Ancient Roman Music

LUTE

• The lute, the true forerunner of the guitar (kithara), is considered a medieval instrument but was played by the ancient Romans. The image above was from the late Roman era in Constantinople, perhaps 500 AD. The Roman lute had three strings and was not as popular as the lyre or the kithara, but was easier to play.

LUTE

• The lute, the true forerunner of the guitar (kithara), is considered a medieval instrument but was played by the ancient Romans. The image above was from the late Roman era in Constantinople, perhaps 500 AD. The Roman lute had three strings and was not as popular as the lyre or the kithara, but was easier to play.

LUTE

• The Egyptian lute predates the Greek lute and is basically the same except more slender. It also had "f-holes" straddling the strings, allowing the frets to reach down to the bridge.

ORGAN

• Organs powered by bellows were commonly played at the games, and also in more serious settings.

ORGAN

• The Roman organ, called a hydraulicis, was often played at Colisseum events where gladiators fought and criminals were publicly executed. Perhaps they even had a version of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" or some crowd favorites. In the mosaics below the organ is played along with horns resembling French horns and military style trumpets. Like most things Roman, the organ came orignally from the Greeks. It is possible the Greeks got it from the Hebrews.

ORGAN• the organ would appear to have

between 8 and 12 pipes. The Roman organ was powered by a bellows and pumped by foot.

• The Roman organ was also played in more respectable settings such as the chamber style music being played by the ladies in the image below. In this image the organ has many more pipes, perhaps 30, but the smaller pipes may extend in a double row. These pipes are clearly smaller in proportion to the Colisseum organ and the assembly more delicate overall. The large box underneath surely contains a bellows and perhaps even an air bladder. In this setting the bellows may have been operated separately.

ORGAN

• The ancient Jewish organ called the magrepha in the Talmud predates the Roman organ, possibly by several centuries. The magrepha had ten pipes with ten holes each and could produce one hundred different notes, according to Samuel. It was normally played in synagogue services.

• The Roman organ had levers or keys that operated flaps over the holes. The larger organs may have had arrays of flaps to create

chords with a single movement.

ORGAN

• Vitruvius provided diagrams of the hydraulicis like the one above and explained their design and operation

KITHARA

• The kithara, the "guitar" of the ancient Romans, was the premier musical instrument and was played in both serious and popular music.

KITHARA

• The Kithara was the premier musical instrument of ancient Rome and was played both in popular music and in serious forms of music. Larger and heavier than a lyre, the kithara was a loud, sweet, and piercing instrument with precision tuning ability. It was said some players could make it cry.

KITHARA

• From Kithara comes our word guitar, and though the guitar more directly evolved from the lute, the same mystique surrounds the guitar idols of today as it did for the virtuoso kithara players, the citharista, and popular singers of ancient Rome.

KITHARA

• Like other instruments, it came originally from Greece and Greek images portray the most elaborately constructed kitharas.

KITHARA

• It was considered that the gods of music, the muses and Apollo, gave kithara players their gift to mesmerize listeners.

LYRE

• Perhaps the most ancient of stringed instruments, the lyre appears in endless forms, in all settings, and everywhere from Greece, to Troy, to Persia and Egypt.

LYRE

• The lyre dates back beyond the Romans to the Greeks but its actual origin is uncertain. It is first mentioned in Homer's Iliad in which he describes Achilles making and playing a lyre with a tortoise shell soundbox.

LYRE

• The lyre had seven strings and appears in several varieties, each with a distinct Greek name. Some had no soundbox and Roman lyres sometimes had wooden soundboxes. No sharp distinction exists between a large lyre with a wooden soundbox and a kithara.

LYRE

• The lyre is most often depicted in classical settings and in the theatre. In Greek art it also commonly occurs in celebrations and orgies. The Spartans were often skilled players of the lyre and other instruments, when they were not engaged in battle.

