CHAPTER 5: Dulcimers in other countries since 1800 > Western Europe

Romance Language area & Netherlands

Little information is to hand concerning the dulcimer in these areas after 1800, and by and large it seems to have been played only in isolated places and times; according to Marcuse, 'psalteries' were popular in Murcia and Alicante, Spain, as accompaniments to songs and dances until the last quarter of the 19th century, but there is no indication as to whether this is an adoption by the populace of the salterio of the 18th century opera or a survival among the upper classes; attempts to trace the source have yet to be fruitful (21).

Van der Meer mentions the Canary Islands in a list of countries where the dulcimer is still a folk instrument (22), but this seems hardly warranted, for his source was a single instrument in the Brussels museum which has been there at least since the days of Mahillon's catalogue (18931912) (23).


Galpin also states that "The Psaltery is still commonly used in Spain and also in the Canary Isles", but gives no details or sources (24).

fig. 187: click

From France comes a delightful engraving of a 'Cinderella musician' - the bridging is shown as type 0.2., but the example is too isolated for any conclusions to be drawn; the instrument was nevertheless unfamiliar enough in the 1800s for the illustration of a 16th-century tympanon in Clement's Histoire de la Musique (Paris, 1885) to be little more than fantasy:

'The Cinderella Musician

Charitable townsfolk
Listen to my couplets
If they don't please you
It's because they're done for nothing
My comic instrument
Will play the bells for you
This rare music
Is Cinderella music

'See this piece of cane
Artistically set
On my (wooden) drum
which I made myself
See my ancient quill
Scrape my timpanon
Tell me my music
Is Cinderella music

'I completely agree
That all around
There is very beautiful music
But not of such good taste
As if it were from the country
It's a (shame?)
That an unmusical man
(Is) called the Cinderella musician

'If I catch your fancy with my instruments
My age and my (features?)
My leanness my children
Offer me a consideration
I'll take the lolly
And the music goes away

(tr. D.K.)


The hakkebert was still being played in the earlier 19th century in Belgium, but van der Straeten's anecdote concerns the last dulcimer in the Netherlands until Louis Hout of Utrecht starting playing a dulcimer in a gipsy band, in substitution for a cimbalom:

"Démodé entièrement, l'hakkebert ou le tympanon, vieux comme le monde, et dont j'ai vu, ii y a une quarantaine d'années, un dernier specimen en action à Bruxelles. Une courroie, passée au cou du virtuoze, retenait l'instrument de forme trapezoidale, de façon à permettre au virtuose d'y executer, à l'aide de baguettes ad hoc, toutes sortes de fantasies. 0n le nommait Jaekske met zijn hakkebert. (26)"


'Completely out-of-date, the hakkebert or tympanon, as old as the world, a last specimen of which I saw in action in Brussels some 40 years ago. A strap, passed round the virtuoso's neck, held the trapezoid instrument, so as to allow him to execute, with the help of some sticks ad hoc all kinds of fantasies. They called him Jimmy with his hakkebert.' (tr. DK)