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The earliest reference to the word "lyre" is the Mycenaean Greek ru-ra-ta-e, meaning "lyrists" and written in the Linear B script. [5] In classical Greek, the word "lyre" could either refer specifically to an amateur instrument, which is a smaller version of the professional cithara and eastern-Aegean barbiton, or "lyre" can refer generally to all three instruments as a family. [6]
The word chelys was used in allusion to the oldest lyre of the Greeks, which was said to have been invented by Hermes. [1] According to the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, he came across a tortoise near the threshold of his mother's home and decided to hollow out the shell to make the soundbox of an instrument with seven strings. [2]
The lyre has two arms, which have a "yoke" or crossbar connecting them, and strings between the crossbar and the soundboard. [2] Sachs divided this into the box lyre such as the Greek kithara and the bowl lyre which used a bowl on its side with skin soundboard. [2] The harp which has strings vertical to the soundboard. [2]
[1] [2] All of the instruments of the ancient Greek lyre family were played by strumming the strings, but modern African lyres are most often plucked; a few yoke lutes are played with a bow. [ 2 ] The sound box can be either bowl-shaped (321.21) or box-shaped (321.22).
This category concerns instruments of the yoke lutes (or lyres) family.In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, lyres are designated as '321.2'.. 321.2: Instruments in which the string is attached to a yoke that consists of a cross-bar and two arms, with the yoke lying in the same plane as the sound-table (lyres or yoke lutes)
Bowed lyre with no fingerboard 321.22-71: Switzerland: alphorn [136] [137] Long wooden conical trumpet, bent at the end, with turned boxwood mouthpieces, traditionally used by herdsmen 423.121.12 Trinidad and Tobago: steelpan [4] [138] [139] Barrel-shaped percussion instruments, tuned chromatically, originally made from discarded 55 gallon ...
The cythara is a wide group of stringed instruments of medieval and Renaissance Europe, including not only the lyre and harp but also necked, string instruments. [1] In fact, unless a medieval document gives an indication that it meant a necked instrument, then it likely was referring to a lyre.
The Anglo-Saxon lyre, also known as the Germanic lyre, a rotta, or the Viking lyre, is a large plucked and strummed lyre that was played in Anglo-Saxon England, and more widely, in Germanic regions of northwestern Europe. The oldest lyre found in England dates before 450 AD and the most recent dates to the 10th century.