kithara

File:Fresco of women listening to a private musical performance.jpg depicting women in a peristyle, listening to another woman play a kithara and sambuca.]]

The cithara originated from Minoan-Mycenaean swan-neck lyres developed and used during the Aegean Bronze Age.{{harvp|Vorreiter|1975|p=94: "[T]he swan-neck lyres were the predecessors of the sacred kitharai of later times, i.e. the 6th to 3rd centuries B.C., in the Hellenic world."}} Scholars such as M.L. West, Martha Maas, and Jane M. Snyder have made connections between the cithara and stringed instruments from ancient Anatolia.{{harvnb|Maas|Snyder|1989|p=185}}.{{sfnp|West|1992}}

Whereas the basic lyra was widely used as a teaching instrument in boys’ schools, the cithara was a virtuoso's instrument and generally known as requiring a great deal of skill.{{cite book |author=Aristotle |title=Politics |at=1341a}}: Aristotle calls the cithara an organon technikon. The cithara was played primarily to accompany dance, epic recitations, rhapsodies, odes, and lyric songs.{{sfnp|West|1992}} It was also played solo at the receptions, banquets, national games, and trials of skill. Aristotle said that these string instruments were not for educational purposes but for pleasure only. It was played by strumming the strings with a stiff plectrum made of dried leather, held in the right hand with elbow outstretched and palm bent inwards. The strings with undesired notes were damped with the straightened fingers of the left hand.{{sfnp|West|1992}}

The cithara had a deep, wooden sound 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 crossbar or yoke (zugon) or to rings threaded over the bar, or wound around pegs. The other ends of the strings were secured to a tail-piece after passing over a flat bridge, or the tail-piece and bridge were combined.{{sfnp|West|1992}}{{sfnp|Maas|Snyder|1989}}

Most vase paintings show citharas with seven strings, in agreement with ancient authors, but those same authors also mention that occasionally an especially skillful kitharode would use more than the conventional seven strings.{{sfnp|West|1992}}

File:Apollo Musagetes Pio-Clementino Inv310.jpg (Apollo holding a cithara and wearing the customary kitharōdos’ robes) and musagetes (leader of the Muses). Marble, Roman artwork, 2nd century CE.|286x286px]]

The cithara is said to have been the invention of Apollo, the god of music.{{cite book|author=Pausanias|author-link=Pausanias (geographer)|title=Description of Greece|at=5.14.8}} Apollo is often depicted playing a cithara instead of a lyre, often dressed in a kitharode’s formal robes. Kitharoidos, or Citharoedus, is an epithet given to Apollo, which means "lyre-singer" or "one who sings to the lyre".

An Apollo Citharoedus or Apollo Citharede, is the term for a type of statue or other image of Apollo with a cithara. Among the best-known examples is the Apollo Citharoedus at the Vatican Museums, a 2nd-century CE colossal marble statue by an unknown Roman sculptor.{{sfnp|West|1992}}

• Phrynnis ({{langx|grc|{{math|Φρῦνις}}}}) of Lesbos: The Suda mentions that Phrynnis was the first to play the cithara at Athens and won at the Panathenaea; by cithara is probably meant the new 12-stringed instrument invented by Melanippides of Melos.{{cite encyclopedia |title=phi |encyclopedia=Suda |at=761 |publisher=University of Kentucky |url=https://www.cs.uky.edu/~raphael/sol/sol-entries/phi/761 |via=uky.edu }}
• Athenodoros of Teos, who played at the Susa weddings of Alexander the Great

{{multiple image

|caption_align=left |header_align=center |align=right

|image1=Utrechts-Psalter PSALM-149-PSALM-150 psalterio or lyre.jpg|width1=100|alt1=Utrecht Psalter image of cithara or lyre

|image2=Utrechts-Psalter PSALM-67 instruments cithara.jpg|width2=87|alt2=Rotta played differently

|footer= Two sketches of string instrument players (citharas, lyres or rottas?) from the Utrecht Psalter, drawn by an Anglo-Saxon artist in Reims, {{circa|850 CE}}.

