Background notes (ahem) for all FORGOTTEN REALMS AD&D game campaigns

by Ed Greenwood
 

Glaur	Hand-drum	Thelarr	Tocken	Wargong
-	-	Zulkoon	-	-
Dragon 123	-	-	-	Dragon

The Forgotten Realms display as rich
and varied a selection of music as does our
own modern Earth, from the drums and
wailing horns of orc tribes to the eerie
tone-bells of dwarves and gnomes, from
the whistles and tantans of halflings to the
haunting nosepipes and harps of the elves.
To describe even the ballads of the
humans of the North would take an entire
book, so a summary must suffice.
Most music of the Realms sounds to our
ears akin to late Medieval and Renaissance
dance airs -- mellow and sprightly, with
the melody carried by a horn or harp (or
both, interweaving counter-melodies), and
rhythm marked by deeper horns or
drums. Both ballads and instruments in
the Realms suggest widespread intercommunication between that plane and this in
the past; many instruments known to the
musicians of our past are commonly used
in the Realms. These include the bandore,
cittern, dulcimer, harp, lute, lyre, mandolin, psaltery, and shawm (the double-reed
instrument that was the ancestor of the
oboe and bassoon). Other instruments
employed in the Realms would be immediately recognizable by musicians of Earth,
but are known in the Realms by different
names. These include the flute (longhorn),
guitar (yarting), panpipes (birdpipe),
recorder (songhorn), and tambourine
(tantan).

However, some instruments of the
Realms have no identical counterparts on
Earth, although most would be readily
understood (though not readily mastered)
by musicians of Earth. These include the
glaur, hand-drum, thelarr, tocken,
wargong and zulkoon, described below.

T h e   glaur  is a short, broad-mouthed
and flaring curved horn, resembling a
cornucopia in shape and fashioned of
silver (which gives the clearest tone), electrum, or brass. A glaur is almost always
fitted with a row of tubular valves like
those of a trumpet, so that the sound it
makes can be varied in pitch. Those glaur
without valves are known as gloon, and
are always played by large groups of musicians, each having a gloon that sounds a
different note so that tunes may be fashioned or fanfare chords assembled. A
glaur's tone is a brash, bright, metallic
roar. By mouth action, a glaur-player can
make it snarl. The valves of a glaur do not
change the horn's sound by distinct
changes of note as they are manipulated (if
the horn is winded continuously), but
rather cause the instrument's tone to
swoop or soar from the note presently
played to that newly selected. A group of
glauren (the plural form of "glaur players")
can make a continuous, swirling, melodic
tone, somewhat reminiscent of bagpipes.

The  hand-drum  is a cylinder of thick,
polished wood, sometimes of pieces bound
together with iron bands and soaked to
warp into a curve before being sealed, but
ideally an intact section of hollowed-out
trunk of ash, ironwood, or cherry tree.
Both ends of the drum, which is typically
1-2' long and 6-8" in diameter, are covered
with tightly stretched hide to form an
instrument like a conga drum. It is typically slung on a shoulder strap and played
by beating and slapping. Its tone can be
muted by clasping the instrument to the
chest or in the crook of one arm. It is used
to hold rhythm or sometimes to indicate
danger, the sound of feet, and (by beat)
emotions in the telling of tales in taverns.

The  thelarr,  or whistlecane, is a long,
canelike reed cut from swamps throughout the Realms, where it grows in standing
water up to 40' or more (but rarely more
than a dozen feet above the water?s surface). Only that portion of the reed that
develops above the water's surface can be
used. When severed, typically in 4-5'
lengths, and dried slowly on rocks near a
fire of coals (or by being laid on exposed
rocks or other sunlit surface in hot weather), the reed forms a long pipe instrument.
One end is blown into, producing a tone
varying in pitch according to the length of
the particular pipe. A player may use
several pipes laid on a rack close to hand,
but these are never fastened together like
panpipes, as the vibration of one reed
causes all the others to sound, and the
resulting cacophony is painful to hear. A
thelarr's tone always has a sawlike, buzz
ing quality, produced by the dry fibers
within the reeds hollow interior. The hard
outer shell of the cane always remains
slightly flexible, and a skillful whistlecaneplayer can vary the pitch of the tone very
slightly, causing a warbling effect, by
clamping down on the cane with his hands
at differing distances from the blown end
of the instrument.

The  tocken  is a set of carved oval,
open-ended wooden bells of graduated
sizes, hung in a row from a section of cane
or branch (which may in turn be affixed to
a straight or arched pole). It is played like
a xylophone, by striking the bells with a
wooden rod. Tocken are sometimes fashioned of brass in the South, but such specimens are sneered at in the North (roughly,
north of the latitude of Amn all across the
Realms in this case, from the Inner Sea to
the Sword Coast) as being "cowbells," not
having the subtle tone of carved wood.

The  wargong,  or shieldgong, is an
instrument sometimes fashioned of the
battered metal shields of vanquished enemies, but more often made of massive,
beaten brass circles, varied in tone by
weight, thickness, curvature, and the
number and pattern of cutouts -- holes of
varying shapes pierced through the metal.
Wargongs are hung from tripods (when in
the field), suspended from overhanging
horizontal beams at a minstrels? gallery of
a court hall, or borne on carved wooden
yokes on the shoulders of musicians in a
parade or when marching to war. They
are struck with wooden mallets wrapped
in cloth or strips of rubber-bark, and are
used for sudden effect (like our Oriental
gong) or tapped lightly and rhythmically to
produce a continuous, deep, rolling sound
audible for miles -- making them useful
for signaling. A row of towers on a fortified wall in the Realms (such as those on
the Wall of Giants, which defends
Aglarond from Thay) employs such instruments as signal gongs.

T h e   zulkoon  is a long, rectangular,
wooden box that narrows at the top. Its
bottom has an accordion-bellow of heavy
hide that has a tendency to rupture (creating an annoying whistle and loss of
"wind"), which the player rests upon the
ground (or litter or chariot, if mobile) and
pumps with a foot-treadle. The wind thus
created goes up the zuldoon's body and
emerges at a number of holes, which are
overlaid by ivory or bone keys and metal
strings, strummed or flipped by the player
to create sounds, so that the zulkoon
functions something like an accordion,
with an underlying droning sound.
Zulkoons require five or six arms to play
properly, if their controls are at all complex, and some permanent court specimens are larger than the norm and are
played by two musicians (plus two or
more bellows-pumpers). Organs are rare
and treasured instruments in the Realms,
and are never portable; the zulkoon serves
as a rudimentary organ when a true organ
cannot be found.