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Ancient musical instrument in the shape of s. Varieties of ancient musical instruments

The first convincing evidence of musical experiences dates back to the Paleolithic era, when man learned to make instruments from stone, bone and wood in order to produce various sounds with their help. Later, sounds were extracted using a faceted bone rib, and this emitted sound resembled the grinding of teeth. Rattles were also made from skulls, which were filled with seeds or dried berries. This sound often accompanied the funeral procession.

The most ancient musical instruments were percussion. Idnophone - an ancient percussion instrument - arose during the formation of speech in an ancient person. The duration of the sound and its repeated repetition was associated with the rhythm of the heartbeat. In general, for an ancient person, music is, first of all, rhythm.

Following the drums, wind instruments were invented. The ancient prototype of the flute discovered in Asturis (20,000 BC) is striking in its perfection. Side holes were knocked out in it, and the principle of sound extraction was the same as that of modern flutes.

String instruments were also invented in ancient times. Images of ancient strings have been preserved on numerous rock paintings, most of which are located in the Pyrenees. So, in the Cogul cave, there are “dancing” figures “carrying bows” nearby. The "lyre player" struck the strings with a bone or wood edge, extracting a sound. It is curious that in the chronology of development, the invention of stringed instruments and dance occupy the same time space.
At this time, an aerophone appears - an instrument made of bone or stone, appearance which resembles a rhombus or a spearhead.

Threads were threaded into the holes in the tree and fixed, after which the musician ran his hand along these threads, twisting them. The result was a hum-like sound. Most often played on the aerophone in the evenings. The sound emanating from this instrument resembled the voice of spirits. This tool was improved during the Mesolithic era (3000 BC). There was a possibility of sounding of two and three sounds at the same time. This was achieved by cutting vertical holes. Despite the primitive way of making such tools, this technique has long been preserved in parts of Oceania, Africa and Europe.

Among the musical instruments used by ancient civilizations we find wind instruments: flutes (tigtigi) and oboe (abub). We know that the population of Mesopotamia, like the Egyptians, had high technology manufacture of reed wind instruments. They have modified tools throughout the existence of their civilization. Soon, along with the flute, the pishik was invented, which contributed to the appearance of the oboe. In this instrument, the sound was produced by the rapid vibration of air in the squeaker, and not by blows of air currents on the mouthpiece, as happens in flutes. Of the strings, the lyre (algar) and harp (zagsal) were widely used, which were still very small in size.

Often the body of the musical instrument was painted. We see confirmation of this on the exhibits found in the tombs of the state of Ur (2500 BC). One of them is in british museum. It also hits a lot of percussion instruments. This is often evidenced by iconography, bas-reliefs, dishes, vases, steles. As a rule, the painting on them indicates the use of large drums and small timpani, as well as castanets and sisters. On later exhibits, there are also cymbals and bells.

Instruments and repertoire were inherited next generations who lived in Mesopotamia. By 2000 B.C. The Assyrians improved the harp and created the prototype of the first lute (pantur).

God Pan created the shepherd's pipe, Athena - Greek goddess wisdom invented the flute, the Indian God Narada invented and gave a man a harp-shaped musical instrument - veena. But these are only myths, because we all understand that musical instruments invented by the man himself. And there is nothing surprising here, because he is the first musical instrument. And the sound that comes from him is his voice.

The primitive man conveyed information with his voice and informed his fellow tribesmen about his emotions: joy, fear and love. To make the “song” sound much more interesting, he clapped his hands and stamped his feet, banged stone against stone and beat on the stretched skin of a mammoth. Just like that, the objects that surrounded the person slowly began to transform into musical instruments.

Musical instruments are divided into three groups, that is, according to the method of extracting sound from them - these are wind, percussion and strings. So let's now figure out what all the same primitive pulled, why did he knock, and what did he hit? We do not know for sure what musical instruments were at that time, but we can guess.

The first group - wind instruments. We don't know why ancient man blew into a reed reed, a piece of bamboo or a horn, but we know for sure that it became an instrument when the holes appeared.

