greek lyre

11-10-09 6:23 PM

of 53http://crab.rutgers.edu/~pbutler/greeklyre.html

GREEK LYREI'd made an Anglo-Saxon lyre at this point, and somebody asked if I could make an ancientGreek style lyre. I didn't really know much about it at the time, so I tentatively said surebased on some pictures of reconstructions he was trying for, and went about looking up theinformation.

I found two books that were most instructive on the topic. Almost all the information herewas taken from them:

Ancient Greek Music by M.L.West, Clerendon Press, Oxford, 1992. A very nice discussion ofpretty much all Greek musical instruments, a good primer on Greek music theory, and avery helpful selection of all existing Greek music, transcribed in modern notation. Thehistorical music selection in the video at the bottom of the page comes from West'sreconstruction.

Stringed Instruments of Ancient Greece by Martha Maas and Jane McIntosh Snyder, YaleUniversity Press, New Haven, 1989. Primarily a discussion of the art history of theinstruments, setting the many copious illustrations in context and providing commentaryon construction, depiction, use, and description. Not much discussion on the actual musicor music theory, but that's not it's goal. Very useful for lots of excellent images.

There are a number of different kinds of Greek lyres dating from the dark ages through the2nd and 3rd centuries CE and even later in to the Byzantine period. After a basic review ofthe information, I discovered they fall roughly into two categories: the box lyres and thebowl lyres.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The box lyres are best represented by the professional kithara instrument of the 8thcentury BCE onward. These were elaborately constructed instruments, very large with alarge wooden assembled box, curving arms, and a complex spring mechanism to tensionthe crossbar, and generally ornate decoration. They were made by professional luthiers inthe cities, and are much more than I wanted to deal with for this project. I also don't havethe means to do the metalwork required for their construction.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The bowl lyres come in two varieties, the chelys or "tortoise shell" lyre and the barbitos. Thechelys lyre is the older, "generic" Greek lyre seen in multiple example above. The barbitos isconstructed the same as the chelys lyre, but the arms are about one and a quarter to oneand a half times as long, and the pitch proportionately deeper. It was one of these types oflyre that I decided to try to reproduce.

The chelys (chelys means tortoise in Greek) lyre is considered the original lyre, and is themost pervasive, being used in a wide variety of music and by both men and women. Thefourth Homeric Hymn describes how the god Hermes invented the lyre, constructing it fromthe materials near to hand to the herdsman. The body he made from a tortoise shell,scraping it out and drilling holes in it. Two pieces of cane wood were fit like a cross in thebody of the shell. Two arms were thrust into the shell, braced in place by the cane bars, anda crossbar affixed to them. A skin was then stretched across the face of the body, and sevenstrings of sheep-gut were strung onto it. This becomes the base model of the lyre.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


Historical analysis and the pictures of the lyres (see below) suggest that the tortoiseregularly used was the testuda marginata native to Greece and having a very distinctiveblocked shell with high contrast coloring. In modern times the animals' shells measurearound 9-12 inches long and about 4-5 inches deep, so that, combined with the images,gives us some idea of the overall size of the instrument.

The arms of the instrument may have originally been made of horn (such as sabre or oryxhorns) or even ivory, but far more common appears to be wood. Several types of wood arementioned in the literature, including boxwood and holm-oak. There is a survivingfragmentary instrument in the British Museum called the Elgin Lyre, the arms of which aremade from sycamore. Strings were made from gut mostly, though twisted sinew, flax oreven horsehair may have been used.

The oldest depictions of the lyres (Minoan/Mycenaean) show instruments with as few asthree or four strings, but four or five were more common. By the seventh century BCE thenumber seems to have grown and gotten pretty fixed at seven strings. By commentary fromthe age, Simonides (c.556-468) is credited with adding an eighth string to the lyre family ofinstruments, Phrynis (c490-420) with adding a ninth, and Timotheus to the tenth andeleventh. These strings were added mostly to the professional kithara instrument and werethought to be something of a bastardization of the instrument rather than purely

11-10-09 6:23 PM


innovation (Pherecrates speaks of Timotheus raping the muse Music with his dozenstrings). The added strings weren't often seen on the smaller chelys style lyres, which eveninto the Roman period rarely had more than seven or eight strings (though pictorialexamples show as many as 12). The majority number of images suggests that seven wasthe standard.

