(Fr. psaltérion, saltere, sauterie; Ger. Psalterium, Psalter; It. and Sp. salterio).
An instrument of the zither family (classified as a Chordophone). It consists of a raised piece of wood, or a wooden box with soundholes, without a neck; it may be rectangular, triangular or trapeziform in shape (the various forms are shown schematically in fig.1). The instrument may be strung singly or with multiple courses. The strings are stretched parallel to the soundboard over one or more bridges and attached at either side by wooden or bone pegs, or metal pins. In relation to each other, the strings are parallel or fan-shaped in their arrangement, depending on the shape of the psaltery. Usually the strings are plucked, by the fingers or by plectra. (For psalteries struck with hammers, see Dulcimer.)
1. The ancient Greek and Latin terms.
2. The instrument: medieval and Renaissance.
3. Baroque, Classical and modern.
JAMES W. McKINNON (1), NELLY VAN REE BERNARD,MARY REMNANT (2), BERYL KENYON DE PASCUAL (3)
The Latin term psalterium (Gk. psaltērion) was applied to a variety of ancient and medieval string instruments. It belongs to the category of words (like organum and antiphona) that requires special study to trace frequent shifts in meaning. Tentatively the history of the term falls into three stages: its original usage, in its Greek form, as a term for the harp; as a term figuring prominently in ecclesiastical literature concerning the Book of Psalms; and its eventual application to box zithers such as the psaltery and dulcimer.
The term was derived from the Greek psallein (‘to pluck with the fingers’); the related psaltria might refer to female players of the more common kithara or lyre, but psaltērion itself was reserved for the comparatively rare harp. Athenaeus (xiv, 636), for example, quoted Apollodorus identifying it with the Magadis, another term for harp; and Pseudo-Aristotle (Problems, xix.23) referred to the unequal strings of the triangular psaltērion (see Trigōnon). (See also Greece, §I, 5(iii)(b).)
The term entered Christian literature by way of the Septuagint, the translation of the Old Testament into Greek made in the 3rd century bce, which served as the basis for early Christian versions of the Bible. The Septuagint in most cases rendered nebel, the Old Testament harp, by either nabla or else (especially in the psalms) psaltērion. At the same time it translated the Hebrew mizmor, which occurs in the superscription of 57 psalms, as psalmos, a hymn sung with harp; this led Greek-speaking Jews to adopt for the entire book the name biblos psalmōn (‘book of psalms’), and eventually simply psaltērion (‘psalter’). Jerome corroborated these usages in the Vulgate by rendering nebel as psalterium with even greater consistency than did the Septuagint.
These circumstances, that the Book of Psalms as well as one of its most frequently mentioned instruments were both called psalterium, have assured for the term a rich existence in Christian literature. Its hundreds of occurrences in patristic and medieval commentary on the psalms serve mostly as starting-points for allegorical exegeses, but a number of passages have at least some organological significance. Eusebius of Caesarea established in his prologue to the Psalter (PG, xxiii, 73) the notion that David stands in the midst of his four subordinate Levite musicians, Asaph, Ethan, Heman and Idithun, holding the psalterium. Later, Isidore of Seville (GerbertS, i, 23) described the instrument as being shaped like the triangular Greek letter delta, a reference found in most subsequent psalter prologues. Meanwhile, commentary on Psalm xxxii.2, following the lead of Basil (PG, xxix, 328), regularly referred to the contrast between the kithara with its soundchest at the bottom of the instrument and the psalterium with its soundchest at the top, a feature corroborated by ancient depictions of harps (Wegner, pls.68, 70, 72). These references add little to present organological knowledge but do at least suggest general unanimity among Christian, Jewish and Greek sources in their identification of psalterium with the triangular harp. At the same time the Christians declare, rather too categorically, that the instrument had ten strings in imitation of the Ten Commandments, a concept deriving from occasional Septuagint phrases such as ‘en decachordō psaltēriō’ (Psalm xcii.4).
