Musical domra. What is domra? History and photo of a musical instrument

Musical instrument: Domra

Since ancient times in Rus', ordinary people have talentedly reflected their emotional experiences, as well as ongoing events, in folk art. He was helped in this by various folk musical instruments, the art of performing which was passed on from generation to generation. One of these instruments was the domra - a favorite of buffoons and ordinary people. People sang and danced to her, told fairy tales and epics, her ringing voice and unique timbre attracted the attention of listeners. Domra was often at the center of events, sometimes even dramatic, as a result of which she fell into disgrace and disappeared from folk art for several centuries.

Time passed, the domra was revived and again captivated listeners with its unusual sound, similar to the voice of a ringing stream. She is able to display both romantic moods and the enchanting beauty of nature. It is not without reason that in cinema, when it is necessary to emphasize the charm of the Russian land, we often hear the tremulous voice of the domra.

Read the history of the domra and many interesting facts about this musical instrument on our page.

Sound

Domra is an instrument with great expressive capabilities; its bright and light voice is easily recognized. Due to the strong tension of the strings, the sound of the domra is ringing, but quickly fades. The timbre is warm, soft, radiant, velvety and rich.

Pizzicato, hitting the strings up and down, tremolo, harmonics and glissando - this is a set of basic techniques used by domra players.

Playing an instrument is usually done with the help of a mediator. Long notes can only be played using the tremolo technique.

Domra is an instrument with great technical potential; compositions of varying complexity and any stylistic orientation are available to it - these are original works and transcriptions of works by classical composers. Masterly arpeggiated and passage technique, complex rhythmic figurations, various strokes, playing with intervals and chords - all these are technical techniques that the performers master.

Domras come in two types: three-string – has a range from “E” of the first to “E” of the fourth octave; and four-string - the range from “B” of the small to “E” of the fourth octave.

Photo:

Interesting Facts

• Domrochei, that’s what domra performers were called in the old days.
• In the distant past, domra was made from a pumpkin cut in half and peeled.
• Domra and balalaika are two different modifications of one type of ancient plucked string instrument.
• In 1654, by order of Nikon, the Patriarch of All Rus', five large fully loaded carts with buffoon instruments, including domras, were brought to the banks of the Moscow River and publicly burned there. The huge fire burned for several days.
• Joseph Stalin loved listening to domra.
• A.A. Tsygankov, a virtuoso musician, is called the king of domra, as well as the “domra Paganini.”
• In the United States of America there is an association of lovers of playing the domra and balalaika, which has existed for more than 30 years and has 400 members.
• On a four-string domra, which has a violin tuning and range, you can perform the entire repertoire written not only for the violin, but also for the mandolin.

Design

The domra, like the violin, is a very capricious instrument, and for it to sound good, it must be made by a highly qualified craftsman with a keen ear, and also from well-seasoned wood.

The design includes the body of the instrument and the neck with the head.

1. The body consists of a body and a deck.

• The body is usually made of curved rivets, forming a hemispherical shape. Staves are made from rosewood, white maple or curly birch. Tail holders called buttons are installed on the body.
• The deck is the front part of the body in the shape of a flat oval, covering the body and bordered along the edge by a shell. In the center there is a voice box - a resonator with a shaped rosette.A shell is placed on the soundboard, which protects it from scratches, and a stand that lifts the strings and is installed in a precisely defined place. The soundboard is typically made from resonator spruce and fir, the bridge is made from maple, and the shell is made from hardwood or synthetic materials.

2. The neck attached to the body ends with a head with a tuning mechanism attached to it, necessary for tensioning the strings. A fingerboard with saddles is glued to the fingerboard, which separate the frets, arranged in a chromatic sequence. A nut is attached between the head and neck of the neck, which affects the height of the strings. Highly raised strings are pressed heavily against the frets and make playing the instrument more difficult.

The sound on a domra is produced using a small plate of a mediator - a plectrum, which has the shape of an oval and the size of which depends on the size of the domra. Tortoiseshells are considered the best material for picks, but plectrums are also now made from various polymer materials.

Varieties

Domra has two types, which differ in the number of strings and tuning.

