In einer eMail vom 31.10.2006 16:23:34 Westeurop=E4ische Normalzeit schreibt [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
> misreading or > miswriting of words, attribution of a generic word to any new > instruments, confusion between instruments, use of a local name for a > new imported arrival... > > I suggest we refer to them all as 'axe' from now on! > David, that was a well-written posting! The fact is that there aren't many root words in the Indo-Germanic zone for a fretted, plucked instrument. The other fact is that there are not all that many feasible ways of constructing a fretted, plucked instrument, either! You need strings to generate defined notes, a bridge to transmit the vibrations, a body for amplification, a neck for fretting, and a tuning mechanism to get the notes right. Strings can be gut, wire, horsehair, silk or some modern synthetic equivalent. The body can be a wooden box or a drum. The box, as in the vast majority of European instruments, has only a few possible forms: bowl-backed, flat-backed and "portuguese", "German" or "vaulted" back, or carved back. The size of the neck is limited by the ergonomics of the human hand, and can be fretless, fretted with wire or wood, or with tied frets. The bridge can be floating or fixed. The tuners may be pegs or various kinds of machine (planetary, worm-and-pinion, Preston), set in three basic forms of peghead (violin, Embergher, flat). That's basically it. Four main parameters, each with only 2 to 4 possible values. All our individual instruments are permutations on these. Some permutations are common, some are rarely encountered. What I've left out is the "soul" of the instrument - its tuning! This is the part of the instrument that interfaces most closely with the soul of the player. Change the tuning, and the player will find that his familiar-looking instrument has become a stranger. YOUR favourite instrument, the one you can just pick up and play without thinking about it, is just one permutation of these parameters. And its name is just the derivate of the Indo-germanic root word for a "stringed instrument" that happened to be current and not already used at the time and place at which your instrument in its definitive form emerged. Obviously, with the few choices of back and string material, and with a common woodworking tradition and musical aesthetic, individual instrument types all over Europe at all times will have similarities, but I think one must be careful about calling these "family likenesses". Cheers, John D. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