In the Carolingian period a contradictory tradition arose when the psalterium was said to be quadratum (‘rectangular’). The earliest extant source for this notion, Hrabanus Maurus's De universo (PL, cxi, 498), pronounced it in the same passage to be both ‘quadratum’ and ‘ut alii volunt, in modum deltae literae’ (‘as others prefer, in the shape of the letter delta’). Subsequently the two conceptions of its shape co-existed: the triangular in the more conventional psalter commentaries (e.g. Honorius of Autun, PL, clxxii, 269), and the rectangular in the group of texts associated with the curious letter of Pseudo-Jerome to Dardanus. The former is illustrated chiefly by depictions of David holding a variety of string instruments, many of which bear resemblance to real instruments (both contemporary and classical); while the latter is illustrated with a schematic rectangular shape traversed by ten lines, suggesting a pseudo-instrument inspired by the text (although some might see a relationship with the roughly rectangular kithara of ancient Magna Graeca). It is this latter instrument which some organologists have singled out as the psalterium decachordum (see fig.2).
The precise steps leading to the last stage in the history of the term psalterium – its application to box zithers which came into the West by way of Moorish Spain and Byzantium – have not received definitive study. The underlying reason for the change in the term's meaning, however, may have been the general resemblance of the prevailing two-dimensional illustrations (in both their triangular and rectangular forms) in early medieval manuscript illumination and sculpture to the more complex yet equally flat shapes of contemporary zithers. Frequently the artist seems to have rendered a harp as a zither by failing to isolate one of its sides as a soundchest and by giving the impression of a solid board or bow behind the strings. This, together with the absence of a neck on either instrument, as well as the general fluidity of early medieval instrumental terminology, renders the final, contradictory application of the term not at all surprising.
The early history of the psaltery is as yet unfathomed, as there is insufficient coincidence between verbal descriptions and visual representations. The triangular and rectangular psalteries mentioned in the letter from Pseudo-Jerome to Dardanus may or may not have actually existed when this hoax was perpetrated in about the 9th century ce, but from that time onwards they appear more and more frequently in the visual arts, played generally by David and his musicians or by Elders of the Apocalypse. Some examples are fantasies which could never have worked, while others display a knowledge of craftsmanship that must have been based on fact. The words ‘rote’, ‘rota’ and ‘rotta’, much associated with the lyre family, were sometimes also applied to the triangular psaltery: in one piece of evidence, on an 11th-century capital in the cloister of the abbey of Moissac, a musician holding a triangular psaltery appears with a carved inscription naming the instrument as a rota. This carving is one of many that could be mistaken for a triangular harp, but other examples, particularly manuscript illustrations, show that the strings of the psaltery run parallel to the soundboard. The absence of soundholes for many of these representations may indicate that such psalteries were basically raised wooden boards rather than hollow boxes. From the 12th century onwards, however, soundholes appear with greater frequency, suggesting the presence of such a box; at the same period the box was sometimes flanked by a set of strings on each side, thus producing a double psaltery.
In the Middle Ages, European instrumental resources were considerably enlarged by importation from the East, via Byzantium (from the 10th century to the 12th) as well as via the Iberian Peninsula where the Arab invasion began in 711. Andalusia gradually became the melting pot of Eastern and Western culture, and Persian-Arabian instruments spread northwards via Catalonia to France and the rest of Europe. The Eastern Santur, an isoceles trapezium-shaped psaltery played by striking the strings with hammers (therefore a type of Dulcimer), was known to Spanish Muslims in the 11th century. The instrument was either brought to Europe from what is now Turkey, or was disseminated in the opposite direction from Europe to the East. In 13th-century Spain, besides the then still popular rota and citara, there existed two types of psaltery known as the canon entero and the medio canon; these are depicted in the Cantigas de Santa María of Alfonso el Sabio, King of Castile and León (reigned 1252–84). The name canon was subsequently absorbed into other languages (see Canon (ii)). The canon entero and the medio canon correspond to the Islamic nuzha (rectangular psaltery) and the Qānūn (trapeziform in shape, one of the sides being rectangular) respectively.
