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Concept
Bandura
Summary
A bandura (банду́ра) is a Ukrainian plucked-string folk-instrument. It combines elements of the zither and lute and, up until the 1940s, was also often called a kobza. Early instruments ( 1700) had 5 to 12 strings and resembled lutes. In the 20th century, the number of strings increased initially to 31 strings (1926), then to 56 strings – 68 strings on modern "concert" instruments (1954).
Musicians who play the bandura are referred to as bandurists. In the 19th and early 20th centuries traditional bandura players, often blind, were called kobzars. It is suggested that the instrument developed as a hybrid of gusli (Eastern-European psaltery) and kobza (Eastern-European lute). Some also consider the kobza as a type or an instrument resembling the bandura. The term bandura occurs in Polish chronicles from 1441. The hybridization, however, occurred in the late-18th or early-19th centuries.
Banduras are first recorded in a Polish chronicle of 1441, which mentioned that Sigismund III, king of Poland, employed the Ruthenian Taraszko at court to play the bandura and be his chess companion. Medieval Polish manuscripts recorded other court bandurists of Ukrainian descent.
The term bandura is generally thought to have entered the Ukrainian language via Polish, either from Latin or from the Greek pandora or pandura; some scholars believe the term was introduced directly from Greek.
The use of the term bandore (or bandora) stems from a now discredited assumption, initially made by Russian musicologist A. Famintsyn, that the word was borrowed directly from England. The word appeared in early 20th century Soviet Ukrainian-English and Russian-English dictionaries. Eastern European string instruments such as the hurdy-gurdy are occasionally referred to as banduras, and the five-string guitar as a bandurka.
The use of lute-like stringed instruments by Ukrainians dates back to 591. In that year, Byzantine Greek chronicles mention Bulgar warriors who travelled with lute-like instruments they called kitharas.
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