Kanun (Instrument)

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Kanun (Instrument)

See also Kanun (disambiguation)
Kanun (disambiguation)

Kanun can refer to any of the following* Kanun , a Middle Eastern stringed musical instrument* Short for Kanuni i Lek? Dukagjinit, the traditional tribal law of Albania...

The qanún or kanun (Arabic ????? qanun,Azerbaijani

Azerbaijani

Azerbaijani may refer to:* Something of, or related to Azerbaijan* Azerbaijani people. See also Demographics of Azerbaijan and Culture of Azerbaijan....
Qanun, Turkish

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken by over 63 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Cyprus, with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania and other parts of Eastern Europe....
Kanun , Greek ?a??? 'measuring rod

Measuring rod

A Measuring rod is a kind of ruler. This phrase is often used without mention of a particular kind or length of ruler and has been used since ancient times....
; rule' akin to ?a??a 'cane') is a string instrument

String instrument

A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones....
found in Near East

Near East

Near East today is an ambiguous term that covers different countries for archeologists and historians, on one hand, and for political scientists, economists, and journalists, on the other....
ern traditional music based on Maqamat

Maqamat

Maquamat may have the following meanings.*Plural for Maqam*Plural for Maqama*Maqamat Badi' az-Zaman al-Hamadhani...
. It is basically a zither

Zither

The zither is a musical string instrument, most commonly found in Slovenia, Austria, Hungary, the southern regions of Germany, alpine Europe and East Asian cultures....
with a narrow trapezoidal soundboard. Nylon

Nylon

Nylon is a generic designation for a family of synthetic polymers known generically as polyamides and first produced on February 28, 1935 by Wallace Carothers at DuPont....
or PVC

Polyvinyl chloride

Polyvinyl chloride, commonly abbreviated PVC, is the third most widely used thermoplastic polymer after polyethylene and polypropylene....
strings are stretched over a single bridge poised on fish-skins on one end, attached to tuning pegs at the other end.

Kanuns used in Turkey have 26 courses

Course (music)

A course is a pair or more of adjacent strings tuned to unison or an octave and usually played together as if a single string. It may also refer to a single string normally played on its own on an instrument with other multi-string courses, for example the bass string on a nine string baroque guitar....
of strings, with three strings per course.

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The qanún or kanun (Arabic ????? qanun,Azerbaijani

Azerbaijani

Azerbaijani may refer to:* Something of, or related to Azerbaijan* Azerbaijani people. See also Demographics of Azerbaijan and Culture of Azerbaijan....
Qanun, Turkish

Turkish language

Measuring rod

String instrument

Near East

Maqamat

Maquamat may have the following meanings.*Plural for Maqam*Plural for Maqama*Maqamat Badi' az-Zaman al-Hamadhani...
. It is basically a zither

Zither

Nylon

Nylon is a generic designation for a family of synthetic polymers known generically as polyamides and first produced on February 28, 1935 by Wallace Carothers at DuPont....
or PVC

Polyvinyl chloride

Course (music)

Tortoise

Tortoises or land turtles are land-dwelling reptiles of the family of Testudinidae, order Turtle. Like their marine cousins, the sea turtles, tortoises are shielded from predators by a shell....
-shell picks, one in each hand, or by the fingernails, and has a range of three and a half octave

Octave

In music, an octave The octave is occasionally referred to as a diapason.The octave above an indicated note is sometimes abbreviated 8va, and the octave below 8vb....
s, from A2 to E6. The dimensions of Turkish kanuns are typically 95 to 100 cm (37-39") long, 38 to 40 cm (15-16") wide and 4 to 6 cm (1.5-2.3") high. The instrument also has special latches for each course, called mandals. These small levers, which can be raised or lowered quickly by the performer while the instrument is being played, serve to change the pitch of a particular course slightly by altering the string lengths.

While Armenian kanuns employ half-tones

Semitone

A semitone, also called a half step or a half tone,Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and others use "half tone".One source says that step is "chiefly US", and that half-tone is "chiefly N....
and Arabic kanuns quarter-tones, typical Turkish kanuns divide the equal-tempered semitone of 100 cents into 6 equal parts, yielding 72 equal divisions (or commas

Comma (music)

In music theory, a comma is a small or very small interval between two enharmonic notes tuned in different ways. For example, an A flat tuned as a major third below C in just intonation, and a G sharp tuned as a major third above E, will not be exactly the same note....
) of the octave

Octave

72 equal temperament

In music, 72 equal temperament, called twelfth-tone, 72-tet, equal division of the octave, or 72-et, is the Temperament scale derived by dividing the octave into twelfth-tones, or in other words 72 equally large steps....
are available on the Turkish kanun, however, since kanun makers only affix mandals for intervals that are demanded by performers. Some kanun makers choose to divide the semitone of the lower registers into 7 parts instead for microtonal subtlety at the expense of octave equivalences. Hundreds of mandal configurations are at the player's disposal when performing on an ordinary Turkish kanun.

The kanun is a descendant of the old Egyptian harp, and is related to the psaltery

Psaltery

A psaltery is a stringed instrument musical instrument of the harp or the zither family. The of Ancient Greece dates from at least 2800 BC, when it was a harp-like instrument....
, dulcimer

Hammered dulcimer

The hammered dulcimer is a string instrument musical instrument with the strings stretched over a trapezoidal sounding board. Typically, the dulcimer is set on a stand, at an angle, before the musician, who holds small mallet hammers in each hand to strike the strings ....
and zither

Zither

The zither is a musical string instrument, most commonly found in Slovenia, Austria, Hungary, the southern regions of Germany, alpine Europe and East Asian cultures....
. Among others, Ruhi Ayangil, Erol Deran, Halil Karaduman, and Begoña Olavide are present-day exponents of this instrument.

A 79-tone tuning

Musical tuning

In music, there are two common meanings for tuning:* #Tuning practice, the act of tuning an instrument or voice.* #Tuning systems, the various systems of Pitch used to tune an instrument, and their theoretical basis....
for the kanun was recently proposed and applied to a Turkish kanun by Ozan Yarman and has been acclaimed by Turkish masters of the instrument.

Ancient Egyptian Harps

To the left and below are depictions of the ancient Egyptian harp. Two of its notable features are its size and lack of pillar. Since many of the harps depicted in ancient Egyptian pictorial sources are quite large, and lacking the support of a pillar, it probably suggests that they were very loosely strung and, with such long strings, likely in the bass range. The HARPA web site contains a summary of an article featured in their newsletter on the Egyptian harp, an excerpt of which follows: "Egypt can be considered the largest harp culture of all times. The arched harp, the archetypal music instrument of Ancient Egypt, existed from the Old Kingdom into the Greek-Roman era. In the Old Kingdom, the arched harp had a shovel-shaped form. It stood upright on the floor, with the player kneeling behind it. This harp was the Old Kingdom's only stringed instrument (ca. 2575-2134 BC), and it survived even as newer types appeared during the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2040-1640 BC). The shovel-shaped harp was called benet, as has been deciphered from the hieroglyphics that accompany illustrations of harps. The expression benet was also used as a general term for harp as other types of harp appeared on the scene."

(HARPA No. 31 from summer of '99 contains an article on the Old and New Kingdoms by Dr Lise Manniche, the first of three about harps and harp playing in ancient Egypt.)

Parts

Kafes

Strings

Damak

Köprü

Deri

Burgu

Egypt

External links

William McClure Thomson, (1860): Vol II, p. 577.