During the Middle Ages a type of psaltery with incurved sides, known as the ‘pig's head psaltery’ (It. istrumento di porco; Ger. Schweinekopff) on account of its shape (fig.4), became very popular. This was generally single- or double-strung. The Latin names ‘ala’, ‘ala entera’ and ‘medio ala’ were sometimes applied to wing-shaped psalteries. The Iberian pig's head psaltery called ala entera (whole wing) appears in three miniatures in the Cancioneiro da Ajuda (P-La). A half-wing psaltery known as the ‘Bohemian wing’ was used in eastern Europe. Also in eastern Europe there flourished the instrument now known as the psaltery-harp, which combined the basic features of both harp and psaltery and thus contained a double soundbox. Examples of psalteries found further north include the Finnish Kantele (with related forms found in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia) and the Russian Gusli.
The strings of the medieval psaltery were made of metal or gut. Egidius de Zamora (Ars musica, c1270) recommended brass and silver strings. According to ‘Le bon berger’ (1379) the triangular rota was gut strung (see Marcuse, 1975, p.217). Metal strings for the qānūn are mentioned in the 14th-century Persian treatise Kanz al-tuhaf. ‘Abd al-Qādir (d 1435) prescribed twisted copper strings for the trichordally strung courses of the qānūn.
Eastern psalteries such as the qānūn and santur were (and still are) played in a horizontal position. In the Cantigas de Santa María, psalteries are depicted in a vertical playing position. The strings were plucked by the fingers or by plectra, such as birds' feathers, quills cut from birds' feathers or ‘dediles’ (rings worn on the fingers, with quills attached); the latter technique was used in Spain and Italy, especially in the 18th century (see §3 below). Psalteries played by striking the strings with hammers (such as the santur) are more properly defined as dulcimers.
The psaltery was widely used up to about 1500, being referred to frequently in lists of musicians such as that of the Feast of Westminster in 1306, where performers included ‘Gillotin le Sautreour’ and ‘Janyn le Sautreour qui est ove Mons. de Percy’. Like most other medieval instruments it had no specific repertory but was used to play whatever music the occasion demanded. Its use as a solo instrument is well demonstrated by Chaucer's often-quoted passage from ‘The Miller's Tale’:
And
al above ther lay a gay sautrie,
[On which he made a-nyghtes melodie]
So swetely that all the chambre rong:
And Angelus ad virginem he song.
The canon entero is mentioned in Arcipreste de Hita's Libro de buen amor (1330):
Dulce
canno entero sal'con el panderete
Con sonajas d'açofar faze dulçe sonete.
The diatonic psaltery could not cope with the demands of Renaissance chromaticism and in the 15th and 16th centuries was used less. However, chromatic notes were made possible by the development of a dividing bridge system applied to isoceles trapeziform psalteries, as in the Hackbrett depicted in Virdung's Musica getutscht of 1511 (fig.5; see also §3 below). Rather than adding extra strings for chromatic notes between the diatonic ones, the use of dividing bridges meant that one string or course could serve for two notes. Another line of development was the addition of a keyboard to the psaltery, foreshadowing the invention of the harpsichord (fig.6).
In western Europe during the early Baroque period the struck dulcimer and the plucked psaltery evolved along similar structural lines, having a trapezoid soundbox with both divided and undivided courses of strings running either over long bridges comprising several separate sections or over files of individual bridges. This allowed the development of fully or almost fully chromatic instruments with a wider compass. The early stages of these later developments can be seen in the Hackbretter depicted in Praetorius's Theatrum instrumentorum (1620; pls.xviii and xxxvi) and the simplest model of the psaltérion illustrated in Mersenne's Harmonie universelle (1636–7; bk 3, p.174). Already in 1650 Athanasius Kircher referred in his Musurgia universalis to a three-octave, plucked Psalterium and illustrated one with a few chromatic notes. Preference for one of the two playing techniques was generally divided along geographical lines. The plucked instrument, known as the salterio, became the norm in the Mediterranean countries, spreading from Italy to the Iberian peninsula and subsequently to Latin America. The situation in France has not been fully researched but both forms were known and played there.
