Ancient Greek harps

Psalterion
Art from Greek vase showing a woman playing triangular frame-harp
Woman playing triangular frame-harp, a psaltērion or trigōnon, in red-figure pottery from Apulia, ca. 320–310 BC C. Anzi (British Museum).
String instrument
Other names
Classification plucked string instrument
Hornbostel–Sachs classification322
  • 322.1 Open harps – The harp has no pillar.
  • 322.2 Frame harps – The harp has a pillar
    (Harps, the plane of the strings lies perpendicular to the resonator's surface; the harp has a pillar.)
DevelopedAncient Greece with possible input from Egypt and nearby Asia

The psalterion (Greek ψαλτήριον)[7] is a stringed, plucked instrument, an ancient Greek harp. Psalterion was a general word for harps in the latter part of the 4th century B.C.[8] It meant "plucking instrument".[8]

In addition to their most important stringed instrument, the seven-stringed lyre, the Greeks also used multi-stringed, finger-plucked[9] instruments: harps. The general name for these was the psalterion.[10] Ancient vase paintings often depict – almost always in the hands of women – various types of harps. Names found in written sources include pektis, trigonos, magadis, sambuca, epigonion. These names could denote instruments of this type.

Unlike the lyres, the harp was rarely used in Greece. It was seen as an "outside instrument" from the Orient. It also touched on Greek social mores, being used mainly by women, both upper-class women as well as hetaerae entertainers.[3] There was a group of women known as psaltriai, female pluckers of the instrument who could be hired for parties.[11] Anacreon, poet of drinking and love (and infatuation, disappointment, revelry, parties, festivals, and observations of everyday people), sang of playing the Lydian harp and pektis in his works.[3]

The "most important" harps were the psaltêrion, the mágadis and the pēktis.[3] The Latin equivalent of the word, psalterium, has been the name of many-stringed box zithers or board zithers since the Middle Ages.

  1. ^ McKinnon, James W. (1984). "Psalterium, Psaltery". In Sadie, Stanley (ed.). The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 3. pp. 151, 153.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Grove was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ a b c d Cite error: The named reference Sachs1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ McKinnon, James W. (1984). "Pēktis". In Sadie, Stanley (ed.). The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 3. p. 30.
  5. ^ McKinnon, James W. (1984). "Magadis". In Sadie, Stanley (ed.). The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 2. pp. 592–593.
  6. ^ McKinnon, James W. (1984). "Sambuca". In Sadie, Stanley (ed.). The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Vol. 3. p. 288.
  7. ^ "ψαλ-τήριον, τό" [Psalter, to]. Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon. stringed instrument, psaltery, harp, 'τρίγωνα ψ' ('trígona' triangular)
  8. ^ a b West 1992, p. 74
  9. ^ "ψάλλω" [Chant or Sing]. Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon. psalló = 'to pluck an instrument with the hands or fingers'
  10. ^ Barker 1989, p. 16.
  11. ^ West 1992, p. 74.