}}

In the Middle Ages, cythara was also used generically for stringed instruments, including lyres, but also including lute-like instruments.{{harvp|Segerman|1999|pp=79–80}}{{efn|"Cithara was the Latin name for the Greek kithara, a lyre-like instrument. It was often used as a generic term for 'plucked stringed instrument' by writers discussing a variety of instruments in medieval and Renaissance times, but when a player used this name for his instrument, [...] he was probably making a claim that his instrument was the one that had the magic to readily manipulate the listener's emotional states as the original kithara (with a similar large plectrum) had a reputation of doing to the ancient Greeks."}}{{harvp|Ciabattoni|2010|pp=60–61}}{{efn|"There is evidence of citharae shaped like a lute, that is with a neck and an elongated body, even before the twelfth century: the Golden Psalter of St. Gall depicts King David wielding an instrument that has a broad neck, a circular pegbox (without pegs depicted), and three strings, and whose total length is three times as long as its body, which is of a circular shape. This instrument resembles a lute more than a cithara, but it is associated with David. Further evidence appears in The Stuttgart Psalter [...] This psalter contains several images of an instrument having a long neck and a narrow body with parallel sides, sloping shoulders, and a pear-shaped pegbox. In the text, next to all these miniatures, the instrument is called a cithara."}} The use of the name throughout the Middle Ages looked back to the original Greek cithara, and its abilities to sway people's emotions.

An instrument called the kinnor is mentioned a number of times in the Bible, generally translated into English as "harp" or "psaltery", but historically rendered as "cithara". Psalm 42 in the Latin Vulgate (Psalm 43 in other versions), says,

: "Confitebor tibi in cithara, Deus, Deus meus,"{{cite web |url=http://www.drbo.org/lvb/chapter/21042.htm|title=Latin Vulgate Bible, Psalms Chapter 42 |website=www.drbo.org}}

which is translated in the Douay-Rheims version as

: "To thee, O God my God, I will give praise upon the harp."{{cite web |url=http://www.drbo.org/chapter/21042.htm |title=Douay-Rheims Bible, Psalms Chapter 42 |website=drbo.org}}

The King James version renders this verse as

: "Yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, O God my God."{{cite web |url=https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Psalms-Chapter-43/ |title=Psalms Chapter 43 KJV |website=www.kingjamesbibleonline.org}}

The cithara is also mentioned in other places in the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible, including Genesis 4:21, 1 Kings (1 Samuel) 16:16, 1 Paralipomenon (1 Chronicles) 25:3, Job 30:31, Psalms 32:2, Psalms 56:9, Psalms 70:22, Psalms 80:3, Psalms 91:4, Psalms 97:5, Psalms 107:3, Psalms 146:7, Psalms 150:3, Isaiah 5:12, Isaiah 16:11, 1 Machabees 3:45, and 1 Corinthians 14:7.{{cite web |trans-title=Latin Vulgate Bible |title=Biblia Sacra Vulgata |lang=la |website=drbo.org |url=http://www.drbo.org/lvb/index.htm}}

The kaithros mentioned in the Book of Daniel may have been the same instrument.{{cite Grove |date=2001 |title=Kaithros |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.14601 |url-access=subscription}}

File:Kitharaspieler Kreta asb 2004 PICT3430.JPG|Bronze figurine from Crete, {{circa|850 BCE}}

File:Citharoedus-bp.jpg|Kithara player by the Berlin Painter {{circa|490 BCE}}

File:Providence Painter - ARV 637 29 - Nike flying with kithara - draped youth - Wien KHM AS IV 698 - 03.jpg|Nike flying with kithara by the Providence Painter, {{Circa|480}} BC

File:Achilles Painter - ARV 997 155 - two Muses on mount Helikon - München AS SCH 80 - 13 (cropped for Kithara).jpg|Kithara player 445–435 BC from vase, painting by the Achilles Painter

File:Muse lyre Louvre CA482.jpg|Muse tuning two phorminges. The phorminx was an intermediate stage, as the cithara developed from the lyre. Detail from an Attic white-ground cup from Eretria, {{circa|465 BC}}.

File:Relief slab depicting Apollo, Marsyas, a Scythian (4th cent. B.C.), National Archaeological Museum of Athens (21 June 2018).jpg|Apollo and Marsyas, 4th century BC

File:P. Fannius Synistor anagoria links.JPG|A Roman representation of a woman playing the cithara (Villa Boscoreale, {{Circa|40–30}} BC).

File:LYCIAN LEAGUE, Cragus, Hemidrachm, reverse.jpg|Cithara on the reverse of a hemidrachm from Cragus (Lycian League).

