Fig. 23.—Cithara. From a 9th century MS. formerly in the monastery of St. Blasius
in the Black Forest.
Cithara was a name applied to several stringed instruments greatly varying in form, power of sound, and compass. The illustration ([Fig. 23]) represents a cithara from a manuscript of the ninth century, formerly in the library of the great monastery of St. Blasius in the Black Forest. When in the year 1768 the monastery was destroyed by fire, this valuable book perished in the flames; fortunately the celebrated Abbot Gerbert possessed tracings of the illustrations, which were saved from destruction. He published them, in the year 1774, in his work “De cantu et musica sacra.” As the older works on music were generally written in Latin we do not learn from them the popular names of the instruments; the writers
merely adopted such Latin names as they thought the most appropriate. Thus, for instance, a very simple stringed instrument of a triangular shape, and a somewhat similar one of a square shape (Fig. 24), were designated by the name of psalterium.
Fig. 24.—Psalterium. From a MS. of the 9th century, formerly in the monastery of St. Blasius in the Black Forest.
Fig. 25.—Cithara. From a MS. of the 9th century, formerly in the monastery of St. Blasius in the Black Forest.
The cithara here illustrated ([Fig. 25]) is evidently an improvement