A three-string domra (designed by V. Andreev) in an orchestra is called a small domra and is tuned in fourths. The four-string domra (designed by Lyubimov) has a fifth scale like a violin.

Each type of domra also has subspecies that differ in size. In the group of three-string domras, the following are actively used in the practice of ensemble and orchestral playing: bass, alto, and piccolo; rarely used: double bass, tenor and mezzo-soprano.

Four-string domras (designed by G. P. Lyubimov) have: bass, alto, and piccolo, rare varieties: double bass and tenor.

• Piccolo sounds bright and light, her piercing voice greatly complements and decorates the sound of the entire orchestra.
• The viola, with a soft and chesty sound in timbre, usually serves as a harmonic filler between the upper and lower voices, but sometimes it is also assigned solo moments.
• Bass - has a rich, velvety sound throughout the entire range. Being the owner of a weighty, thick and slightly heavy voice, the lower register of the instrument is entrusted with leading the bass line. The melodic lines assigned to the middle and high registers, which have a soft and velvety tone, sound very colorful and soulful. Due to its large size, the bass is technically very limited, because it requires the domrist to have a large stretch of the fingers of his left hand.

Application and repertoire

Already initially, during the period of restoration of the domra by craftsmen under the guidance of the musician, creator of the balalaika circle and composer V. Andreev, its purpose was determined as melodic in an orchestra of folk instruments. For a long time, the role of the domra was precisely this; it plays the same role of prima in a folk orchestra as the violin does in a symphony orchestra. The domra remained for quite a long time only an orchestral instrument, and only then did it become an ensemble instrument, when the domra quartet began its concert activity under the direction of V. Andreev. The instrument appeared on stage as a solo instrument a little later. It’s a pity, but in Russia the domra was no longer used as a folk instrument.

The domra revealed itself very brightly as a solo concert instrument, and works began to be composed especially for it. Particularly noteworthy is the concert work by N. Budashkin, which truly became a pearl in the repertoire for this instrument, also works large shape Y. Shishakov, B. Kravchenko, Y. Zaritsky, who further revealed his new artistic possibilities.

Unfortunately, venerable composers who write in other genres do not show much interest in domra, and composers-performers usually write works for it, among them: A. Tsygankov, G. Zaitsev, N. Penko, K. Volkov, V. Solomin , V. Soboleva-Belinskaya, V. Pozhidaev, N. Hondo, Y. Semashko, E. Podgayts and others. However, the domra is not offended in terms of repertoire; transcriptions written by the greatest composers for violin, flute, clarinet, and piano sound beautifully on the instrument. These are masterpieces of such composers as I.S. Bakh, P.I. Tchaikovsky, G. Wieniawski, F. Poulenc, A. Scarlatti, C. Saint-Saens, P. Sarasate, D. Shostakovich, N. Paganini, S. Rachmaninov, S. Prokofiev, D. Gershwin, A. Piazzolla.

Works:

N.P. Budashkin - Concerto in A domra with orchestra (listen)

Yu.N. Shishakov - Concerto for domra (listen)

Performers

After its long-awaited return, the domra immediately found its admirers, who began to actively develop and popularize the instrument. One of the first professional virtuoso domrists was P. Karkin, who developed the basic techniques of sound production and, with his tireless work, made a significant contribution to the development of performing skills. The successors of P. Karkin’s work were F. Korovay, V. Nikulin, R. Belov, Yu. Yakovlev, A. Simonenkov, M. Vasiliev, V. Krasnoyartsev, V. Kruglov, A. Tsygankov, T. Volskaya, V. Ivko, B. Mikheev, S. Lukin, and others.

Today, to be a domra performer means to be committed to your craft, and musicians prove this by creating their own unique performing style. And the result of such enthusiasm is that the domra has become a full-fledged academic instrument on a par with the flute, violin, piano, cello, oboe, clarinet and others.

