The Pythagorean Monochord: A Song History

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"The Pythagorean Monochord" closes Neal Hellman's Mountain Dulcimer Arrangements From Both Sides Of The Atlantic, a Fingers Of Steel book of 35 mountain dulcimer arrangements that writes out the hammer-ons, pull-offs and bends rather than giving bare melody lines.[1] On the listing's song list it comes last, after an otherwise alphabetical run of titles, and the listing names no composer or tuning for it.[1] Gourd Music's own listing for the collection describes it as drawing on Ireland, England, Scotland, Italy, Sweden and the Southern Appalachians, with three tunes by the Irish harper Turlough O'Carolan and notes on every arrangement, but the sources consulted here do not say who wrote this piece, why it carries its name, or whether it appears on any of Hellman's albums.[1][2]

Stained glass panel of a seated woman holding up a tablet of numbers, with a bearded man in a turban holding an open book beside her

Figure of Arithmetic with Pythagoras (one of a pair), stained glass, late 18th–mid-19th century. Shown for Pythagoras; it has no connection to the piece.

The sources consulted here do not connect the piece to the instrument of its title, which has just one string, set over a calibrated box with a bridge that can be slid along it; by the 6th century BC it was in use in Greece for gauging the distances between musical pitches.[3] Tradition credits Pythagoras with finding that consonant intervals come from plain whole-number divisions of a string, 2:1 for the octave and 3:2 for the fifth.[4]

Hellman, a performer and teacher of the mountain dulcimer, founded and directs Gourd Music, has produced more than forty albums, and wrote The Hal Leonard Dulcimer Method among other instruction books.[5]

Our book that contains the song "The Pythagorean Monochord"

Sources

  1. Fingers Of Steel: "Neal Hellman, Mountain Dulcimer Arrangements From Both Sides Of The Atlantic".
  2. Gourd Music: "Mountain Dulcimer Arrangements From Both Sides of the Atlantic".
  3. Britannica: "Monochord".
  4. Whipple Museum of the History of Science, University of Cambridge: "Monochord".
  5. DulcimerDownloads: "Neal Hellman".
  6. Image: Figure of Arithmetic with Pythagoras (one of a pair), stained glass, late 18th–mid-19th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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