Russian folk musical instruments. Varieties of ancient musical instruments An ancient musical instrument whose ancestor was a bow

The Greek goddess of wisdom, Athena, invented the flute, the god Pan made the shepherd's pipe, and meanwhile the Indian god Narada invented and gave people a harp-like instrument - wine. But these are just myths. Musical instruments were invented by people. This is not surprising, because man is the first musical instrument. And the sound he makes is his voice.

In a voice, a primitive man transmitted information to his fellow tribesmen and reported on his emotions: fear, joy, love. To make the “song” more interesting, he stamped his feet and clapped his hands, pounded stone on stone and beat on the stretched skin of a mammoth. So, the objects surrounding a person began to turn into musical instruments.

If we divide the instruments, according to the method of extracting sound from them, we get three groups- percussion, brass and strings. So why did primitive man knock, what did he blow and what did he pull? We don't know exactly what the first musical instruments were, but we can guess.

The first percussion instruments were made from dried animal skins and all kinds of hollow objects: wooden logs, large fruit shells, later clay pots. They beat them in various ways: with fingers, palms, sticks. Ancient drums and tambourines were used in ritual ceremonies and military operations. And the African tribes even communicated with each other at a distance with the help of combat.

The next group is wind. It is not known why an ancient man blew into a piece of bamboo, a reed reed, a horn or a hollow animal bone, but it became a tool when special holes appeared. On the territory of modern Hungary and Moldova, pipes and tweeters are found that date back to the Upper Paleolithic. And the most ancient instrument is the flute, found in the south-west of Germany. More precisely, these are the remains of an instrument resembling a flute made from the bone of a swan, whose age is more than 35 thousand years! In rock art, you can also find the image of the first wind instruments.

The first stringed instrument considered to be a hunting bow. Pulling on the bowstring, the ancient hunter noticed that from a pinch, the bowstring "sings". And the stretched vein of the animal "sings" even better, and most importantly longer, if you rub it with the animal's hair. This is how the bow appeared, a stick with a bunch of horsehair stretched over it, which was led along a string made from twisted animal sinews, and later from silk threads. This divided stringed instruments into plucked and bowed instruments. Also, ancient people noticed that strings stretched over a hollow object resonate - they sound louder and richer. The resonator can be an earthen vessel, a dried pumpkin, but, of course, a tree sounds best of all.

The most ancient stringed instruments are the lyre and the harp. Instruments similar to them are found among all ancient peoples. Ursk harps are the oldest stringed instruments found by archaeologists. They are over 4500 years old!

The truth is that we cannot say exactly what the first musical instrument looked like, but the fact that music, even in its primitive form, was part of the life of primitive man, that's for sure!

Even the tragic fate of Dr. Robert Ball, who died making sounds from a metal horn of the Bronze Age, did not deter archaeologists from trying to sound prehistoric and ancient musical instruments. And so, after hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands of years, sounds again poured out of some of the original instruments. Numerous replicas, copies of these instruments, also went into action. But how can one be sure that the sounds produced today are at least partially similar to those heard by people of the distant past? Frankly, it seems to us that the results of experimental archeology in this area will always be problematic. However, we have no other way yet. The most ancient musical instruments that have come down to us are bone pipes and flutes. They were found at many Late Paleolithic sites scattered throughout the then inhabited territory. The sounds extracted from them were reflected from the white limestone massifs of the Pavlovsk Hills in South Moravia, carried in the vicinity of present-day Petrškovice. One such instrument, originating from the Istalloskö Cave in Hungary, is made from the femur of a cave bear. It has two holes on the front and one on the back. If this instrument is played like a transverse flute, then it emits the tones "la", "si flat", "si" and "mi".

The most ancient musical instruments that have come down to us are bone pipes and flutes. They were found at many Late Paleolithic sites scattered throughout the then inhabited territory. The sounds extracted from them were reflected from the white limestone massifs of the Pavlovsk Hills in South Moravia, carried in the vicinity of present-day Petrškovice. One such instrument, originating from the Istalloskö Cave in Hungary, is made from the femur of a cave bear. It has two holes on the front and one on the back. If this instrument is played like a transverse flute, then it emits the tones "la", "si flat", "si" and "mi".

