Ads
related to: celtic lyre harp
Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
The Celtic harp is a triangular frame harp traditional to the Celtic nations of northwest Europe. It is known as cláirseach in Irish, ... most likely a kind of lyre ...
In Ireland, the Celtic harp was strung with wire strings. [citation needed] The number of strings varied anywhere from six to thirty. Harps in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had six to thirteen strings; [4] harps built later in the Middle Ages had more strings. Harps were single strung and tuned diatonically.
A bridge thought to be from an Iron Age lyre, and dating to around 300 BC, was discovered on the Isle of Skye which would make it the earliest surviving stringed instrument from western Europe. [1] [2] The earliest descriptions of a European triangular framed harp i.e. harps with a fore pillar are found on carved 8th century Pictish stones.
The original Celtic lyre however came with different numbers of strings, as the Lyre of Paule, [46] which is depicted on a statue from Côtes d'Armor in Brittany, apparently had seven strings. [47] The remains of a stringed instrument thought to be a lyre were found on the island of Skye in Scotland in 2012, dating from c. 300 BC. [48]
The earliest reference to the word "lyre" is the Mycenaean Greek ru-ra-ta-e, meaning "lyrists" and written in the Linear B script. [5] In classical Greek, the word "lyre" could either refer specifically to an amateur instrument, which is a smaller version of the professional cithara and eastern-Aegean barbiton, or "lyre" can refer generally to all three instruments as a family. [6]
A harp is an instrument where the strings are perpendicular to the soundboard. This classification is entirely modern, as historically people made little distinction between lyres and harps. In Old English the lyre was called a "hearpe" and in old Norse a "harpa", the word coming from Latin, "to pluck". [28]