This makes sense given the standard playing style. The instrument was more often playednot by plucking like a modern harp (which was used occasionally or for certain effects), butby strumming across all the strings, and dampening the ones the player doesn't want tosound with the fingers. The player holds the instrument in the left hand by a strap thatallows his hand to rest in the open space between the arms against the strings. The righthand holds a pick, often depicted as tied to the other arm of the lyre by a chord, and strumsacross the strings with the pick. A lot of the pictures show the player in the gesture ofhaving just struck across all the strings, with the right hand streched past the instrument,pick in its fingers.

Using that style of play, the hand only has five fingers, and the fingers can at best stop atotal of six strings (the thumb bracing across two). So having more than seven stringsmakes it difficult to strum across all of them without having too many sound at once.Having eight or nine strings means at least two or three are going to sound as notes unlessthe player is very careful not to strike all the strings when he or she plays. Descriptions ofthe music suggested that the melody was played as doubling to the vocal, with some othernotes added in for effect. One model suggests that the melody was plucked with the fingersdoubling the vocal line, and then the strums were used to fill the spaces between the vocalline, as bridges or as rhythmic beats. Apuleius describes a scultpure of a youth playing akithara "his left hand, fingers apart, sets the strings going, while the right hand moves theplectrum toward the kithara as if ready to strike it when the voice has paused in its song."Without getting into a length discussion of ancient Greek music theory, they tended not touse chords the same way we do in modern music. It was more like a bass note and a melodynote with the other strings providing a deadened rhythmic "thud." It also was used as arhythm instrument to accompany pipes. For examples of the different styles of play, see thevideo at the bottom of the page.

In doing the reconstruction, I wanted to take a look at a number of examples of theinstrument and how it looked, and then draw up some plans.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The first image from above - a red-figure cup by the artist Duris from the early fifth centuryBCE, presently in Berlin. These three examples show a nice base version of the instrumentfrom a couple of angles. First the body is the slightly oblong shape of the shell. The armsextend from the corners (sort of about where the front legs would be), and curve firstoutward wider than the width of the shell body, then gently inward to end about the widthof the body or slightly narrower. A crossbar is placed at about twice the length of the body.So if the body/shell is about ten inches long, the crossbar is roughly at about 20 inchesfrom the base of the body. The arms continue past the crossbar and are rounded points.The crossbar itself extends past the arms a short space as well. How the crossbar isattached is left somewhat vague. The front view of the instrument shows the crossbar infront of the arms, but the back view ALSO shows the crossbar in front of the arms, so eitherit is slotted over them, appearing both in front and behind, or the artist was lazy. The oneexisting side view we have doesn't clarify it much unfortunately. All three examples herehave seven strings. The strings are mounted to some kind of squarish tailpiece that sits onthe end of the instrument, run over a bridge on the lower half of the face (about 1/4 or 1/3up the face), and then procede uninterrupted to the crossbar, where they are wrapped

11-10-09 6:23 PM


around a piece of cloth around the crossbar and tied to perpendicular stick. How thetailpiece is attached is not depicted, and the bridge is pretty much just a straight line.

