Dulcimer tones in Flint Hill Sunday
Madeline MacNeil, renowned folksinger and virtuoso of the mountain and hammered dulcimers, performs at 2 p.m. Sunday at Flint Hill Baptist Church, a presentation of the Rappahannock Historical Society.
A first-generation Virginian who traces
her ancestry to New England and Canada, MacNeil says it was her interest in stories that led her in the 1960s to Appalachian music and to the dulcimer.
The hammered dulcimer is an instrument with a centurieslong history that spans Persia (santur), Hungary (cymbalom) and China (yangqin). In Germany, it influenced the development of the piano, and became known as a dulcimer in England, many of whose emigrants brought it with them to America. The mountain dulcimer developed primarily from the German scheitholt, which came here with the German settlers. As those settlers began moving, often through the Shenandoah Valley and notably to western North Carolina and eastern Kentucky, the scheitholt changed — and eventually adopted the “dulcimer” name some 200 years ago.
For much of the 1970s, MacNeil lived at Skyland, in Shenandoah National Park, delighting visitors from all over the world with her dulcimer playing. She began recording in 1983 and has many notable albums available today, including “Heart’s Ease,” awarded the 1989 String Music Album of the Year by the National Association of Independent Record Distributors. She has written many books for Mel Bay Publications as well as histories of Appalachian music with Ralph Lee Smith, and has performed throughout the U.S. and in Virginia as a touring artist for the Virginia Commission for the Arts. She has performed in Ireland, Scotland and other venues in Great Britain. “Hearing Madeline MacNeil sing ‘Shenandoah’ brought tears to my eyes,” actor Gregory Peck once said after hearing her perform her signature song.
Refreshments will be served. Donations of $5 to the RHS are appreciated. For more information, call 540-675-1163.