Few dated Italian psalteries are to be found from the 17th century but there are Italian instruments attributed to that period. The ‘modern’ psaltery seems not to have been played at all in Spain during the 17th century, since theoretical works refer to the biblical instrument and other documentary references to a salterio appear to indicate the string drum, also known as the salterio and usually played together with a tabor pipe. There is, however, no shortage of 18th-century Italian and Spanish psalteries, while examples from Latin America also exist. A typical mid-18th-century salterio might have had 24 courses of four unison strings running over two or three sectioned bridges dividing the strings in various ratios. It would have had a compass of almost three chromatic octaves from g (G is the basic key of the salterio). As the century progressed larger instruments were made: with a compass extending down to c and courses of six strings in Spain; with additional files of bridges and extra nuts allowing a more convenient tuning pattern in Italy. Bass courses sometimes had one less string than the treble ones.
Several documents from Italy, Spain and Brazil include an explanation of psaltery tuning but only two works are known that deal with playing technique: Pablo Minguet y Yrol's Reglas y advertencias generales (1754) and Giambattista Dall'Olio's Avvertimenti per suonatori di salterio (1770; reproduced by Count Luigi Francesco Valdrighi in 1879). They confirm the use of a plucking technique with the thumbs and one or more fingers from each hand. There is also evidence of the alternative use of quills attached to rings, perhaps even to thimbles, worn on the fingers. Whereas Kircher had described an alphabetic tablature, both Minguet y Yrol in his Reglas and Antônio Vieira dos Santos (a Portuguese emigrant living in Brazil during the first half of the 19th century) in a manuscript anthology provide music in numerical notation. Normal notation, however, seems to have been the more usual system. Players of the salterio in its 18th-century heyday were usually members of the upper and moneyed classes, such as members of the Corvi and Travaglini families from Spoleto, or belonged to religious orders, e.g. nuns of the Convento de la Encarnación in Avila. The German, Frau Bauer, and the Spaniard, Juan Bautista Pla, better known as an oboist, performed as international virtuosos on the psaltery; Valdrighi also listed some Italian virtuosos.
The corpus of surviving Baroque and Classical music continues to grow as research progresses. It consists not only of anthologies of simple popular, dance and military music for solo psaltery but also accompanied and unaccompanied sonatas for one or two psalteries, chamber music with bowed strings and even concertos or other orchestral works. Emanuele Barbella, Niccolò Jommelli, Carlo Monza and Florido Ubaldi are among the 18th-century Italian composers named in manuscript sources; Vicente Adán, Braulio Canales and Gaspar Esmit [Smith] among the Spaniards. The psaltery was also used to accompany vocal music, both secular and sacred (mostly non-liturgical), with and without obbligato passages.
While little or no psaltery music is known from the 19th century in western Europe, its continued use during the early decades is documented. The Ospizio dei SS Giuseppe e Lucia in Naples, for example, employed a salterio teacher among its music staff in 1823–4. Spanish music historians writing in the latter part of the century mention seeing, or hearing of, the psaltery being played in earlier years in eastern Spain. In Mexico the 18th-century psaltery received a new lease of life when late in the 19th century it became a standard component of popular music ensembles. It is to be found in two sizes, the small requinto and the larger tenor. Such bands today may include several psalteries of each size. Other forms of psaltery are still played elsewhere in the world, e.g. the Qānūn and the Kantele.
For a short time in the early 20th century small rudimentary psalteries in the shape of a right-angled trapezium were produced in some European countries, mainly for teaching purposes. In the second half of the century, Baroque and Classical psaltery music was rescued from oblivion in Europe and the USA as a result of its publication for performance on the dulcimer. Nevertheless a few musicians are using the Baroque plucked technique. A pioneer in this field has been Paul Gifford. Nelly van Ree Bernard has been active in the promotion of the earlier types of psaltery, which are now to be found in many ensembles specializing in medieval music.
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