Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/130

Rh 114 L Y 11 E stretched between the yoke and bridge, or to a tailpiece below the bridge. There were two ways of tuning : one was to fasten the strings to pegs which might be turned (j&amp;lt;oAAa/3oi, KoAAoTres) ; the other was to change the place of the string upon tho crossbar ; probably both expedients were simultaneously employed. It is doubtful whether 7 7 XpSoToVos mean ^ the tuuitig key or the part of the instrument where the pegs were inserted. The extensions of the arms above the yoke were known as Kepara, horns. Th number of strings varied at different epochs, and possibly in different localities, four, seven, and ten having been favourite numbers. They were, as already said, used without a finger-board, no Greek description or representa tion having ever been met with that can be construed as referring to one. Nor was a bow possible, the flat sound board being an insuperable impediment. The plectrum, however (TrXfJKTpov), was in constant use at all times. It was held in the right hand to set the upper strings in vibration (Kpeiteiv, Kpoveiv rta 7rA?;/cTpa&amp;gt;) ; at other times it hung from the lyre by a ribbon. The fingers of the left haul touched the lower strings (t/roAAew). With Greek authors the lyre has several distinct names ; but we are unable to connect these with anything like certainty to the varieties of the instru ment. Chelys (x^ Aus, &quot;tortoise&quot;) may mean the smallest lyre, which, borne by one arm or supported by the knees, offered in the sound-chest a decided resemblance to that familiar animal. That there was a difference between lyre and cithara (KiOapa) is certain, Plato and other writers separating them. Hermes and Apollo had an altar at Olympia in common because the former had invented the lyre and the latter the cithara. Perhaps the lyre and chelys on the one hand, and the cithara and phormmx on the other, were similar or nearly identical. Apollo is said to have carried a golden phormmx. But lyre has always been accepted as the generic name of the family, and under stood to include all varieties. The large lyre was sup ported by a strong ribbon slung over the player s shoulder, passing through holes beneath the yoke in the arms of the instru ment, and caught by the player s left hand, the ends hanging in a sash-like fashion. This cithara, or, it may be, phorminx (&amp;lt;o p//,iy, &quot;port able lyre &quot;), is fre quently, by the vase painters, de lineated as so held, the plectrum, at tached by another ribbon, being re presented, when not in use, as pendent, or as in- FIG. 2. Cithara or Phorminx, from a vase in terlaced between the British Museum. Best period of Greek the strings. Passing by the story of the discovery of the lyre from a vibrating tortoise-shell by Hermes, we will glance at the Museum, where also are fragments of such an instrument, the back of which is of shell. real lyres of Egypt and Semitic Asia. Tbe Egyptian lyre is unmistakably Semitic. The oldest representation that has been discovered is in one of the tombs of Beni Hassan, the date of the painting being in the 12th dynasty, that is, shortly before the invasion of the shepherd kings. In this painting, which both Ptosellini and Lepsius have reproduced, an undoubted Semite carries a seven or eight stringed lyre of fan-shaped form. The instrument has a four-cornered body and an irregular four-cornered frame above it, and the player carries it horizontally from his breast, just as a modern Nubian would his kissar. He plays as he walks, using both hands, a plectrum being in the right. This ancient lyre, dat ing 2000 B.C., exists to this day in a remarkable speci men preserved in the Berlin Museum (fig, 3), and is found again in form as well as in manner of holding in the Assyrian lyre of Khorsabad. During the rule of the shepherds the lyre became naturalized in Egypt, and in the 18th dynasty it is frequently de picted, and with finer grace of form. In the 19th and 20th dynasties the lyre is sometimes still more slender or FlG - 3. Egyptian Lyre now at Berlin. Drawn is quite Unsym- by F ermission of Director-General Scluine. metrical and very strong, the horns surmounted by heads of animals as in the Berlin one, which has horses heads at those extremities. Prokesch copied one in the ruins of &quot;Wadi Haifa, splendid in blue and gold, with a serpent wound round it. The Egyptians always strung their lyres fan-shaped, like the modern Nubian kissar. Their paintings shew three to eight or nine strings, but the painters accuracy may not be unimpeachable; the Berlin instrument had fifteen. The three-stringed lyre typified the three seasons of the Egyptian year the water, the green, and the harvest; the seven, the planetary system from the moon to Saturn. The Greeks had the same notion of the harmony of the spheres. There is no evidence as to what the stringing of the Greek lyre was in the heroic age. Plutarch says that Olympus and Terpander used but three strings to accompany their recitation. As the four strings led to seven and eight by doubling the tetrachord, so the trichord is connected with the hexachord or six-stringed lyre de picted on so many archaic Greek vases. &quot;We cannot insist on the accuracy of this representation, the vase painters being so little mindful of the complete expression of details ; yet we may suppose their tendency would be rather to imitate than to invent a number. It was their constant practice to represent the strings as being damped by the fingers of the left hand of the player, after having been struck by the plectrum which he held in the right hand. Before the Greek civilization had assumed its historic form, there was likely to be great freedom and independence of different locali ties in the matter of lyre stringing, which is corroborated by the antique use of the chromatic (half-tone) and enharmonic (quarter- tone) tunings, pointing to an early exuberance, as in language when nations are young and isolated, and perhaps also to an Asiatic bias towards refinements of intonation, from which came the xpoou, the hues of tuning, old Greek modifications of tetrachords entirely disused in the classic period. The common scale of Olympus remained, a double trichord which had served as the scaffolding for the enharmonic varieties. We may regard the Olympus scale, however, as consisting of two tetrachords, eliding one interval in each, for the tetrachord, or