Kamancha
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The kamancha is played with a bow. It is widespread amongst Eastern and
Central Asian peoples under a variety of names. In Azerbaijan, the kamancha
reached a high level of development starting from the second half of the 19th
century. This is closely connected with the development of the khanande art.
Earlier kamanchas were made of pumpkin and the wood of nutmeg and decorated
with ivory. The one-stringed and two-stringed versions of the kamancha are
thought to be descendents of the gopuz played with a bow. The kamancha is
described in the works of medieval classical poets. Mir Seyid Ali,
representative of the 16th-century school of painting, depicted the barbat, daf
and kamancha in his work called “A Musical Gathering”.
Abdulgadir Maraghayi mentioned the kamancha in his works. E. Kaempfer, a
German traveler who visited Azerbaijan in the 17th century, noted that the
kamancha had three or four strings and a fine timbre. Nizami Ganjavi described
the kamancha in his “Khosrov and Shirin”:
The Kaman is moaning like Moses
And is listening to the singer while
he is singing.
The singer started a beautiful gazal*
And praised this
feast.
In the 20th century, there were three-stringed, four-stringed and even
five-stringed kamanchas. There is a 19th-century five-stringed kamancha
preserved in the ethnography fund of the Azerbaijan History Museum. The kamancha
that belonged to Zulfugar Hajibeyov, a well-known Azerbaijani composer, is also
exhibited in this Museum. The body and the neck of this three-stringed kamancha
are tastefully decorated with mother-of-pearl. The body of the instrument is
horizontally cut in the middle and covered with leather.
The kamancha consists of a head and neck and a spit that passes through the
head and connects the two parts. The body, head and pegs are hewed out of a nut
tree with the help of a special device. The open front part of the instrument is
covered with sturgeon skin. The sound quality of the instrument depends on the
distance between the neck and strings. The total length of the instrument is 700
mm. The body is 175 mm tall and 195 mm wide.
The kamancha’s range is from the “la” of the small octave to the “la” of the
third octave. The scores for the instrument are written in the “sol” clef
(treble clef, or G clef) and the instrument is played one tone higher. It is
tuned in perfect fourths and fifths.
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