(1) The Latin name for Dulcimer.
(2) A string keyboard instrument (Fr. doucemelle) shown in the manuscript treatise (F-Pn lat.7295, c1438–46) by Henri Arnaut de Zwolle (d 1466). It was essentially a keyed dulcimer whose action arranged for the strings to be struck (not plucked), without any subsequent damping. The layout and stringing of the instrument employs a principle found on many dulcimers in that the strings may be divided into sections with different bridges in order to sound different notes. However, the first of the three types of dulce melos described by Arnaut is a normal dulcimer, played in the ‘rustic fashion’, i.e. either struck with wooden sticks or plucked by hand. The Czech theorist Paulus Paulirinus also uses the term to describe this kind of instrument (Liber viginti artium, MS, 1459–63, PL-Kj).
The second and third types of dulce melos described by Arnaut are played by keyboard. In these instruments 12 unison pairs of strings pass over four bridges, the pairs tuned consecutively by semitones to provide a compass of an octave. Since the lengths of strings between the four bridges were in the ratio 4:2:1, the possibility of a total range of three octaves was provided. In fact the keyboard range was only two octaves and a 7th, from B to a''.
In the second type (see le Cerf and Labande, pl.x) the bridges are placed parallel to one another and perpendicular to the front of the instrument's rectangular case. All the strings between any pair of bridges have the same sounding length, even though the highest and lowest pairs of strings are tuned nearly an octave apart. If the higher-pitched strings between two bridges are fully stressed, then the lower-pitched strings must be fairly thick and would have a poorer tone. The third type (fig.1) has bridges that are placed obliquely in order to mitigate this problem, but the ratio of sounding lengths between the lowest and highest strings is only about 1:1·3 and not the theoretical 1:2 that would give a pure octave between two strings at the same tension. The keys are of necessity more cranked than in the second version. In both designs it would appear that the soundboard was near the bottom of the case, with the keys and action above it, the strings being carried on very tall bridges resting on the soundboard and rising between the groups of keys for each octave of the instruments' range. Both instruments would have been at 4' pitch.
The action of the keyed dulce melos is the fourth of those sketched and described on the page of Arnaut's manuscript devoted to the harpsichord (see Harpsichord, fig.2, upper right-hand corner; see Lester, p.38, and Restle, p.25, for interpretations of the action). A reconstruction is shown in fig.2: a strip of wood (pecia colata), effectively the hammer shaft, was hinged to the key (clavis) near the balance point, probably with a strip of leather. Since the strip of wood was weighted (plumbum) and the rear end of the keylever was arrested by a fixed stop (obstaculum superius), playing the key with some force would cause the hammer shaft, into which was inserted a tangent (crampinus; apparently of metal, as on the clavichord), to fly upwards towards a string above it. The tangent made contact with the string, which was left to sound undamped after playing. Since the hammer was of metal, this arrangement would produce a much brighter sound than any later piano action using leather-covered hammers.
This mechanism has no exact parallel in any surviving piano action, because it includes no means of making the hammer move faster than the key. However, it could have been the basis of the type of action seen in some mid-18th-century German square pianos, for example by Zumpe (see Pianoforte, fig. 9), where the hammer shaft is mounted on a separate rail above the keylever, and raised by a stalk on the keylever. Arnaut's action has little similarity to the Tangent piano (to which it has formerly been likened), and there is no documentary evidence for Galpin’s suggestion (‘Chekker’, Grove4, suppl.) that the mysterious Chekker employed the action of Arnaut's dulce melos.
It is not known how common keyed dulcimers were. No examples survive, and no other literary references have been found, except for two 16th-century Venetian documents that refer to a ‘dulcimello’ (see Vio and Toffolo, p.36), but, in view of Arnaut's and Paulus Paulirinus's use of dulce melos to refer to a normal dulcimer, it is not certain that the Venetian instrument had a keyboard. The ‘instrumento Piano e forte’ made by Hippolito Cricca in 1598 in Modena is not described clearly enough that we can be sure what action it used, but it is probable it had some kind of striking action. When we consider that Arnaut's hammered dulce melos was known in the latter half of the 15th century it would be strange if there had been no further experiments with such actions before Cristofori’s well-known examples of c1700.
J. Reiss: ‘Pauli Paulirini de Praga Tractatus de musica (etwa 1460)’, ZMw, vii (1924–5), 259–64
G. le Cerf and E.-R. Labande: Instruments de musique du XVe siècle: les traités d'Henri-Arnaut de Zwolle et de divers anonymes (Paris,1932/R)
J. Lester: ‘The Musical Mechanisms of Arnaut de Zwolle’, English Harpischord Magazine, iii/3 (1981–5), 35–41
G. Vio and S. Toffolo: ‘La diffusione degli strumenti musicali nelle case dei nobili, cittadini e popolani nel XVI secolo a Venezia’, Il Flauto Dolce, xvii–xviii (1987–8), 33–40
K. Restle: Bartolomeo und die Anfänge des Hammerclaviers (Munich, 1991)
S. Pollens: The Early Pianoforte (Cambridge, 1995)
EDWIN M. RIPIN/DENZIL WRAIGHT