Lyre: Greece musical instrument

The lyre is a string musical instrument that is known for its use in the Greek classical ancient music and later. The word lyre comes from the ‘Greek word ‘λύρα’ and the earliest reference the word is the Mycenean Greek ru-ra-ta-e that means ‘lyrists’, that is written in the Linear B syllabi script. The lyres of Ur, dogged out in Mesopotamia, traced back to 2500 BC. The earliest picture of this musical instrument with 7 strings shows in the famous sarcophagus of the Hagia Triada. During the Mycenaean occupation of Crete, the sarcophagus was used. The recitations of the ancient Greek were accompanied by the playing of the musical instrument. The lyre of the ancient days was ordinarily performed by being strummed with the use of a plectrum, like the guitar or a zither, instead of being plucked like the harp musical instrument. The fingers of the free hand are there to silence the unwanted strings in the chord. The lyre is analogous in appearance to a small harp but with little differences.

source of picture: www.harpguitars.net 

The word lyre can either refer specifically to a common folk musical instrument that is a smaller version of the profession musical instrument known as kithara and the eastern-Aegean barbiton, or lyre can generally refer to all three musical instruments as a family.

In organology, lyres can be defined as ‘yoke lutes’, being lutes that the strings are attached to a yoke that lies in the same plane as the sound-table and is made up of two arms as well as a cross-bar. The term is also used metaphorically to mean the work or skill of a poet.

Lyre from different times and places are regarded as a branch of the zither family by some organologists, a general category, which includes not only the zithers, but also many different stringed musical instruments like the lutes, guitars and the psalteries.

Others see the musical instrument as being two separate classes. Those specialists retain that the zither is distinguished by strings spread across almost all or most of the soundboard or the top surface of the sound chest that is also known as the resonator or the sound box, as opposed by the lyre, whose strings came out from a more or less general point off the soundboard of the musical instrument like the tail piece. Examples of that difference are the violin and the piano. Some specialists even claim that the musical instrument like the violin and the guitar belong to the class apart from the lyre because they have no yokers surmounting their resonators as true lyres have. This group they often refer to as the lute category after the musical instrument of that name and include within it the guitar and the violin together with the banjo and analogous stringed musical instrument with fingerboards. Those who vary with that opinion oppose by calling the lute, the violin the banjo and the guitar and other such musical instruments ‘independent fingerboard lyres’, as countered to simply fingerboard lyres like the Welsh Crwth that have both fingerboards and frameworks above their resonators. 

One point on which the organologists generally agree on is that lyres are closely related to the harp musical instrument. The other point of their agreement is that the harps are different from the lyres in having strings coming directly up from the soundboard and resting in a plane that is near perpendicular to the soundboard, as countered to the lyres, the zither, the lutes and analogous musical instruments that there strings are attached to one or more points somewhere off the soundboard of the musical instrument and lie in a plane crucially parallel to it.

A classical lyre has a hollow body or sound chest that in the ancient tradition of Greece was produced of the turtle shell. Extending from the sound chest of the musical instrument are two raised arms that are sometimes hollow and are curved both outward and forward. They are connected near the top of the instrument by a crossbar. An additional crossbar, attached to the sound-chest of the instrument makes the bridge of the instrument that transmits the vibrations of the strings. The deepest note was that farthest from the body of the player; as the strings of the instrument did not vary in length, more weight may have been gained for the deeper notes by thicker strings, just as in the violin and analogous modern day musical instruments, or they were tuned by having slacker tension. The strings of the musical instrument were of gut. They were stretched between the crossbar and the bridge of the musical instrument, or the tailpiece beneath the bridge. There were two main ways of tuning the musical instrument; one was to fasten the strings to peg that might be turned and the other was to swap the place of the string upon the crossbar; probably both expedients were used concurrently.

Some cultures that are using and developing the lyre were the Aeolian and Ionian Greek colonies on the coast of Asia that shares the same border with the Lydian empire.

The number of strings on the classical musical instrument differed in various epochs, and possibly in various localities; some are four, seven and ten having been favorite number of strings found on the musical instrument. They also were used without a finger board, no Greek explanation or representation having been met with that can be interpreted as referring to one. Nor was a bow possible, the flat sound-board being an insuperable obstacle. The plectrum of the pick was in use constantly. It was held in the right hand to set the upper strings of the instrument in vibration; when not in use, it hung from the instrument by a ribbon. The fingers of the left hand touched the lower strings of the musical instrument.

Other musical instruments that are known as the lyre have been designed and used in Europe outside Greco-Roman world since the Iron Age. The remains of 2300 years old lyre was found on the Isle of Skye, Scotland in 2010 making it Europe’s oldest surviving stringed musical instrument. Material evidence propose lyres became more popular during the Middle Ages and now views opines that many modern stringed musical instrument are late-emerging examples of the class of lyre. Lyres appearing to have been fabricated independently of the Greco-Roman prototype were used by the Gallic, Celtic, Teutonic, Scandinavian peoples over 1000 years ago. Dates of the instruments origin that probably differ from region to region cannot be determined, but the oldest known fragment of such musical instrument are thought to have dated back from about 6^th century of the Common Era. After the bow made its way to the European countries from the Middle East around 2 centuries later, it was applied to many species of those lyres that were small enough to making bowing practical. Different tones can be manufactured from the single bowed strings of the instrument by pressing the fingernails of the player’s left hand against the different points along the string to the fret the string of the musical instrument.

After the ancient lyre was discarded, the name of the instrument was used to label unrelated musical instrument, mostly bowed lutes like the Byzantine lyra, the Cretan lyra, the lyra viol and lirone.