File:Wall painting - Apollon seated with cithara - Rome (Palatine - house of Augustus) - Roma AdP 379982.jpg|Apollo Kitharoidos. Painted plaster, Roman artwork from the Augustan period.

File:Wall painting - concert - Herculaneum (ins or II - palaestra) - Napoli MAN 9021 (cropped for lyre).jpg|1st century AD, Herculaneum. Woman playing kithara; 2 straps are visible that holds the instrument up while she uses both hands to play (one blue, one yellow).

File:Orpheus2.jpg|Orpheus Mosaic in Rottweil

File:Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, RA, OM - Sappho and Alcaeus - Walters 37159.jpg|Alcaeus of Mytilene playing a cithara while Sappho listens in Sappho and Alcaeus by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1881; The Walters Art Museum).

File:George Lawrence Bulleid, 1905 - Girl with lute.jpg|Girl with Lute by George Lawrence Bulleid, 1905

File:A modern reconstruction of an ancient Greek kithara, in Kotsanas Museum of Ancient Greek Technology.jpg|A reconstruction of the so-called Apollo's kithara in Kotsanas Museum of Ancient Greek Technology, Athens, Greece.

{{columns-list|colwidth=15em|

• Ancient Greece
• Ancient Greek music
• Ancient Rome
• Barbiton
• Cythara
• Gittern, an instrument whose name is derived from Kithara
• Guitar
• Harp
• Kinnor
• Kitharode
• Lyre
• Phorminx
• Pandura
• Rotte
• Sitar
• Zither

}}

{{notelist}}

{{Reflist|25em}}

• {{cite book|last=Anderson|first=Warren D.|year=1994|title=Music and Musicians in Ancient Greece|isbn=0-8014-3083-6 |location=Ithaca, NY|publisher=Cornell University Press|url=https://archive.org/details/musicmusiciansin00ande}}
• {{cite book|last=Ciabattoni|first=Francesco|title=Dante's Journey to Polyphony|year=2010|location=Toronto, Buffalo and London|publisher=University of Toronto Press|isbn=9781442620230|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fCT7oAEACAAJ}}
• {{cite book|last1=Maas|first1=Martha|last2=Snyder|first2=Jane McIntosh|year=1989|title=Stringed Instruments of Ancient Greece|location=New Haven, CT|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-030003686-2}}
• {{cite journal|last=Segerman|first=Ephraim|title=A Short History of the Cittern|journal=The Galpin Society Journal|volume=52|year=1999|pages=77–107|doi=10.2307/842519|jstor=842519 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/842519|url-access=subscription}}
• {{cite journal|last=Vorreiter|first=Leopold|title=The Swan-Neck Lyres of Minoan-Mycenaean Culture|journal=The Galpin Society Journal|volume=28|year=1975|pages=93–97|doi=10.2307/841575 |jstor=841575 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/841575|url-access=subscription}}
• {{cite book|last=West|first=Martin Litchfield|author-link=Martin Litchfield West|year=1992|title=Ancient Greek Music|location=Oxford|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=0-19-814975-1}}

{{Commons category|Citharas}}

• {{cite book|last=Bundrick|first=Sheramy D.|year=2005|title=Music and Image in Classical Athens|location=New York|publisher=Cambridge University Press}}
• {{cite web|last=Hagel|first=Stefan|title=Ancient Greek Music|publisher=Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften|location=Vienna, Austria|access-date=2016-10-25|url=http://www.oeaw.ac.at/kal/agm}}
• {{Cite EB1911|last=Schlesinger|first=Kathleen|author-link=Kathleen Schlesinger|wstitle=Cithara|volume=6|pages=395—397}}
• {{cite web|title=The Kithara in Ancient Greece | Thematic Essay|series=Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History|publisher=The Metropolitan Museum of Art|access-date=2016-10-25|url=http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/kith/hd_kith.htm}}

• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6adj7Xoo9Us Peter Pringle demonstrates how a kithara worked]
• {{cite web|url=http://www.kerylos.fr/index_en.php|title=Ensemble Kérylos}} A music group directed by scholar Annie Bélis, dedicated to the recreation of ancient Greek and Roman music and playing instruments rebuilt on archaeological reference. In its recording D'Euripide aux premiers chretiens: musique de l'antiquité grecque et romaine, the band plays both Roman and Greek kitharas.

{{Greek musical instruments}}

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Category:Ancient Greek musical instruments

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Category:Sacred musical instruments