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slightly spread. Sometimes some or all of them are bent forwards, or curled right over so that the nails are towards the strings. Sometimes the thumb is bent across the palm, or out away from it. Sometimes the player is clearly pulling at a string with a finger and thumb. Sometimes his fingers are contorted in some quite complicated manuvre. The right hand is usually holding the plectrum well beyond the strings, as if it has completed a vigorous outward sweep.79 |
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One function of the left hand was certainly to pluck individual strings. The indications in the paintings are confirmed by literary references to 'plucking' in lyre-playing.80 But it is widely held that the left hand also served to modify the sounds produced by the plectrum, by damping certain strings and perhaps also by touching them lightly as they vibrated, so shortening the vibrating length and raising the note. |
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As regards the latter possibility, the fact that the hand is trapped in its wrist sling means that it could not move up and down the strings (as can a violinist's hand, for example): there was only one short section of each string, somewhere near the middle, that it could reach. So the only effect that could have been produced by stopping with fingers of the left hand would have been to raise notes by large intervals of the order of an octave. This does seem to have been done by some virtuoso citharists as a special effect (below, p. 69), but it would not have served any purpose, so far as we can tell, in the ordinary rendering of Greek melodies.81 |
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The idea of damping is more plausible as a regular part of lyre-playing. It was advocated by C. Saint-Saëns (the composer), who |
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79 See H. Roberts (as n. 64), 44ff.; Maas-Snyder, 34, 63f., 92f., 122f., 142, 146, 177. |
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80 Ion fr. 32. 3 W.; Ar. Eq. 522 (if the allusion is to Magnes' Barbitos-players); Pl. Lysis 209b, 'and I imagine that when you pick up the lyre, your father and mother don't stop you tuning any strings you like either up or down, and plucking them and striking them with the plectrum'; with explicit reference to the left hand, Apul. Flor. 15, Philostr. Imag. 1. 10. 4, Philostr. Jun. Imag. 7. 3, ps.-Asc. Verr. 2. 1. 53 (ii. 237. 1 Stangl). |
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81 Stopping with the right hand, or pressing the plectrum on a string at a point below the bridge to increase its tension and raise its pitch, are also unlikely except possibly as virtuoso tricks. See R. P. Winnington-Ingram, CR 2 (1952), 34f. and CQ 6 (1956), 183-6, against Sachs and Gombosi; J. M. Barbour, Jour. Am. Musicol. Soc. 13 (1960), 13-15; H. Roberts (as n. 64), 49-52. Paquette (whose interpretations of the vase-paintings often seem over-subtle or arbitrary) still believes in such a use of the plectrum, and he reproduces a detail from a 4th-c. Lucanian amphora (Louvre K 526) where it does appear to be pushed under the strings of a kithara. Perhaps this is a representation of virtuoso playing of that period (the lyre has nine strings); or perhaps the artist is simply incompetent (the player has two left thumbs). |
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