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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 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]
See Rotta for the medieval lyre, or Rote for the fiddle. During the 11th to 15th century A.D., rotte (German) or rota (Spanish) referred to a triangular psaltery illustrated in the hands of King David and played by jongleurs (popular musicians who might play the music of troubadours) and cytharistas (Latin word for a musician who plays string instruments).
The Byzantine lyra or lira (Greek: λύρα) was a medieval bowed string musical instrument in the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire.In its popular form, the lyra was a pear-shaped instrument with three to five strings, held upright and played by stopping the strings from the side with the fingertips and fingernails.
[4] Iberia Portugal Spain Musicians, Crusader Bible, MS M.638, fol. 29r Circa 1140 A.D., Sicily. A woman in Muslim clothes plays an adufe percussion instrument, in a painting at the Capella Patina. 1240s A.D., France. An adulf (square held over the group's head) Circa 1320, Barcelona. Woman playing an adufe, from an illustration in the Golden ...
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)
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.
Continuous, clear records of the use of crwth to denote an instrument of the lyre (or the Byzantine bowed lyre) class date from the 11th century. [ citation needed ] Medieval instruments somewhat resembling the crwth appear in pictures (first in Continental Europe) as far back as the 11th century, shortly after bowing was first known in the West.