ORIGINS OF THE SERBIAN GUSLE From the Prehistory to the Middle-Ages Igor Đurović ICONEA PUBLISHING - LONDON - UK ORIGINS OF THE SERBIAN GUSLE From the Prehistory to the Middle-Ages © 2020 Igor Đurović All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author. TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface p. 1 The Gusle p. 2 OrganologyoftheSerbianGusle p.6 Philology p.24 Historical Data fro Medieval Serbia p. 31 IgilandScythianHarp p.32 UnfoundedConnectionstotheIllyrians p.36 Conclusion p. 37 Bibliography p.41 TABLE OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1: Present day gusle p. 3 Figure 2: Upper Paleolithic Period. Grotte des Trois Frères p. 4 Figure3:Parpalloarrowtips p.5 Figure 4: Gasulla Cave: Ibex hunting p. 5 Figure 5: Kon-Kon musical bow p. 5 Figure 6: Prehistoric petroglyphs. Musical bows from South Africa p. 5 Figure 7: New Guinea musical bow p. 6 Figure 8: Sraped musical bow, Africa p. 6 Figure 9: Bumbass, Germany p. 7 Figure 10: Latvian diga p. 7 Figure 11: Lithuanian bow p. 11 Figure 12: Basse de Flandre p. 11 Figures 13 and 14: Georgian and Estonian bows p. 12 Figure 15: Maple distribution p. 12 Figure 16: Detail of instrument p. 14 Figures 17 and 18: Iraqi harp p. 14 Figure 19: Detail of Assyrian harp p. 15 Figure 20: Slot on Scythian harp p. 15 Figure 21: Gusle from Lika p. 15 Figure 22: Zbruč Idol p. 15 Figure 23: Kurpie and Kashubian instruments p. 17 Figures 24 and 25: German instruments p. 17 Figure 26 Hittite lute p. 18 Figure 27: Small lute p. 18 Figure 28: Egyptian lute p. 19 Figure 29: Egyptian lute p. 19 Figure 30: Egyptian lute p. 19 Figure 31: Egyptian lute p. 20 Figure 32: Spanish lute p. 21 Figure 33: Spanish lute p. 21 Figure 34: Tambura p. 21 Figure 35: Utrecht Psalter p. 22 Figure 36: Serbian lute p. 22 Figure 37: Serbian lute p. 22 Figure 38: Husle p. 23 Figure 39: Spanish bowed lutes p. 23 Figure 40: Serbian lute and details p. 23 Figure 41: Musical scene by Rabanus Maurus p. 27 Figure 42: Munich Serbian Psalter p. 28 Figure 43: Mongolian instrument p. 33 Figure 44: Scythian harp p. 34 Figure 45: Steppe harp p. 34 Figures 46 and 47: Scythian harps from Xinjiang p. 34 Figure 48: Assyrian harp p. 35 Figure 49: Chinese instrument p. 35 Figure 50: Abkhazian bowed instrument p. 35 Figures 51 and 52: Kazakh Kobyz p. 36 Figure 53: Fragment of instrument p. 38 ORIGINS OF THE SERBIAN GUSLE: From the Prehistory to the Middle-Ages Igor Đurović1 PREFACE This article is a new distinct and revised version of my initial work about the origins of the gusle: The origin of musical instruments among the Serbs, based on archaeological, historical, ethnographic and other data [2016]. I have attempted at showing the changes and reasons for the transformations of the musical bow which was originally bowed with a wooden stick, up to the present-day gusle. Most of the text in this paper was included in the first version. I have added some conclusions with the intention of publishing the present work separately. I have particularly focused on philology in a dedicated chapter. I have added new depictions in this edition such as Ancient Egyptians lutes with scrolls decorated with horses’ heads as seen in Medieval Europe, thereby revising previous conclusions that these were types of lutes, which were the first ones to be bowed with horsehair bows during the eighth to the ninth centuries, were forerunners of the modern gusle. Larger bowed lutes with three strings appeared briefly in the West between the ninth and fourteenth centuries. Serbs adapted them to suit their epic poetry and reduced the number of strings to one, or two. Igor Đurović May the ninth, 2019 Kragujevac 1. Archaeologist and curator at the Public Museum, Kragujevac, Serbia. 2 IgorĐurović-Origin of the Serbian gusle THE GUSLE Njegoš described the beautiful and sweet Christmas as straw was spread in front of the hearth, and badnjaks, the oak branches laid in front of the fire with rifles, pastry, gusles, songs and toasts. This is more than a Christian festival, it is an ancient Serbian holiday2. Čajkanović claimed that the genre of Serbian epic poetry and its relations to the ancestor’s cult belonged to remote antiquity, and was even perhaps of Indo- European origins3. So, some bowed instrument used to accompany Serbian epic poetry would certainly have existed in the past, long before the birth of Christ. It is only the matter of what form and how the gusle became what it is today. Unfortunately, there are no iconographic representations of the gusle until it appears on Serbian ecclesiastical art during the seventeenth century4. The Mediaeval textual evidence is poor because of inaccuracies in Mediaeval terminology of Church Slavic texts where ‘gusli’ and ‘gusle’, referred to different string instruments. Additionally, the word ‘gudeti’ had a different sense than its present-day meaning where it has become the verb ‘to bow’. Fortunately, the Serbian gusle retained sufficient details in its structure, allowing for studying the layers of its development. Therefore, the gusle itself will be useful for the study of its origin, more specifically the component parts of the instrument. In our attempt to determine the temporal occurrence of these, we will first compare the European ethnographic information, then philological and archaeological data, mediaeval materials, oral tradition knowledge and other available sources. Then we shall draw conclusions from my previous books. 2. Čajkanović 1973: 191. 3. Čajkanović 1995: 34, 131. Loma also came to the same conclusions (Loma 2002). 4. The Psalter by Gavrilo Trojičanin (1643), Morača Monastery, St. Luka’s icon (1672-1673), Pejović 2005: 192. The author sees the reason for the late emergence of the gusle in the role it played for rituals of the supreme Pagan God, which will be discussed later. Igor Đurović - Origin of the Serbian gusle 3 Figure 1. Present-day gusle (first half of the twentieth century, Ethnographic Museum, Belgrade, Serbia, (Mitrović 2014: 79). Bowing Until recently, based on the oldest historical data and depictions, it was believed that bowing began in Europe during the eighth to the ninth centuries with the introduction of the horsehair-bow6. This constituted the evidence that the widespread usage of the bow dated back only to the early Middle-Ages. It was originally thought that the bow was an Arabian contribution which was unknown earlier. Bowing was thought to have suddenly reached the heart of Europe. In fact, the prompt adopting of a horsehair bow confirms that some primitive bowed instruments must have existed in Europe7 much earlier and that their bowing had already been widespread. However, scholars were not of this opinion. They considered the bow as made up of an arched wooden stick onto which horsehair or other materials were stretched but could not imagine a primitive bow made only of a wooden structure, a stick stripped of its bark which could have served the function of bowing, as indeed the technique is used nowadays, when the violin is played ‘con legno’, that is with the wooden part of the bow. This technique could have stemmed from the earliest prehistoric times in Europe. The musical bow The musical bow probably evolved from the hunting bow when hunters across the world noted that the string of the bow could produce sound when it was plucked. The earliest hunting bows came from the Upper Paleolithic Period as attested with 6. The depiction of bowed string instruments in theUtrecht Psalter from the ninth century and records of Arabian travel writers (Sachs 1940: 216; Farmer 1931: 103; Remnant 1978: 43). It was believed that bowing had been invented by the skillful warriors of Central Asia, the Huns and the Mongols and later spread across China, the Middle-East, Africa and the Balkans (Sadie and Tyrrell 2001). 7. Remnant 1978: 44. 4 IgorĐurović-Origin of the Serbian gusle Figure 2. Upper Paleolithic, Magdalenian Period. The etching at the Grotte des Trois Frères in the Ariège in France. The depiction shows a masked hunter with an alleged musical bow (Bandi 2000: fig. 34). stone arrowheads discovered in the Iberian Peninsula dated to the earlier phase of the Solutrean culture (17000 – 16000 BC) with the so-called Parpallo arrow-points8. There are several manners to produce a sound from a stringed bow. Firstly, the plucking of the strings with fingers, secondly, the striking the strings with a stick, and thirdly the rubbing of a stick across the strings. These three methods are well-known to ethnomusicology. Originally the musician set the bow against a container placed on the ground. The container served as resonator. Then the bow was pressed against the musician’s mouth holding it tightly between his teeth9. The musical bow is generally recognised as a precursor of lyres, harps and lutes. With arched harps, more strings were progressively added to the bow, and resonators were fitted to the bows. With lutes, the bow was straightened and a resonator was added. In Europe, the existence of the musical bow can be traced far back as prehistory. There was some evidence of its existence during the Mesolithic and Neolithic Periods with reference to a depiction from the Paleolithic at the Grotte des Trois Frères10 8. Dušan Mihajlović, in Srejović 1997: 951-2. 9. This might be the reason why violins are held against the shoulder in Western Europe: presumably they inherited the prehistoric tradition of being held against the teeth.