The second group - percussion instruments, which were made from all kinds of items, namely from the shells of large fruits, wooden logs, and from dried skins. They were beaten with a stick, fingers or palms, and used for ritual ceremonies and military operations.

And the last, third group - stringed musical instruments. It is generally accepted that the first stringed musical instrument was a hunting bow. An ancient hunter, pulling on a bowstring, noticed that the string from a chip "sings". But the stretched vein of the animal "sings" even better. And it “sings” even better when you rub it with the hair of an animal. This is how the bow was born, that is, at that time, it was a stick with a bundle of horsehair stretched over it, which was driven along a string made of twisted animal veins. After some time, the bow began to be made of silk threads. This divided the stringed musical instruments into bowed and twisted.

The most ancient musical stringed instruments are the harp and the lyre. All ancient peoples have similar tools. Ursk harps are the oldest stringed instruments that have been found by archaeologists. They are about four and a half thousand years old.

The truth is that it is impossible to say exactly what the first musical instrument looked like, but it can be said with complete certainty that music, even in a primitive form, was part of the life of primitive man.

21 Nov 2015

History of musical instruments. Video lesson.

When did musical instruments originate? You can get very different answers to this question (from 100 years to tens of thousands). In reality, no one can answer this question, since it is unknown. But it is known that one of the most ancient tools found during archaeological excavations is more 40 thousand years(it was a flute made from an animal bone, the femur of a cave bear). But wind instruments did not appear first, which means that musical instruments appeared even earlier.

What was the first instrument?

The first prototype of a musical instrument was human hands. At first, people sang, clapping their hands, which were, as it were, his musical instrument. Then people began to pick up two sticks, two stones, two shells, and instead of clapping their hands, they hit each other with these objects, while receiving various sounds. The toolkit of people largely depended on the area where they lived. If they lived in the forest zone, then they took 2 sticks, if they lived by the sea - 2 shells, etc.

Thus, instruments appear, the sound of which is extracted by means of a blow, therefore such instruments are called percussion .

The most common percussion instrument is, of course, drum . But the invention of the drum belongs to a much later time. How this happened, we cannot now say. We can only guess. For example, once, having hit a hollowed tree in order to drive out bees from there and take honey from them, a person listened to an unusually booming sound that comes from hitting a hollowed tree, and he came up with the idea to use it in his orchestra. Then people realized that it was not necessary to look for a hollow tree, but you could take some kind of stump and hollow out the middle in it. Well, if you wrap it on one side with the skin of a dead animal, you get a tool very similar to drum. Many peoples have tools of a similar design. The only difference is that they are made from various materials and slightly different in shape.

In music different peoples percussion instruments play a different role. They played a particularly important role in the music of African peoples. There were various drums, from small drums to huge drums, reaching 3 meters. The sound of these huge drums could be heard for several kilometers.

There was a very sad period in history associated with the slave trade. Europeans or Americans sailed on African continent to capture and then sell its inhabitants. Sometimes when they came to the village, they did not find anyone there, the inhabitants had time to leave from there. This happened because the sounds of the drum that came from the neighboring village warned them about this, i.e. people understood the "language" of drums.

Thus, the first group percussion instruments .

What group of instruments appeared after the drums? These were wind Instruments, which are called so because the sound is extracted from them by blowing in air. What led a person to the invention of these tools, we also do not know, but we can only assume something. For example, one day, while hunting, a man went to the shore of a lake. Dul strong wind and suddenly a man heard a sound. At first, he was wary, but upon listening, he realized that it was a broken reed that sounded. Then the man thought: “What if you yourself break the reed, and blowing air into it, try to make it sound?” Having successfully done this, people learned to extract sounds by blowing air. Then the man realized that a short reed makes higher sounds, and a long one lower ones. People began to bind reeds of different lengths and extract, thanks to this, different heights sounds. Such an instrument is often referred to as the Pan flute.

