gusli
Sign in to saveThe gusli (, ) or husla (, husla) is the oldest East Slavic multi-string plucked instrument, belonging to the zither family, due to its strings being parallel to its resonance board. Its roots lie in Veliky Novgorod in the Novgorodian Republic. It has its relatives in Europe and throughout the world: kantele/kannel in Finland, kannel in Estonia, kanklės in Lithuania, kokles in Latvia, Zither in Germany, citera in the Czech Republic, and psalterium in France. Furthermore, the kanun has been found in Arabic countries, and the autoharp, in the United States. It is also related to such ancient ins
Key facts
- Instrument.name
- Gusli
- Instrument.image
- Gusli tradition.png
- Instrument.image_capt
- Krylovidnye gusli
- Instrument.classification
- Simple chordophone
- Instrument.hornbostel_sachs
- 315.2
- Instrument.hornbostel_sachs_desc
- Trough zither with resonator
- Instrument.range
- varies Russian traditional tuning: E3 A3 H3 C4 D4 E4 F4 G4 A4
- Instrument.related
- Kantele Kannel Kokles Kanklės Zither
via Wikipedia infobox
Wikidata facts
- Image
- Gusli tradition.png
Show 2 more facts
- Commons category
- Gusli
- Hornbostel-Sachs classification
- 314.122-5
Sources (1)
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~6 min read
Article
12 sectionsContents
- Etymology
- History
- Archaeology
- Types
- ''Shlemovidnye gusli''
- ''Krylovidnye gusli''
- ''Keyboard Gusli''
- Related instruments
- Modern Russian performers
- See also
- References
- External links
The gusli (, ) or husla (, husla) is the oldest East Slavic multi-string plucked instrument, belonging to the zither family, due to its strings being parallel to its resonance board. Its roots lie in Veliky Novgorod in the Novgorodian Republic. It has its relatives in Europe and throughout the world: kantele/kannel in Finland, kannel in Estonia, kanklės in Lithuania, kokles in Latvia, Zither in Germany, citera in the Czech Republic, and psalterium in France. Furthermore, the kanun has been found in Arabic countries, and the autoharp, in the United States. It is also related to such ancient instruments as Chinese gu zheng, which has a thousand-year history, and its Japanese relative koto. A stringed musical instrument called is listed as one of the Me in ancient Sumer.
==Etymology== thumb|200px|"Gusli musicians" by Viktor Vasnetsov, 1899 The term gusli derives from the verb *gǫsti (make sound, howl, play music) with the suffix *slь (from Proto-Indo-European *-trom). In the times of the Kievan Rus', the term gusli is believed to have simply referred to any generic stringed instrument. The root of the term comes from a word meaning "make sound in the wind." The term was eventually associated with the trapezoidal gusli-psaltyry (which may have originated in Byzantium).