Archaeologists discovered on the banks of the Desna near Chernigov a whole set of bone musical instruments, which made it possible 20 thousand years ago to make a very decent orchestra. Six musicians could choose according to their taste a flute or syrinx (Pan's flute), a xylophone from two lower jaws of a mammoth or a drum from a piece of a skull, a timpani from a scapular and pelvic bones with a stick from a mammoth tusk, or a rattle from several bone plates. Together with them, a drummer from Mezin in Ukraine could take part in the concert, for whom a set of carved bones allowed him to reproduce a six-tone scale by striking with a stick. Finally, in order to complete our understanding of the Paleolithic orchestra, let us recall the long-known fresco in the French cave of the Three Brothers (Trois Freres): a hunter, dressed in an animal skin, plays a kind of musical bow, reminiscent of instruments that are still used by some African tribes .

Pan flutes (consisting of several pipes of different lengths) already exist from the Late Paleolithic, but only a few copies have survived. Pipes dating back to the 5th century BC. e., have from four to seven trunks. And a three-thousand-year-old artifact from Poland, found in the burial of an elderly man, consists of nine pipes that make the sounds “do, re, mi, salt, la, do, re, mi, salt.” It is a two octave pentatonic scale, and if realized consciously as a musical formation, its existence in prehistoric Poland makes a striking impression. At Malhelm Tarn in Yorkshire, English archaeologists discovered a recorder dating from the last centuries before the change of chronology. They succeeded in extracting the tones “C, C sharp and F” from the instrument.

The oldest ocarina, which belongs to the class of pipes, comes from Austria and was made at the end of the third millennium BC. e. She has a single hole for blowing and a characteristic oval resonator chamber. She reproduces "la, si flat, si, do".

With these and similar instruments, the potential sonic range is fortunately limited. Therefore, on the basis of experiments, we can say with a certain degree of plausibility that it was these sounds or some of them that people listened to in prehistoric times.

The next group of wind instruments are horns and pipes of various types. Researchers are unanimous in principle that the prototype for musical horns was the horns of animals, and tubular bones served as the prototype for musical pipes.

Probably the best known of these instruments are the Late Bronze Age lures. They are made of bronze, their length is from one to two meters. Usually they are paired, and the same size, but curved in opposite directions. Both instruments are tuned in the same key, and playing two lures at the same time either led to heterophony ("dissonance") or caused accidental harmony (consonance). The first experiments with lures were carried out by the creator of the three-century archaeological periodization, Christian Jurgensen Thomsen. The latest research in Denmark has shown that most lures can be played from seven to nine tones, and in all likelihood, this corresponds to the capabilities of Bronze Age musicians. Professional trumpeters, using all sorts of tricks, even extracted sixteen tones. Mouthpieces on lures are very different and not very convenient for playing music. In the same way, imperfections in the processing of the internal parts of the instruments make it necessary to express an opinion about the relative indifference of ancient musicians to the purity of musical expression - we judge this, of course, from a modern point of view.

The next large musical instrument is the Iron Age Celtic horn, originating from Ardbryn in Ireland. Its height is almost two and a half meters. It tapers to about the middle like a bell, and then takes the form of a cylinder, abruptly ending without any rounding of the mouthpiece. The instrument was voiced using a simple metal mouthpiece, it emitted three tones: B flat, F, B flat. It is curious that without a mouthpiece the experimenter managed to extract as many as seven tones. The sounds of this horn are like two drops of water to the sounds extracted from the paired Danish lur from Brudevelte.

The largest "family" of metal horns survived in Ireland. They date from around 900-600 BC. e. We know almost one hundred instruments, of which twenty-five can be voiced. Horns of two types. In some, air is blown at the end, in others - from the side. From instruments with a hole on the side, archaeologists have not yet found a single mouthpiece. Therefore, there is no certainty that mouthpieces were used at all in this variation. Each of these horns can produce a single tone, but their general range extends from G to D sharp. The lowest tone (it is reproduced by an eighty-centimeter horn) is salt. Then follows a group of horns emitting A and A sharp. Finally, half-meter horns were given to sharp, re, re sharp. The horns, in which air is blown from the end, turned out to be much more “musical”. The experimenter was able to extract four tones from some.

The low quality and stability of tones extracted from Irish horns suggests that the main thing for both listeners and performers was, first of all, the very existence of these huge majestic instruments, and not the specific sounds they made.

