Fig. 180.—Psaltery to produce a prolonged sound. Ninth Century. (MS. in the Bibl. Imp., Paris.)
The nabulum[23] ([Fig. 182]) was made either in the shape of a triangle with truncated corners, or of a semicircle joined at the two extremities; its sounding-board occupied the whole of the rounded part, and left but a very limited space for the twelve strings. The chorus or choron, the imperfect representation of which in the manuscripts of the ninth and tenth centuries calls to mind the appearance of a long semicircular window or of a Gothic capital N, generally had one of its sides prolonged, on which the performer leaned so as to hold the instrument in the same way as a harp ([Fig. 183]).
Fig. 181.—Buckler-shaped Psaltery with many Strings. (Ninth Century. Boulogne MS.)
Fig. 182.—Nabulum. Ninth Century. (MS. d’Angers.)
Fig. 183.—Choron. Ninth Century. (Boulogne MS.)
Fig. 184.—Psalterion. Twelfth Century.
The psalterion, which was in use all over Europe after the twelfth century, and is thought to have originated in the East, where it was found by the Crusaders, was at first composed of a flat box of sounding wood, with two oblique sides; it assumed the shape of a triangle truncated at its top, with twelve or sixteen metallic strings either of gold or silver, which were played upon by means of a small bow of wood, ivory, or horn ([Fig. 184]); subsequently the strings were made more slender, the number being increased to as many as twenty-two; the three angles of the sounding-box were cut off, and holes were made, sometimes one only in the middle, sometimes one at each angle, and sometimes as many as five, symmetrically arranged. The performer placed the instrument against his chest, and held it so as to touch the strings either with the fingers of the two hands, or with a pen or plectrum ([Fig. 185]). This instrument, which in the representations of poets and painters never failed to figure in celestial concerts, produced tones of incomparable softness. The old romances of chivalry exhausted all the phrases of admiration in describing the psalterion. But the highest eulogium which can be passed on this instrument is that it formed the starting-point of the harpsichord, or of the stringed instruments struck or played on by means of mechanism.
