Dulce melos

{{Short description|Early keyboard instrument}}

File:1440 Dulce Melos.png's 1440 manuscript.]]

The dulce melos (or doucemelle) is an early keyboard instrument and possible ancestor of the piano. The instrument is described as a type of zither, similar to a hammered dulcimer, but with the strings struck by hammers on keys. The instrument had twelve pairs of strings, each divided into three sections in a 4:2:1 ratio, resulting in a full chromatic octave of 36 notes, as each note is divided into two higher octaves by the bridges. Among the instrument's first attestations was a 1440 work by Henri-Arnault de Zwolle.{{cite book|author=Igor Kipnis|title=Harpsichord and Clavichord: An Encyclopedia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LG3DUo0pBckC&pg=PA158|date=15 April 2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-135-94978-5|pages=158–}}{{cite book|title=Early Keyboard Instruments|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DA7ZS4dMIekC&pg=PA191|year=1989|publisher=Norton|isbn=978-0-393-30515-9|pages=191–}}

The instrument was researched in the 1844 publication Dissertation sur les instruments de musique au moyen-age by Bottée de Toulmon, which detailed a piano-like instrument detailed in a 15th-century Latin manuscript.{{cite book|author=Curt Sachs|title=The History of Musical Instruments|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W615TIDz97UC&pg=PA343|date=19 September 2012|publisher=Courier Corporation|isbn=978-0-486-17151-7|pages=343–}}