Ney

For other uses, see Ney (disambiguation).

Ney
Persian ney with six holes (one on the back)
Ancient
Classification End-blown
Playing range

The ney (Persian: نی), is an end-blown flute that figures prominently in traditional Persian, Turkish, Jewish, Arab, and Egyptian music. In some of these musical traditions, it is the only wind instrument used. The ney has been played for over 4,500 years, dating back to ancient Egypt,[1] making it one of the oldest musical instruments still in use.[2]

The ney consists of a piece of hollow cane or giant reed with five or six finger holes and one thumb hole. The Arabic ney is played without any mouthpiece. This contrasts with the Turkish ney that sometimes have a brass, horn, or plastic mouthpiece which is placed at the top to protect the wood, to produce a steeper sound, and protect it from damage, with a better edge to blow on. Modern neys may instead be made of metal or plastic tubing. The pitch of the ney varies depending on the region and the finger arrangement. A highly skilled ney player, called neyzen, can reach more than three octaves, though it is more common to have several "helper" neys to cover different pitch ranges or to facilitate playing technically difficult passages in other dastgahs or maqams.

In Romanian, this instrument is called "fluier", the word nai[3] is applied to a curved pan flute while an end-blown flute resembling the Persian ney is referred to as caval.[4]

  1. ^ "ANE TODAY - 201801 - The Earliest Music in Ancient Egypt". American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR). Retrieved 2022-09-18.
  2. ^ "Prehistoric music", Wikipedia, 2022-09-06, retrieved 2022-09-18
  3. ^ nai in Dicţionarul explicativ al limbii române, Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică "Iorgu Iordan", Editura Univers Enciclopedic, 1998.
  4. ^ caval in Dicţionarul explicativ al limbii române, Academia Română, Institutul de Lingvistică "Iorgu Iordan", Editura Univers Enciclopedic, 1998.