Every year the European Early Music Network (REMA: Réseau Européen de Musique Ancienne) celebrates Early Music Day (21 March) and appoints an Ambassador for the occasion. The idea is not just to appoint someone famous, but to choose a musician who demonstrates the vitality and breadth of the early music movement. This year it is the Austrian musician and researcher Franziska Fleischanderl, who is making an impressive career playing an instrument that most people will barely have heard of and the music world has all but forgotten: the 18th-century Italian salterio.

It is a variation on the flat sound box with strings across it that is found all around central and southern Europe in various forms, and can be seen played by angels in pre-Renaissance paintings and altar pieces. The salterio is a distinct member of the group, though, as Franziska explains. “There's a progression from the psaltery, in mediaeval times held in front of the body and plucked, through the 15th century when it became the dulcimer, a rectangle with hammers, laid flat on a stand. The salterio is a marriage of the two. There were a lot of different shapes but they are all the same family. The World Cimbalom Association brings them all together, including versions from as far away as China.”

The salterio, which looks like the bottom two thirds of a triangular box, has the advantage that it is just as effective when tapped with the delicate hammers, really carefully shaped sticks with a curl at the end, or plucked. “We have three techniques: hammers, finger pizzicato and plectra pizzicato,” the plectra are not held between two fingers as for a guitar, but mounted in metal rings around the fingers so that they are like extended nails.

“The strings are like those of a harpsichord, mostly brass with iron for the high notes,” Franziska told me. “There are three and four strings to each note, with a bridge in the middle. You need that number of strings for volume and tuning – if one of the strings is slightly out of tune you get vibrations between them that are not quite in unison, which gives the sound extra richness and colour.

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_{Franziska Fleischanderl & Il Dolce Conforto perform the third movement ('Allegro') from Vivaldi's Amsterdam Concerto in D, RV 220}

“I started as a child on the dulcimer. I told my parents that I wanted to when I was four, but they didn't believe me until I was eight. But I was living in Linz where the tradition of the dulcimer is quite common. Building a career has not been the easiest, even so. I was super lucky to be able to study in Switzerland where I was given a scholarship by a private bank, so I was economically independent.

“Ten years ago this February, I went to Italy to research the history and the repertoire. In Bologna there had been a school in the 18th century for aristocrats where playing the salterio was very fashionable. There were only two musical manuscripts, but in a library I found documents giving all the details of how they played, including 10,000 pages of book-keeping. I discovered in Bologna that the salterio was first played by hammers at the beginning of the 18th century, then the finger pizzicato technique emerged in the 1720s, and the plectra pizzicato started in the 1730s. So all three techniques are used in Italy, and I found all of them across the country. Before I did my research, it was believed that the salterio in Italy was only played using plectra pizzicato, and hammers were used only north of the Alps. But this was not true.”

Each century has its favoured instruments that somehow fall by the wayside while others become part of the standard equipment. Museums display them but only once in a while do musicians take the trouble to discover the extent of what they can do. The salterio is a classic example. Franziska says that, “There are hundreds of salterios surviving from the 18th century in Italy but very few have been restored for playing. They almost always had metal strings. Only two with gut strings have survived. There are now two makers in Germany, and I am trying to find new makers, not just of the instruments but of the hammers. I make my own brass finger rings to hold the plectrums. My instrument was made in Rome by Michele Barbi and is 300 this year. I'll be giving some birthday concerts on it with Andrea Macon and making some more recordings.” Macon founded the Venice Baroque Orchestra nearly thirty years ago.

“At the moment I'm studying one of Vivaldi's mandolin concertos. It's easy to play on the salterio. I hammer the strings in the fast movements and pluck them in the slow ones, which gives more resonance. There's not a concurrence with the mandolin but they do have a similar timbre so there is some interchange of repertoire. When I have the opportunity, I would like to try out making salterio arrangements of the music for mandolin by other composers, not just Vivaldi.”

The salterio had its own solo repertoire, but it was also used in Italian ensembles to add variety to the other string instruments. “The repertoire is full of music by composers like Porpora and Piccinni, as well as less well-known ones like Ubaldi and Ugolino. There are lots of sonatas and concertos, 14 with string orchestra, but in the sources we find nothing about continuo playing. It was always used as a melodic solo instrument. In opera arias and cantatas, it was used in an obbligato role to accompany the singer. There's one aria by Vivaldi that uses it. In other arias and cantatas it is mainly used in an accompanying or obligato role.”

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_{Franziska Fleischanderl plays Florido Ubaldi's Concerto/Sonata on a 300-year-old salterio made by Michele Barbi (Rome, 1725)}

This year Franziska's ambassador position is not going to involve too many extended tours and long travels from her base in Salzburg. For the moment there is one overriding priority. “My baby is only six months old so my practicing tends to happen at 6am. I am very happy, even if it means early practice. I really enjoy being a musician mum,” she says with a smile. “A musician's life connects to having a baby rather than separating motherhood and musicianship.”

REMA's Early Music Day will be marked by hundreds of concerts, events, and happenings, taking place simultaneously all over the world, live and online events, with contributions and concerts being streamed. Franziska will be busy working on her project with Andrea Macon that day. Her latest album, Vivaldi's Salterio (2023), with Il Dolce Conforto was released on Christophorus.

By Simon Mundy