The dulcimer was a three-cornered or trapeze-shaped instrument, about three feet at its widest part composed of a wooden frame inclosing a wrestplank for the tuning pins around which one end of the strings were wound; a soundboard with two or more sound-holes; and two bridges over which the strings passed. Opposite the wrestplank there was a hitchpin-block, to which the other ends of the strings were attached.
The dulcimer had about fifty notes, and several strings (two, three, four, and even five) were used for each note. They were of fine wire. The dulcimer was placed on a table and struck with hammers, the heads of which were of leather, hard on one side and soft on the other to get the required loud and soft forte and piano effects. There was no damping (checking) contrivance to stop the vibration.
The compass was from two to three octaves from C or D in the Bass Clef. The psaltery and dulcimer came from the East; they had been known in Persia and Arabia for centuries when the Crusaders made their acquaintance and brought them home. Chaucer describes the instrument in his Miller’s Tale, (Canterbury Tales) as “a gay sauterie.” It appears in that beautiful fresco of Orcagna’s, Triumph of Death, in the Campo Santo in Pisa (1348) and in many illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages. From its likeness to the shape of a pig’s head, old writers often call it Istromento di porco.
Even as late as 1650, when instruments had improved so greatly, Kircher wrote in his Musurgia that the psaltery played with a skilled hand is second to no other instrument, and Mersenne praises “its silvery tone and purity of intonation so easily controlled by the fingers.” These two instruments were often beautifully decorated and inlaid and the sound-holes artistically treated.
VIOLINIST, SINGER, AND LADY PLAYING THE VIRGINAL
If we look at the [frontispiece] we will see the psaltery, or psaltérion, resting on the lap of the lady on the extreme left, who holds the plectrum delicately, but firmly, in her right hand. But to reach our modern piano from these two quaint instruments we have to travel through several centuries.
We get into a tangle of names when we stir up the ancestors of the pianoforte. The dulcimer and psaltery are simple enough, but from them we come immediately to the clavicembalo (one of the Italian names for the harpsichord), or gravicembalo, as it was also called, which name was derived from clavis, a key, and cembalo, a dulcimer. Then we get the French clavecin (which comes from clavicymbalum) clavichord, harpsichord, harpsicordo, clavicordo, and clavier. Then in the same group we have the virginal and the spinet, closely allied to these forerunners of the pianoforte in everything but their names.
Students of the piano are often puzzled to know why they are given a Suite de pièces pour le clavecin, or a Prelude and Fugue from the Well-tempered[90] Clavichord.