Seeking amongst the representations on vases and gems for hints of design and purpose, questioning each one, saying, what can you tell me? I one day found my attention directed to the marked distinction between the ornamental ends of the cross-bar of lyres, how that the designer had drawn the end projecting at the right hand much larger than the end shewing at the left hand. Surely, I thought, that feature in construction indicates handling for some practical end; what can it be but that the cross-bar has been converted to be used as lute and lyre pegs had previously been used—it could be turned.
Then, the eye, being prepared to see, was quickened to observe; I looked around and found so many instances in which this particular distinction of the right hand from the left was dominant in the construction, that the conclusion arrived at was confirmed. The advantage given to the players right hand was that of a better grasp in turning this long peg, evidently the peg by intent fitted very tightly.
| Terpsichore with a Lyre. | Fig. 61. |
Now arose a point of great difficulty. Here was a peg a long bar carrying seven or eight strings, and if its office was to tune the strings, the twisting of the peg would affect the whole series simultaneously, an extension of its office certainly, but in like degree a limitation of its powers. It appeared to me upon close consideration that only a partial twist was allowed to it, and that the intention of it and real purpose of it was to guard the strings against breaking, which would be likely to occur if the strings were under constant tension, subject at the same time to changes of temperature and of moisture. Thus each string would be strained to its desired pitch, and fixed at the bottom holding, and when the instrument was set aside after playing, a slight turn of the peg would slacken the whole series, which again would be tightened, when required, by a partial turn in the opposite direction.
Fig. 62.
Fortunately there exists a monument which will greatly help us in understanding the practice of the lyre, for it shows us the player in the act of tuning her lyre by this cross bar-peg. The central figure is dancing and playing at the same time, and we should notice the band by which it was the custom to support the lyre from the left arm. The figure to the left of the engraving has already had her dance and is readjusting her strings which have been disturbed in pitch by the plucking of the fingers; the figure on the right is preparing for her turn and is tightening the strings ready for playing. This illustration (Fig. [62]) was given in “Hope’s Costume of the Ancients,” a work published in 1812, the subject of which did not promise anything for music, but it is a bit of treasure trove very important in the elucidation of the art of the lyre. That block appeared in Nauman’s History of Music, and perhaps is passed by with but a casual glance from musical readers.
| Erato with the Psaltery. | Fig. 63. |
The lyre held by Terpsichore (Fig. [61]), shews a variation in construction, it has below the cross-bar a second bar which would seem in itself to be intended to define more strictly the lengths of the strings when the peg carrying the series were fixed in its correct position, but an examining the larger lyre or Psaltery (Fig. [63]) carried by Erato, “the lovely one,” as the Greeks called this muse, this addition will be seen to assume a more important relation, and the appearance is as of platform attached to the crossbar through which the strings are threaded, and they do not pass to wind round the bar. This platform is more or less a puzzle. It might be designed to throw the strings more forward of the body of the instrument; Erato’s lyre is curved evidently with that purpose in view. Many representations shew this little platform. I have noticed instances of the loose ends of strings shewn above it, although the rule seems to have been for those ends to be at the bottom of the lyre where the tuning of each string was regulated. Erato’s lyre is of advanced pattern, being hollow like a violin, and doubtless it was of high sonority.
In the gem room of the British Museum there is another painting from Herculanæum, in which a new idea is manifest; the platform is replaced by levers at right angles to the bar to which the strings are attached. M. Victor Mahillon gives a rough drawing of this, but it is hardly convincing as to how such levers or rollers can be brought into use. I have brooded over this painting, searched it intently with opera glasses, seeking time and again to read its mystery, and still it is clouded in mist, the actual construction not to be made out.