2 mins
From the ARCHIVE
T. L. Phipson recounts an impromptu recital by a lama in a remote Mongolian village, on an instrument that, from its description, may have been a morin khuur
Although the violin was derived directly from the viola d’amore a good many years ago, it would appear from what follows that in the East people still make musical instruments that recall the ancient Indian productions. Let us now take a slight musical excursion into the deserts of Mongolia. In his recent work Among the Mongols, the Rev. James Gilmour has described the incidents of his life in a portion of the globe rarely visited by representatives of Western civilisation.
One afternoon, the author espied a curious looking instrument lying on the top of one of the boxes, and a lama, or chief man of the tribe, volunteered to extract music from it. This instrument is described as a “homemade fiddle.” The main parts of it consisted of a hollow box about a foot square, and two or three inches deep, covered with a sheep skin, and a stick about three feet long thrust through the sides of the box. Here we have the flat model of Stradivarius, with the Cremona varnish replaced by a sheep’s skin! It had only two strings, and these, we are informed, consisted of a few hairs pulled from a horse’s tail, and lengthened at both ends by pieces of common string. The bow consisted of a bent whittled branch of some shrub, fitted with a few horsehairs tied on quite loosely.
It is easy to conceive that it was impossible not to laugh at the sight of so uncouth an instrument. The lama to whom it belonged was, however, not in the least disconcerted at this; but with a smile on his placid countenance, took up the bow, set the box on his knee, and went through the preliminaries of tuning, with all the gravity of an accomplished musician.
The lama, it appears, was a clever performer; he had made the instrument himself, and knew how to use it. He soon showed that highly artistic effects could be produced from this very queer violin. After the lama had played a few verses of the song just mentioned, it became evident that it was time to stop him, but in what this evidence consisted we are not informed. There was a young woman in the tent, his daughter, “clad only in two garments of common rough Chinese cloth, but graceful, and beautiful in build and feature. She was just reaching womanhood, and her mouth was adorned by a set of milk-white and perfect teeth. From the looks of the mother it was evident she wished her daughter to be asked to sing.” After a little persuasion she consented, whilst the lama scraped away on his two strings (a decided advantage over Paganini’s one), and a “very lively concert was the result.” www.thestrad.com
VENETIA JOLLANDS