#Instruments like a lute skin

The bows used for music required a resonator, a hollowed object like a bowl, a gourd or a musician's mouth, in order to produce audible sound. He considered this evidence in support of the theory that the musical bow was ancestral to the pierced lute. He pointed out that the name for the Greek lute, pandûra was likely derived from pan-tur, a Sumerian word meaning 'small bow'. Sachs considered the musical bows important, however. One reason was that the oldest known musical bows were 10 feet long, useless for hunting, and that 'musical bows were not associated with hunters' beliefs and ceremonies'. Curt Sachs said that there was good reason not to consider hunters' bows as likely musical bows. Whether the bow in the cave illustration is a musical instrument or the hunting tool in a paleolithic hunt, musicologists have considered the idea that the bow could be a possible relative or ancestor to chordophones, the lutes lyres, harps and zither families. One interpretation of the 'magician-hunter' image considers his hunting-bow to be a musical bow, used as a single-stringed musical instrument. The artwork is confused, and those who are trying to reproduce the art in color have had to work to bring out legible images. His engraving showed a mysterious figure, a 'man camouflaged to resemble a bison', in the midst of a mass of herd-animals, 'herding the beasts and playing the musical bow'. 13,000 BC cave painting into a black-and-white lithograph engraving. Henri Breuil surveyed the Trois Frères caves in France and made an engraving that attempted to reproduce a c. In theory, families of musical instruments descend from the musical bow. These days, lute-family instruments are used worldwide.įigure on wall whose bow(?) has been thought of as possibly musical. Lute-family instruments penetrated from East and Southeast Asia through Central Asia and the Middle East, through North Africa, Europe and Scandinavia. This was overwhelmed by incoming instruments and Europeans developed whole families of lutes, both plucked and bowed. In the non-literate period, they apparently experimented with locally made instruments which were referenced in documents from the Carolingian Renaissance. Foreign sources came in through Byzantium, Sicily and Andalusia.

#Instruments like a lute skin

From these two, and from skin topped lutes known today as rubabs and plucked fiddles, instruments developed in Europe.Įuropeans had access to lutes in several ways. The short wood-topped lute moved east to China (as the pipa) south to India (as the Vina), and west to the Middle East, Africa and Europe as the Barbat and Oud. The short lute developed in Central Asia or Northern India in areas that had connection to Greece, China, India and the Middle East through trade and conquest. The lute spread eastward as well long lutes today are found everywhere from Europe to Japan and south to India. 1500 the lute had reached Egypt, through conquest, and it had reached Greece by 320 BC both through Egypt and eastern neighbors. The instrument spread among the Hittites, Elamites, Assyrians, Mari, Babylonians and Hurrians. The lute's existence in art was more plain between 2330–2000 BC (the 2nd Uruk period), when the art had sufficient detail to show the instrument clearly. The discovery of an apparent lute on an Akkadian seal, now in the British Museum, may have pushed the known existence of the plucked lute back to c. This date was based on the archaeological evidence available to him at that time. The lutes were pierced lutes long-necked lutes with a neck made from a stick that went into a carved or turtle-shell bowl, the top covered with skin, and strings tied to the neck and instrument's bottom.Ĭurt Sachs, a musical historian, placed the earliest lutes at about 2000 BC in his 1941 book The History of Musical Instruments. Lutes either rose in ancient Mesopotamia prior to 3100 BC or were brought to the area by ancient Semitic tribes. The lute family includes not only short-necked plucked lutes such as the lute, oud, pipa, guitar, citole, gittern, mandore, rubab, and gambus and long-necked plucked lutes such as banjo, tanbura, bağlama, bouzouki, veena, theorbo, archlute, pandura, sitar, tanbur, setar, but also bowed instruments such as the yaylı tambur, rebab, erhu, and the entire family of viols and violins.

Lutes are stringed musical instruments that include a body and 'a neck which serves both as a handle and as a means of stretching the strings beyond the body'.

Lute player with short-necked lute, far right. Hellenistic banquet scene from the 1st century AD, Hadda, Gandhara.