H.L. Mencken

Baltimore Evening Sun/January 9, 1911

A Cousin to the Mandolin

The Russian Court Balalaika Orchestra, which is holding forth at the Academy of Music this week, slipped into town practically unannounced one afternoon about a month ago and gave a concert which lifted the small audience that had turned out to the seventh—or, at least, to third or fourth—heaven of delight. The exquisite sounds that its members brought forth from their strange-looking instruments were entirely new to Baltimore ears. But they were intensely pleasant as well as new, and so a demand arose that the orchestra come back and play some more. This week it will play eight times and there will be ample opportunity for those who missed the first concert to become acquainted with the balalaika and the domra. 

The balalaika is a cousin to the common mandolin, but it is a far more respectable instrument, just as the orchestral trumpet is a far more respectable instrument than the dance-hall cornet—that fiendish machine. No one seems to know who invented the balalaika. It was made, in a crude form, by the Tartars of the Central Asian wilderness 200 years ago, and has long been popular with the peasants of Russia. The early balalaika seems to have had three strings of gut. Which were tuned in at least five different ways. The length of the instrument was from 24 to 27 inches and the base of the triangular box from 14 to 20 inches wide. There is an old balalaika in the museum of the Conservatory of Music at Brussels, with a box not triangular but slightly rounded. There is also mention of balalaikas with five or seven strings.  

The Inning of the Balalaika

The primitive instrument has been brought to great perfection by W. W. Andreeff, conductor of the Balalaika Orchestra and an ardent student of folk music. He has retained the three strings of the original, but he has tuned them more scientifically than the peasants did and he has greatly improved the construction of the instrument. There is now a full quintet of balalaikas, as there is of fiddles in the modern orchestra, and they vary considerably in tone color. All are played pizzicato save the prima, which is also played by brushing the strings with the open hand. The strings are now of wire, save in the prima again, which has one string of gut. The tuning is as follows: 

Prima. E—E—A.

SeCundo. A—A—D.

Viola. E—E—A, one octavo lower than the prima.

Bass. E—A—D. 

Double bass. E—A—D, one octave lower than the baas. 

The balalaika is triangular in shape. The domra, which is also used in the Andreeff orchestra, is oval, with a rounded belly. It is strung with catgut and is plucked with a metal, bone or celluloid plectrum. Mr. Andreeff has perfected a sextet of domras, ranging from one called the domra-piccolo to a ponderous double bass. The tuning is as follows:

Piccolo. B—E—A.

Prima. E—A—D.

Secunda. E—A—D, one octave lower.

Viola. E—A—D, another octave lower. 

Bass. E—A—D. another octave lower. 

The Other Instruments

The dulcimer, which is also used in the balalaika orchestra, is more familiar than either the balalaika or domra. Mr. Andreeff, however, has improved the instrument to some extent and it now makes most luscious music. Castanets, tambourines and a reed pipe are adjuncts to the orchestra, but they are seldom heard. 

Mr. Andreeff comes of a well-to-do family of Bejetsh, in the Government of Tyer, Russia. As a boy at his parents’ country home he heard the balalaika played by a peasant and was so enthralled by the instrument that he learned to play it, although there was a prejudice against it in the society to which he belonged.

After mastering the instrument Mr. Andreeff went to St. Petersburg and there astonished musicians and amateurs of music by the originality of the effects produced by the instrument that had long been abandoned to the peasant. He argued that if the balalaika were improved it would be still more effective, and he commissioned V. Ivanoff, a maker of musical instruments, to carry out his ideas. 

Mr. Andreeff began his work for the regeneration of the Russian national instruments in 1888. In 1898 he reaped the reward of his labors, for the Czar then gave him permission to call his orchestra the Imperial Russian Court Balalaika Orchestra, granted him a life pension and bestowed other honors upon him. 

A Composer of Fine Waltzes

He is a composer of ability as well as a conductor and musical antiquarian, and all of the compositions played by his band were arranged by him. His scoring of the Russian folk songs and dances is particularly effective. He has also written a number of extremely beautiful waltzes, full of national color, and his men play them superbly.