His definition focused on body and neck characteristics and not on the way the strings were sounded, so the fiddle counted as a 'bowed lute'. Gandhara Lute, Pakistan, Swat Valley, Gandhara region, 4th-5th centuryĬurt Sachs defined lute in the terminology section of The History of Musical Instruments as 'composed of a body, and of a neck which serves both as a handle and as a means of stretching the strings beyond the body'. The player of a lute is called a lutenist, lutanist or lutist, and a maker of lutes (or any similar string instrument, or violin family instruments) is referred to as a luthier. As a small instrument, the lute produces a relatively quiet sound. The lute player either improvises ('realizes') a chordal accompaniment based on the figured bass part, or plays a written-out accompaniment (both music notation and tablature ('tab') are used for lute). It is also an accompanying instrument in vocal works. During the Baroque music era, the lute was used as one of the instruments which played the basso continuo accompaniment parts. The lute is used in a great variety of instrumental music from the Medieval to the late Baroque eras and was the most important instrument for secular music in the Renaissance. The European lute and the modern Near-Eastern oud descend from a common ancestor via diverging evolutionary paths. By pressing the strings on different places of the fingerboard, the player can shorten or lengthen the part of the string that is vibrating, thus producing higher or lower pitches (notes). The lute is plucked or strummed with one hand while the other hand 'frets' (presses down) the strings on the neck's fingerboard. The strings are attached to pegs or posts at the end of the neck, which have some type of turning mechanism to enable the player to tighten the tension on the string or loosen the tension before playing (which respectively raise or lower the pitch of a string), so that each string is tuned to a specific pitch (or note). The term also refers generally to any necked string instrument having the strings running in a plane parallel to the sound table (in the Hornbostel–Sachs system). More specifically, the term 'lute' commonly refers to an instrument from the family of European lutes. wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2020/07/Track-3B-fanfar-edit-1.mp3Ĭredit line - Copyright Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology.A lute ( / lj uː t/ or / l uː t/) is any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity, usually with a sound hole or opening in the body. James Lloyd in 2016 on a replica of the Louvre Museum aulos). This recording gives us a taste of what an aulos might have sounded like (improvised by Dr. Writing in the 4th century BC, Aristotle, who clearly didn’t much like the aulos, tells us “at Athens it became so fashionable that almost the majority of freemen went in for aulos-playing … But later on it came to be disapproved of as a result of actual experience, when men were more capable of judging what music conduced to virtue and what did not….” The aulos remained popular in different parts of Greece, however, at parties, to accompany sacrifice, and even for the choruses of Greek drama. The aulos could be a divisive instrument. The aulos, an instrument made of two separate pipes and reeds-like playing two oboes at once-was popularly taught in Athens in the early 5 th century BC. Our example is one half of an aulos, and is crafted with skill, including bronze, ivory, wood, and even silver, so it is unlikely it was used in a schoolroom. It translates as: “While you live, shine / have no grief at all / life exists only for a short while / and Time demands his due.” /wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2020/07/Track-8B-edit-jtl-1.mp3Ĭredit line - Photo Antikensammlung Staatliche Museen zu Berlin James Lloyd, demonstrates the Seikilos Song, found on a grave marker in modern-day Turkey.This short song dates to the 1st or 2nd century CE, making it the earliest complete song with musical notation.

The text on the scroll is difficult to read, but probably says “Muse, I begin to sing for myself of fine-flowing Scamander” mimicking an epic invocation.įrom later periods, Greek musical notation survives, providing us with the melody for ancient songs. Perhaps in more advanced lesson the boy would sing and play the lyre that hangs above him. At the top centre, an older man holds a scroll for a youth to sing. Here boys play the lyre but also sing with musical accompaniment. The outside of this Attic cup in Berlin was decorated by Douris, the same artist who signed our fragment.

Ancient greek lute