(Fr.).
A string instrument in the form of a simple dulcimer (it is classified as a Chordophone: box zither), used primarily in southern France, as an accompaniment to the pipe (see Pipe and tabor). It has sometimes been referred to as a ‘string drum’. It was commonly used to accompany dancing during the Renaissance; La Borde in the late 18th century mentioned it as still popular in the Gascogne and Béarn regions of France. The 18th-century vogue for the pastoral created a fashion for it in French court circles, and produced numerous keyboard pieces featuring bass drones, often entitled ‘Tambourin’. It continues to flourish in and around the Basque country, where it is known by such local names as bertz, soinu, tuntun and toutouna. In Aragon it is known as chicotén or salterio (‘psaltery’), and elsewhere in Spain as salmo. In its earlier history it was known in Germany, Italy and Switzerland.
The instrument consists of six thick gut strings stretched over a wooden soundbox some 90 cm long and tuned to the key note and 5th of the pipe. The strings are struck with a stick (baguette), held in the player’s right hand, and provide a rhythmic bass to the pipe – the three-holed flute, or galoubet – played by the left hand. Both instruments are shown being played in Lancret’s painting Danse pastorale (see illustration) and in a fresco (dated 1488–93) by Filippino Lippi in the chapel of S Maria sopra Minerva, Rome. Examples of the tambourin de Béarn survive in the Stearns Collection, University of Michigan, the Musée de la Musique, Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. A similar instrument is mentioned by Altenburg (Versuch einer Anleitung zur heroisch-musikalischen Trompeter- und Pauker-Kunst, Halle, 1795) – the trombe, a wooden chest with a gut string stretched over a bridge. A two-string example is depicted in the Angers Tapestry (1380). In the preface to his Six sonates en duo pour le tambourin avec un violon seul (Paris, n.d.), Lavallière gives a description and tunings for both the six- and 13-string tambourines.
La BordeE
A. Jacquot: Dictionnaire pratique et raisonné des instruments de musique anciens et modernes (Paris, 1886)
C. Sachs: Real-Lexikon der Musikinstrumente (Berlin, 1913/R)
R. Wright: Dictionnaire des instruments de musique (London, 1941)
J.A. de Donostia and J. Tomás: ‘Instrumentos de música popular española’, AnM, ii (1947), 105–50
J.A. de Donostia: ‘Instrumentos musicales del pueblo vasco’, AnM, vii (1952), 3–49
W. Bosmans: Eenhandsfluit en trom in de Lage Landen/The Pipe and Tabor in the Low Countries (Peer, 1991)
JAMES BLADES, MARY CYR, DAVID KETTLEWELL