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The Hammered Dulcimer in France

In French it's le tympanon. This word is also used for the ancient tambourine, but the pronunciation is slightly different; the last "n" silent for the hammered dulcimer, hard for the ancient tambourine.

Not that there's likely to be much confusion. Despite high respect for regional and rural culture (and a government arts budget that encourages both) there is no strong hammered dulcimer tradition in most of France. Even though there are now some players of the diatonic hammered dulcimer scattered around the country ( just as one finds a few players of the hurdy-gurdy scattered around the US), people generally will not recognize it. In 1999, when I played in the Compagnie Barbaroque in the Fêtes Nocturnes at the Château de Grignan, I was continually being asked the name of the instrument and its origin.

Now, "playing Highland pipes for the Cleveland Orchestra" will strike most pipers as odd, and playing a hammered dulcimer in an orchestral ensemble is a bit odd as well. Hammered dulcimers are not usually orchestral instruments, unless you count Ragtime and Hary Janos for cymbalom. But Didier Capeille, the director of the Compagnie Barbaroque, has been quite accepting of any instrument if it has a sound he wants and is competently played. A good composer, he's also able to write and arrange, and thus the hammered dulcimer will find himself reading a part along with the bassoon, tuba, bagpipes, or whatever. And it's seldom an easy part, either. One of Didier's smaller ensembles, the Quatuor Barbaroque, did a recording in 2002 of Vivaldi's Four Seasons on the EMEC label [number E-055, angeles at seemsa.com] with Gilles Raymond playing the tympanon.( bravo, Gilles!) Like Poulenc, Didier often gives you the feeling that there's a joke somewhere in the music, and this lively recording is no exception.

Speaking of exceptions, there are some other possibilities for encountering one of the instruments in France. The Swiss have a long tradition of playing hammered dulcimer, and in French regions close to Switzerland ( such as Savoy) the instrument is not unknown; Jeanpy Castellan and his band Campanelle [http://campanelle.free.fr/accueil.htm] have been using the diatonic tympanon for some time, and just over the border close to Geneva the French/Swiss group Montferrine[http://www.sav.org/montferrine] uses the larger chromatic German Swiss hackbrett . France has also had substantial immigration, and thus the cymbalom of eastern Europe and the santur of Iran have immigrated as well. Some French artists have taken them up; the early music ensemble La Compagnie Medievale, of Montpellier, has a good santurist ( alas, their wonderful CD Croisade is now out of print) For the couple dozen French cymbalists there is also now a site [ http://cymbalum.seb.free.fr/] with a page of snappy comebacks for questions, like "How long does it take to tune?" Answer: "nobody knows ".

In talking of hammered dulcimer traditions, I can't neglect the tambour de Béarn, or the Bearnaise string drum. Béarn is that province in the south west, bordering the Pyrenees mountains and the Atlantic. This instrument, hit with sticks to make a rhythm, is perhaps the earliest form of the hammered dulcimer. There is also a very old tabor pipe or one-handed flute tradition in the region, and at some point the two were combined, so that the musician plays the flute with her left hand, uses her left elbow to hold the tambour, and wields a stick with the right hand to beat the strings. The tambour d. B. has considerable punch. For some nice early illustrations of the early instrument, there's [http://www.instrumentsmedievaux.org/pages/tambor23.htm] . But please note that the man in the photo is playing it upside down ( In my photo I'm holding one of the things the right way up) The group Adarron, in Pau, was one band using the instrument well, and though their site has sadly disappeared , an Australian dance group has posted a few of their tunes, from their recording Er Navèth [ http://www.arach.net.au/~bgoldby/Pages/Music.htm]

As shown in the illustration, the hammered dulcimer was known in France in the baroque, and earlier. In 1992, my friend the lutenist Valerie Capeille ( then wife of Didier) Seth Austen and I did a recording of mostly French Early music with some other French artists. Pas d' Eté, or Summer Steps , was the result. Here's a clip of Seth and I doing one lute duet, the classic La Rossignol.

Valerie and I talked about how very little early written music for the hammered dulcimer had survived, or was being attempted. Modern hammered dulcimer players generally were taking melodies from Susato, Attaignant, Gervaise or a similar Renaissance source, and playing them like fiddle tunes. Few tried the polyphonic music that was the fashion of the time, and with some cause- with only two hammers, the hammered dulcimer has limitations for polyphony! Valerie was playing a lot of Renaissance Guitar, which was in fashion for a very brief time in the 1550's. Since it only had four string courses ( imagine a ukelele, and you're not far off) the music for it was very spare, compared to lute music. We found that a number of pieces for it could be transcribed and played on hammered dulcimer without great alteration. Soon we were working on a book, which Mel Bay decided to publish French Renaissance Dances for the Hammered Dulcimer. For those interested in Authentic Performance of Renaissance music on hammered dulcimer it's useful. Here's one of the simplest from it, listed in Morlaye's collection with several others as simply "another Poitou bransle"

The bransle was a very popular dance, a social dance that could be done by all ages. Poictou is Poitou, a region in the west of France with a very strong bagpipe and hurdy-gurdy tradition and, indeed, the low A drone is supposed to imitate a bagpipe. As I said, it's very simple; the right hand does the drone, the left hand does the upper voice. You'd think the drone would be a low D, ( and you can add one in, in the right hand part) but having a drone on the fifth is still often found in traditional French music. It's now out of print. but I still have some copies for those interested. Contact info, web pages for my instruments, recordings, etc. and for the Upper Potomac Dulcimer Fest, can be found at www.dulcimerfest.org

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Nicholas Blanton made his first hammered dulcimer in 1977 and hasn't been without something to tune since. Many top players use his hammered dulcimers, and though he's made cymbaloms, citterns, mandolins and the world's only Renaissance Banjo, hammered dulcimers are still mostly what he builds. Some of his performances and recordings include baroque music with the Compagnie Barbaroque and medieval troubadour music with Ensemble Trob'art, of France, music and sound effects for a Punch & Judy show of the Blackbird Theatre, and concerts, dances and weddings in West Virginia, where he lives.