Story

The historical roots of domra go back to ancient times, but no one can say for sure when and where it came from on Russian soil. In the ancient chronicles that have survived to us, there is almost no information about it. Different nationalities had instruments extremely similar to domra: doglama among the Turks, dumra among the Kyrgyz, rubab among the Tajiks, dumbyra among the Bashkirs, dombra among the Kazakhs. The predecessor of all such instruments is considered to be the oval-shaped ancient Egyptian tanbur, the sound of which was produced using a small sharpened stick. The domra also had a great resemblance to it, but on a Russian instrument, carved from wood, with an attached stick - a neck and strings stretched from veins, it was played with a fish bone or a feather.

Domra was in great demand in Rus', people shared sadness and joy with it. They sang and danced to the domra, told fairy tales and told epics. The instrument, very easy to make, was very popular among the common people and funny people - buffoons. The vociferous and light domra sounded for five hundred years in peasant huts, on the market square and even in royal mansions. In the 16th century, in order to organize entertainment for the royal court, the “Amusement Chamber” was created - a kind of court orchestra of that time, which included domrochei - the so-called domra performers.

In the 17th century, dark times came for buffoons who staged funny performances and often made harmless jokes about ecclesiastical and secular authorities.

Serious discontent between the nobility and the church resulted in persecution of musicians. By special order of the tsar, in 1648, buffoons began to be sent into exile or executed, and instruments, including domras, called demonic, were collected and destroyed. Domra was destroyed and no one remembered about it for 200 years. Only at the end of the 19th century, in a province far from the capital, in a remote village, in the attic of a dilapidated hut, an instrument with an oval-shaped body was found, and no one even remembered what it was called.

Based on the images in ancient documents, we came to the conclusion that this instrument is a domra. How she managed to survive remains a mystery, but the sleeping beauty had to return to life.

Based on the form of a unique rarity found and the sketches of V. Andreev, the founder of the first orchestra of folk instruments, and with the participation of the enthusiast and patriot N. Fomin, the domra was recreated in 1896 by violin instrument maker S. Nalimov. At that time, V. Andreev had already organized a balalaika ensemble, which successfully performed in Russia and abroad, but to realize his main dream, to create a full-fledged orchestra, he needed an instrument that would beautifully carry out the melodic line, and the domra was very suitable for this.

V. Andreev together with S. Nalimov were developed and then manufactured different types domra: piccolo, alto, tenor (rarely used), bass and double bass (not used), which have become the main instruments of folk instrument orchestras. Ten years after its revival, the domra, which has a small range, was used only as an orchestra instrument. At the beginning of the 20th century, at the request of conductor G. Lyubimov, master S. Burov designed a domra, which had not three strings, like Andreev’s, but four. It was tuned in fifths like a violin and had an appropriate range. Undoubtedly, the increased range of the four-string domra was an advantage, but it was inferior to the “three-string” in timbre coloring. After some time, in the collaboration of G. Lyubimov and S. Burov, domras of different sizes were made - from piccolo to double bass, all of them had 4 strings and fifth tuning. These domras became part of the domra orchestra, which, unfortunately, did not last long.

There is probably no instrument in the world with such a dramatic fate as the domra. At the peak of her popularity, she fell into disgrace, tragically disappeared and was for a long time forgotten. And it was revived again, but now it doesn’t amuse people on the ruins of a village hut, but captivates listeners with its sound in huge concert halls.

Today, the domra, a young, promising instrument with significant capabilities, which has risen to the heights of an academic genre, has a very great creative perspective, as interest in it is constantly growing.

Video: listen to domra

Variety of types of domra

The end of the 19th century is a period of revival in the history of domra. At this time, the wonderful Russian musician-researcher V.V. Andreev did the most difficult and painstaking work to restore and improve Russian folk instruments.

The reconstructed three-string domra received a fourth tuning and a full chromatic scale and was included in the ensemble of folk instruments.

It was according to the instructions of V.V. Andreev created a family of domras of different sizes - piccolo, small, viola, bass and double bass. The tenor domra is used less frequently.

At the beginning of the 20th century, G.P. Lyubimov and S.F. Burov designed a family of four-string domras of fifth scale. Since then, domra has firmly taken its place in the music world.

Domra device

Domra consists of three parts: a wooden hemispherical body oval shape, neck (neck) and head.

