Kamancha

Kamancha is bow played stringed musical instrument. Its types with other names were spread among the peoples of East and Central Asia. High development of kamancha playing is linked with starting of the development of high performance of singing art from the second half of the nineteenth century.

Its first samples were made of pumpkin, Indian nut, and decorated with ivory. It is assumed that one-and two-stringed kamancha once was formed from stringed gopuz. Kamancha has been widely described in the works of classics of the Middle Ages. Representative of XVI century painting school of Tabriz Mir Seyed Ali had described in his Music  party  work instruments like barbet, daf and kamancha.

Abdulqadir Maraghi in his works besides other musical instruments referred to kamancha as well and provided information about it. E. Kempfer, German traveler who traveled in XVII century in Azerbaijan noted that kamancha is the three-stringed instrument, and sometimes as four-stringed and having very beautiful sound timbre.

In the past century, it is known that three-stringed, four-stringed, and even five-stringed kamancha was existed.

Kamancha consists of body, arm, and  bar crossed inside the body and connecting its both parts. Body, arm and tuning pegs are made of walnut wood by special way of hewing in machine tools. The surface of body is covered with sturgeon skin. The right identification of distance between the strings of the instrument and arm is important factor in good performance of sound. The total length is 700 mm, the height of body is 175 mm, a width is 195 mm.

Its diapason is from small octave’s lya to the third-octave’s lya sound. Notes for kamancha are written in sol key and is sounded one tune upper than written. It is tuned with net fourth, fifth intervals.