All Topics  
Kithara

 

 
   Email Print
   Bookmark   Link
 

 

Kithara
 
 
  Topics Kithara Topic Home

The kithara (Greek) or cithara (Roman) () was an ancient Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
 musical instrument
Musical instrument

A musical instrument is an object constructed or used for the purpose of making music. In principle, anything that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument....
 in the lyre
Lyre

The lyre is a string instrument well known for its use in classical antiquity and later. The recitations of the Ancient Greece were accompanied by lyre playing....
 family. In modern Greek the word kithara has come to mean "guitar
Guitar

The guitar is a musical instrument with ancient roots that is used in a wide variety of musical styles. It typically has six Strings , but Tenor guitar, Seven-string guitar, Eight-string guitar, Ten-string guitar, Eleven-string guitar, Twelve-string guitar, Thirteen-string guitar and doubleneck guitar string guitars also exist....
" (a word whose origins are found in kithara).

The kithara was a professional version of the seven-stringed lyre
Lyre

The lyre is a string instrument well known for its use in classical antiquity and later. The recitations of the Ancient Greece were accompanied by lyre playing....
. As opposed to the simpler lyre, which was a folk-instrument, the kithara was primarily used by professional musicians, called citharedes.






Discussion
Ask a question about 'Kithara'
Start a new discussion about 'Kithara'
Answer questions from other users
Full Discussion Forum



Encyclopedia


The kithara (Greek) or cithara (Roman) () was an ancient Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
 musical instrument
Musical instrument

A musical instrument is an object constructed or used for the purpose of making music. In principle, anything that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument....
 in the lyre
Lyre

The lyre is a string instrument well known for its use in classical antiquity and later. The recitations of the Ancient Greece were accompanied by lyre playing....
 family. In modern Greek the word kithara has come to mean "guitar
Guitar

The guitar is a musical instrument with ancient roots that is used in a wide variety of musical styles. It typically has six Strings , but Tenor guitar, Seven-string guitar, Eight-string guitar, Ten-string guitar, Eleven-string guitar, Twelve-string guitar, Thirteen-string guitar and doubleneck guitar string guitars also exist....
" (a word whose origins are found in kithara).

The kithara was a professional version of the seven-stringed lyre
Lyre

The lyre is a string instrument well known for its use in classical antiquity and later. The recitations of the Ancient Greece were accompanied by lyre playing....
. As opposed to the simpler lyre, which was a folk-instrument, the kithara was primarily used by professional musicians, called citharedes. The barbiton
Barbiton

The barbiton, or barbitos , is an ancient stringed instrument known from Greek literature and Ancient Rome classics related to the lyre. The barbiton is an unrelated lute-like instrument derived from Persia....
 was a bass version of the kithara popular in the eastern Aegean
Aegean Sea

The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkans and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey respectively....
 and ancient Asia Minor.

Construction

The kithara had a deep, wooden sounding box composed of two resonating tables, either flat or slightly arched, connected by ribs or sides of equal width. At the top, its strings were knotted around the transverse tuning bar (zugon) or to rings threaded over the bar, or wound around pegs. The other end of the strings was secured to a tail-piece after passing over a flat bridge, or the tail-piece and bridge were combined. Most vase paintings show kitharas with seven strings, in agreement with ancient authors, but these also mention that occasionally a skillful citharede would use more than the conventional seven strings.

It was played with a rigid plectrum
Plectrum

A plectrum is a small flat tool used to pluck or strum a string instrument. For guitars and similar instruments, the plectrum is a separate tool held in the player's hand....
 held in the right hand, with elbow outstretched and palm bent inwards, while the strings with undesired notes were damped with the straightened fingers of the left hand.

