Some thoughts on Verdurian string instruments, with some ideas and suggested terms that it would be good to check before I run with them too much!
Re. 'endivyón' and the 'endi' bow.
Using the word
endi for the bow makes me wonder whether it might have originally been literally a stick with no hair, banged against the strings to excite them (like the terrestrial col legno technique, and not dissimilar to the idea of the dulcimer).
Unless I’ve missed it (very possible) there’s no mention of bowed string instruments in southern Ereláe. Sitars, zithers, etc yes, but no bowed instruments that I can find. (Not saying they don’t exist, but that other types of chordophones are probably more central to those cultures.) So perhaps the idea of bowing string instruments didn’t come to Eretald from Xengiman or neighbouring cultures. Cad’inor
arcos isn’t the basis of any musical term that I can find, either. So to understand the development of the endi bow I've been looking a bit wider than the idea of a transverse haired bow developed directly from the hunting bow (even though this is probably a development which happened independently in several areas on Earth). Such a bow was quite possibly a part of the musical culture of Eretald from early times, but my theory is that it may not be the only or even main precursor of the modern endi bow.
Since
endi also means woodwind instrument, it’s tantalising if a bit romantic to imagine this idea catching on from a multi-instrumentalist using their flute/whatever to excite the strings of a vyon. Perhaps as a folk-etymology.
As to how hair came to be added... Possibly there was already a tradition of transverse, haired lyre-bowing in Ereláe, but also a tradition (perhaps more widespread, given how easy a stick is to come across or make compared to a haired bow) of using beaters. Practically, the transverse haired technique became standard by (maybe) renaissance times due to its much greater capacity for resonance in melodic playing, but linguistically the beaten technique won out as a way to describe both, probably because it was more deeply embedded in folk tradition.
Indeed what developed into the modern endi bow may have been seen as a way to achieve both techniques, given that the reverse and tip of a haired bow need be no different from parts of a stick. Beaten (
baďul ?) playing may still form a key part of endivyón playing, particularly in folk contexts; bowing with the hair might be referred to as something to do with
nüle… (‘curl, lock of hair’), or
lir referring to its more melodic character —
lirtene? Baďul playing may also be particularly associated with accompanying the voice.
This would have ramifications for the design of the modern endi bow, given its more central dual purpose. Its tip might have a slightly bulbous ending for
baďul finta (?) ’tip-beating’. Its shaft may have a heavier (thicker) area roughly half-way along to allow
elbaďul (?) ‘middle-beating’. Its handle would be designed for optimum switching between these (three) techniques. (N.B. elbaďul would be louder than col legno but still quite quiet; baďul finta — a technique without European equivalent that I can find — would potentially carry quite well, if my experiments are anything to go by.) The bow would likely be heavier and shorter, slightly disadvantaging it compared to the terrestrial violin bow in terms of (haired) legato melodic playing, and probably producing a slightly darker, duskier tone. (Perhaps in the modern period, streamlined bows designed purely for lirtene playing start to be produced, as the baďul style is left in the past.)
Interlude: on strumming
The modern Verdurian term for ‘string instrument’ is
dronul, either a diminutive of
drona ‘guitar’, or the past participle of
dronen ‘to strum, play (music)’. The word
drona is marked as “imitative” in the Verdurian Dictionary, indicating that the syllable
dron- is thought to have been coined as an onomatopoeic representation of plucking a string.
The original association of string instruments with percussive excitement of the strings is strengthened by the alteration of Old Verdurian tröcen/trocen (derived from the dynamic form of Cad’inor trogan ‘to touch, be in contact with / contact’) to drocen ‘pluck (string instruments)’ by analogy with dronen. Strumming and plucking certainly seem to have been central to the idea of the string instrument for a long time, with bowing a development of later times.
A bit of background on the post-Classical vyon and the development of the endivyón
Descended ultimately from the Cuzêian
viannas (which has its own history), the post-Classical vyon or ‘lyre’ was in fact a family of instruments of varying sizes, ranges and features. The Cuzêians may have sometimes bowed the viannas, but if so this practice left little trace; the Medieval vyon was traditionally plucked, struck or strummed. (N.B. The term 'vyon' may be used to refer to this instrument retrospectively, much as we may use 'lyre' with modern pronunciation and spelling to refer to ancient instruments.)
Anything from three to six strings were used, sometimes with additional bourdon strings, fixed to a flat bridge on a rectangular resonator. It was originally an n-frame instrument with no fingerboard. The strings were plucked with the fingers of the right hand or possibly a plectrum. The fingers of the left hand were used to mute certain strings to produce chords and harmonics; multiple tunings existed, though commonly strings were tuned to the tonic, supertonic and dominant to allow easy production of chords I and V. Pressure could be applied with the flat of the left thumbnail to the side of the outer string, or less effectively the undersides of the others, to allow a skilled player to produce a melody on a single string with a chordal accompaniment.
The fingerboard started to be added to the vyon’s frame already in the Classical period, allowing the easier stopping of the strings and thus a greater variety of notes to be produced; by the later Medieval period generally only the fingerboard remained, totally changing the technique of the instrument. (This bit, i.e. string instruments with one central fingerboard, might have been inspired by Southern Ereláe, given that in Classical times Skourene music used 'sitars'.)
Medieval and earlier vyons generally had a lower range than the modern endivyón, and were most often played resting on the legs. A horizontal position better suited larger instruments, while an upright position (like the viola da gamba) suited medium-sized ones; the orientation had some ramifications for playing techniques (which I won't go into here). Being lower and more often played unstopped, their sound characteristically had a longer decay, more like a terrestrial harp. Thus they were well suited for the baďul technique, and, if it is true that there were ever multi-instrumentalists playing their vyons with their flutes, it would have been using this sort of vyon that they were using. Using beaters (without hair) known as endi to play the vyon was already common in the Late Classical period.
The niche of ‘small, high string instrument capable of producing a sweet melody’ was filled in Early Medieval times not by the vyon, which was best suited to accompaniment of the voice or other instruments, but by the dičura family, generally played with a plectrum or the fingernails.
Smaller vyons were, however, increasingly made throughout the Medieval period and onwards to allow playing against the chest or neck (sometimes suspended by a strap) while walking or standing, and over time these became more specialised for melodic playing, for which to the pre-existing beater already known as the ‘endi’ was added a course of hair to form the precursor of the modern endi bow. The term endivyón came to refer to these smaller, melodic, chest-orientated, transverse-bowed vyons during the Renaissance period; the term itself reveals the conception of the endi bow as half of the instrument, not merely an auxiliary to it.
In modern times the vyon still exists as a regional and folk instrument. Whilst the term is very broad, referring to plucked, strummed and beaten lyre-like instruments of different sizes, shapes and functions, vyons in general differ from the modern endivyón so greatly that the extrapolated instruments of the endivyón family (principally the viond sëte and viond nizze) were named using a reborrowing of Caďinor
viondos rather than using the base vyon.
Final thought for now
I quite want the Ismaîn
çişte to evolve literally from the boxes that musicians carried their vyons around in. Or alternatively, this (and the multi-instrumentalist's endi=literal flute theory) to be origin stories for these instruments in folk-legend.
~~~
Please query, correct, suggest, etc! I know this is a bit technical and possibly not particularly interesting to all, but hey, I like detail. FYI I'm writing a piece for violin and soprano in Verdurian, to a fabulous text supplied by Zompist, hence I've been trying to think about how the endivyón might differ from the terrestrial violin. Watch this space.
