Древнегреческая лира: история и классификация

Ancient Greek string instrument

The lyre (/'//l//aɪər/) is a stringed musical instrument that is classified by Hornbostel–Sachs as a member of the lute family of instruments. In organology, a lyre is considered a yoke lute, since it is a lute in which the strings are attached to a yoke that lies in the same plane as the sound table, and consists of two arms and a crossbar. The lyre has its origins in ancient history. Lyres were used in several ancient cultures surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. The earliest known examples of the lyre have been recovered at archeological sites that date to c. 2700 BCE in Mesopotamia. The oldest lyres from the Fertile Crescent are known as the eastern lyres and are distinguished from other ancient lyres by their flat base. They have been found at archaeological sites in Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, and the Levant. and then later spread throughout the Roman Empire.

The earliest reference to the word "lyre" is the Mycenaean Greek ru ra ta e, meaning "lyrists" and written in the Linear B script. 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. The English word comes via Latin from the Greek.

Hornbostel–Sachs classifies the lyre as a member of the lute family of instruments which is one of the families under the chordophone classification of instruments. Hornbostel–Sachs divide lyres into two groups Bowl lyres (321.21), Box lyres (321.22). In organology, a lyre is considered a yoke lute, since it is a lute in which the strings are attached to a yoke that lies in the same plane as the sound table, and consists of two arms and a crossbar.

There is evidence of the development of many forms of lyres from the period 2700 BCE through 700 BCE. Lyres from the ancient world are divided by scholars into two separate groups, the eastern lyres and the western lyres, which are defined by patterns of geography and chronology. The lyres of Ur are bull lyres excavated in ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), which date to 2500 BC and are considered to be the world's oldest surviving stringed instruments. However, older pictorial evidence of bull lyres exist in other parts of Mesopotamia and Elam, including Susa. and associated with a type of lyre depicted in Israelite imagery, particularly the Bar Kochba coins. and modern luthiers have created reproduction lyres of the "kinnor" based on this imagery.

In Ancient Greece, recitations of lyric poetry were accompanied by lyre playing. The earliest picture of a Greek lyre appears in the famous sarcophagus of Hagia Triada (a Minoan settlement in Crete). The sarcophagus was used during the Mycenaean occupation of Crete (c. 1400 BC). The lyre of classical antiquity was ordinarily played by being strummed like a guitar or a zither, rather than being plucked with the fingers as with a harp. A pick called a plectrum was held in one hand, while the fingers of the free hand silenced the unwanted strings.

A classical lyre has a hollow body or sound chest (also known as soundbox or resonator), which, in ancient Greek tradition, was made out of turtle shell. Extending from this sound chest are two raised arms, which are sometimes hollow, and are curved both outward and forward. They are connected near the top by a crossbar or yoke. An additional crossbar, fixed to the sound chest, makes the bridge, which transmits the vibrations of the strings. The deepest note was that closest to the player's body; since the strings did not differ much in length, more weight may have been gained for the deeper notes by thicker strings, as in the violin and similar modern instruments, or they were tuned by having a slacker tension. The strings were of gut (animal intestines). They were 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 that might be turned, while the other was to change the placement of the string on the crossbar; it is likely that both expedients were used simultaneously. Some of the cultures using and developing the lyre were the Aeolian and Ionian Greek colonies on the coasts of Asia (ancient Asia Minor, modern day Turkey) bordering the Lydian empire. Some mythic masters like Musaeus, and Thamyris were believed to have been born in Thrace, another place of extensive Greek colonization. The name kissar (cithara) given by the ancient Greeks to Egyptian box instruments reveals the apparent similarities recognized by Greeks themselves. The cultural peak of ancient Egypt, and thus the possible age of the earliest instruments of this type, predates the 5th century classic Greece. This indicates the possibility that the lyre might have existed in one of Greece's neighboring countries, either Thrace, Lydia, or Egypt, and was introduced into Greece at pre classic times.

Other instruments known as lyres have been fashioned and used in Europe outside the Greco Roman world since at least the Iron Age. Lyres are depicted on ceramic and bronze vessels of the Proto Celtic Hallstatt culture across central Europe. Among them there are lyres with rounded bottoms, stringed instruments whose resonators seem to be missing and lyres with strongly curved yokes and single or double bulging resonators. In 1988, a stone bust from the 2nd or 1st century BC was discovered in Brittany, France which depicts a figure wearing a torc playing a seven string lyre. The Germanic lyre is representative of a separate strand of lyre development. Appearing in warrior graves of the first millennium AD, these lyres differ from the lyres of the Mediterranean antiquity, by a long, shallow and broadly rectangular shape, with a hollow soundbox curving at the base, and two hollow arms connected across the top by an integrated crossbar or ‘yoke. Famous examples include the lyre from the ship burial at Sutton Hoo, and the decayed lyre discovered in silhouette at the Prittlewell royal Anglo Saxon burial in Essex. including the Byzantine lyra. After the bow made its way into Europe from the Middle East, it was applied to several species of those lyres that were small enough to make bowing practical. The dates of origin and other evolutionary details of the European bowed lyres continue to be disputed among organologists, but there is general agreement that none of them were the ancestors of modern orchestral bowed stringed instruments, as once was thought. There came to be two different kinds of bowed European lyres: those with fingerboards, and those without. The last surviving examples of instruments within the latter class were the Scandinavian talharpa and the Finnish jouhikko. Different tones could be obtained from a single bowed string by pressing the fingernails of the player's left hand against various points along the string to fret the string. The last of the bowed lyres with a fingerboard was the "modern" (c. 1485–1800) Welsh crwth. It had several predecessors both in the British Isles and in Continental Europe. Pitch was changed on individual strings by pressing the string firmly against the fingerboard with the fingertips. Like a violin, this method shortened the vibrating length of the string to produce higher tones, while releasing the finger gave the string a greater vibrating length, thereby producing a tone lower in pitch. This is the principle on which the modern violin and guitar work.

The term is also used metaphorically to refer to the work or skill of a poet, as in Shelley's "Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is" or Byron's "I wish to tune my quivering lyre, / To deeds of fame, and notes of fire".

Over time, the name in the wider Hellenic space came to be used to label mostly bowed lutes such as the Byzantine lyra, the Pontic lyra, the Constantinopolitan lyra, the Cretan lyra, the lira da braccio, the Calabrian lira, the lijerica, the lyra viol, the lirone.