Tricorder and tricord

[Joel S. Berson]

At 12/29/2011 06:22 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>All true... but the question I have is, what is a "tricord"?
>...
>The instrument in question is a piano. ... And it is in reference to
>pianos that the term generally appears:

Otherwise known as "trichord", and in the OED, at least as an
adjective:  "Having three strings to each note: applied to a
pianoforte in which most of the keys have three strings each."

(For the noun, the OED only has "A musical instrument of three
strings; a three-stringed lyre or lute.", which a piano is not.)

Then there is the kanoon, about which it is written "The psaltery was
attributed to Al-Fa-ra-bi,..but the instrument is not mentioned by
him under its millennium-old name of qa-nu-n... As the qa-nu-n it was
known in Muslim Spain in the eleventh century, and in the fourteenth
century it was mounted with sixty-four strings, tuned tricordally, in Persia."

Joel

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