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The problem of classifying the musical instruments of the world's peoples on scientific principles has long exercised musicologists. The most influential system is the one devised by E. M. von Horn-bostel and C. Sachs, which operates with four main categories (and many subdivisions): idiophones (that is, instruments made from sonorous materials that will yield a sound simply by being struck, shaken, rubbed, etc.), aerophones, membranophones, and chordo-phones.1 For our purposes, however, the familiar layman's classification into stringed, wind, and percussion instruments will serve perfectly well. It corresponds, incidentally, to a classification recognized by some ancient writers.2 |
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The stringed instruments of the ancient world were played by plucking with the fingers, striking with a plectrum, or a combination of both. (Bowed instruments did not appear until the Middle Ages.) The purpose in each case was to make tuned strings vibrate and to amplify these vibrations to a reasonable level of audibility by transmitting them to a resonant soundbox. |
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The standard stringed instruments in Greece at all periods were lyres of various forms. From at least the end of the seventh century BC there were also some harps, and from the second half of the fourth century BC some lutes. The defining features of a lyre are that it has two arms projecting from the body and linked by a crossbar or yoke; the strings extend from the crossbar over an open space and then over a bridge on the front soundboard to a fastening at the base. In |
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1Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 46 (1914), 553-90, Sachs. HMI 454-67, K. Wachsmann in NG ix. 237-45. |
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2 Ath. 636c, Nicom. Ench. 2 p. 240. 22 J., Cassiod. Mus. 6. 1209c. More often we find a simple dichotomy of strung and blown (Aristox. fr. 95, Aristocles ap. Ath. 174c. Manilius Astr. 5. 331, Poll. 4. 58f., Aristid. Quint. p. 85. 3 ff., al.). percussion instruments being either left out of account or grouped with stringed instruments as 'struck'. Certain late sources make the human voice a third category beside blown and struck instruments (Augustine, In Psalm. 150. 8, De doctr Christ. 2. 17. 27; Isid. Orig 3. 20-2). Anon. Bellerm. 17 has blown, strung, and 'bare' (psila), the last category including both the voice and such things as musical jars. |
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