santoor
raga
compositions
music
The Santoor
Designation and origin
In his thesis on the Dulcimer, David Kettlewell wrote: “Much controversy - and sometimes, one suspects, plain confusion and incomplete knowledge - surrounds the instruments in the santur area, concerning the meaning of the name, what names are given to dulcimers, how far back in time they can be dated, and so on.” (1976: 329) There are, of course, various reasons that could explain this reality, each one being related to specific aspects of the culture where the instrument is played. We will here refer to the one proposed by Namita Devidayal in regard to the history of the sitar as it eloquently summarizes the Indian perspective on the matter: “In India, truth is considered overrated. Mythology overwhelms fact. The same story is slightly different in every retelling, like many renditions of a raga. And so it is that there are multiple origin stories for the sitar.” (2018: 127) We could thus choose to retell this origin story about the birth of the santoor in India, in the mists of time. However, since we prefer to rely on research findings that are based on identifiable textual and iconographic sources, we will have to tell another story.
According to Gifford, the term santoor (sanṭūra) is a Persian (or Turkish) adaptation of the Arabic sanṭīr which itself derives from the Greek psaltery (from psallein, "to pluck") that designated in the Europe of the Middle Ages a plucked string instrument of trapezoidal shape. (2001: 45) This term first appears in an anonymous manuscript of the 14th century, Kashf al-Ghumūm, in which it is written that Syrians call "sanṭīr" the instrument known in Egypt as qanun. (46) The description and the accompanying image confirm that the instrument in question was indeed a qanun: a plucked board zither of right trapezoid shape that has been present in the Middle East since the 10th century.
The instrument we know today as santoor is an isosceles trapezoid-shaped box with several strings (from 72 to over 100, depending on the origin of the instrument) arranged in courses of three or four that is played with two wooden mallets.
The santoor is thus similar to the French doulcemelle, the English and American dulcimer, the German hackbreth, the Eastern European cimbalom, the Greek santoori and the Chinese yangqin.
The first representation of this type of instrument appears on the cover of an illuminated manuscript, The Psalter of Queen Melisande, which is preserved in the Egerton collection of the British Library. This manuscript is supposed to have been created at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem between the years 1131 and 1143 for Queen Melisande of Jerusalem. The cover is made of ivory panels decorated with turquoises and ruby-colored gems. On the upper panel we can see an image of King David striking the strings of a trapezoidal board-zither with what appears to be sticks. It is, however, difficult to rely on this source as evidence in tracing the historical development of the instrument since this manuscript expresses the fusion between Western and Byzantine art and because three centuries would elapse before any other representation of this type of instrument appeared in Westerner or Eastern sources. (Gifford 2001: 26)
An image of a santoor appears in Iran towards the end of the 15th century in a manuscript of the Khamsa of Nizami: two illuminations show women playing lute, chang and santoor for King Bahrām Gūr and a princess. (Gifford, 2001: 47) According to this and other iconographic sources, it seems that the santoor was present in Iran before it came to Turkey and that it was first played by women in harems before being played by Ottoman court musicians (beginning of the 17th century) and Persian court musicians (end of the 19th century).
According to Gifford, the santoor arrived in India from Iran or Iraq probably with musicians attracted by the Persian-speaking Kashmiri court (2001: 53). It is impossible, however, to know when. We know that the qanun was already present in India by the late-fifteenth century (Miner, 2010: 375), but there is apparently no mention or representation of an instrument corresponding to the santoor in India before the end of the nineteenth century. Day (1891) mentions that we can occasionally find in India an instrument called "Santir" which is similar to the qanun, but has more strings and is generally played with wooden sticks. (p.133) Day also mentions that the invention of the Indian qanun (the ancient svaramaṇḍala) is attributable to the sage Kātyāyaṇa and that is why the Sanskrit treatises refer to this instrument as kātyāyaṇa vīṇā or śatatantrī viṇā (100-string vina).
However, this is quite unlikely since the śatatantrī viṇā (or kātyāyaṇa vīṇā) of the Vedic period was an arched harp and not a board-zither. This instrument is described in the Śāṅkhyāyana Śrautasūtra XVII, 3, 1-11 as having a wooden body covered with an ox-hide and a wooden neck on which the strings are attached. (Caland, W., & Lokesh, C., pp. 477, Nijenhuis, pp.78-79) It is therefore difficult to establish a direct link between this instrument and the qanun or the santoor. We can however see descendants of this type of harp in the bīn-jājā played by members of the Pardhan ethnic group in Madhya Pradesh (Knight, 1985) and in the saung-gauk played in Myanmar.
Description of the Instrument
The Indian santoor is a trapezoidal box made of hardwood (usually walnut, teak or oak) of variable size (about 60 cm x 50 cm x 10 cm). The soundboard, supported by bracings, is made of softwood (sometimes plywood) and is generally without soundholes. It hosts thirty identical small movable bridges (the number may vary from one instrument to another) that are divided into two parallel rows placed to the left and right side of the box. The bridges are in rosewood and crowned with a saddle made of bone on which the strings rest in groups of three. The strings are tied to the left on small nails driven into the outer part of the box and attached on tuning pegs that are screwed into the right outer part. The different gauges of steel and bronze strings are strung as such as the trebles are found on top (the narrowest part of the trapeze) and the bass at the bottom (the widest part). The santoor has a range of two octaves and a half. It is tuned diatonically according to the scale of the raga, the tonic (Sa) being generally tuned to D.
Until the middle of the 20th century, the santoor in India was known as the main instrument of the Kashmiri Sufi music called sūfyāna musīqī or sūfyāna kalam. (Pacholczyk, 1978) Due to the efforts of Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, it has now become a major solo instrument in the music of northern India. Shivkumar Sharma reduced the number of strings per bridges (from four to three), systematized the tuning system and developed the playing technique that allows the musician to interpret most of the ragas of hindustani music.
In the gharana established by Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, the santoor player holds the mallets (mezrāb) with the index, middle finger and thumb. He may thus strike the strings softly and slide from note to note in order to produce a specific glissando effect. Since most of the playing happens on the right-hand side and only on one side of the bridge (the inner side), the musical gesture is moving forward and backward rather than from side to side. As it is with other instruments in Indian music, the santoor is played sitting on the floor. The instrument is placed on the musician’s lap, the widest part of the instrument close to the body. Some santoor players choose to keep the narrow part of the instrument on a stand placed in front of the musician.
References:
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Caland, W., & Lokesh, C. (1980). Śāṅkhyāyana-Śrautasūtra: Being a major yajñika text of the Rgveda. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
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Devidayal, N. (2018). The Sixth String of Vilayat Khan. New Delhi: Context.
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Gifford, P. M. (2001). The Hammered Dulcimer: A History. Lanham: Scarecrow Press.
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Kettlewell, D. (1976), The Dulcimer. A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy of Loughborough University.
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Miner, A. (2010). Sources on the early history of the Tambur, Rabab, Sitar and Sarod. In Bor, J., Delvoye, F., Harvey, J., and Nijenhuis, E. (Ed) Hindustani Music: Thirteenth to Twentieth Centuries. New Delhi: Manohar.
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Nijenhuis, E. . (1970). Dattilam: A compendium of ancient Indian music. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
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Pacholczyk, K. (1978) Sufyana Kalam, the Classical Music of Kashmir. Asian Music, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1978), pp. 1-16.
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Roderic Knight The Harp in India Today. Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Winter, 1985), pp. 9-28. Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology.
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Shiloah, A. (2008). Musical Scenes in Arabic Iconography. Music in Art, 33(1/2), 283-300.