Dulcimer of the Middle East, south-eastern Europe and South and East Asia. It is used in Iran, Iraq, India, Kashmir, Turkey, Greece, Armenia, China and Tibet.
The prototype of the instrument may be seen in a harp, carried horizontally and struck with two sticks, found in iconographical documents of the ancient Babylonian (1600–911 bce) and neo-Assyrian (911–612 bce) eras. In the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), the santir appears among the instruments in the orchestra of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Chaldea (604–562 bce). Certain Arab sources mention its use during the Sassanian era (226–641 ce). In the 11th century the instrument was known to Spanish Muslims and, in the 14th, Ibn Khaldūn mentioned its use by Arabs in North Africa. In the 16th century the Egyptians made a distinction between the qānūn and the santūr; Villoteau (Description de l’Egypte, Paris, 1809–28) referred to the santūr as marginal in Egypt itself, though the instrument was most definitely used at that time in Iraq.
In Iran the santur consists of a trapeziform case made of walnut wood, approximately 90 cm wide at the broad end, 35 cm wide at the narrow end and 6 cm deep. The sides form an angle of 45° to the wider end. The strings are fixed to hitch-pins along the left-hand side and wound round metal wrest-pins on the right by means of which they are tuned with a tuning-key. Each quadruple set of strings rests on a movable bridge of hardwood (kharak). These bridges are aligned almost parallel with the sides of the case. The right-hand rank corresponds to the bass strings and that on the left to the treble strings. In the centre of the santur the low-pitched strings on the right cross the high-pitched strings on the left.
The left-hand strings can be played on either side of the bridges. In this way three different courses of strings are available: the lowest-sounding on the right, a second series, sounding an octave higher, left of centre, and the highest-sounding series, giving the third octave, on the left. There are nine (or sometimes 11) quadruple strings on either side so that, with 18 groups of strings, 27 different notes can be played. The bass strings are of brass and the trebles of steel. The first series of strings has a range of e'–f'', the second e''–f''' and the third e'''–f''''. The tuning can be readily modified by adjusting the position of the bridges.
The santur is played by striking the strings with two light hammers (mezrāb) held in three fingers of each hand. The hammers do not rebound and the tremolo is controlled solely by a rapid alternating movement of the right and left wrists. Tradition calls for a delicate and precise tone-quality which is obtained only with light hammers of hardwood, and some players stick felt to the ends of the hammers to soften the impact; others have obtained the same result by laying a piece of cloth on the strings. During the second half of the 20th century the Iranian santur virtuoso Farāmarz Pāyvar wrote several books on performance techniques.
The contemporary Iraqi santūr consists of a trapeziform soundbox made from two boards of wood joined together by splints of varying height; hardwoods such as walnut, bitter orange, white beech or apricot may be used. It is approximately 80 to 90 cm wide at the broad end, 31 to 41 cm wide at the narrow end and 7 to 12 cm deep, though when an instrument is made to accompany a specific singer, the size of the soundbox may be changed to accommodate the register of the singer’s voice.
The Iraqi santūr generally has 23 (recently 25) courses of strings (triple, quadruple and rarely quintuple) tuned in unison. There is no damping mechanism, so the sound of the struck melody notes is accompanied by the sympathetic vibrations of the other strings. Strings were traditionally metallic and varied in thickness, treble ones being of steel and those for the lower octaves of bronze. Bronze has now been replaced by nylon, either used by itself or alternating with brass or steel wire. Each group of strings rests on a movable hardwood bridge with a circular base in the shape of a bobbin. The bridges are placed so that the strings are divided into three sections, giving the fundamental note and two higher octaves. The santūr is played with two light sticks held in three fingers of each hand (see illustration); the ends of the sticks are usually covered with cloth to soften their impact on the strings.
Unlike its modern counterpart, the ancient Persian santūr has fixed bridges, which make it impossible to tune the notes during performance; only a number of basic modes may be played and transposed by three or more degrees on any one instrument. The ancient santūr is still played in Iraq. The santūr has a range of more than three octaves from g to a'''.
In South Asia, the santūr was restricted until recently to Kashmir, with its strong Persian culture. The construction of the Kashmiri santūr is similar to that of its Iranian counterpart (though smaller, deeper, and held on the player’s lap), but the tuning differs. Its 100 strings are tuned to nine scalar degrees to the octave (whole tones plus a flat 3rd and 7th) and the range is over one-and-a-half octaves. 12 degrees have two quadruple courses (one of steel, struck with the sticks, and one of brass, resonating sympathetically); the 13th has only a steel course.
In Iran the santur is an important instrument in the traditional orchestra, with the same repertory as the tār and setār (lutes). It is also used in motrebi (music for entertainment), but never in folk music. In Iraq the santūr is part of the classicalshālghī al baghdādī (‘Baghdad ensemble’) along with the jūza (four-string spike fiddle), the daff zinjārī (frame drum with cymbalets), the tabl (single-headed drum) and the naqqāra (double kettledrum). The principal role of the shālghī is to accompany classical singing (maqām ‘irāqī) in teahouses, private homes and concerts. In the Caucasus, the sant’ur or santuri (which may have from 13 to 26 courses from triple to quintuple) is used mainly in the sazandar and ashugh (folk poet-singers) ensembles. In Greece its equivalent, the sadouri, is used in small folk ensembles.
The Kashmiri santūr is the leading instrument of the religious art-music ensemble sūfyāna kalām (‘Sufic utterance’). Together with the setār (long lute), dukrā (drums) and (formerly) the sāz-ī-kāshmīr (spike fiddle), it accompanies kalām songs in a repertory of over 50 modes, some with Indian rāga names, some Middle Eastern. It was introduced into Hindustani rāga music by Shiv Kumar Sharma, who has become the instrument’s most famous exponent. Fixed-pitch chordophones were not formerly prominent in Indian court music because of the stylistic importance of voice-derived portamento (mir), but Sharma introduced a virtuoso stick-technique which re-creates the sound of vocal portamento through timing and tremolo. Since then the instrument has enjoyed growing popularity. It does not have a fixed tuning system but is re-tuned from piece to piece to a scale in the rāga system, in three octave registers.
See also Iran, §§II, 5 and III, 3; Iraq, §II, 1; Kashmir, §3; Greece, §IV, 1(iv); Uzbekistan, §I, 3.
H.G. Farmer: ‘The Music of Ancient Mesopotamia’, ‘The Music of Islam’, NOHM, i (1957), 228–54, 421–77
M.H. al Ridjab: Al maqāmal-‘irāqī [The Iraqi maqām] (Baghdad, 1961)
N. Caron and D. Safvate: Iran: traditions musicales (Paris, 1966)
S.A. Rashid: Tārīkh al-ālāt al-mūsīqīyya fī-l-‘irāq al-qadīm [History of musical instruments in ancient Iraq] (Beirut, 1970)
B.C. Deva: Musical Instruments of India (Calcutta, 1978)
S.Q. Hassan: Les instruments de musique en Irak et leur rôle dans la société traditionelle (Paris, 1980)
J. During: La musique iranienne: tradition et evolution (Paris, 1984)
N. Tremoulhac: ‘‘Ūd, santur, naqqara’, Journal of the Académie Musicologique du Forez, France, i (1984), 44–9
J. Pacholczyk: Sūfyāna mūsīqī: the Classical Music of Kashmir (Berlin, 1996)
JEAN DURING, SCHEHERAZADE QASSIM HASSAN, ALASTAIR DICK