This blog is a project designed to concisely illuminate the evolution of the Lyre, specifically in the times of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. Primarily through analysis of artistic depictions, I hope to not only explore the development of the physical construction of the instrument, but also to speculate on how it possibly lent itself to music through research, synthesis, and my own meager speculation.
Now that we've gotten the introductions out of the way, let's start with what we can find upon a very, VERY cursory glance of the lyre.
Depiction of Hermes with Lyre on a Chalkiiki Coin, courtesy of© Andrew Lang, The Homeric Hymns
According to folklore, Hermes invented the lyre by (I must say, quite creatively) stretching cow intestines on a tortoise shell. He gifted it to Apollo (from whom he had.. er.. borrowed the cow intestines), who then gave it to Orpheus, son of the King of Thrace and the muse Calliope. Orpheus learned how to play from either Apollo (who was deemed the first master of the lyre) or Linus (any one of Apollo's sons). This served Orpheus well later in life, as he used its dulcet tune to drown out the song of the sirens. There is a great deal of art illustrating this, and I intend to address them throughout the course of this blog.
It is otherwise widely accepted that the lyre was developed in Palestine around 3200 BCE (although I have yet to find out why - you'll know as soon as I do), evolving from the harp by using long upright arms instead of the single curved bow and having the strings run along a bridge instead of being directly connected to the sound box. The oldest depiction of the lyre is Sumarian, dating back to about 2800 BCE. As I said before, although the lyre has undergone a rather drastic evolution (it certainly had time to do so!), ultimately developing a fingerboard and being played with a bow, my focus will be on how the lyre developed within ancient Greek and Roman times.
For more information (and my sources for this entry)
http://www.mid-east.com/Info/lyres.html
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/353012/lyre
http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/hsc02b.htm
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16338/16338-h/16338-h.htm
It is otherwise widely accepted that the lyre was developed in Palestine around 3200 BCE (although I have yet to find out why - you'll know as soon as I do), evolving from the harp by using long upright arms instead of the single curved bow and having the strings run along a bridge instead of being directly connected to the sound box. The oldest depiction of the lyre is Sumarian, dating back to about 2800 BCE. As I said before, although the lyre has undergone a rather drastic evolution (it certainly had time to do so!), ultimately developing a fingerboard and being played with a bow, my focus will be on how the lyre developed within ancient Greek and Roman times.
For more information (and my sources for this entry)
http://www.mid-east.com/Info/lyres.html
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/353012/lyre
http://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/hsc02b.htm
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16338/16338-h/16338-h.htm
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