Titonis pursued by Eos, an Attic kalpis. Hillsborough Hearst 21. One and only good sideview, showing upcurve of the arms and how the arms emerge from the body. Crossbar isshown behind the arms. The bridge and tailpiece are out of frame.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


Man offering youth a gift of a rabbit on an Attic pelike. Athens 1413. Clean back view,showing a lip around the edge of the instrument that might be the skin wrapped around theedge of the shell. Note, in the constant confusion, that the crossbar is shown now in FRONTof the arms. The proportions of the instrument are consistant with the first image above, asare the normal seven strings.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


Orpheus attacked by Thracian woman on Attic lekythos. Boston 13.302. This view has acouple of interesting details. First is that the confusion of the crossbar in front of or behindthe arms continues with this artist, who puts it behind the lower arm but in front of theupper on. The bridge is particularly interesting, as the artist has attempted to show that ithas either feet (going down) or arms (coming up), placed narrower than the full width of thebridge but at the width of where the strings meet the bridge. Also the pick chord is shownclearly, with the plectrum held in the same hand as holding the instrument. Again a squaretailpiece indeterminately attached, and seven strings.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


Apollo at altar on Attic amphora. New York 07.286.78. Another clean image. Thisinstrument seems to have the arms not coming out of the front of the face, but from behindit, which is unusual. The arms are also a little longer in proportion than the otherdepictions, being closer to almost one and half times the body length to the crossbar. Thebridge is shown to have little feet at the corners. Again we have a square tailpiece and sevenstrings. The crossbar is one again unclean in position, behind the lower arm but drawnthrough the upper one. This also shows the plectrum very cleary in the players right hand,with the chord dangling from the end and tied to the lower arm in the picture. The wriststrap for the left hand is also shown attached to the lower arm, so that the instrument is"hanging" from his left hand and braced against his torso.

Given all of that, I decided to try to construct a chelys lyre. There were a couple of materialconsiderations though that would change the design a little bit from the historical.

First, using an actual tortoise shell would be problematic. First, the species of tortoiseoriginally used for these instruments is now endangered, and in general my vegan wife

11-10-09 6:23 PM


strongly objects to my using animal parts in the instruments. I didn't want to waste a lot ofreal and rare animal parts on experimenting with how to build with the actual shell, sodecided that I wouldn't use tortoise for the body, but would use something else instead. Ihad also toyed with the idea of using oryx horns for the arms, but again rejected that asbeing perhaps not in the best animal-friendly interests.

The two options that came to mind for the body then were wood and gourd. I'd recentlymade a couple of gourd instruments (a drum, rebab, and a saz), and thought that it mightwork nicely as a substitute. It had a natural feel, was light and relatively sturdy, and wasgenerally pretty quick and easy to work. Carving the bowl out of a piece of wood wouldrequire a very large and expensive piece, and would take a very long time given my limitedaccess to power tools.

The gourd, however, as sturdy as it might be isn't nearly as solid as tortoise shell. It wouldnot directly support the stress of the tension of the strings. So bracing the arms of the lyreagainst the gourd walls, and then using the end of the gourd as the tailpeg wouldn't work.The stress against arms would collapse the walls, and the end of the gourd would just snapoff with the string tension. As a compromise then I decided build the arms as runningthrough the gourd, with the tailpeg being the ends of the arms, and attaching the gourd asa resonator to the arms. Thus the arms end up as a single piece "yoke" instead of the twoarms with two brace crossbars in the original historical design. This does change the designof the instrument in a couple of ways. First, the arms would then end up being far moreparallel to the plane of the face of the instrument, rather than curving out away from it, asthey would if they were jammed into the shell. This changes the shape of the instrument abit, and also means that the bridge is going to be lower. It also means that the resonation ofthe strings is transmitted to the body just through the skin and not through the arms aswell as it might have in the historical construction. The historical tailpieces were justhooked onto the end of the shell with bent wires, the shell itself being strong enough towithstand the tension. The gourd is not, so I will have a kind of tailpeg of wood sticking alittle out the end of the gourd to accommodate the tailpiece and the strain it will put on thestructure of the instrument.

The last technical problem was how to attach the skin to the body. Nobody seems tomention this detail anywhere, and the pictures do not show a clean side view to see how thejoint might be accomplished. No ropes are shown on the backsides of the instrumenthowever, so they were not tied on, which lives nailed on or glued. I'm not horriblycomfortable with trying to figure out how to cleanly glue the thing on, so I decided to use arow of tacks to hold the head to the body.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


From all of that, I came up with a set of basic plans. The individual who wanted theinstrument wanted one with eight rather than seven strings, so I added on the eighth string

11-10-09 6:23 PM


to the plans.

