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special form of kithara came into use for solo performances at the great festivals, the Pythikon, which has been mentioned earlier. |
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The 'psilocitharist' clearly did more than simply render songs without words. It must have been a more elaborate style of playing, involving a greater density of notes, more agile fingering, and the display of varied tonal effects. Plato dismisses it, together with solo piping, as a tasteless and meaningless stunt that seeks to astonish by speed, accuracy, and the production of bestial noises.95 Some performers, if not all, may have abandoned the plectrum to give themselves the full use of their ten fingers. It has been noted that the Italiote kithara is sometimes depicted being played in this way, and it was suggested as an explanation of the fact that the Pythikon was also called daktylikon. Ammonius defines the citharist as one who 'only plucks the strings' as opposed to the citharode who 'also sings'.96 |
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The defining features of a harp have been described on p. 49. It is among the most ancient of stringed instruments, being derived directly from the primitive musical bow. The oldest type, the arched harp, retained something of the bow's basic form: the soundbox was prolonged into a curved neck that formed an arch with it, and the strings were strung across this arch. Arched harps were in use among the Sumerians from 3400 BC or earlier, and among the Egyptians by the twenty-sixth century. After about 2000 BC they were displaced in Mesopotamia by the angular harp, in which the neck was jointed to the soundbox at a right angle or (later) an acute angle. This type too reached Egypt after a few centuries. It is depicted in a Cypriote representation of the mid-second millennium, and two more of the twelfth century.97 |
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In view of this diffusion, we might have expected to find the harp well established in the Aegean area in the Bronze and early Iron Ages. In fact evidence for its presence is exceedingly scarce before about 600 BC. From the pre-Greek Cycladic culture of the third millennium (c. 2800-2300) we have a number of small marble models of seated male musicians playing angular harps. These are |
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95Leg. 669e-670a. |
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96Diff. 271. |
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97 London 1920. 12-20. 1 and 1946. 10-7. 1; Aign, 60, 62; Rimmer, 22; H. Catling, Cypriot Bronzework in the Mycenaean World (Oxford, 1964), pl. 34-5. |
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