The body consists of: a body, a soundboard that covers the body from above and is edged along the edges with a shell, buttons for securing the strings and a bottom sill that protects the soundboard from the pressure of the stretched strings.

In the middle of the soundboard there is a round hole - a resonator with a figured rosette. Above the soundboard, near the fingerboard, there is a hinged shell that protects the soundboard from scratches when playing. A stand - an armrest - is sometimes attached above the strings and the lower sill.

A neck is inserted into the body, onto which a fingerboard with saddles and frets located between them is glued. Fret counting starts from the nut. On the headstock there are pegs that regulate the tension of the strings.

What is domra? The legendary “balalaika” and “harp” of Ukrainian kobzars, Belarusian songwriters and Russian storytellers have not lost their popularity for many years. Domra is a musical instrument that over the years has become a national symbol of the south of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. It is actively used by thousands of artists in recordings of both instrumental melodies and song compositions.

What is domra

Domra is a string instrument belonging to a subgroup of folk instruments and characteristic of the South Slavic peoples. The structure of the domra is similar to a balalaika or homez. Also, these instruments are united by a playing style - using a special pick that touches the strings. This style of playing is called plucking.

Domra is an instrument used for solo performance of any texts to the accompaniment, less often - as part of an ensemble or orchestra of folk instruments.

As a representative of the string family, domra is an instrument that requires a special approach to master and use. Thanks to the acoustic features of its structure, in skillful hands the domra is capable of producing enchanting sounds that are unusual for the human ear.

Tool name

The word “domra” itself was obtained by processing several words from Turkic languages ​​denoting stringed musical instruments, for example, in the Tatar language there is the word dumbra, translated as “balalaika”. The Crimean Tatar dialect has the word dambura - “guitar”. The Turkish language contains the word tambura, which also means guitar, and the Kazakh language calls the balalaika - dombıra. The Kalmyk variant is very close to the Kazakh language - dombr̥, which also means balalaika.

History of origin

What is domra? A musical instrument that may interest anyone who is interested in the history and theory of folk music.

The first mention of a musical instrument similar to it can be found in palace records of the 16th-17th centuries, which tell about domrachei - musicians playing the domra.

She was popular with buffoons, traveling artists and jesters. Since, despite its simplicity and ease of use, it had a good sound and quite rich timbral capabilities, which allowed the artist to easily accompany himself while performing a song or story.

For a long time, playing the domra was considered a humiliating activity, unworthy of a person of the upper and middle classes. That is why there was no single type of domra - each specimen was made using an artisanal home method. Often artists made their own domra or performed such work to order.

Soon the domra disappeared from historical documents, and until the 19th century no one knew about its existence. This was due to the introduction of censorship and the active hunt for buffoons, besides whom no one else used this tool. With the disappearance of funny songs as a genre, the instrument was also forgotten for a while. Even the descendants of the once famous storytellers did not know what domra was.

"Second birth"

Only at the beginning of the 20th century, the director of the first “Orchestra of Folk Instruments” in the USSR, Vasily Andreev, was able to restore the original form of the domra, as well as hypothetically restore its sound, based on a poorly preserved copy musical instrument, found by him in the Oryol region.

Despite the fact that many musicologists still do not consider Andreev’s find to be a real domra, this word is now used to describe the entire family of musical instruments created on the basis of his drawings.

Currently, this folk instrument is popular in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, and is also popular abroad due to its exotic sound.

Concert and chamber works are created for the domra, as for many other folk instruments.

Design

Traditional domra of the highest quality is made from various expensive types of wood. Moreover, there are strict traditions of instrument making. And also the rules for combining wood in strictly prescribed proportions.

The body of the instrument is made of white maple and Norway birch, the stand is made of rare maple, the soundboard is made of spruce or fir, the neck is made of larch, and the fingerboard is made of ebony.

The Russian domra is an instrument made according to the model of Semyon Ivanovich Sotsky, the famous master craftsman and guardian of Russian musical culture. The models of folk instruments created by him have been used in elite world orchestras since 1936.

The structure of the domra is similar to that of almost any stringed instrument.

It consists of two parts - a resonating body and a neck. The body, in turn, is divided into a sound-saving body and deck.

