The Praetorius Scheitholt

In 1619 Michael Praetorius published the second volume of Syntagma Musicum . In it tried to list all of the instruments known in his world. He described the instruments and included illustrations of some of them. One plate included an illustration of an instrument he called a scheitholt. I remarked to my daughter and her husband that I have never seen a scheitholt. I looked all over the internet for one and found many instruments called scheitholts, but none fit the description provided by Praetorius. They challenged me to make one. After a couple of months of research I was able to put together specifications to build one. A helpful site at a German museum gave numbers for length, width, height, VSL, and number of frets. I contributed a little imagination in creating the sound hole rosette and the peg head. Here is a photo of the recently created scheitholt. I, along with some assistance from Ken Hulme, wrote an article on why we should not apply the term "scheitholt" to all those PA German zitters or hummels that are misnamed here in the USA. I expect that article to be published in the next issue of Dulcimer Players News .

Ken

"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."