This is due to the legend that a long time ago in Ancient Greece there lived a goat-footed god named Pan. One day he was walking through the forest and suddenly saw beautiful nymph named Syrinx. Pan to her... And the beautiful nymph took a dislike to Pan and began to run away from him. She runs and runs, and Pan is already catching up with her. Syrinx prayed to her father - the river god, that he would save her. Her father turned her into a reed. Pan cut that reed and made himself a pipe out of it. And let's play it. No one knows that it is not the flute that sings, but the sweet-voiced nymph Syrinx.

Since then, it has become customary that multi-barreled flutes, similar to a fence of shortened reed pipes, are called Pan flutes - on behalf of the ancient Greek god of fields, forests and grasses. And in Greece itself, it is now often called the syrinx. Many nations have such instruments, only they are called differently. The Russians have kugikly, kuvikly or kuvichki, the Georgians have larchemi (soinari), in Lithuania - skuduchay, in Moldova and Romania - nai or muskal, among the Latin American Indians - samponyo. Some call Pan's flute a flute.

Even later, people realized that it was not necessary to take several pipes, but it was possible to make several holes in one pipe, and by clamping them in a certain way, extract various sounds.

When our distant ancestors made some inanimate object sound, it seemed to them a real miracle: before their eyes, dead objects came to life, gained a voice. There are many legends and songs about the singing reed. One of them tells how a reed grew on the grave of a murdered girl, when they cut it and made a flute out of it, she sang and told in a human voice about the death of the girl, named the name of the killer. This tale was translated into verse by the great Russian poet M.Yu. Lermontov.

Cheerful fisherman sat

On the banks of the river

And in front of him in the wind

The reeds swayed.

He cut the dry reed

And pierced the wells

He pinched one end

Blowed at the other end.

And as if animated, the reed spoke -

Thus arose the second group of musical instruments, which are called wind

Well, the third group of musical instruments, as you probably already guessed, is string group tools . And the very first string instrument was simple Hunter bow. Many times before hunting, a person checked whether the bowstring. And one day, having listened to this melodious sound of a bowstring, a man decided to use it in his orchestra. He realized that a short bowstring made higher sounds, and a longer bowstring made lower sounds. But it is inconvenient to play on several bows, and the person pulled on the bow not one bowstring, but several. If you imagine this tool, you can find in it similarities with harp .

Thus there are three groups of musical instruments: percussion, wind and strings.

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 clapping and stomping, a little later people learned to extract sounds from their natural environment, using everyday household items, and finally, people began to improve these same items to get the first musical instruments. IN different corners around 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. A particularly large contribution to contemporary arts made by the ancient Greeks and Romans, who held the musical craft 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 ancient instruments handicraft production.

Also, our ancestors replaced musical instruments with household items, creating sound. Such objects were often spoons, flaps, buckets, etc., and they also used natural materials(bark of trees, horns of animals, trunks of plants, birch bark).

First in Rus' musical art somehow it 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. late XIX- at the beginning of the 20th 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!

23.09.2013

The history of the emergence of Russian folk instruments goes back to the distant past. Frescoes of St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, iconographic materials, miniatures handwritten books, popular prints testify to the diversity of the musical instruments of our ancestors. The ancient musical instruments discovered by archaeologists are true material evidence of their existence in Rus'. In the recent past everyday life Russian people was unthinkable without musical instruments. Almost all of our ancestors owned the secrets of making simple sound instruments and passed them down from generation to generation. Familiarity with the secrets of craftsmanship was instilled from childhood, in games, in work that was feasible for children's hands. Watching the work of the elders, teenagers received the first skills in creating the simplest musical instruments. Time passed. The spiritual ties of generations were gradually broken, their continuity was interrupted. With the disappearance of the folk musical instruments that once ubiquitous in Russia, the mass familiarization with the national musical culture.

