief and informative definitions (entries edited some by me):
noun hammer(ed) dulcimer (or simply dulcimer): a musical instrument with a sounding board or box, typically trapezoidal in shape, over which strings of graduated length are stretched, played by being struck with handheld hammers.
noun cimbalom or cimbal: a large Hungarian [hammer(ed)] dulcimer (musical instrument) [a concert version was designed by V. Josef Schunda in 1874 in Budapest].
noun zither: a musical instrument consisting of a flat wooden sound box with numerous strings stretched across it, placed horizontally and played with the fingers and a plectrum. It is used especially in central European folk music.
noun Appalachian dulcimer [AZ: in AmE, usually just dulcimer]: a musical instrument with a long rounded body and a fretted fingerboard, played by bowing, plucking, and strumming. Also called mountain dulcimer.
Video performances:
— cimbaloms in action: Hungarian gypsy street musicians performing in Copenhagen on YouTube here; Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, played by Erzsébet Gódo, on YouTube here
— Anton Karas playing on the zither: “The Third Man Theme” (“The Harry Lime Theme”) — original sound track from the 1949 Orson Welles film The Third Man, especially famous for the Ferris wheel scene in the Prater, the amusement park in Vienna
[added on 5/14, when I realized that the Third Man clip was just the audio:
— Zither Man (1950), a short British Pathé film about Anton Karas]
— Stephen Seifert playing “Whiskey Before Breakfast” (a public domain tune) on a mountain dulcimer
May 14, 2025 at 3:00 am |
Thanks for the cimbalom music! I remember being in Vienna with my parents and sister in the summer of 1961, eating at restaurants filled with the sound of the cimbalom and other instruments. Ah, for gulyas, Wiener schnitzel,and a teenaged appetite!
May 14, 2025 at 6:14 am |
For me it was 1972, I was 32, and taking my very first trip out of the US, thanks to the Guggenheim Foundation, which provided the support for a journey to Vienna (to give a paper at an international congress) and then on to other places (Zürich, Paris, London), at the end to do fieldwork in Wales. Ann and Elizabeth were with me, mostly being touristic (it was on this trip that the 7-year-old Elizabeth discovered that people actually *spoke* foreign languages, were not just using French and German to torture her, and it changed her life). Much time in cafés and in fabulous restaurants, with cimbalom and zither music everywhere. It was an amazing dream. And I got to go back, fairly often, for conferences, eventually on my own.