The words "psalter," meaning a book of psalms, and "psaltery," which, in modern usage, is a kind of zither, both come from the same Greek root referring to a family of harp-like instruments. It is easy to imagine (although I don't know that this happened) the one coming to be associated with the other through medieval prayer rituals. Interestingly, the bowed psaltery, a 20th century invention, has a voice that harkens me to the sound of sacred psalms sung in ancient, reverberant church halls: the instrument feels inherently meditative to me.
After spending a fairly short time with it, I could clearly auralize the psaltery's strings in a choir together, surprisingly resonant and sustained, and, building on this inspiration, constructed a series of four-voice chords. Each is repeated once via the delay (no feedback) and from one chord to the next only one note changes at a time, creating -- hopefully -- a kind of wandering but even musical kinhin. Over this, I improvised an independent fifth voice, allowing my ear to move the bow where it wanted; I did some light editing of this melody, adding a few notes in spaces that seemed missing them, but I did my best to retain the sense of meditativeness.
Like the work with the bowed clock chime, this piece is mostly a first experimentation with and demonstration of the instrument, exploring its timbres for future inclusion in other works not necessarily based or focused on it. The more I play with it, the more I like its sound and am excited to continue on the path of discovery it blazes.
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