Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions (5 page)

Figure 2.2 shows a psalmodikon, a type of instrument that arrived in the United States in the 19th century with immigrants from Scandinavia. The psalmodikon originated in Denmark about 1820 and was quickly adapted in Norway and Sweden as a substitute for the fiddle for playing music in churches. Church authorities in both countries regarded the fiddle as inappropriate for playing hymns because it was also used to play dance music. The psalmodikon, however, received their warm endorsement. The instrument, which is bowed, has a single string that runs over a chromatic fretboard. The psalmodikon that is shown in the photo has wooden frets, formed by a series of peaks and valleys cut into the fretboard. There is a single tuning peg at the foot.

Figure 2.1.
Carte de visite
from Minnesota, second half of the 19th century, showing a langeleik player in traditional Norwegian dress. (Courtesy Fred Petrick)

This psalmodikon dates to about the 1840s and comes from the Bishop Hill Colony in Illinois, which was established by Swedish immigrants in the mid-1840s. Franklin Lewis Matteson, born in Sweden about 1844, came to Bishop Hill with his family when he was about 10 years old. Franklin's son, Maurice Matteson, a musician and folklorist, became chairman of the music department at the University of South Carolina and made a number of visits to Bishop Hill. In 1943, Jonas Bergren, a resident of Bishop Hill and a musical instrument collector, gave the instrument to Maurice. It passed to his son, Richard, who became a professor at the University of Maryland. In 2008, Richard Matteson returned the psalmodikon to Bishop Hill for its historical collection.

The psalmodikon is enjoying a minirevival in the United States. Beatrice Hole of Eden Prairie, Minnesota, is president of an organization of enthusiasts called the Nordic-American Psalmodikonforbundet. The organization sponsors get-togethers, issues a newsletter, and maintains a website (
www.psalmodikon.org
). In 2005, Hole published a book entitled
Music for Psalmodikon, Written in Sifferskrift
, in which many hymns, Christmas songs, and other songs are laid out in four-part harmony for four psalmodikons, in a traditional form of psalmodikon tablature called sifferskrift. It was the first songbook to be published with siffer-skrift notation in more than a hundred years. In 2008, the group issued the world's first CD of psalmodikon music, with four players playing in harmony.

Figure 2.2. Psalmodikon from Bishop Hill Colony in Illinois, founded by Swedish immigrants in the 1840s. (Courtesy Richard Matteson)

However, despite their presence in the United States, none of these instruments is the direct ancestor of the Appalachian dulcimer. Specimens are few and scattered, and they are rarely or never found in the dulcimer's mountain world. For that, we must look to the scheitholt.

In 1619, a German scholar whose Latinized name was Michael Pretorius published a descriptive catalogue of musical instruments, entitled
Syntagma Musicum
. The book was illustrated with woodcuts, one of which is shown in figure 2.3. Instrument no. 8 is identified as a “Scheidtholtt.” This instrument has been accurately observed by the artist, and its fret pattern can be made out. It is fretted to play two octaves of the major (Ionian) scale, starting at the open string.

The book provides a description of the scheitholt, in old block letter printing and in Renaissance German. I am grateful to Christa Fannon of Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, a student in a dulcimer workshop that I taught, for providing the following translation:

Although this instrument should rightly be listed among low-class instruments: So I have nevertheless / since it is known to few / wanted to briefly describe it here. And it is not quite unlike a log [
Scheit
] / or piece of wood / since it is nearly like a small monochord rather poorly put together out of three or four small thin boards / at the top with a small neck / in which stick three or four pegs / strung with three or four brass strings: Of which three are strung in unison / but one of them is forced down in the middle with a small hook / so that it has to resonate one fifth higher: And if desired / one can add a fourth string one octave higher. But one strums continuously across all these strings with the right thumb below at the bridge: and one moves with a small smooth stick in the left hand back and forth on the closest string / whereby the melody of the song is accomplished over the fret-board / if embossed with brass wire. [Author's note: Pretorius probably meant “which is fretted with brass wire.”]

It is interesting to note that Pretorius, writing a century and a half before Lustig, has already consigned our “low-class” instrument to the musical doghouse!

Although I do not find the tuning information entirely clear, it would seem that the tuning, with the added octave string, would produce a 1-5-8 (
do
-
sol
-high
do
) chord, with the first note of the scale at the open melody string. The strumming technique speaks for itself. I played with my thumb when I was a novice dulcimer enthusiast in Greenwich Village in the early days of the folk revival! (To see it, check the picture on page 20 in my book
Greenwich Village
. What are a few centuries among zither-playing friends?)

