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drew attention to the fact that some African lyres are played in this way, by rhythmic strumming with a plectrum and by damping all the strings that are not required to ring out.82 But this strumming sometimes alternates with plucking; and so it must have been in Greece (whether or not the strumming was combined with damping), as we have seen that plucking was certainly of some importance, and it would not make sense to pluck simultaneously with the sweeps of the plectrum. Virgil implies an alternation when he describes the playing of Orpheus in Elysium: 'now he strikes them (the seven strings) with his fingers, now with his ivory plectrum'.83 Ptolemy, listing the finest effects of lyre-playing that cannot be reproduced on the monochord, mentions among them the simultaneous striking of more than one note (with the plectrum), and 'plucking in addition' (epipsalmos, perhaps of decorative notes subsidiary to the main melody).84 |
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Ancient sources make it clear that when a singer was accompanied by the lyrethe usual role of the instrumentits basic function was to duplicate the sung melody. From the latter part of the fifth century on, some divergent or additional notes were played as well, but the earlier practice is reported to have been simple unison.85 We should naturally suppose that it was the plucking fingers that picked out the melody, and that the plectrum-strums came mainly where the voice paused. This is confirmed by the passage of Aristophanes where Euripides, wishing to imitate a citharode without actually having a kithara to hand, does so by adding phlatto-thratto-phlatto-thrat after each line of song,86 and by Apuleius' description of a statue of a youth playing a kithara: 'his left |
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82 C. Saint-Saëns in Lavignac's Encyclopédie de la musique, i (Paris 1913). 538-40; Sachs, HMI 132f.; G. A. Plumley, El Tanbur (Cambridge. 1976), NG vi. 271f., xviii. 331. It should be pointed out that damping the strings does not reduce them to silence but gives their sound a dull, dead quality. |
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83Aen. 6. 647. Other Latin poets transfer the epithet 'ivory' to the player's fingers (Prop. 2. 1. 9) or thumb (Star. Silv. 5. 5. 31). Does this refer to a practice of attaching picks to the individual fingers? Mention of the thumb is frequent after Ovid (Am. 2. 4. 27, Met. 5. 339, 10. 145, 11.170; Tib. 2. 5. 3; Pers. 6. 5; Venantius Fortunatus 7. 1. 1); Martial 14. 167 recommends a plectrum for avoiding a blistered thumb. |
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84Harm. 2. 12 p. 67. 5; see Barker, GMW ii. 341. |
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85 Ps.-Plut. De mus. 1141 b, cf. Pl. Leg. 812 de; ps.-Arist. Pr. 19. 9, 43 (above. p. 39 n. 1). |
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86Ran. 1281 ff. Other verbal imitations of the plectrum-stroke are threttanelo (Ar. Plut. 290); tenella in the traditional acclamation of a victor, tenella kallinike, where the loud stroke across the lyre-strings served as a cue. just like our 'hip-hip' before 'hooray!'; and blityri in the saying blityri kai skindapsos, 'blityri and delyrium', meaning 'idle nonsense'. |
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