It seemed pretty good, so I went about acquiring gourd about 10 inches or so long and 4-5inches or so deep, to match the rough dimensions of the tortoise shell as described.

This gourd is pretty big (about 10 inches across), and was acquired from the Amish inLancaster County, PA. For some reason, that was NOT where I was expecting to find goodgourds.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The body of the lyre will actually be only half the gourd (the other half probably becoming abarbitos, but that is another story). I draw a line around the gourd, lining up the stem andbase carefully.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


Using a very small saber saw, I carefully cut the gourd in half. This gourd was obviously pre-dried and had it's outer shell rather cleaned up. The inside however is still needs a bit ofcleaning. There are a number of seeds, and much of the fibrous soft inner tissue that formschambers for the seeds. All that is quickly removed with a broad head scoup chisel.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


Which basically gets us down to the "wood" of the gourd, looking something like this.

The wood of the gourd is then thinned down and smoothed out so that very little to none of

11-10-09 6:23 PM


the "flesh" remains. The gourd at this point is about 1/16th to 1/8th inch thick in mostplaces. I leave the top edge closer to a 1/4 inch thick to support the skin head.

This is the skin head - it's a thin piece of goatskin about 22 inches in diameter. I need itlarge enough to fully cover the gourd opening with about a 3 inch fringe all around. Thehead will initially be tied on and tightened with ropes. Once I've gotten enough tension on it,the head will then be tacked down all around the perimeter of the gourd, and the excesstrimmed off. That is why it's starting out so large.

The remaining structuring elements of the lyre were constructed out of wood. Here I'vedecided to use the last usable bits of the cherry board that made two of the citoles and apochette. The arms are drawn onto a paper template, which is then traced onto the wood.The crossbar will be cut out of the remainder below.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


Several hours with my new japanese saw (SAMURAI SAW!), and the arms and crossbar havebeen roughed out. The two arms will meet in the body of the body of the instrument, andthe end of the arms will form the endpin to which the tailpiece is attached.

The gourd placed onto the arms to see how the layout will mostly go.

Next I shape down the arms. If I had a band saw this would be pretty simple. As it is, I use a

11-10-09 6:23 PM


saw to "comb" cut the wood, so that I can chisel off the undesired bits more quickly.

The completed roughed out arm. This is then repeated with the other arm.

The two roughed arms are matched up and the joint between marked cleanly.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The gourd body is then laid on it to mark the points where it intersects the arms on thebackside. The idea will be to thin the arms from behind (so they are flush with the top) whilethinning the yolk from above (so it is not in contact with the skin head).

The arms are marked in pencil (you can see the greyed out areas to be removed in the neararm). This shot also shows the chisel work that went into shaping the arms. On the far arm it

11-10-09 6:23 PM


really looks like rough wood bark furrows!

The lower section of the arm is sawn off, while the area to be hollowed out (and the taperedend of the arm) is comb-cut to be removed with the chisels. This is done for both arms.

Both arms have now had the hollowing done, and the two parts are lined up to make surethe joint is still clean.

Now that the full basic shape has been determined, I use a hand planer like a spoke shave,and round off the arms into an oval cross-section. The sides, top and bottom of each of theyoke areas is also cleaned up. There were a couple of small knots in the arms just at the

11-10-09 6:23 PM


bend in the arm, which made it a little difficult to clean up, but doesn't look like it willweaken them any.

With both pieces now filed cleanly to shape, the joint between them is cleaned up until it isnearly perfect and solid.

The two arms are glued together and clamped. This required some creative clamping,including using a couple of small scrapwood wedges to keep the pressure even over thewhole curve of the joining.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


With the arms completed, now I start on the crossbar. The crossbar is a roughly cut piecefrom the original chunk. It's not particularly square even from the initial cutting out.

