The Choice of the Greeks.
THE DELPHIC LYRE.
The fingers of the hand upon the pipes having decreed in a practical
way the first scale of musical sounds, very naturally it would come to
pass that an instrument with strings, in the time of beginnings, would
be set to copy the same order of sounds, which, simple as it was, had
an importance that held the character of law, something to be abided
by. Imitation is the beginning of conservatism, all history tells us
that the crudest and the most limited attainments are those that set up
the sternest barriers against innovation.
When the string time came, the method resorted to for obtaining
differences in sounds from strings was that of varying the lengths;
next the differences gained by varying the strain upon them were
perceived; and ultimately the advantages from the use of strings
manufactured of various thicknesses. This last method implies the
cultivation of a trade or an industrial production of sheepgut treated
for the purpose of the musical use of it. Probably the advance from
the first step to the last was a slow process; it was progress, and
progress is slow.
The Egyptian lyres and harps that are the subject of illustration in
the chapter previous, show very clearly the custom of reliance upon
differences in lengths, and strain in varying degrees, the sloping
bar particularly indicating the simplest mode of effecting change of
strain, but as yet there is not evidence of the practice of uniformity
in the lengths of the strings of lyres. That the Egyptians had attained
skill in making strings of various sizes, gauging them, in fact, to
suit the positions of each, may fairly be inferred, at least for late
developments in the larger harps, but not, I think, for instruments of
the very early periods.
With the Greeks the contrary is the rule, they come into the temple of
history ready equipped with the portable open-handed lyre, the strings
of uniform length. They are late comers it is true, and derive their
arts from both Egypt and Asia, and I should assume that, in this case,
the particular form of their lyres was due to Asia.
It was the lyre of the strangers visiting Egypt. Fig. 51, page 293,
that was the choice of the Greeks, it may have been Lydian, or Lycian,
or Phrygian, or Lesbian, as thus the ancient writers named several
modifications of style in lyres, but the essential design is the same
in all.
We should not forget that development was going on simultaneously
for thousands of years in the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates.
An instrument like that shown in Fig. 52 I consider to have been
the prototype of all cross-bar lyres, both of the sloping and the
horizontal bars, the latter the latest form because, as I said,
implying an industry of skill in making the strings; the original home
of the prototype, Mesopotamia, the instrument working its way up into
Asia Minor, a region where empires came and went, yet this type of lyre
remained through all vicissitudes, fixed in the people’s choice by
immemorial custom of age after age.
The Greek lyre is first mentioned by Homer. His words have a deep
significance of the intimate influence it had on Greek life. He speaks
of the player,—
“How he comforts the heart
With the sound of the lyre.”
In the bronzes-room of the British Museum there is a disc with a
relief representing Hermes making the lyre. One lyre he holds in
his left hand; another is beside the altar. The strings of both are
inlaid with silver. The fable concerning the origin of the lyre in the
tortoise-shell is told in many ways. In the Hymn to Hermes, according
to Mr. Lang’s version, it is told how Hermes,—
“cut to measure stalks of reed and fixed them in through
holes bored in the stoney shell of the tortoise, and
cunningly stretched round it the hide of an ox, and
put in the horns of the lyre, and to both he fixed the
bridge and seven harmonious cords of sheepgut. Then took
he his treasure when he had fashioned it, and touched
the strings in turn with the plectrum, and wondrously
it sounded under his hand, and fair sang the God to the
notes, improvizing his chant as he played.”
—this version is elegant, some readers would prefer to have the more
literal description given by Dr. Burney:—
“the invention of the lyre is attributed to the Egyptian
God Hermes or Thoth.... Hermes walking along the banks
of the Nile, happening to strike his foot against the
shell of a dried tortoise, was so pleased with the sound
it produced that it suggested to him the first idea of
a lyre, which he afterwards constructed in the form of
a tortoise, and strung it with the dried sinews of dead
animals.”
