I present to you an old rare bandura by an unknown Ukrainian master in working order. Bandura has 39 strings. This is a beautiful old Ukrainian musical instrument, quite suitable for playing.
Bandura is a Ukrainian folk string-plucked musical instrument. A classical (diatonic) and modern (diatonic or chromatic) instrument from the family of harps, gusels and psalteries. A musician, playing an old-world or modern bandura, does not press the strings on the neck, but, like a harp, pinches the fingers (of the left hand, etc.) at the right moment to extract the sound of a certain string, but in the 1st and 19th centuries. all banduras used the technique of pressing the strings against the neck. Bandura of the 18th century. were more similar to German semi-lutes than to modern instruments.
In a broader sense, the bandura includes the kobza, an ancient Ukrainian national string-plucked musical instrument from the lute family. The musician, playing the kobza, presses the strings on the neck, holding it like a lute, and with a pinch of the fingers at the right moment, he extracts the sound of a certain string.
There are several hypotheses about the origin of the Ukrainian bandura. In theory, it is evolutionarily related to the kobza, and not to the gusli. Old Russian gusli had a small number of strings (4-5), which were played by rattling. This way of playing, inherent in the balalaika, has not been recorded in Ukraine. By the way, not a single sample of the most ancient Russian gusel was found. After unification with the Principality of Lithuania (1321), the Ruthenian lands were guided in their development by Western culture. Imperial culturological assimilation began at the end of the 18th century, when the multi-stringed Ukrainian musical instrument "bandura" was already formed and existed (1740).
The following facts speak in favor of the thesis about the origin of the bandura from the kobza:
in the 19th century. banduras were symmetrical, which is inherent in lute-shaped instruments;
the main strings placed on the body of the bandura are called "strings", that is, as part of the strings with the main strings on the fretboard;
the functional names of the strings on the kobza fretboard sometimes coincide with the names of such bandura strings;
commonality of the traditional repertoire and forms of activity of kobza and bandura players;
constructive inconveniences for performing the “doom system” on the banduras in comparison with the absolute convenience of playing on the kobza neck. The appearance of the bandura as an instrument of a homophonic-harmonic musical formation could not have happened before the appearance and formation of the system itself in European music.