![]() They eventually began producing their own instruments in New York City. In the early 1960s, Ritchie and her husband George Pickow began distributing dulcimers made by her Kentucky relative Jethro Amburgey, then the woodworking instructor at the Hindman Settlement School. The instrument achieved its true renaissance in the 1950s urban folk music revival in the United States through the work of Jean Ritchie, a Kentucky musician who performed with the instrument before New York City audiences. But Wyman preferred singing with the more robust support of the piano. The soprano Loraine Wyman, who sang Appalachian folk songs in concert venues around the time of the First World War, created a brief splash for the Appalachian dulcimer by demonstrating it in concerts, and was portrayed in Vogue magazine (right) holding her instrument, a Thomas. Loraine Wyman, who gathered folk songs in the field and performed them in concert halls, shown in the May 1, 1917, issue of Vogue holding an Appalachian dulcimer. Virtually no audio recordings of the instrument exist from earlier than the late 1930s. But for the first half of the 20th century the mountain dulcimer was rare, with a handful of makers supplying players in scattered pockets of Appalachia. The instrument became used as something of a parlor instrument, as its modest sound volume is best-suited to small home gatherings. Edward Thomas of Knott County, Kentucky, began building and selling them. įew true specimens of the mountain dulcimer exist from earlier than about 1880, when J. He too cited the langeleik, scheitholt and épinette des Vosges as ancestor instruments. This was one of the factors which led to the building of the dulcimer, which has less dramatic curves. Ĭharles Maxson, an Appalachian luthier from Volga, West Virginia, speculated that early settlers were unable to make the more complex violin in the early days because of lack of tools and time. The organological development of the dulcimer divides into three periods: transitional (1700 to mid-1800s), pre-revival or traditional (mid-1800s to 1940), and revival or contemporary (after 1940). Alan Smith reconstructed the instrument's history by analyzing older dulcimers. Long said of the instrument's history:īecause few historical records of the dulcimer exist, the origins of the instrument were open to speculation until recently when Ralph Lee Smith and L. Since 1980, more extensive research has traced the instrument's development through several distinct periods, and has likely origins in several similar European instruments: the Swedish hummel, the Norwegian langeleik, the German scheitholt, and the French épinette des Vosges. Because of this, and a dearth of written records, the history of the Appalachian dulcimer has been, until fairly recently, largely speculative. Origins and history Īlthough the Appalachian dulcimer first appeared in the early 19th century among Scotch-Irish immigrant communities in the Appalachian Mountains, the instrument has no known precedent in Ireland, Scotland or Northern England. The instrument has also acquired a number of nicknames (some shared by other instruments): "harmonium", "hog fiddle", "music box", "harmony box", and "mountain zither". When it needs to be distinguished from the unrelated hammered dulcimer, various adjectives are added (drawn from location, playing style, position, shape, etc.), for example: mountain dulcimer Kentucky dulcimer plucked dulcimer fretted dulcimer lap dulcimer teardrop dulcimer box dulcimer etc. Most often it is simply called a dulcimer (also rendered as "dulcimore", "dulcymore", "delcimer", "delcimore", etc.). The Appalachian dulcimer has many variant names. The body extends the length of the fingerboard, and its fretting is generally diatonic. The Appalachian dulcimer (many variant names see below) is a fretted string instrument of the zither family, typically with three or four strings, originally played in the Appalachian region of the United States. ![]() Hummel (instrument) (Sweden, Netherlands).Appalachian dulcimerĭulcimer, mountain dulcimer, lap dulcimer, fretted dulcimer, dulcimore, etc. ![]() For other uses, see Dulcimer (disambiguation). ![]()
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