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simultaneously, refers to the citharodes. At the same time as they are recalling the words and music from their memories, they are thinking about the sound of their voice and the melodic line, they are tapping out the rhythm with one foot, and they are sweeping across some strings with the right hand while the left pulls, restrains (i.e. damps?), or presents others.91 Quintilian is speaking of citharodes and of the Imperial age. But there is no particular reason to think that he is speaking of the special technical tricks developed by a few exceptional virtuosi. What he describes may have been the normal strumming technique on all types of Greek lyre from the beginning. It is consistent with our expectations of variety in the strumming, and with the evidence of the vase-paintings. When a player is shown on the vases as pulling a string between finger and thumb, we may wonder whether he is not retracting it from the plectrum's path (Quintilian's trahunt) rather than plucking it, for which a single fingertip must normally have sufficed. |
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When the Athenian schoolboy learned to play the lyre, then, I suppose him to have been taught (a) songs by the famous lyricists, Alcaeus, Anacreon, and others, (b) how to pick out the melodies with his left hand as he sang them, and (c) how to punctuate them with appropriate strums, damping or pulling back particular strings with his left hand while striking across with the plectrum held in his right. |
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It remains to speak of the use of the kithara as a solo instrument, not accompanying song. Greek writers call this 'bare lyre-playing', psile kitharisis, and treat it as something of a special art. It is said to have been invented by one Aristonicus of Argos, a resident of Corcyra, and to have been introduced to the Pythian festival in 558 BC.92 There were also prizes for it at the Panathenaea in the Classical period.93 We hear of particular performers who advanced the art. Lysander of Sicyon, perhaps in the early fifth century, was credited with increasing the power and duration of the notes, achieving fine 'colourings', and evoking a sort of echo at the upper octave called 'whistling', presumably by the technique described above, p. 66. Stratonicus of Athens in the early fourth century was the first to play solos on a kithara of more than seven strings.94 At some stage a |
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91Inst 1. 12. 3 alios neruos dextrá percurrunt, alios laeuá trahunt, continent, praebent Cf. E. K. Borthwick. CQ 9 (1959). 26f. |
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92 Menaechmus. FGrH 131 F 5; Paus. 10. 7. 7, cf. above. p. 60. |
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93IG 22. 2311. 15 (= SIG 1055), early 4th c. |
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94 See pp. 341, 368. |
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