Kithara

File:Goluchow Painter ARV 10 4 young cithara player (03).jpg

Young kithara player, in costume, by the Goluchow painter; Athens, c. 520 BCE

The kithara (Template:Langx), Latinized as cithara, was an ancient Greek musical instrument in the yoke lutes family. It was a seven-stringed professional version of the lyre, which was regarded as a rustic, or folk instrument, appropriate for teaching music to beginners. As opposed to the simpler lyre, the cithara was primarily used by professional musicians, called kitharodes. In modern Greek, the word kithara has come to mean "guitar"; etymologically, the word guitar derives from kithara.

Origin and uses

File:Fresco of women listening to a private musical performance.jpg

Ancient Roman fresco depicting women in a peristyle, listening to another woman play a kithara and sambuca.

The cithara originated from Minoan-Mycenaean swan-neck lyres developed and used during the Aegean Bronze Age. Scholars such as M.L. West, Martha Maas, and Jane M. Snyder have made connections between the cithara and stringed instruments from ancient Anatolia.

Whereas the basic lyra was widely used as a teaching instrument in boys’ schools, the cithara was a virtuoso's instrument and generally known as requiring a great deal of skill. The cithara was played primarily to accompany dance, epic recitations, rhapsodies, odes, and lyric songs. It was also played solo at the receptions, banquets, national games, and trials of skill. Aristotle said that these string instruments were not for educational purposes but for pleasure only. It was played by strumming the strings with a stiff plectrum made of dried leather, held in the right hand with elbow outstretched and palm bent inwards. The strings with undesired notes were damped with the straightened fingers of the left hand.

Construction

The cithara had a deep, wooden sound box composed of two resonating tables, either flat or slightly arched, connected by ribs or sides of equal width. At the top, its strings were knotted around the crossbar or yoke (zugon) or to rings threaded over the bar, or wound around pegs. The other ends of the strings were secured to a tail-piece after passing over a flat bridge, or the tail-piece and bridge were combined.

Most vase paintings show citharas with seven strings, in agreement with ancient authors, but those same authors also mention that occasionally an especially skillful kitharode would use more than the conventional seven strings.

Apollo as a kitharode

File:Apollo Musagetes Pio-Clementino Inv310.jpg

Apollo kitharoidos (Apollo holding a cithara and wearing the customary kitharōdos’ robes) and musagetes (leader of the Muses). Marble, Roman artwork, 2nd century CE.

The cithara is said to have been the invention of Apollo, the god of music. Apollo is often depicted playing a cithara instead of a lyre, often dressed in a kitharode’s formal robes. Kitharoidos, or Citharoedus, is an epithet given to Apollo, which means "lyre-singer" or "one who sings to the lyre".

An Apollo Citharoedus or Apollo Citharede, is the term for a type of statue or other image of Apollo with a cithara. Among the best-known examples is the Apollo Citharoedus at the Vatican Museums, a 2nd-century CE colossal marble statue by an unknown Roman sculptor.

Famous cithara players

• Phrynnis (Template:Langx) of Lesbos: The Suda mentions that Phrynnis was the first to play the cithara at Athens and won at the Panathenaea; by cithara is probably meant the new 12-stringed instrument invented by Melanippides of Melos.
• Athenodoros of Teos, who played at the Susa weddings of Alexander the Great

Utrecht Psalter image of cithara or lyre

Rotta played differently

Two sketches of string instrument players (citharas, lyres or rottas?) from the Utrecht Psalter, drawn by an Anglo-Saxon artist in Reims, c. 850 CE.

Other instruments called "cithara"

In the Middle Ages, cythara was also used generically for stringed instruments, including lyres, but also including lute-like instruments. The use of the name throughout the Middle Ages looked back to the original Greek kithara, and its abilities to sway people's emotions.

Biblical references

An instrument called the kinnor is mentioned a number of times in the Bible, generally translated into English as "harp" or "psaltery", but historically rendered as "cithara". Psalm 42 in the Latin Vulgate (Psalm 43 in other versions), says,

"Confitebor tibi in cithara, Deus, Deus meus,"

which is translated in the Douay-Rheims version as

"To thee, O God my God, I will give praise upon the harp."

The King James version renders this verse as

"Yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, O God my God."

The cithara is also mentioned in other places in the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible, including Genesis 4:21, 1 Kings (1 Samuel) 16:16, 1 Paralipomenon (1 Chronicles) 25:3, Job 30:31, Psalms 32:2, Psalms 56:9, Psalms 70:22, Psalms 80:3, Psalms 91:4, Psalms 98:5, Psalms 107:3, Psalms 146:7, Psalms 150:3, Isaiah 5:12, Isaiah 16:11, 1 Machabees 3:45, and 1 Corinthians 14:7.