The myth will be useful in accounting for the very frequent appearance
of the tortoise-shell lyre in the classical designs of the Greek
artists in their vases, bronzes and sculpture.
[Illustration: _The Chelys or tortoise-shell lyre._
_Fig. 60._]
This illustration will represent the finished style so often seen, with
the shell and the twisted horns. The ancient artist evidently did not
know how the instrument was constructed, and has exaggerated the size
of the shell, and curtailed the strings, in a wise ignorance of musical
effects depending upon resonance.
The Chelys (from _chelus_, a shell) is the typical form of the Greek
lyre, there is no trace of it in Egyptian paintings, they have the
more primitive slant-bar style with the square-shaped body, but the
Greeks coming much later in date appropriated the method of uniform
length of the strings, and although we often read of “the shortest and
the longest strings,” the evidences of such in use are hard to find.
That many-stringed lyres became accepted in certain circles of society
cannot be doubted, the names of many such being current, and the extent
over which the series of notes ranged being likewise stated, yet on
their vases and marbles and in the best period of classic art, we find
the Chelys, and the various modifications of it up to the perfected
lyre in the hands of Apollo, alone thought worthy of representation.
The abundance of these is marvellous, and the imagination conjures up
visions of numberless treasures still waiting beneath the native soil.
Not only was the Chelys the lyre of the gods, it was also the domestic
lyre; the tortoise lyre was everywhere at home. The British Museum
possesses one of these, alas, one must say, fragments of one, and
reckons this poor wreck of musical feeling and devotedness (for it
was found in a tomb) a rare and choice treasure. This Chelys is of
sycamore and is light and of very simple make, the cross-bar is forked
at each end, and so formed it slips over the trimmed points of the
two uprights, and rests on notches cut on each side for the purpose;
the uprights are shaped to well-known curves and the lower ends were
fixed in the tortoise shell, which covering a piece of wood formed a
soundboard. Only a portion of the shell remains. The crossbar still
retains the black marks made by the strings that in life were wound
round it, and tightened there, that the lyre might make music to the
fingers of the youth it had comforted, and was lovingly placed in the
tomb that it might still continue to comfort him.
As it lay in the case under glass, the measurements as near as I could
take them were,—length of arms or uprights 15 inches, the crossbar
fixing three inches below the tips of these, and extending 1-1/2in.
beyond, between the arms the width at the crossbar 7-1/2in. increasing
in the curves to 8-1/2in., the shell with soundboard I reckon as about 7
by 3-1/2in., thus the whole length appears to be 22 inches. The general
look of it gives the idea of graceful slimness, the wood is sycamore,
and the construction of the lyre so simple that it might have been
home-made.
The original lyre of Apollo is of this style, fashioned in the same
simplicity, a little more slim, since four strings only were at first
given. Looking over the 3,000 gems in the British Museum, the bronzes,
and the Sculptures, and the multitude of Vases, from earliest to
latest periods, and amidst varied and ornate styles in advanced art,
we see that still the same simple form remains a cherished favourite
not to be displaced from the people’s choice by the newer patterns,
religion and tradition had made this the companion of the ever youthful
Apollo, and we find that the artists kept up the association in their
representations of the well-known Homeric chronicles of gods and men.
From the way in which the lyre is praised by Homer (or by other
poets under his great name), it is evident that the instrument was
already ancient. Olympus the elder, and Orpheus the Thracian, were
centuries earlier than Homer; two centuries later Terpander comes into
recognition historically, and his lyre had but four strings when he
gained the prize in his first musical contest at the feast of Apollo
in Sparta, B.C. 676, so that from these dates we learn that for many
centuries the lyre had remained a simple instrument of four strings,
producing but four sounds. Some say that these elder musicians limited
themselves to three strings, and that one Linus by name it was who
added the fourth string. However Terpander as he grew in renown became
dissatisfied, and greatly daring increased the number of the strings to
seven. Cleonidas in the _Introduction to Music_ (ascribed to Euclid),
has preserved for us two lines from a poem as spoken by Terpander
himself, which Mr. Wm. Chappell translates as follows:—
“But we loving no more the tetrachordal chant
Will sing aloud new hymns to a seven-toned lyre.”
