Dolceola

Andy Cohen playing a dolceola

A dolceola is a musical instrument resembling a miniature piano, but which is in fact a zither with a keyboard. The strings attached look like a harp. It is used in traditional holy blues and has an unusual, angelic, music-box sound. Dolceolas were made by the Toledo Symphony Company from 1903 to 1907.

Performers

Although the gospel musician Washington Phillips was thought to have played the dolceola on several of his recordings, he was actually playing a compound instrument he fashioned out of two East Boston Phonoharp company celestaphones. It consisted of two chord zithers, attached side by side, one of which had four chords, the other of which had five. He played them with his fingers, as other zither players do. Having nine chords to choose from, he also had fifteen courses of melody strings, which he contrived to tune in octaves rather than in unisons, thus giving him the 'angelic' sound he was famous for. His sixteen extant sides (available on the Yazoo, Document, Agram and P-Vine labels) were cut between 1927 and 1929 in Dallas, Texas. Mr. Phillips lived in Teague, Texas, where he raised sweet sorghum for sorghum molasses.

Paul Mason Howard, a Los Angeles musician who actually did play the dolceola, accompanied Lead Belly on some of his 1944 Capitol sides. A listen to those recordings, collected under the title Grasshoppers In My Pillow, reveals the characteristic clatter of the dolceola's three-level keyboard action. There is none of that on Phillips's recordings, though it is easy to understand why people thought he played one, given the multiple chord arrangement of his instrument.

References

The Dolceola: a piano? A zither? Or what?

See also

Autoharp

Marxophone