okieshadow
Mountain Dulcimer
Where does such sadness in wood come
from? How could longing live in these
wires? The box looks like the most fragile
coffin tuned for sound. And laid
across the knees of this woman
it looks less like a baby nursed
than some symbolic Pietà,
and the stretched body on her lap
yields modalities of lament
and blood, yields sacrifice and sliding
chants of grief that dance and dance toward
a new measure, a new threshold,
a new instant and new year which
we always celebrate by
remembering the old and by
recalling the lost and honoring
those no longer here to strike these
strings like secrets of the most
satisfying harmonies, as
voices join in sadness and joy
and tell again what we already
know, have always known but forget,
from way back in the farthest cove,
from highest on the peaks of love.
Robert Morgan
okieshadow
Dulcimers appear in a wide variety of body types, many of which are recorded in A Catalog of Pre-Revival Dulcimers. A representative array would include: hourglass, teardrop, trapezoid, rectangular, elliptical ("Galax-style"), violin-shaped, fish-shaped, and lute-back.
okieshadow
Until the late 1970s, most Appalachian dulcimers were made with a purely diatonic fretboard. A few years later, an added 6½ fret (and where the instrument fretboard is long enough, the 13½ fret, an octave higher) had become standard. Most makers now offer 1½ and 8½ frets as options, and the fully chromatic dulcimer is rising in popularity.
okieshadow
Dulcimers may have as few as two or as many as 12 strings (in six courses). Instruments with only one string would more properly be termed monochords.
