Сиканская кватара: от бытового кувшина до музыкального инструмента

A quartara stood about twenty-two inches high, carried two handles at the shoulder and held a little over four and a half gallons. For most of Sicilian history, it was also the answer to the question of “how much.” The word named a quantity as well as an object, and the quantity was fixed precisely enough that people went on buying and selling “by the quartara” long after unification did away with the old Sicilian measures. Most households owned several, hauled back full from the village fountain, and standing in the coolest corner of the room. When one of them was empty, somebody would put their mouth to the neck and blow, and the jug would answer with a low boom deep enough to hold down the bottom of a tarantella. Since the Greeks, two-handled terracotta jars of this kind have been made on the island, and the quartara sat at the head of a family of them; below it came the lancedda, roughly half the size, and then u bummulu, a small flattened vessel holding a gallon or so, pierced with a spout that was stopped with a stick and carried out to the fields with the midday meal. The bummulu‘s name is thought to come from a Greek root imitating the gurgle of liquid leaving a narrow neck, the sort of etymology that sounds invented but… is not. Because unglazed fired earthenware is slightly porous, a little of the water inside seeps out through the wall and evaporates off the surface, and evaporation carries heat away with it, which meant a full quartara kept its contents cool through months perhaps as hot as those we’ve been experiencing recently in the Belpaese. Metal would have been stronger, of course, but it would have cooked the water: clay was better because it let the heat out. What the shape does musically is simple enough: blow across the mouth of a large empty jar and the air trapped inside sounds the way it does in a bottle, but terracotta gives the note a dull, woody edge where glass gives a bright hoot. Catalogues of instruments file the quartara as an aerophone, usually with the word “improper” attached, on the reasonable grounds that nobody ever built one to be played. The result is a rimbombo, as Sicilians call it, deep and hollow, more felt than heard if you are standing close. And since the pitch depends on how much air is enclosed, a jug with water still in it sounds higher than one that has been drained. In an ensemble, it works as bass and pulse, set beneath the friscalettu, the little cane flute that carries the tune, but alongside the tamburello, a guitar and, when there is one, the marranzano, the iron jew’s harp twanged against the teeth. Its job is to create and keep the bottom note and the beat, the same job an American jug band gives its jug. This is why nobody solos on a quartara; in the end, it is furniture that keeps time, but a group without one sounds thinner in a very noticeable way. Across the South, there is a whole class of instruments that started life as something else in the kitchen, and the quartara is one of them. The friction drum that Campania calls the putipù and Puglia the cupa-cupa is a terracotta jar with a skin stretched over the mouth and a cane pushed through the middle, rubbed rather than struck; the torototela of the northern plains used a dried pig’s bladder for its sounding box. None of them were bought, they were what a household already had, pressed into service on the days when there was going to be music: what they have in common is their humble, yet creative origins, and the fact no one spent extra money to make them! Caltagirone, Sciacca and Santo Stefano di Camastra, three of the island’s pottery towns, are still turning the jars out, the trade having outlived the need for the object. That is the odd position the quartara now occupies: plastic and metal took over the carrying and the cooling two generations ago, so the domestic reason for owning one has gone, but folk groups keep playing them. Ensembles in Taormina and Agrigento still list the quartara among their instruments, and the ones sold to visitors are usually explained as decoration, which they mostly are. The exceptions are the ones somebody is still blowing into, and those are kept empty on purpose. A quartara stood about twenty-two inches high, carried two handles at the shoulder and held a little over four and a half gallons. For most of Sicilian history, it was also the answer to the question of “how much.” The word named a quantity as well as an object, and the quantity was fixed precisely enough that people went on buying and selling “by the quartara” long after unification did away with the old Sicilian measures. Most households owned several, hauled back full from the village fountain, and standing in the coolest corner of the room. When one of them was empty, somebody would put their mouth to the neck and blow, and the jug would answer with a low boom deep enough to hold down the bottom of a tarantella. Since the Greeks, two-handled terracotta jars of this kind have been made on the island, and the quartara sat at the head of a family of them; below it came the lancedda, roughly half the size, and then u bummulu, a small flattened vessel holding a gallon or so, pierced with a spout that was stopped with a stick and carried out to the fields with the midday meal. The bummulu‘s name is thought to come from a Greek root imitating the gurgle of liquid leaving a narrow neck, the sort of etymology that sounds invented but… is not. Because unglazed fired earthenware is slightly porous, a little of the water inside seeps out through the wall and evaporates off the surface, and evaporation carries heat away with it, which meant a full quartara kept its contents cool through months perhaps as hot as those we’ve been experiencing recently in the Belpaese. Metal would have been stronger, of course, but it would have cooked the water: clay was better because it let the heat out. What the shape does musically is simple enough: blow across the mouth of a large empty jar and the air trapped inside sounds the way it does in a bottle, but terracotta gives the note a dull, woody edge where glass gives a bright hoot. Catalogues of instruments file the quartara as an aerophone, usually with the word “improper” attached, on the reasonable grounds that nobody ever built one to be played. The result is a rimbombo, as Sicilians call it, deep and hollow, more felt than heard if you are standing close. And since the pitch depends on how much air is enclosed, a jug with water still in it sounds higher than one that has been drained. In an ensemble, it works as bass and pulse, set beneath the friscalettu, the little cane flute that carries the tune, but alongside the tamburello, a guitar and, when there is one, the marranzano, the iron jew’s harp twanged against the teeth. Its job is to create and keep the bottom note and the beat, the same job an American jug band gives its jug. This is why nobody solos on a quartara; in the end, it is furniture that keeps time, but a group without one sounds thinner in a very noticeable way. Across the South, there is a whole class of instruments that started life as something else in the kitchen, and the quartara is one of them. The friction drum that Campania calls the putipù and Puglia the cupa-cupa is a terracotta jar with a skin stretched over the mouth and a cane pushed through the middle, rubbed rather than struck; the torototela of the northern plains used a dried pig’s bladder for its sounding box. None of them were bought, they were what a household already had, pressed into service on the days when there was going to be music: what they have in common is their humble, yet creative origins, and the fact no one spent extra money to make them! Caltagirone, Sciacca and Santo Stefano di Camastra, three of the island’s pottery towns, are still turning the jars out, the trade having outlived the need for the object. That is the odd position the quartara now occupies: plastic and metal took over the carrying and the cooling two generations ago, so the domestic reason for owning one has gone, but folk groups keep playing them. Ensembles in Taormina and Agrigento still list the quartara among their instruments, and the ones sold to visitors are usually explained as decoration, which they mostly are. The exceptions are the ones somebody is still blowing into, and those are kept empty on purpose.