Kantele

The kantele ( [ kɑntɛlɛ ], Finnish) or kannel ( [ kɑn ɛl ː ], Finnish and Estonian ) is a fingerboard loose box zither, played in Finland, Estonia and Karelia.

Design

The stringed instrument is the older form of a wing-shaped sound box made of wood, consisting of a burnt-out and hollowed with the ax birch trunk. In this five pentatonic tuned horsehair strings are attached. By the middle of the 20th century turned to this method. They came in different sizes and usually tuned in D major or D minor. The original five strings have been extended over time to up to twenty-three strings.

Modern Kanteles have up to 36 wire strings that can be tuned up or down during the game with the help of a lever system by a semitone. The instrument is - similar to the Alpine zither - played with the fingers lying on the lap or on a small table. Sometimes a plectrum is used. A padded board, which is mounted above the strings can dampen by depressing all of the strings.

An electrical kanteles was developed in Finland.

On the body of Konzertkantele right shown above, the C and G strings with black and red markings are indicated, as well as the points of contact for generating Flageoletttönen are marked.

In Waldorf schools, a roundish shaped, stringed instrument tuned in pentatonic scale is used, whose development was inspired by the kantele and therefore bears the same name.

Play

The kantele you can play in two ways: Most players keep the long strings directly in front of him are ( Haapavesi style), while players have turned with strong traditional roots of the short strings to be ( Perhonjoki style or Perhonjokilaakso style). The styles are named after the place Haapavesi and the river Perhonjoki, two centers of population and Kantelemusik.

Mythology

In the Finnish national epic Kalevala, the old magic singer Väinämöinen made ​​the first kantele from the jawbone of a giant pike. From the teeth of the vertebrae are made ​​for the strings Horsehair is taken. When he plays it, all the animals of the forest come along and listen; people withdraw from the work and are taken by the sound. The second Kantele he later made ​​from a birch.

The kantele is eponymous for the collection of poems Kanteletar ( " kantele - player " ), such as the Kalevala was also compiled by Elias Lönnrot.

On the Karelian University in Petrozavodsk there is a course in Kantelebau and play, which is directed by two Kantelemeistern. At the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, you can study traditional and modern Kantelespiel.

Term in other languages

The Finnish term of the instrument kantele is just as Estonian kannel considered as a loanword from a Baltic language. In the Old Prussian language of this instrument is mentioned in various dialects as a kantele, kant, kantlis and kantle. Kantonis or Kantus is the musician, kantwilis is the music lovers. In Latvian the instruments hot kokle, Kankles in Lithuanian. Contrast, Lithuanian kantelis is the song ( daina ). Similarly, the gusli in Northwest Russia. The names related Finnish kantele jouhi typologically belongs to the lyres.