Using the chisels and hand planes, the crossbar is squared off at approximately the rightinitial size. This takes a while.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The crossbar is then laid across the arms about two inches from the top of the arms andcentered. Both the arms and the cross are marked in pencil where they intersect with eachother so the joinery slots can be cut. The overhang on the crossbar is a little long, so I'llprobably cut it down. Originally I had the crossbar at three inches down from the top of thearms, but that had assumed a "rounder" gourd. Since the gourd is more tapered, I will haveto move the bridge up a little higher on the body to get good resonance from it, and that inturn, to maintain string length, means moving up the arm a little bit. Since the armsconverge, the crossbar is now a lot longer than it needs to be (as it was originally spanninga longer opening).

The slots for the cross-bar have been cut out and cleaned up. They are about 2/5th thethickness of the arm.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The crossbar is test-fit into the slot, and the thickness noted. The crossbar is a little toothick in cross-section, so needs to be overall thinned down.

The slots where the arms intersect are marked in pencil.

Before I cut the slots, however, I shorten the ends of the crossbar, and thin it down a bitmore. This has been planed down to the appropriate thickness and cut down to the rightlength.

The slots for the arms have been cut out and tested (and shaved and tested and shaved andtested) until the fit is good. You can also see the pen markings for the other shaping of this.The ends will be tapered and the central area thinned where the pegs will pierce it.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The ends have been rough cut, and the central area comb-cut to be chiseled out.

The crossbar has been chiseled down, and all the filework on it done to smooth out theshaping. It's ready to be attached to the arms.

Gluing and clamping the crossbar to the arms. This is much easier to clamp than the twoarms together.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


And now we have a particularly weird shaped yoke. My wife was commenting that it lookslike a plow-yoke of some kind. But it is now ready to have the gourd body attached.

The gourd is laid onto the yoke, and basic slots cut to fit the yoke into.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The yoke is test fit into the slots, and then both are reshaped, and retested, etc.

The final gourd slotted.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The arms final shaped - the tail end has been rounded and shaped to be the "endpeg" towhich the tailpiece will be attached. The arms have a slight raised notch against which thewall of the gourd sits to hold it firmly in place.

Final fitting of the gourd and arms - the arms are now flush with the top of the gourd. Thereis slight gapping around the arms that I might fill with wood slivers.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


Before I glue the gourd into place, there are two other things to do to the yoke. First, it'seasier to brace the piece while it's still flat, so I mark where the pegholes will be.

And drill the starter holes for the pegs. These will be tapered with the reamer once I finishthe pegs, but it's much easier to drill the holes straight when I can brace the piece flat.

The last thing to do before attaching the body is to sand the whole yoke smooth. Can't reallysee this so not really any picture, but the yoke is much easier to handle without the gourdattached for sanding purposes.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


After final sanding, the yoke is then oiled down with finish, as this is basically easier to dowithout the gourd in place.

The slots in the gourd weren't a particularly tight fit, so I added small wooden wedges intothe opening to get a snugger fit, and to close the gapping. These were glued into place.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The gourd is then finally sanded, stained, and finished. The original idea had been to stainit green like the faerie saz, but the green dye did not take to this gourd at all for somereason, being very streaky and uneven (I did a test on the other half, not the half that I usedfor the instrument). The other color I originally was going to use on the faerie lyre was aburgundy red (which looked nice on the test piece there), so I decided to take that routewith this one. It's a rich dark red, and blends very nicely with the ruddy cherry wood. Withthe oil finish on it, it almost looks like leather.

The finished gourd is then matched up and glued into the body of the finished yoke. I didn't

11-10-09 6:23 PM


need to use clamps here, as it was a rather snug fit.

Once that was dry, the top edge was leveled and cleaned up, so that there was a smoothcontinuous edge to mount the head to.