Figure 2.3. Woodcut from
Syntagma Musicum
by Michael Pretorius, published in 1619. Instrument no. 8 is a “Scheidtholtt.”

The scheitholt came to America with early German settlers. Or at least, a clear memory of it came, since it seems likely that an instrument that a skilled German craftsman could easily make would rarely have been carried in the crowded conditions of the crossing. The instrument was soon being made and played in the German settlements in Pennsylvania.

However, the name did not come to America with the instrument, and thereby hangs one of the many naming problems in our tale. I know of no record of the term
scheitholt
being applied to the American version of the German instrument prior to the post–World War II folk revival.

In the early years of the 20th century, an amateur historian named Henry Mercer, who lived in Bucks County, an area of heavy traditional German settlement north of Philadelphia, gathered together a collection of thousands of old artifacts that he found in eastern Pennsylvania. Many of them were things that people had discarded or that he purchased by the basketful in country auctions for small sums. Mercer was a man of family means and was able to devote his life to his great project, which he called, “Tools of the Nation Maker.” In 1914, he erected a large building to house his collection and donated building and contents to the Bucks County Historical Society. It is now called the Mercer Museum.

Mercer was far ahead of his time in his vision of the importance of collecting and preserving the artifacts of traditional everyday life. Henry Ford said that Mercer's museum, containing everything from hand-forged ax heads to a Conestoga wagon, was the only one that he would even consider visiting.

The collection includes 14 musical instruments that Mercer called “Pennsylvania German zithers.” The instruments came from Mennonite owners and/or communities and were made in the second half of the 19th century. The owners and players called them “zitters.” Photos of these instruments can be seen in Smith's
Catalogue of Pre-Revival Appalachian Dulcimers.

In today's dulcimer world, the instrument, in both the European and American versions, is referred to by its old European name,
scheitholt
, probably because of the tale about the instrument in the Metropolitan Museum of Art that Jean Ritchie published
.
But shouldn't we call the American instrument by the name,
zitter
, which the people who made and played it always used?

My reaction is that the advocates of using the term
zitter
are right, but the change would now be too difficult to make. Adding yet another name to this already name-rich scene might create as many problems as it solves. In this book, therefore, I will continue to refer to the instrument in both its American and European forms by the name
scheitholt
. (The exception will be in discussing a quoted text that refers to it as a zitter; in these cases, I will call it by the awkward but necessary name “scheitholt/ zitter.” Maybe I'll change my mind when I write another book!)

Figure 2.4 is the only photograph known to me of a 19th-century American scheitholt player with his instrument. It turned up on eBay and was brought to my attention by Lisa Johnson, another alert member of the jungle telegraph. The photo is a tintype, measuring 2
X
3¼ inches. The four corners have been cut off by tin shears, perhaps to create a simple decorative effect.

I contacted the seller, an Iowa antiques dealer, and asked if she had any information about the photo or its subject. She replied that the photo had been purchased at an auction of several small estates in northeast Iowa and that she had no additional information. I bid on it and got it.

The tintype photographic process was introduced in 1853 and immediately established itself as the photographic method of choice for itinerant photographers. The making of daguerreotypes and ambrotypes, the earliest forms of commercial photography, involve a difficult and sensitive chemical and photographic process. Tintypes traded lesser photographic quality for an easier production process, lower cost, and a highly durable product. The images were made directly on small plates cut from thin sheets of iron by tin shears. The plate was coated with a substance called
collodion,
a viscous mixture of celluloses. Before taking the picture, the collodion-coated plate was sensitized with silver nitrate. After the picture was taken, the plate was placed in a fixing bath to stabilize the image and prevent further exposure. When the plate was immersed in a bath of potassium cyanide, the image appeared in about 30 seconds, as if by magic. And it didn't come off.

From 1853 until the 1880s, when newer photographic methods largely supplanted tintypes, itinerant tintype photographers roamed the land, taking thousands of images and selling them for 10 or 15 cents each. They brought photographs and photography to everyone for the first time. And they also created an enormous body of folk and genre images, of which this photo of a scheitholt player is one. (Another is the only known photo of Billy the Kid.)

Daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes all produce reverse images— that is, the kind of image that you see in a mirror. When photographing players of musical instruments, tintype photographers often instructed their subjects to switch the position of the instrument from right to left, so that it would look “right” in the reverse image. This can be seen on many old photos of banjo players, in which the fifth peg faces downward in the photo!