Sappho used a lyre of six strings, Pythagorus about B.C. 520 added an
eighth string, Phrynis added a ninth, Anacreon a tenth, his lyre was
supposed to be a Lydian _magadis_, capable of so dividing the string in
playing that by an intermediate bar, against which each string could
be pressed, octave sounds could be given; then we hear of Timotheus
(the younger) in B.C. 446 adding four strings to the Spartan lyre, an
audacity which was so great an affront that the Spartan Ephori cut away
the four strings, confiscated the lyre and suspended it in the temple
as a warning to all innovators, and there it was to be seen by citizens
and by travellers in the round building known as the _Skeias_.
Concerning these inventions there are other claimants, and many
conflicting statements; the legendary lore also comes in to the
confusion of dates, Hermes the old Egyptian God is one of the reputed
inventors of the lyre, and he furnished it offhand with the _seven
strings_ obtained from the land tortoise, so that chronology is a
hazardous topic, baffling the most patient of investigators. The
Egyptians themselves only admit of three strings being in the original
invention, these representing the three seasons into which their year
was divided.
The instrument has many forms, little differences in structure giving
rise to new names. The Phorminx, Cithara, Kitharis, Chelys, Barbitos,
Psalterion, Trigon, and numerous others; the principle being the same
in all I class them under the general term, lyre.
The information given to us in ancient treatises on musical matters
affords very little light upon the structure, manipulation, tuning and
other details which we in these days are curious about. It is indeed
difficult to arrive at reasonable conclusions, having, in default
of the actual examples of the Greek Lyres, to rely upon artistic
representations often, as we notice, conventional only, as in our day,
for artists are ruled by the eye, and seek little beyond appearance;
hence fixed types suit them, and this sufficiency accounts for the
absence of representations of many instruments which we know by verbal
reference alone.
How were the instruments strung? How were they tuned? How played? The
utmost obscurity clouds these enquiries.
In order to show the steps in development that took place, I have
selected a few illustrations, each change, no doubt had a purpose
although there is no record left to enlighten us. The writers of
the ancient treatises on music busied themselves with scholastic
subtleties concerning scales and tetrachordal divisions, and if they
were musicians, perhaps were as indifferent as our composers and
musicians too generally have shewn themselves to be to the practical
comprehension of the nature and construction of the instruments they
used. Much that was written we cannot understand, probably because the
terms they used had to them meanings and associations of ideas other
than those obvious to modern interpreters. The makers of lyres and
the skilled players, those who knew the things we would learn did not
write, and the writers who did not know,—they explained things, or
undertook to do so, which is another matter, and the consequence is
that no man at the present day can speak with certainty upon the most
interesting questions connected with these Greek instruments.
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.
[Illustration: _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.
[Illustration: _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.
[Illustration: _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.
There are several illustrations of lyres having a number of loose rings
upon the bar; Dr. Burney gives one where one long string is threaded
through a series of them from top to bottom of lyre. But the idea is an
impossible one for practical validity, since the tension could not be
regulated to differ for each note, and the string being continuous from
one to the other, to affect one note would be to affect all.
Rings and loops on the bar are often seen, details of strings being
omitted, and there is doubt how much the painter knew of the instrument
he presumed to depict; modern artists shew themselves equally
presumptuous, seldom or never caring to know or to enquire into the
mode of playing, or to understand the design of the construction.
Some little light, I think, is given in a description of an ancient
lyre which, in a mutilated state, was recovered by Lord Elgin from a
tomb at Athens.