Next part is the "soundboard" which in this case is a thin piece of goatskin. I first traced thegourd body outline on the skin, and give it a two inch margin all around.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The idea is to tie the head onto the gourd, stretch it into place, tack the edges and then cutoff the fringe. To tie the head on, I need to create a slightly firmer edge, as this skin israther thin and will tear under the pressure of stretching. So I have a thick hemp string thatwill be laced to the edge of the skin, and then the tensioning ropes will be laced behind thatedge to tighten the head. To do this, I have to make a lot of lacing holes in the head (about140 or so).

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The skin is then soaked in warm water to make it flexible (it's like a wet rag then), and I lacethe thicker rope into the edge.

The finished skin with edge lacing (the paper towels are there because the skin is still wet).I'm now ready to mount it to the gourd.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The head has to be laced to something, so I have this brace that I used for the head of thefaerie saz. This is a double strand of thick wire, around which has been wrapped the heavystring. It works as a good anchor, and can be shaped to match the form of the gourd.

The head is then positioned against the gourd, and I start lacing it up.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The lacing is pretty much done at this point, pulling the skin tight against the gourd. Therestill was a fair amount of tearing, but it didn't prove too much problem. If I do this again,though, I'll probably only lace the sides to the ring, and just "corset" the bottom tip, as Iended up having to do that anyway to get the stretch right.

That's allowed to dry, and it tightens a bit more as it dries. This is what it looks like nowfrom the top. The duck tape is to hold the flap over that arm that started to tear, and Iwanted it to dry in shape.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


Once it had dried more or less thoroughly, it is tightned a little bit more by driving woodenwedges under the strings. That was as tight as I could get the head without significantfurther tearing.

With the head on as tightly as possible, the bronze tacks are then used to hold it into place.Each tack first has a small pilot hole drilled with the finger drills, and then is tapped lightlyinto place to keep from splitting the gourd.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The tacks go all around the top edge, carefully pulling the skin tightly over the arms and tailof the yoke.

Once all the tacks are in place, the tensioning part is cut away with a sharp knife. I willsalvage the tightening ring from this - otherwise the rest has to be cut up to get it off.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


That leaves the head clean on the body, with the skin ending just below the edge of thetacks, neat and clean. The overhang on the arms and tail is trimmed back as well.

The body is now done. I'm ready to start with the fittings for the instrument.

The fittings for this instrument are the pegs, tailpiece, and bridge. All were kind ofexperimental, as I hadn't made this kind of instrument before. The pegs were probably

11-10-09 6:23 PM


going to end up too close to turn easily by hand, so like with the Anglo-Saxon lyre, they willbe square headed and will be tightened with a key. The tailpiece I'm going to raise a littlehigh. The original ones were pretty much a hollow bar with a heavy bronze or copper wirerunning through it and "hooking" onto the edge of the turtle shell. The gourd couldn't takethat pressure, so it's being looped into the tailpiece, though I will probably use bronze orcopper wire rather than tailgut. The bridge should have broad feet (soas not to puncturethrough the skin head), and otherwise will be about an inch tall. The strings originally werenatural gut, but for a variety of reasons (from cost to stability) will here be nylgut. Thedesired tuning will be a diatonic scale from C below middle C to middle C.

These are the spalt maple pen blanks that will be used for the pegs. Unfortunately, inturning then, the spalting ended up creating fracture lines, and pegs kept breaking givenany pressure. So I decided spalt maple = bad for pegs!

11-10-09 6:23 PM


So, instead I went back to the olive wood. Probably a better choice anyway for a Greek lyre,as olive wood was obviously local and common. These were pen blanks I had left over fromthe cantiga citole (where I made the pegs from this wood).

The blanks are measured out, then I rough carve out the center spoke ("gerbil barbelles!)and then put them on the mini-lathe I have. The turned centers are then cut in have to maketwo small mallets.

All eight mallets are now done - the grain patterning on the olive wood is quite wild andneat.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


I then carve one master peg. The head is thinned down, and the peg shaft tapered with thepeg shaver. This will then be used as the model for the remaining pegs.