John Coles notes that the total noise that could have been made if all twenty-four horns and twice as many rattles were sounded at the same time at the Dauris site in Central Ireland would certainly wake the living and the dead.

The next group of prehistoric instruments are clay and metal rattles.

How easy it is to make them sound, and how little they contribute to the understanding of ancient music! Clay rattles have been around since the Neolithic. The Neolithic also adds ceramic drums. Replicas of two of them, made by experimenters on the model of finds in the Czech Republic (the heads were covered with cowhide leather), made such loud, piercing sounds that, undoubtedly, they were used only in open space. At the same time, the height of the drums did not exceed 20 and 26 cm, respectively.

Ancient musicians made other kinds of percussion instruments from bones, tortoise shells and shells, which were beaten with a hand or a stick. The model of such an instrument, made after the frescoes of the Mayan Indians, reproduced three different tones, depending on which parts of the shell were hit.

The abundance of wind, string and percussion instruments speaks of the cultural wealth of the ancient Russians. Absorbing the sounds of nature, the people created simple rattles and whistles from improvised materials. Every child in Russia had the skills to make and play simple musical instruments. It has been an integral part of folk culture and life since the times of Ancient Russia. Many of them are used to this day unchanged - others were improved and formed the basis of folk orchestras.

Russian folk music (instruments):

Balalaika

Balalaika has become a symbol of Russian culture. This is a three-stringed plucked instrument with a triangular soundboard. The first mention of the instrument dates back to the 17th century. but the instrument received mass distribution only after a hundred years. The classical balalaika originated from the East Slavic domra with two strings and a rounded soundboard.

The status of a folk instrument was assigned to it for a reason. The root of the word balalaika is the same as in the words balakat or balabol, which mean a meaningless, unobtrusive conversation. So the instrument most often acted as an accompaniment for the leisure of Russian peasants.

Gusli

Another stringed folk plucked instrument, but much older than the balalaika. The first historical evidence of the use of the harp dates back to the 5th century. The ancestor of the instrument has not been precisely established, but, according to the most common hypothesis, they originated from the ancient Greek cithara. There were several types of psaltery with a resonator of various shapes and the number of strings from 5 to 30.

Gusli of all types (wing-shaped, helmet-shaped, lyre-shaped) were used to accompany the soloist's voice, and the musicians were called gusliers.

Horn

A small mouthpiece wind instrument with a bell at the end of the barrel and six playing holes (simultaneously the name of a group of wind instruments). The traditional horn was carved from juniper, birch or maple. The ensemble and dance variety of the instrument originated from the signal horns of shepherds and warriors, who accompanied both leisure and work.

The first information about horns recorded on paper dates back to the 17th century, but in fact they began to be used much earlier. Since the 18th century, there have been references to horn ensembles.

Domra

The traditional Slavic plucked string instrument is the progenitor of the balalaika. The fundamental differences from the first from the last are in the configuration of the deck (oval and triangular, respectively). It became widespread in the 16th century, presumably having evolved from Mongolian two-stringed plucked instruments.

There are three- and four-string versions of the instrument. Domra was considered an instrument of traveling buffoons (a domra player is a domrachi).

Accordion

Bayan is a Russian folk musical instrument with Bavarian roots. The harmonica served as a constructive basis for it. The first instrument was created by the master Mirwald in 1891, and in the next year button accordions appeared in Russia. However, the name of the instrument was first mentioned in 1903 (before that it was called the chromatic accordion).

It is a solo concert or ensemble instrument. However, it often accompanies people's leisure activities at public festivities or family holidays.

Russian accordion

The hand accordion came to Russian musical culture along with the invasion of the Mongol-Tatars. Its progenitor was the Chinese shen instrument. The Chinese progenitor has come a long way from Asia to Russia and Europe, but the harmonica received mass popular love after the 1830s, after the opening of the first production. But even in the presence of a set production, most of the instruments were made by folk craftsmen, which contributed to a wide constructive diversity.

Tambourine

It is almost impossible to establish the time and place of the appearance of the tambourine as a musical instrument - it was used in various rituals of many peoples. Ritual tambourines most often represent a leather membrane on a round wooden frame - a shell. Bells or round metal plates were often hung on the sides of Russian musical tambourines.