“It was in fifty pieces, but the fragments could be so
put together as to leave no doubt of its figure and
action. The wood is of cedar, and in size similar to that
held in the hand of Apollo. Having laid in the earth
about three thousand years, it was surprising that the
woodwork was not all decayed, for the metallic parts
were completely dissolved. This lyre evidently had eight
strings, from the number of little rollers which had
turned upon the cross bar. On each roller there was a
small projecting peg, upon which the string was looped;
and then by turning the roller it was raised in pitch,
and the mode of fixing it was by slipping the end of the
roller, which was notched, upon a fastened piece of wood
of corresponding shape.”
This clearly was a clutch method, and a fairly good mechanical
invention, and possibly some details are wanting, if fine tuning
according to our notions was required; and we are led to suppose that
the Greeks were very exacting about pitch. Yet for all the ancient
writers tell of subtle divisions of tones, I have my doubts of the
practical exercise of discrimination of pitch to the imagined degree
of sensitiveness of ear, generally assumed to be a natural gift of
the people of Greece; the instruments were not fitted with sufficient
mechanical exactness to produce and retain such fine distinctions.
Another advance in lyre-making consisted in the adaptation of a
projecting box affixed to the front of the larger body of the lyre;
this was an Egyptian invention, for which, see _ante_ Fig. 56. The
strings were attached to this little box, and it is probable that
within it there were means for tightening and relaxing the tension of
each. This was also a useful device for bringing the strings forward
from the face of the instrument. Let us hope that some forgotten tomb
still holds a perfect lyre in its keeping.
Greek writers make mention of lyres of many strings, with strange
sounding names, but examples are rare of such, indeed they are more
Asian than Greek. Pompeii and Herculanæum have preserved for us
pictures of some, but the period is late.
There is an instrument which may stand as a representative of the many
stringed, and as indicating the class of so-called _Trigons_, almost
letter D shape. It is depicted upon an ancient vase in the Munich
collection (Fig. 64). It is supposed to be in the hands of Erato, she
holds it against her left shoulder, not as is the custom with our
modern players of harps, resting on the right shoulder; obviously the
custom in each case is the one best suited to the convenience of the
player and to the different demands upon the instruments in ancient and
in modern use. The vase is Etruscan, but the lyre is Egyptian in origin
and Asian in style, witness the leopard skin spread upon the seat. The
artist was at fault in his drawing. The lyre is of the Egyptian model,
the bulk or thick portion of the boat-form being thrown upward above
the shoulder, and this as a sounding-board should have been made plain.
This particular development of style I should surmise to be Lydian, or
perhaps, more southern in origin, possibly Assyrian.
[Illustration: _Fig. 64._]
Plato and Plutarch both comment upon many-stringed lyres, condemning
their use and advocating a return to the ancient simplicity. Old
Pausanias, who wrote at a much later period “a Description of Greece,”
shews himself familiar with the many-stringed by a simile he uses,
stating that “in Egypt he had seen the pyramids, had beheld with
wonder the colossal statue of Memnon at Thebes, and had heard the
musical sound, like the breaking of a lyre string, which the statue
emitted at sunrise.” The breaking of strings is thus known to be an
old-world trouble, and no doubt Pausanias had often heard the sound,
else this reference would not have come to him so naturally as a
fitting illustration; only a large or many stringed-lyre would give a
noticeably musical sound; an instrument with short strings equal to
our violin strings would give but a brief snap, not in any degree a
musical sound. Desiring a personal experience I suggested to a friend a
realistic test, and he kindly strained a string of his violoncello to
breaking point. So we knew that the sound heard in this catastrophic
incident of to-day, was certainly not of the nature that the great
travellers of past days were attracted to as one of the wonders of
the world. A many stringed harp somewhat of the capacity of modern
harps would, however, under the shock communicate a thrill over the
whole range, finding out a sympathetic resonance from vibration of
those strings that happened to be in accord with the pitch of the
sounding-body, and this kind of response on the breaking of a string
was probably that which furnished old Pausanias’s memory with so
pertinent a simile. Whoever has heard one of the higher pianoforte
strings break will understand fairly enough the nature of the sound.
