The gudok (, russian: гудок), gudochek (, russian: гудочек) is an ancient Eastern Slavic string

musical instrument A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...

, played with a bow.Гудок

Great Soviet Encyclopedia The ''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' (GSE; ) is one of the largest Russian-language encyclopedias, published in the Soviet Union from 1926 to 1990. After 2002, the encyclopedia's data was partially included into the later ''Bolshaya rossiyskaya e ...

A ''gudok'' usually had three strings, two of them tuned in

unison In music, unison is two or more musical parts that sound either the same pitch or pitches separated by intervals of one or more octaves, usually at the same time. ''Rhythmic unison'' is another term for homorhythm. Definition Unison or per ...

and played as a drone, the third tuned a fifth higher. All three strings were in the same plane at the bridge, so that a bow could make them all sound simultaneously. Sometimes the gudok also had several

sympathetic strings Sympathetic strings or resonance strings are auxiliary strings found on many Indian musical instruments, as well as some Western Baroque instruments and a variety of folk instruments. They are typically not played directly by the performer (excep ...

(up to eight) under the

sounding board A sounding board, also known as a tester and abat-voix is a structure placed above and sometimes also behind a pulpit or other speaking platform that helps to project the sound of the speaker. It is usually made of wood. The structure may be spe ...

. These made the gudok's sound warm and rich. The player held the gudok on his lap, like a

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G2, ...

viola da gamba The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitch ...

. It was also possible to play the gudok while standing and even while dancing, which made it popular among skomorokhs. Initially in the 12th century (and probably before), the gudok did not have a

neck The neck is the part of the body on many vertebrates that connects the head with the torso. The neck supports the weight of the head and protects the nerves that carry sensory and motor information from the brain down to the rest of the body. In ...

for pressing strings. This suggests that it was played by stopping the strings from the side with fingernails (similarly to the

Byzantine lyra The Byzantine lyra or lira ( gr, λύρα) was a medieval bowed string musical instrument in the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. In its popular form, the lyra was a pear-shaped instrument with three to five strings, held upright and played by ...

), rather than pressing strings onto the instrument's neck. Later in the 14th century some modifications of the gudok had a real

for pressing strings. Russian gudok ceased to exist as a folk instrument for several centuries. All present instruments are replicas, based on several parts of gudoks found in the

Novgorod Veliky Novgorod ( rus, links=no, Великий Новгород, t=Great Newtown, p=vʲɪˈlʲikʲɪj ˈnovɡərət), also known as just Novgorod (), is the largest city and administrative centre of Novgorod Oblast, Russia. It is one of the ...

excavations. There have been several attempts to revive the gudok in music.

Borodin Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin ( rus, link=no, Александр Порфирьевич Бородин, Aleksandr Porfir’yevich Borodin , p=ɐlʲɪkˈsandr pɐrˈfʲi rʲjɪvʲɪtɕ bərɐˈdʲin, a=RU-Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin.ogg, ...

's opera '' Prince Igor'', contains a "Gudok Player's Song", which is an artistic reconstruction of how the gudok may have sounded.

References

*Humeniuk, A. - ''Ukrainski narodni muzychni instrumenty'' - Kyiv:

Naukova dumka Naukova Dumka ( uk, Наукова Думка — literally "scientific thought") is a publishing house in Kyiv, Ukraine. It was established by the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 1922, largely owing to the efforts of Ahatanhel Kry ...

, 1967 *Mizynec, V. - ''Ukrainian Folk Instruments'' - Melbourne: Bayda books, 1984 *Cherkaskyi, L. - ''Ukrainski narodni muzychni instrumenty'' // Tekhnika, Kyiv, Ukraine, 2003 - 262 pages. *Povetkin, V. I. - "Musical instruments" // Wood Use in Medieval Novgorod. Edited by Mark Brisbane and Jon Hather. Oxbow Books and the authors, 2007. р. 360-381: illustrated. *N.G. Gerasimova, M.I. Kolosova, K.M. Plotkin, V.I. Povetkin. - "Thirteenth century fiddles from excavations in Pskov. Their investigation, stabilization and reconstruction" // Proceedings of the 4-th IGOM Group on Wet Organic Archaeological Materials Conference. Bremerhaven, 1990. Edited by Per Hoffmann Deutsches Schiffahrtsmuseum. P. 267-279: il.

External links

Site with large photo of 12th century gudok or rebec.
{{Authority control Necked bowl lutes Bowed instruments Ukrainian musical instruments Russian musical instruments Russian inventions String instruments with sympathetic strings

See also

References

External links