Athens National Archaeological Museum.Ī spindle harp is a frame harp shaped like an isosceles triangle. From a red-figure nuptial basin by the Lautros Painter (430BC). Harps in paintings and vases Įpigonion, 430 B.C. Sometimes there is a second bar under this bar, parallel to it, perhaps taking some of the load and protecting the tuning rings from moving while playing. At the bottom of the neck, each string is connected to a leather ring (like the tuning ring known from the Greek lyres) that enables tuning. The strings sit vertically, the shorter, higher-tuned strings closer to the musician, the lower ones further away. Their position is just the opposite of that which is common with today's western harps the thin bar-shaped neck rests horizontally on the left thigh of the seated musician, while the body of the instrument connected to it is curved along the musician's upper body, stretching and widening and bending back towards the end. modern harps Ĭompared to modern European harps, Greek angular and frame harps stand "upside down" when used. The European harp of the Middle Ages, and today, can be considered to be related to the Greek psaltery based only on its musical classification it is apparently based on a tradition radically different from the Greek tradition, and is probably of Celtic origin. Juvenal describes it as chordæ obliquæ ("oblique strings"). The Romans never accepted the harp, and its occurrence in iconography is exceptional. Written sources link the harp to Asia Minor, in Lydia. The first data appears around 600 BC, and in the Greek visual arts the harp appears from the middle of the 5th century BC. In the following thousand years, in the Greek Bronze Age and then in the early Iron Age, there are hardly any traces of the harp in the Aegean region. Researchers believe that they discovered a similar instrument on some of the seal presses of the Minoan civilization from the period between 19 BC. They show a harp whose body and neck are connected by a third element, a column, thereby completing the complete triangular shape of the instrument. These are the oldest representations known in the history of musical instruments in which a frame harp can be recognized. In the Aegean Sea area, in the 3rd millennium BC, the Cycladic culture left behind marble figurines depicting men with harps. This type is from the 2nd millennium BC, and it also appears in Cypriot depictions. In the angular harp, the neck of the instrument is connected to the body at a right angle, and in later periods at an acute angle. In Mesopotamia around 2000 BC, a new type of harp, the angular harp, took its place it appeared in Egypt after a few centuries later. Such an instrument was already used by the Sumerians around 3400 BC and the Egyptians in 2500 BC. In its simplest version, the sound body of the bowed harp and its neck, which grows out as an extension, form a continuous bow similar to an up-bowed bow, with the strings connecting the ends of the bow. Harps probably evolved from the most ancient type of stringed instrument, the musical bow. See also: Harp § Origin Cycladic culture harp player, 2800–2700 B.C The Latin equivalent of the word, psalterium, has been the name of many-stringed box zithers or board zithers since the Middle Ages. The "most important" harps were the psaltêrion, the mágadis and the pēktis. Anacreon, poet of drinking and love (and infatuation, disappointment, revelry, parties, festivals, and observations of everyday people), sang of playing the Lydian harp and pektis in his works. There was a group of women known as psaltriai, female pluckers of the instrument who could be hired for parties. It also touched on Greek social mores, being used mainly by women, both upper-class women as well as hetaerae entertainers. It was seen as an "outside instrument" from the Orient. Unlike the lyres, the harp was rarely used in Greece. These names could denote instruments of this type. Names found in written sources include pektis, trigonos, magadis, sambuca, epigonion. Ancient vase paintings often depict – almost always in the hands of women – various types of harps. The general name for these was the psalterion. In addition to their most important stringed instrument, the seven-stringed lyre, the Greeks also used multi-stringed, finger-plucked instruments: harps. Psalterion was a general word for harps in the latter part of the 4th century B.C. The psalterion (Greek ψαλτήριον) is a stringed, plucked instrument, an ancient Greek harp. (Harps, the plane of the strings lies perpendicular to the resonator's surface the harp has a pillar.)Īncient Greece with possible input from Egypt and nearby Asia 322.2 Frame harps – The harp has a pillar.322.1 Open harps – The harp has no pillar.sambuca (an angular harp of "foreign origin"),.Woman playing triangular frame-harp, a psaltērion or trigōnon, in red-figure pottery from Apulia, ca.
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