Pantalon – Loopholes

The preceding post examined a large hammered dulcimer with two soundboards, each supporting its own set of strings, one primarily of metal and the other of gut. It was invented in the late-17th century by Pantalon (aka Pantaleon) Hebenstreit who eponymously called it a pantalon. One of his students, Johann Kuhnau, referred to it as a “Pantalonischen Cimbal” – pantalonic dulcimer – in a letter sent to Johann Mattheson on 8 December 1717.

The term pantalon also entered into the musical lexicon as a noun adjunct, with the appearance of Pantalonclavichorde – pantalon clavichords. They were later joined by keyboard instruments with small hammers of uncovered wood or hard leather – Hämmerpantalone – hammer pantalons, often referred to simply as pantalons. (Such instruments have been catalogued in museum collections as nascent pianos and differentiating the two has become a research topic of its own.)

The hammered dulcimers of Hebenstreit’s day did not have damping mechanisms, nor did his pantalon or the hammer pantalon. A core tonal attribute of such instruments is a broad sympathetic vibration of the passive strings, triggered by those that are actively struck. The sound of all strings persists while decaying to inaudibility. The concept labeled “pantalonic” in 1717, appears to have propagated into musical instrument nomenclature to denote a box zither (the classification group to which all the instruments named here belong) deliberately intended to provide this type of resonance.

This post focuses on the intersection of the pantalon with the clavichord. They initially crossed paths in the workshop of the renowned German keyboard instrument maker, Gottfried Silbermann. He both manufactured pantalons for Hebenstreit and invented an extremely wide clavichord with two separate soundboards, named the cembal d’amour.

That instrument has been discussed extensively in scholarly publications, as have the archetypal pantalonic dulcimer, pantalon clavichords, and hammer pantalons. The present text re-examines some of the detail in that narrative. It also provides links to online facsimiles of frequently cited source documents.

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In 1713, the German composer and music theorist Johann Mattheson published a book titled Das neueröffnete Orchestre (The Newly Revealed Orchestra). It includes commentary on individual musical instruments, with remarks about a harp, a hybrid harp-zither, and two hammered dulcimers, in immediate succession:

The pleasantly buzzing David’s harp [“Davids-Harffe/Harpa”], with its gut strings, is fully suited to accompaniment and its merit won’t be questioned; if only there were more who wished to make it better known. The harsh harpanetta, [“Harffe/‌Harpanetta”] with its attendant long fingernails, has already been given its honest farewell. The frivolous hammered dulcimers [“Hackbretter”] should be nailed to the walls of houses of ill repute, except for the large gut-strung one called a Pantalon, which is highly esteemed.

The David’s harp was a double-strung chromatic instrument, with a “bray pin” at the base of each string causing it to buzz. The comment about fingernails with the harpanetta suggests that it was the wire-strung arpanetta demonstrated below. This can be seen as a harp with a soundbox between two parallel stringbeds. In more rigorous analytical terms, it is a wing-shaped zither strung on both sides, played in vertical position.

Hammered dulcimers were and remain in widespread use, in a range of configurations, also labeled with the word stem “cimbal.” They are wire-strung zithers that, by definition, are played by striking the strings. The same instruments can also be plucked, and in cases where that is the predominant technique, are commonly called psalteries (or some variant of that term). The pantalon was an exceptionally large hammered dulcimer with two stringbeds, strung with metal and gut.

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Tag: Pantalon

From pantalon to pantalonic

The Pantalon and Irish hammered dulcimers