The statue was 69 feet high, and it was reared by Amenhotep III., about
1450 B.C.
With testimony so absolute from an ear-witness, the Memnon is no
fable. Silent that voice has been through many centuries, yet we may
well believe that in older days, ere time had worked its inevitable
changes, the sounds heard were in resemblance more truly vocal; and
although then mysterious to hearers, now under science such musical
vibrations are easy of explanation as a natural phenomenon.
The wonder-inspiring statue is still seated there,
“moulded in colossal calm,”
looking across that desert-destined land which remaineth for ever, as
Shelley named it,—
“a desolation deified.”
Seeking an example of Apollo’s lyre, as it existed when Greek art was
at its highest period, I found it, I think, in a marble relief carved
by the hand of Praxiteles; it is an authentic witness of the form of
the lyre in his day, and it seems to carry out the description given
of the lyre discovered by Lord Elgin (see page 319). The artist gives
a representation of the lyre as he saw it, and as no doubt used in the
worship of the ever-youthful Sun-God.
This marble is in the National Museum at Athens. It was found at
Mantinea, in Arcadia, and it represents the contest of Apollo and
Marsyas; Apollo on the lyre and Marsyas on the flutes, or double pipes.
The marble has been finely photographed by the well-known M. Rhomaides,
of Athens, an enthusiast in his art. I copy this for the Apollo;
the quiet dignity of the seated figure is remarkable. According to
proportionate relation, the instrument may be estimated as being about
twenty-six or twenty-seven inches in height, and the acting length of
the strings about eighteen or twenty inches, the frame about two inches
deep, with the interior hollow, so that although the strings should be
only plucked by the fingers, the instrument we should expect would give
a good and a rich resonance. The strings, seven in number, being each
tuned separately by their rollers or rings.
The Apollo lyre was the nursling of the Greeks, never absent from
the Greek life; present in the home and in the temple, heard in the
green meadows, and upon the mountain-side, and by the sapphire sea,
gladdening the heart at household feasts, and inspiring the voice on
the great days of rejoicing.
Those vast processions carved upon marble friezes speak to us of an
existent life when to the people Apollo was “an evident god”; days when
through the shaded valleys, and along the terraced mountain-sides,
young men and maidens with dance and song made a delighted way,—
“touched piously the Delphic lyre,”
and to the sacrificial altar eager throngs pressed onward and
upward,—as in his word-magic Keats pictures it;—
“with trumpets blown
Of triumph calm, and hymns of festival,
Voices of soft proclaim, and silver stir
Of strings on hollow shells, ...
... and the mysterious priest,
Leading that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest.”
That busy stir of life has gone past, faded now into the viewless air,
to be seen no more by man; the dryads and the naiads, the satyrs and
the fauns left their dedicated haunts, and the muses too all vanished,
all hushed silently away, what time the,—
“great Apollo
Let his divinity o’erflowing die
In music, through the vales of Thessaly.”
The fateful land remains as of old, remains unchanged through
milleniums of change,—the traveller to-day may see the lofty Delph
glistening white with snow and great Parnassus towering high above
it; may visit grand Olympus, find the goats browsing yet upon Mount
Helicon, watch the bees gathering honey from the creeping thyme upon
Hymettus, or stop to gaze on the wonderful purple glow that comes
over it at evening light; Hippocrene, faithful to its ancient renown,
runs cool and bright, that whoso will may drink therefrom and pause
to meditate on Time’s concurrent freshness, ever-passing: the ear
is charmed with sounds, the winds waken the soft susurrus from the
pine-forests on the heights, it wanders down the pathways of the hills
to mingle with the drowsy hum of bees, and the tinkling of the goats
bells, and with luscious song of hidden nightingales in pale green
olive groves. The land we look upon is the same; it is man’s world
therein that has changed, sadly changed. From the white mountains to
the valleys, ruin calls to ruin; linger as you will in shade or sun,
“Round every spot where trod Apollo’s foot,”
his music is now unheard,—in his own land his lyre unknown.