MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS - online book

The History And Development Of Musical Instruments From The Earliest Times.

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	86                     MUSICAL INSTRUMEXTS* There are some early monuments of Christian art dating from the fourth century in which the lyre is represented. In one of them Christ is depicted as Apollo touching the lyre. This instrument occurs at an early period in western Europe as used in popular pastimes. In an Anglo-saxon manuscript of the ninth century in the British museum (Cleopatra C- VIII.) are the figures of two gleemen, one playing the lyre and the other a double-pipe. M. de Coussemaker has published in the " Annales Archeologiques " the figure of a crowned personage playing the lyre, which he found in a manuscript of the ninth or tenth century in the library at Angers. The player twangs the strings with his fingers, while the Anglo-saxon gleeman before mentioned uses a plectrum. Cith.ira was a name applied to several stringed instruments greatly vary­ing in form, power of sound, and compass. The illustration represents a cithara from a manuscript of the ninth century, formerly in the library of the great monastery of St. Blasius in the Black Forest. When in the year 1768 the monas­tery was destroyed by fire, this valuable book perished in the flames; fortunately ,the cele­brated abbot Gerbert possessed tracings of the illustrations, which were saved from destruction. He published them, in the year 1774, in his work " De cantu et musica sacra." Several

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