Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Nail violin

(Fr. violon de fer; Ger. Nagelgeige, Nagelharmonika, Eisenvioline; It. violino di ferro).

A friction idiophone (not a violin) consisting of metal, wooden or glass rods (which are in some cases bowed, in others struck) fastened at one end to a sounding-board. It has similar acoustic properties to a stopped organ pipe as opposed to one that is open at one end, having only odd-numbered overtones, and sounding one octave lower than a rod that is fixed or free at both ends.

The instrument was invented in 1740 by Johann Wilde, a German violinist in St Petersburg, after he accidentally scraped the hair of his bow across the metal peg upon which he was about to hang it, producing a musical sound. The flat wooden sounding-board is usually in a half-moon shape and the metal nails are mounted perpendicularly around its curved edge. As these nails diminish in height the notes rise in pitch, and the chromatic nails are distinguished by being slightly bent. The instrument was held in the left hand by a hole underneath, and the sound was produced by rubbing a well-rosined bow across the nails. In 1780 it was improved by the addition of sympathetic strings in the ‘violino harmonico’ of Senal of Vienna, who also excelled upon it as a performer. Modern copies of an early design have been made by Michael Meadows. In the 19th century a type in which wooden rods were rubbed with rosined gloves was known as the Stockspiel or Melkharmonica (resembling an inverted milking-stool). In 1791 an oblong keyboard form, the Nagelclavier, was produced by Träger of Bernberg (Saxony); it was played by a treadle-operated band coated with rosin. Bowed steels rods were also the basis of Franz Schuster's six-octave Adiaphonon (1818–19). The vertical wooden rods in Schortmann's restrained Äolsklavier (c1822) were, exceptionally, blown on by a bellows. Late-19th-century variants of the nail violin, which are struck rather than bowed, are the toy piano and the chimes in some household clocks.

Around the mid-19th century some acousticians analysed the acoustical properties of rods, including those fixed at one end; ‘Marloye's harp’ was a 20-note chromatic instrument (wooden rods), Forré constructed a similar 22-note instrument in 1884, while Charles Wheatstone's ‘kaleidophone’ featured glass beads attached to the free ends of metal rods to indicate their vibration patterns visually. The traditional Latin-American tubular rattle palo de lluvía, recently popular in the West as the ‘rainstick’, is often a hollow cactus stem with the spines removed and reinserted inside; when the rainstick is inverted, seeds or pebbles fall past the protruding spines, striking them randomly.

Most writers assume that the nail violin disappeared in the second half of the 19th century, but in recent years its principle has been revived in many new instruments and sound sculptures, with the ‘nails’ bowed or struck or both. The circular arrangement of the Stockspiel is retained in Mauricio Kagel's large instruments with metal or wooden rods; in Richard Waters's Waterphone rods mounted on a water-filled resonator and played with a stick, the hand or a bow (for illustration see Sound sculpture, fig.2) and in Hal Rammel's ‘triolin’, except that the resonator-base is triangular. Many of the Baschet brothers' ‘Structures sonores’ feature threaded steel rods (the attached glass rods are ‘bowed’ with wettened fingers). Daniel Schmidt's Western Gamelan includes tuned wooden rods which are both struck and function as resonators. Reinhold Marxhausen builds sea-urchin-like ‘manual walkmans’ worn on a player's head as a private instrument. Tom Nunn has specialised in ‘space plates’ (such as the Crustacean) with bronze rods and ‘electro-acoustic percussion boards’ (such as the Bug) that include rods. Hugh Davies uses miniature amplified rods that are rubbed or plucked in his Stickleback, Hedgehog and Porcupine, as does Richard Lerman's Plinky. Amplified struck rods produce the sounds in some electric carillons and the electric pianos of Harold Rhodes. James Wood's microtonal ‘microxyl’ features stroked rods. Rods form one element of combination instruments by Chris Brown, David Cope, Hans-Karsten Raecke, Ferdinand Försch, George Smits, Giorgio Battistelli, Les Phônes, Johannes Bergmark and others. When some plastic toys are moved, a suspended internal beater randomly strikes a circle of rods. Much longer flexible metal rods are used in the Sonambient sound sculptures of Harry Bertoia, David Sawyer's Angel Bars, Robert Rutman's Bow Chimes and Buzz Chimes, and amplified instruments played by electric motors (Max Eastley) and by compressed air (Mario Bertoncini); in these the ‘unbalanced’ relationship between the diameter and length of the rods produces a rich and resonant spectrum. Rods clamped at exactly mid-length with both ends free function like two linked rods fixed at one end. They are normally mounted vertically; the unstruck side resonates in sympathy with the struck one, as with the twin arms of a tuning fork, and when rubbed (e.g. with rosined gloves) they produce a surprisingly high frequency. Examples include the Metallstabharfe (used in Germany between the wars for variety performances) and Dean Drummond's one-octave set of just intonation aluminium Juststrokerods.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

C. Sachs: Handbuch der Musikinstrumentenkunde (Leipzig, 1920, 2/1930/R), 66–73

H. Davies: ‘A Survey of New Instruments and Sound Sculpture’, Echo: the Images of Sound, ed. P. Panhuysen (Eindhoven, 1987), 6–20, esp. 16

B. Hopkin: Musical Instrument Design: Practical Information for Instrument Making (Tucson, AZ, 1996), 45–8

E. HERON-ALLEN/HUGH DAVIES

Naixh, Hubertus.

See Naich, Hubert.

Najara, Israel

(1550–1620). Sephardi rabbi and poet-musician. He greatly influenced the development of the piyyut (Hebrew liturgical poem). See Jewish music, §III, 4(iv).