The instuments produced included the prima, sekunda, alto, bass and contrabass - providing a full spectrum of sound from soprano to low bass in a manner similar to the viol family of the symphony orchestra.Īndreev’s Society of Balalaika Players gained favor with concertgoers and with the Court, and soon his growing ensemble was renamed The Great Russian Imperial Balalaika Orchestra. So positive was the response to his early efforts that he was able to form a chamber ensemble which presented its first public concert in the Spring of 1888, to great critical acclaim.Īndreev and his luthiers standardized the sizes and tunings of the family of instruments produced for his use, and used fixed metal frets in place of the tradtional movable ones. At first unsuccessful in persuading any of the local violin makers to undertake so plebian a task, he ultimately prevailed and performed a public concert in 1886. In the late 1800’s, a Russian nobleman and musician named Vasilii Vasil’evich Andreev (Василий Васильевич Андреев), so the story goes, heard one of the peasants on his estate playing the balalaika and was so taken with the beauty of the sound it produced that he undertook to have a set of balalaika instruments made by a qualified luthier so that they could be played on the concert stage. Frets were originally made of animal gut, tied around the neck, and tuning was at the discretion of the player.Īt various times during its history the playing of the balalaika was banned by both the Orthodox Church and the state, for as often as not the irreverent street musicians, or “skomorokhi” (скоморохи), in their ballads poked fun at both of these institutions. Two-, three-, four- and six-stringed versions appear in various writings. For centuries the balalaika was an instrument of the peasant class, and was also used by minstrels and court musicians to accompany singing. Over the centuries, the design of the instrument evolved to a triangular shape, probably to simplify its construction. The Balalaika probably has its origins in the Oriental dombra, a two-stringed, oval-faced instrument brought to Russia by the Mongols in the 14th Century. The Orchestra also uses accordions, bayans (button accordions), as well as various woodwind and percussion instruments. Domras are oval shape instruments and come in 4 sizes: piccolo, prima, alto, and bass balalaikas are triangular shape instruments and come in 5 sizes: prima, secunda, alto, bass, and contrabass. Most of them have three strings (domras sometimes have 4) but are tuned differently. The Orchestra is made up of two groups of authentic Russian stringed instruments: balalaikas and domras.
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