Different sound

Since ancient times, two styles of playing the domra have been known: with and without a pick.

When struck with a hard plate, the strings of the instrument have a slightly rattling sound, characteristic of Ukrainian folk melodic music. late XVII century.

The Belarusians, who did not know what a domra was until the end of the 16th century and were inspired to create it by Western analogues of string instruments, were not inclined to play with a pick. They preferred to play by plucking, getting a completely different sound.

If a pick is not used when playing the domra, the sound becomes soft, smooth and voluminous. Extremely similar in tone to the sound of an acoustic guitar. This method of playing the domra is considered more academic and is used in folk instrument orchestras.

Varieties

Domra is a musical instrument that has a small number of varieties. There are two types of it: three-string and four-string domra.

The only difference between them is their musical perception. The four-string domra has a greater number of tones, and also sounds one octave lower than the three-string version of this instrument.

There are simply no differences in the manufacturing process or in the composition of materials. This can be explained by the mental characteristics of the peoples who created this or that version of domra.

The three-string instrument became widespread in Ukraine, and the four-string instrument in western Belarus. There, its design was significantly influenced by Polish string instruments.

The four-string domra, which has great capabilities for producing sound, is traditionally used in folk instrument orchestras, as well as in chamber orchestras. Many leading domracheys prefer it to the more ancient three-string prototype precisely because of its similarity to a bass guitar, which provides more comfortable playing during a performance.

Production

We can find the first mention of making domra in the chronicle of the Savino-Storozhevsky Monastery in Kuban. The monastery scribe book contains a record dated 1558 and tells how a certain master began to make special balalaikas with a strange sound production.

At the end of the 18th century, it was here that the first mass production of folk musical instruments began. The “First Guselnaya Workshop” opened in Kuban, producing domras, gusli, balalaikas, guitars and other stringed instruments in industrial scale. According to legend, this factory was run by a local peasant, Emelyanov, who managed not only to produce domras, but also to produce stringed instruments of the highest quality, which was even noted by a letter from the Imperial Court.

Domra is a famous plucked musical instrument, which is considered a “folk instrument” in a number of countries. , in particular in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus. It has an oval body, a short neck and 3-4 strings (quart or fifth tuning; the three-string modification is widespread only in Russia). Notes of a 3-string domra: D (second octave); A, E (first octave), and 4 strings: E (second octave); A, D (first octave); G (small octave).

Sound, as a rule, is produced using a mediator, less often with the pads of the fingers. The most characteristic technique for domra is tremolo, fast and rhythmic “rattling”, “trembling”. If we talk about relatedness, then it is closest to and. The principle of their design is similar, but there are some differences - both structural and in structure.

Domra, for a number of reasons, was not used for a long time, and only in late XIX century was reconstructed and recreated on the basis of the “Vyatka balalaika”, then the concept of “orchestral domra” appeared, this type of instrument has survived to this day. Children entering a music school can choose a domra class and practice on this instrument: it is light, relatively inexpensive, can be taken home, and will not disturb the neighbors; For these reasons, many parents send their young musicians to study this particular musical instrument.

Brief history of origin

The origin of the word “domra” is very simple: in Turkic “dumbra” is a balalaika, but these instruments are very similar in design and sound. Initially, they were played by skomorokhi (free jesters), approximately in XVI-XVII centuries, ensembles consisted of several musicians, which often included bagpipes, tambourines, etc. It is interesting that in the past the emphasis was placed on the last syllable, resulting in “domra?” The instrument was not only ensemble, but also solo, which indicates high practicality and applicability.

The persecution of buffoons began in the 17th century, when they began to be imprisoned or executed for bold jokes on the boyars and clergy. Along with the class of free jesters, their instruments were also exterminated, since they began to be perceived by the people as something seditious, dangerous, forbidden; no one wanted to keep a domra at home. At the same time, the harp existed perfectly at all times and was not affected by any reprisals or reprisals. Domra mysteriously disappeared completely and remained only in popular prints and frescoes. Modern look acquired the instrument only in the 20th century, this was mentioned above

What does domra consist of?

