In the spirit of the Miercurea Ciuc Early Music Festival, with the nature as this year’s topic, we have chosen an object that is closely related to the theme of the festival: a jaw harp, known as well as Jew’s harp. During the late-medieval archaeological excavations of the last years (Sándor mansion in Văcărești, Becz manor house in Cozmeni, Andrássy manor house in Sîncrăieni, a 16th century house in Șoimeni) several numbers of this special folk instrument were found. The jaw harp is made from a square iron rod, bent into a roughly U-shape, which is much rounded at the bottom. In the case of most the jaw harps from the archaeological record the central blade or string is missing. In our case, the date of the instrument is 16th century (the context of the discovery) but generally their dating is difficult, as approximately the same shapes survived for hundreds of years across Europe. Several similar objects are known from the area of the medieval Kingdom of Hungary. As an example from Western Europe, we present an early modern depiction, painted between 1570-1601 by Pieter van Heyden's Zottenkermis. But there are similar jaw harps to ours in the British Museum's online database too.
In terms of structure, the instrument has a tongue cut in bamboo (in Asia and Oceania) or mounted in a metal frame (in Europe), the end of which vibrates freely and can be plucked with the finger or a string attached to it. The instrument is held in the mouth, close to the teeth, and its pitch can be controlled by tongue position and breathing. The pitch depends on the resonance of the tongue and the volume on the maximum amplitude of the vibration. The jaw harp’s sound has a fundamental tone, whose harmonics are amplified by the musician's mouth and the melody is formed by changes in the volume of the mouth cavity. This little harp can be used both as a melodic and a rhythmic instrument.
Among the Turkish peoples of Central Asia and in modern Europe, the jaw harp was used primarily and exclusively as an instrument for women and children, but in the 15th and 16th centuries it was used together with the bagpipe as a typical military instrument. Therefore, it cannot be excluded that its transformation into an instrument for women and children, in fact, is not the continuation of an Iron Age tradition, but, as with other types of instruments, the result of a later "degradation".
In an original way we are presenting four jaw harps, each found in archaeological excavations, to underline the widespread use of the instrument in our region, in the 16th century. Visitors can see the selected objects in the Szekler Museum of Ciuc’s ticket office, in a place specially set up for this purpose.