In Russia, any percussion musical instrument was called a tambourine. The military and ritual tambourine is clearly distinguished. It was they who served as the basis for musical tambourines used during performances of buffoons and other entertainment events.

Firewood

A percussion instrument with the telling name firewood "grew" from an ordinary bundle of firewood. By the principle of operation, it is similar to the xylophone. The sound is extracted with a special mallet made of wooden plates. In the lower part of each plate, a recess is selected, the depth of which determines the pitch of the sound. After adjustment, the plates are varnished and assembled into a bundle. For the manufacture of firewood, dried birch, spruce and maple are used. Maple firewood is considered the most euphonious.

whistle

A small ceramic wind instrument - a whistle - was often supplied with decorative elements. Especially popular were whistles in the form of birds with decorative painting. Preferred creatures and ornaments often indicate the region where the instrument was made.

Whistles emit high trills. Water is poured into some types of whistles and then trills are obtained with overflows. Whistles were created as children's toys.

Ratchet

A row of wooden plates fastened with a cord, this is the Slavic rattle. Shaking such a bunch creates a sharp popping sound. Ratchets are made of durable wood species - oak, for example. To increase the volume between the plates are inserted gaskets of the order of five millimeters thick. The instrument was used at fairs and festivities to draw attention to a particular performance.

wooden spoons

Another symbol of Russian culture is wooden spoons. It is the only percussion instrument that can be eaten. The ancient Russians used spoons to extract rhythmic sounds as much as they used to eat. Spoons made of different types of wood with characteristic painting are used in sets from two to five. The most common option is with three - two are clamped in the left hand of the spoon, and with the third he hits the undersides of the scoops.

At all times and civilizations, the human soul demanded something more, sorry for the comparison, than the simple satisfaction of carnal needs. And one of these desires was the need for music ... Many, many years ago, in antiquity, music originated from primitive people in the form of claps and stomps, a little later people learned to extract sounds from their natural environment, with the help of everyday household items, and finally, people began to improve these same items to obtain the first musical instruments. In different parts of the world, people learned how to make sounds from objects in different ways, and ancient musical instruments around the world are quite different from each other. The oldest musical instruments were made from improvised means: stone, clay, wood, the skins of dead animals, and the horns of dead animals were also used for all sorts of ritual rites.

The development of the ancient civilizations of Europe led to the creation of musical instruments used for entertainment and entertainment. The ancient Greeks and Romans made a particularly great contribution to modern arts, among whom the musical craft was held in high esteem. This is evidenced by numerous preserved musical instruments and even chronicles. But in the culture of the Slavs, musical instruments were respected and valued not at all times, and not by all. It should be noted that in ancient times only men had the right to master any technique of musical art, since it was considered a craft.
The Slavs gave sacred meaning to musical instruments. It was believed that in order to play musical instruments, one must sell one's soul to the devil... Also, ancient musical instruments were often used for signaling purposes or for the performance of rituals, such as Carpathian trembita- the longest musical instrument in the world, its length can be 2.5 m.

The material of trembita does not change to this day: it is smereka (European fir). The Slavic people are especially rich in legends ..... It is believed that trembita should be made from a twilight that was struck by lightning, and this happens often in the Carpathians.

Our ancestors thought that every musical instrument has a soul, and if the person who played this instrument died, then the instrument was buried with him. The herbal pipe (overtone flute), double flute (double-barreled flute - in the figure below) can still be considered primordially Russian folk instruments - one of the oldest handicraft instruments.

Also, our ancestors replaced musical instruments with household items, creating sound. Such objects were often spoons, dampers, buckets, etc., and they also used natural materials (tree bark, animal horns, plant trunks, birch bark).

In Russia, the first musical art somehow was not particularly developed, it was mainly shepherds who were engaged in it. But such peoples as Ukrainians and Belarusians were very fond of having fun, and in Belarus they even designated music as a profession: ancient ensembles were created, invited to idleness, fun, weddings. And there was even a mandatory set of instruments that sounded together, among the Western Slavs they were, and among the southern Slavs - bagpipes and. In the late XIX - early XX century, many traditional musical instruments among the Russian people were replaced (strings), and then.

Musical instruments of our time are the result of the work of more than one generation of musicians and craftsmen, it is a long process of development of culture and civilization as a whole. So let's appreciate and respect what has gone through years of improvement before falling into our hands - the art of playing music!