We have now to speak of stringed instruments, the whole of which may be divided into three principal classes: those played on by the fingers, those that are struck, and those which are rubbed (frottées) by means of some appliance.
As a matter of fact, there are some stringed instruments which may be said to belong to all three of these classes, as all three modes of playing upon them has been adopted either simultaneously or in succession.
The most ancient are doubtless those that are played on by the fingers, first among which, in right of its antiquity, we must name the lyre; from this have sprung the cithern, the harp, the psaltery, the nabulon, &c. In the Middle Ages, however, considerable confusion arose from the fact that these original names were at the time often diverted from their real acceptation.
The lyre, the stringed instrument par excellence of the Greeks and Romans, preserved its primitive form as late as the tenth century. The strings were generally of twisted gut, but sometimes also of brass wire, and varied in number from three to eight. The sounding-box, which was always placed at the lower part of the instrument, was more often made of wood than of either metal or tortoise-shell ([Fig. 178]).
Fig. 178.—Ancient Lyre. (Angers MS.)
Fig. 179.—Lyre of the North. (Ninth Century.)
The lyre was held upon the knees, and the performer touched or rubbed the strings with one hand, either with the fingers or by means of a plectrum. The lyre specified as “Northern” ([Fig. 179]), was certainly the origin of the violin, to the shape of which it even then bore some resemblance; it was fastened at the top, and had a cordier at the end of the sounding-board, as well as a bridge in the centre of the face of the instrument.
The lyre was superseded by the psaltery and the cithern. The psaltery, which never was furnished with fewer than ten, or more than twenty, strings, differed essentially from the lyre and the cithern by the sounding-board being placed at the top of the instrument. Psalteries were made of a round, square, oblong, or buckler-shaped form ([Fig. 181]); and sometimes the sounding-box was lengthened so as to rest upon the shoulder of the musician ([Fig. 180]). The psaltery disappeared in the tenth century and gave place to the cithern (cithara), a name which had been at first applied to all kinds of stringed instruments. The shape of the cithern, which in the days of St. Jerome resembled a Greek delta (Δ), varied in different countries, as is proved by the epithets—barbarica, Teutonica, Anglica, which we find at different times coupled with its generic name. In other places, in consequence of these local transformations, it became the nabulum, the chorus, and the salterion or psalterion (which latter must not be confounded with the psaltery, a primary derivative of the lyre).