Like many plucked string instruments, the domra consists of a body and a neck, a hole is made in the body for sound to enter, and on the neck there are frets; the strings are tensioned using a pegs system that uses a “worm gear”. The body has two main structural parts - the body (lower bowl-shaped part) and the deck (upper part). Elements are often made from wooden strips that are glued together in a special way, less often from so-called “solid wood”, when they try to use fragments where there are no breaks or cracks. This is believed to give the sound its characteristic strength and depth. The "holes" in the soundboard are called sound holes

To protect the body from hand impacts when playing, a “protective shell” is used, which is most often made in black and is a hard plastic or vinyl plate. There is also a saddle system that supports and guides the strings. A stand is installed behind the lower sill, the purpose of which is to support the strings in a certain state from the body; this element plays a vital role, since without it it is completely impossible to play the instrument. It is usually not secured and can be moved by hand; this should not be done. In addition to tensioning the strings, the nut is responsible for transmitting the vibration of the strings to the body, which is also important.

The fretboard is covered with metal strips called frets. Each domra is special in its own way and has a peculiar number of frets - from 18 to 30. The strings are attached at the top with peg rollers: to tune the string, you need to rotate the handle in one direction or another depending on what sound is needed: if it is higher, the string is tightened, for a low sound, it is “released.” The strings can be installed differently, depending on the purpose of the instrument and the preferences of the musician - either plastic (soft and pliable, but quiet and unsharp) or metal (hard, difficult to play, but very sonorous, “bright”).

Small domra

Probably everyone who has had any contact with music has come across such a concept as “small domra”. In fact, it's not a matter of size, but of purpose. Small is called primu , that is, a solo domra playing the main role in one or another musical composition at a concert. Yes, it differs from the others in scale, frets, length, but there are other types:

• piccolo;
• prima (small);
• alto;
• tenor;
• double bass

Video

Listen to domra:

Domra

Old Russian stringed musical instrument. Its exact description and image have not survived; in the book of the German traveler A. Olearius “Description of a Journey to Muscovy...”, 1st half of the 17th century, two musicians are depicted, one of whom plays an instrument with a large hemispherical body (there is reason to consider this instrument a domra). Domra was primarily an instrument of professional buffoon musicians. It was most widespread in the 16th-17th centuries. In ensembles, in addition to the usual one, the “basist” (bass) domra was also used.

In 1895, a member of V.V. Andreev’s orchestra, A.S. Martynov, brought from the Vyatka province a 3-string instrument, which was one of the varieties of balalaika, but was mistaken for a domra. Based on this instrument, Andreev, together with S.I. Nalimov, in 1896-1900. created a family of reconstructed domras of fourth scale (the so-called “discord”) - piccolo, prima, alto, tenor, bass and double bass. Later, having figured out the mistake, Andreev, who believed that the balalaika came from the domra, found this variety closer to the ancient domra (XVI-XVII centuries).

In 1908-1917 G.P. Lyubimov, together with S.F. Burov, designed a family of 4-string domras of fifth scale from piccolo to double bass, which laid the foundation for the domra orchestra. However, due to their timbre monotony, such orchestras did not become widespread.

Tuning and range of orchestral domra:

1. Piccolo
1st B string of 1st octave Range: from B of the 1st octave to E of the 4th octave.
2nd E 2 octaves
3rd A 2 octaves

2. Prima
1st string E of the 1st octave Range: from E of the 1st octave to D of the 4th octave.
2nd A of 1st octave
3rd D of 2nd octave

3. Second
1st string B small octave Range: from B small octave to F 3rd octave.
2nd E of 1st octave
3rd A of 1st octave

4. Alto
1st string E small octave Range: from E small octave to A 2nd octave.
2nd A small octave
3rd D of 1st octave

5. Tenor
1st string B major octave Range: from B major octave to G 1st octave.
2nd E of small octave
3rd A of small octave

6. Bass
1st string E major octave Range: from E major octave to G 1st octave.
2nd A of the major octave
3rd D of small octave

7. Double bass
1st string E counter octave Range: from E counter octave to G small octave.
2nd A counter octave
3rd D major octave