The kaithros mentioned in the Book of Daniel may have been the same instrument.

Gallery

• Bronze figurine from Crete, c. 850 BCE
  Bronze figurine from Crete, c. 850 BCE
• Kithara player by the Berlin Painter c. 490 BCE
  Kithara player by the Berlin Painter c. 490 BCE
• Nike flying with kithara by the Providence Painter, c. 480 BCE
  Nike flying with kithara by the Providence Painter, c. 480 BCE
• Kithara player 445–435 BCE from vase, painting by the Achilles Painter
  Kithara player 445–435 BCE from vase, painting by the Achilles Painter
• Muse tuning two phorminges. The phorminx was an intermediate stage, as the cithara developed from the lyre. Detail from an Attic white-ground cup from Eretria, c. 465 BCE.
  Muse tuning two phorminges. The phorminx was an intermediate stage, as the cithara developed from the lyre. Detail from an Attic white-ground cup from Eretria, c. 465 BCE.
• Apollo and Marsyas, 4th century BC
  Apollo and Marsyas, 4th century BC
• A Roman representation of a woman playing the cithara (Villa Boscoreale, c. 40–30 BC).
  A Roman representation of a woman playing the cithara (Villa Boscoreale, c. 40–30 BC).
• Cithara on the reverse of a hemidrachm from Cragus (Lycian League).
  Cithara on the reverse of a hemidrachm from Cragus (Lycian League).
• Apollo Kitharoidos. Painted plaster, Roman artwork from the Augustan period.
  Apollo Kitharoidos. Painted plaster, Roman artwork from the Augustan period.
• 1st century CE, Herculaneum. Woman playing kithara; 2 straps are visible that holds the instrument up while she uses both hands to play (one blue, one yellow).
  1st century CE, Herculaneum. Woman playing kithara; 2 straps are visible that holds the instrument up while she uses both hands to play (one blue, one yellow).
• Orpheus Mosaic in Rottweil
  Orpheus Mosaic in Rottweil
• Alcaeus of Mytilene playing a cithara while Sappho listens in Sappho and Alcaeus by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1881; The Walters Art Museum).
  Alcaeus of Mytilene playing a cithara while Sappho listens in Sappho and Alcaeus by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1881; The Walters Art Museum).
• Girl with Lute by George Lawrence Bulleid, 1905
  Girl with Lute by George Lawrence Bulleid, 1905
• A reconstruction of the so-called Apollo's kithara in Kotsanas Museum of Ancient Greek Technology, Athens, Greece.
  A reconstruction of the so-called Apollo's kithara in Kotsanas Museum of Ancient Greek Technology, Athens, Greece.

Sources

• Anderson, Warren D. (1994). Music and Musicians in Ancient Greece. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-3083-6.
• Ciabattoni, Francesco (2010). Dante's Journey to Polyphony. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781442620230.
• Maas, Martha; Snyder, Jane McIntosh (1989). Stringed Instruments of Ancient Greece. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-030003686-2.
• Segerman, Ephraim (1999). "A Short History of the Cittern". The Galpin Society Journal. 52: 77–107. doi:10.2307/842519. JSTOR 842519.
• Vorreiter, Leopold (1975). "The Swan-Neck Lyres of Minoan-Mycenaean Culture". The Galpin Society Journal. 28: 93–97. doi:10.2307/841575. JSTOR 841575.
• West, Martin Litchfield (1992). Ancient Greek Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-814975-1.

Further reading

• Bundrick, Sheramy D. (2005). Music and Image in Classical Athens. New York: Cambridge University Press.
• Hagel, Stefan. "Ancient Greek Music". Vienna, Austria: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften. Retrieved 2016-10-25.
• "The Kithara in Ancient Greece | Thematic Essay". Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. October 2002. Retrieved 2016-10-25.

External links

• Pringle, Peter (instrumentalist & presetor) (26 October 2015). The ancient Greek kithara (brief video documentary) – via YouTube. — Pringle demonstrates how a kithara was played.
• "Ensemble Kérylos". — Ensemble Kérylos is a music group directed by scholar Annie Bélis, dedicated to the recreation of ancient Greek and Roman music and playing instruments rebuilt on archaeological reference. In its recording d'Euripide aux premiers chretiens: Musique de l'antiquité grecque et romaine, the band plays both Roman and Greek kitharas.