The master peg is fit into the crossbar using the peg reamer, to make sure I'm happy withthe seating, depth, and clearance around it. All is well, so I go on to duplicate it with theother pegs.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


All eight pegs are completed and fit into place in the crossbar. They still need to be drilledfor the strings, but that will be done when I'm actually ready for the setup.

Next is the tailpiece. That and the bridge will be made out of the hard maple (I thoughtabout using olive wood, but I didn't have a big enough clean chunk in the scrap I had, andthe maple is considerably lighter, probably generating a better sound). Here is the roughcut out piece.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The tailpiece completed, with holes for the strings and tailwire drilled.

Next up was the bridge. My original measurements indicated an inch high bridge.Unfortunately, I forgot that there were THREE rises - first, the skin was going to stretch alittle, and be pushed downward, losing probably a quarter of an inch. The crossbar hadanother 1/4-3/8 of an inch rise over the level of the top of the skin. The tailpiece had a 1/2inch rise or so, so I had originally calculated an inch high bridge. Unfortunately, I forgot thatthe PEGS also add a rise, and that was just enough to have the test string lift off the bridge.So this is actually bridge number two, which is here about two inches tall, though I willprobably cut it down a little. It is made from the same maple piece as the tailpiece.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The finished bridge. The idea is to make it as thin and light as possible where it intersectsthe strings, but to have a rather broad surface contact with the skin so it does not puncturethrough it, or stretch it too much at one point. So the the feet are about 1/2 inch wide andabout one and a half inches long each. That still stretches into the skin, but does not appearto be threatening to puncture it.

The last thing to do before actual stringing was that I needed to make the key to tighten thepegs. This was made out of a scrap of the cherry that I used for the arms and crossbar of thelyre.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


The finished key. It's a simple "I" joint to connect the top crossbar with the shaft. The shaftwas drilled out, and then the opening squared off with the mini-chisels until it fit the masterpeg snugly. Finally it was sanded and oiled.

We're now ready for the actual stringing. The first thing to do is to test to make sureeverything fit and the heights and positioning is good. So using nylon cord, I tie on the

11-10-09 6:23 PM


tailpiece and then run two strings up the middle to test the fit of the bridge, spacing, etc.That is all good (with the second bridge - this is the step where the first bridge failed), so it'son to the actual strings.

The tailpiece is held on not with tailgut, but with wire. Here I'm using red bronze, which isbronze with a very high copper content (I had some I had used to string a wire-strung harp).I doubled it up through the holes, and pulled it as tight as possible. I know there will besome stretching, but it seemed pretty solid.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


Now I add the actual strings. The strings historically would have been made of gut, but hereI'm using synthetic strings called "nylgut" acquired from Aquilla USA. They have similaraccoustic properties of gut, take a while to stretch out to pitch, but once there are "set" theyare much more stable than natural gut, and are less prone to breaking. I start stringing inthe middle and work my way outward, to keep the tension even and not torque or warp anyof the parts in the process. The tuning for this will be C below middle C going diatonicallyup a C major scale to middle C.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


After putting on all the strings and tightening them up to pitch, I discovered that thetailwire was stretching a bit too much, and the tailpiece was carving into the bottom of theskin and slipping forward. I undid everything, and redid the tailwire with three passes ratherthan two. That seemed to do the trick, and it hasn't stretched too far this time.

11-10-09 6:23 PM


11-10-09 6:23 PM


The finished instrument. It came out surprisingly well, and the tone is very warm and deep.It doesn't have the "twang" I'd expect from the skin head (no banjo sound), and issurprisingly loud (louder than my Anglo-Saxon lyre, which is tuned a fifth higher, butotherwise has the same string length).

And finally, a short video of me playing the instrument. The first piece is from West'sreconstruction of a Hymn. The others are freeform playing, just demonstrating techniqueand sound.

greek lyre

Documents