Nowadays, unfortunately, there are not so many craftsmen left who have preserved the traditions of creating the simplest musical instruments. In addition, they create their masterpieces only for individual orders. The manufacture of tools on an industrial basis is associated with considerable financial costs, hence their high cost. Not everyone can afford to buy a musical instrument today. That is why there was a desire to collect materials in one article that will help everyone to make this or that instrument with their own hands. Around us are a large number of familiar materials of plant and animal origin, which we sometimes do not pay attention to. Any material will sound if skillful hands touch it:

From a nondescript piece of clay, you can make a whistle or an ocarina;

Birch bark, taken from a birch trunk, will turn into a large horn with a beep;

A plastic tube will acquire sound if a whistle device and holes are made in it;

Many different percussion instruments can be made from wooden blocks and plates.

Based on publications about Russians folk instruments and experience different people in their preparation, recommendations were made that may be useful in the process of working on them.

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For many peoples, the origin of musical instruments is associated with the gods and lords of thunderstorms, blizzards and winds. The ancient Greeks attributed the invention of the lyre to Hermes: he made an instrument by stretching the strings on a tortoise shell. His son, a forest demon and the patron of shepherds, Pan was certainly depicted with a flute consisting of several stems of reeds (Pan's flute).

IN German fairy tales the sounds of a horn are often mentioned, in Finnish - a five-stringed kantele harp. In Russian fairy tales, warriors appear to the sounds of a horn and pipe, against which no force can withstand; miraculous gusli-samoguds themselves play, sing songs themselves, make them dance without rest. in Ukrainian and Belarusian fairy tales even animals danced to the sounds of bagpipes (dudu).

The historian, folklorist A.N. Afanasiev, author of the work "Poetic views of the Slavs on nature", wrote that various musical tones, born when the wind blows in the air, identify "expressions for wind and music": from the verb "to blow" came - duda , pipe, blow; Persian. dudu - the sound of a flute; German blasen - blow, winnow, trumpet, play a wind instrument; beep and harp - from buzz; buzz - the word used by the Little Russians to denote the blowing wind; compare: nozzle, sipovka from snotty, sniffle (hiss), hoarse, whistle - from whistle.

Wind music sounds are created by blowing air into the instrument. The breath of the wind was perceived by our ancestors as coming from the open mouths of the gods. The fantasy of the ancient Slavs brought together the howling of the storm and the whistling of the winds with singing and music. So there were legends about singing, dancing, playing musical instruments. Mythical representations, combined with music, made them a sacred and necessary accessory of pagan rites and holidays.

No matter how imperfect the first musical instruments were, nevertheless, they required the ability of musicians to make and play them.

For centuries, the improvement of folk instruments and the selection of the best samples did not stop. Musical instruments took on new forms. There were constructive solutions for their manufacture, methods for extracting sounds, playing techniques. Slavic peoples were creators and keepers of musical values.

The ancient Slavs honored their ancestors and glorified the Gods. The glorification of the Gods was performed in front of the sacred goddesses in temples or under open sky. Ceremonies in honor of Perun (god of thunder and lightning), Stribog (god of the winds), Svyatovid (god of the Sun), Lada (goddess of love), etc. were accompanied by singing, dancing, playing musical instruments and ended with a common feast. The Slavs revered not only invisible deities, but also their habitats: forests, mountains, rivers and lakes.

According to researchers, song and instrumental art of those years developed in close relationship. It is possible that ritual chanting contributed to the birth of instruments with the establishment of their musical structure, since temple songs-prayers were performed with musical accompaniment.

The Byzantine historian Theophylact Simokatta, the Arab traveler Al-Masudi, the Arab geographer Omar ibn Dast confirm the existence of musical instruments among the ancient Slavs. The latter in his "Book of Precious Treasures" writes: "They have all sorts of lutes, psaltery and flutes..."

In Essays on the History of Music in Russia from Ancient Times to the End of the 18th Century, the Russian musicologist N. F. Findeisen notes: splendor, they would not be able to make their own musical instruments, completely regardless of whether there were similar instruments in neighboring regions.

There are few references to the ancient Russian musical culture.