Contextual Associations
The santur is a hammered box zither chordophone of the Persian people of Iran. It is used primarily in performances of classical Persian music (musiqi-ye asil) and entertainment music (motrebi), but not in folk and popular music traditions. It can be performed by either professionals or amateurs, and by both men and women. The place of Persian classical music in Iranian society has been in constant flux since the late 19th century as the introduction of Western military, classical and popular musics have at times had pronounced impacts on Persian musical life. Political upheaval and varying attitudes about music as espoused by religious authorities has also impacted the Persian classical music tradition and its transmission. However, there exists today in Iran several private and public institutions at which Iranians interested in learning the santur (and other traditional Persian instruments and singing) can find instruction (see the article by Bastaninezhad for an overview of the shifting sands of institutional support of Persian classical music over the past 110 years).
Description
The trapezoidal-shaped resonator of the santur consists of a wooden frame the angled side pieces of which are thicker than the two parallel sides in order to anchor the dozens of hitch pins and tuning pins used to control the tension of the instrument’s strings. This frame is covered top and bottom by thin boards of wood, possibly walnut. The top soundboard has two rosettes cut into it (detail #1), while the backboard has no perforations (detail #2). The side of the resonator frame that faces the performer (the longer of the parallel sides) has a small soundhole drilled through it (detail #3). Long bridge nuts are glued to the soundboard along its two angled edges. Each consists of a long strip of half-round wood the peak of which is capped with a brass rod (detail #4). All the instrument’s seventy two strings pass over both bridge nuts, with one of their ends lassoed around hitch pins imbedded in the left side of the resonator frame (detail #5) and their other end wound around a metal tuning pin imbedded in the right side of the resonator frame (detail #6). These strings are grouped in eighteen courses of four strings each. Every other quadruple-course, starting from the longest one closest to the performer, has brass-wire strings, while the intervening courses are steel-wire strings. Each string course passes over a moveable pressure bridge with a metal-rod cap that is slightly higher than the bridge nuts along the side edges of the soundboard (detail #7). These bridges divide the sounding length of each string course into two segments of different lengths. The pressure bridges are arranged in two rows of nine each. The left-side row of bridges, over which the courses of steel stings pass, is situated in such a way that the string courses can be struck on either side of each bridge. The right-side row of pressure bridges, over which the brass-wire courses pass, is situated closer to the right-side bridges nut. These courses are struck/sounded only on the left side of each bridge. The string courses are sounded with a pair of slender and lightweight wooden (mulberry) beaters the beating ends of which are padded with felt; one is held in each of the performer’s hands (detail #8).
Player - Instrument Interface and Sound Production
The santur is typically played by a seated musician facing a table or stand with the instrument resting flat or with its far side slightly raised. The strings are struck with light beaters (mezrab) that have a thin layer of felt padding on the part of the beater that contacts the strings. Even with this attenuating of the instrument’s sound, it is still quite loud and the strings when sounded have a relatively long decay. Therefore, as new strings are struck, the previously struck strings are usually still audible. The instrument is tuned to a non-tempered heptatonic scale (seven-tone) modal scale. Twenty-seven notes in all can be produced on the instrument over a range of three octaves and a second (approximately e2 to f5), and these notes are distributed evenly between three sections. The position of each of the left-side bridges divides its course into two segments--the segment to the right of the bridge is twice as long and sounds an octave lower than the segment to the left of the bridge (e.g., the left-side bridge for the longest string course divides the total length of the course into a 10.7 inch segment to the left of the bridge and a 21.4 inch segment to its right, a ratio of 1:2), and both segments of each course are utilized in performance. These nine left-side bridges set off the upper- (on the left-side of the bridges) and middle-register sections (on the right side of them) of the instrument. A lower-register section (an octave bellow the middle-register section) is located to the left of the right-hand row of bridges. Each section is tuned to an octave and a second of the scale with the highest two pitches of each section duplicating at unison the lowest two pitches of the next higher-register section. The santur can be performed either solo or as part of an ensemble. Elaborate figurations and tremolos on single notes are common stylistic features of santur music and can be heard on this video.
Origins/History/Evolution
Zonis (p. 165) reports that the first Persian literary reference to the santur is found in a poem by the 11th-century poet Manucheri and that the earliest depiction of the instrument (in a rectangular shape and called the nuzha) appears in the late 13th-century Kitab al-Adwar by Safi al-Din. How much further back in time this instrument might go in Persia and from where it originated is a matter of speculation. Hammered box-zithers like the santur existed in some related form as early or earlier in the Arab world, and have spread far and wide over the centuries and been integrated into a number of musical traditions throughout the Middle East, the Caucuses, southeastern Europe, and Asia (During, et al, p. 378), and even North America (see also on this website the kimm, the yangqin, and the hammered dulcimer
Bibliographic Citations
Bastaninezhad, Arya. 2014. “A historical overview of Iranian music pedagogy (1905-2014),” in Australian Journal of Music Education 2: 5-22.
During, Jean, and Scheherazade Qassim Hassan, and Alastair Dick.. 2014. “Santur [sandouri, santoor, santuri, sintir, tsintsila]. 2014.”GDMI v. 4: 378-379.
Hasan Zadeh, Setareh. 2023. “Chaarmezrab Shour” (after Faramarz Payvar). YouTube video accessed Feb. 25, 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEBA6Tz_LD4
Jenkins, Jean, and Poul Rovsing Olsen. 1976. Music and Musical Instruments in the World of Islam. London: Music Research.
Zonis, Ella. 1973. Classical Persian Music. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