Uses

The kithara was played primarily to accompany dances and epic recitations, rhapsodies, odes, and lyric songs. It was also played solo at the receptions, banquets, national games, and trials of skill. The music from this instrument was said to be the lyre
Lyre

The lyre is a string instrument well known for its use in classical antiquity and later. The recitations of the Ancient Greece were accompanied by lyre playing....
 for drinking parties
Symposium

Symposium originally referred to a drinking party but has since come to refer to any academic conference, or a style of university class characterized by an openly discursive rather than lecture and question–answer format....
 and is considered an invention of Terpander
Terpander

Terpander , of Antissa in Lesbos Island, was a Ancient Greece poet and citharede who lived about the first half of the 7th century BC.About the time of the Messenian Wars, he settled in Sparta, whither, according to some accounts, he had been summoned by command of the Delphic Oracle, to compose the differences which had arisen between diff...
. Aristotle said that these string instruments were not for educational purposes but for pleasure only.


Sappho
Sappho

Sappho...
 is closely associated with music, especially string instruments like the kithara and the barbitos. She was a woman of high social standing and composed songs that focused on the emotions. A Greek mythology
Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
 story goes that she ascended the steep slopes of Mount Parnassus
Mount Parnassus

Mount Parnassus is a mountain of barren limestone in central Greece that towers above Delphi, north of the Gulf of Corinth, and offers scenic views of the surrounding olive groves and countryside....
 where she was welcomed by the Muses. She wondered through the laurel
Lauraceae

The Lauraceae or Laurel family comprises a group of flowering plants included in the order Laurales. The family contains about 55 genera and over 2000 species world-wide, mostly from warm or tropical regions, especially Southeast Asia and Brazil....
 grove and came upon the cave of Apollo
Apollo

In Greek mythology and Roman mythology, Apollo , is one of the most important and many-sided of the Twelve Olympians. The ideal of the kouros , Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy; archery; medicine and healing; music, poetry, and the arts; and more....
, where she bathed in the Castalian Spring
Castalian Spring

The Castalian Spring, in the ravine between the Phaedriades at Delphi, is where all visitors to Delphi — the contestants in the Pythian Games, and especially suppliants who came to consult the Pythia — stopped to wash their hair; and where Roman poets came to receive poetic inspiration....
 and took Phoebus
Phoebus

Phoebus is the Latin form of classical Greek Phoibos "Shining-one", a byname used in classical Greek mythology for either the god Apollo or the Helios....
' plectrum
Plectrum

A plectrum is a small flat tool used to pluck or strum a string instrument. For guitars and similar instruments, the plectrum is a separate tool held in the player's hand....
 to play skillful music. The sacred nymphs danced while she stroked the strings with much talent to bring forth sweet musical melodies from the resonant kithara.


Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italy author and poet, a friend and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanism and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular....
 compiled images of women notable and famous throughout history. One of his images was Sappho playing a kithara.


See also

  • Citharede
  • Barbiton
    Barbiton

    The barbiton, or barbitos , is an ancient stringed instrument known from Greek literature and Ancient Rome classics related to the lyre. The barbiton is an unrelated lute-like instrument derived from Persia....
  • Harp
    Harp

    The 'harp' is a stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicular to the Sounding board. It is also considered to be a percussion instrument....
  • Kinnor
    Kinnor

    Kinnor is the Hebrew language name for an ancient lyre, the first mentioned in the Bible , where it is now commonly translated harp. In Modern Hebrew, It means a violin....
  • Lyre
    Lyre

    The lyre is a string instrument well known for its use in classical antiquity and later. The recitations of the Ancient Greece were accompanied by lyre playing....
  • Phorminx
    Phorminx

    The phorminx was one of the oldest of the Ancient Greek stringed musical instruments, intermediate between the lyre and the kithara. It consisted of two to seven strings, richly decorated arms and a crescent-shaped sound box....
  • Zither
    Zither

    The zither is a musical string instrument, most commonly found in Slovenia, Austria, Hungary, the southern regions of Germany, alpine Europe and East Asian cultures....
  • Ancient Greece
    Ancient Greece

    The term Ancient Greece refers to the period of History of Greece lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman Republic conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth ....
  • Ancient Rome
    Ancient Rome

    Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
  • Music of ancient Greece
    Music of Ancient Greece

    Much of what defines western European Culture of Europe in terms of philosophy, science, and the The Arts has origins in the culture of ancient Greece....


External links