LYRE

• The lyre, not a fiddle, was the actual instrument Nero played as he watched the common people's housing districts go up in flames. Nero was fond of singing in the baths and it was said that he "regularly murdered the songs of Menicrates." Menicrates was one of the star musical performers of the times.

LYRE

• The lyre was often played to accompany popular songs and poetry and from this instrument comes the word lyric.

FLUTES

• The most ancient tonal musical instrument of all, flutes appear throughout Etruscan, Greek, and Roman, art. They most commonly appear in the form of the twin reeds.

FLUTES

• and Greeks since antiquity. In the image above is an Etruscan youth playing the twin reeds, the most The flute was one of the most popular Roman instruments, but it had been played by the Etruscans common type of flute.

FLUTES

• The flute most often appears in ancient art in the form known as twin reeds, but recorder style flutes, as shown in the Greek vase below, are not uncommon.

FLUTES

• he art of the twin reeds is certainly lost as there are no twin reed players today. The two flutes would seem not to be joined, but simply held together while playing. How these musicians could have held the flutes and simultaneously played them with their fingers is difficult to imagine.

FLUTES

• In the image above left from Pompeii, the fellow playing the twin reeds has his left foot on a box or device that may be a percussive metronome of some sort.

FLUTES

• The flute is most certainly the most ancient tonal instrument of all. If we included whistles as single-note flutes then they clearly date back to over 20,000 BC. The bone flute shown below was found in Athens but is missing the mouthpiece, which most likely contained a reed.

TYMPANI

• The tympani, or tambourine, appears everywhere that celebrations, theatre, or dancing is illustrated

TYMPANI

• Tympani, or tambourines, were common anywhere there was celebration. They were a favorite for dancing in the streets and no Bacchante would be seen without one.

TYMPANI

• Dancing girls at dinner parties and street bands often played the tambourine for rhythm in place of the much-heavier drums.

TYMPANI

• The image of a tympanum laying on the floor was a metaphor for the previous night's celebration. In association with theater masks it symbolized the arts. In some images it symbolizes the joy of religious ritual.

TRUMPETS

• Trumpets and French horns appear both in the military, parade, and in band-style settings.

TRUMPETS

• The Romans seem to have had a variety of trumpets, including bronze military trumpets and Frech Horns, that were used in various settings including triumphs, celebrations, theatre performance, and games at the Coliseum and the Circus Maximus. Trumpeteers were known as tubicines from tuba, meaning trumpet and canere, meaning to play. The trumpeteer was also called a buccinator. Horn-blowers were known as cornicines. The trumpeteer was known as The cornetists were called liticines. When classes were called to gather for an assembly, the cornetists blowing the horn or cornet was known as a classicus.

PANPIPES

• Named after Pan, the panpipes were a familiar and ancient sound to the Romans, who felt that the talent of musicians was inspired by Pan and the muses.

PANPIPES

• The panpipes were a uniquely Roman instrument, and probably date back to the Etruscans. Pan, the "country" god of panpipe playing, (and other mischief) is tied to the rustic agricultural origins of the Latin people.

PANPIPES• Notice the young man with the

panpipes is styled as Pan, the mythical god who inspires musical creativity. He is not yet playing but is watching the lyre player to carefully catch his cue as he slowly raises the pipes to his lips.

• She has the look of a master musician, serious and focused. As she plucks a gentle melody that flows down to the lower strings she steps lightly, signaling the cue for the panpipes at which she will then repeat her melody as the pipes join in harmony.

• On the left the flute player listens and waits with twin reeds, an instrument that will add high notes in counterpoint to the panpipes. On the next cue she will join in with the third part of the harmony, and then they will repeat and fade.

HARP

• The harp, like the lyre and the lute, dates back beyond Greece to the ancient Egyptians

HARP

• The harp is among the most ancient of musical instruments and shows up prominently in Egyptian and Greek paintings. It was often played in combination with lyres, lutes, flutes or pipes, percussive instruments, and accompanied vocals and dancing. It was also common in religious ceremonies at the various temples, and was used at the games during holidays.

DRUMS

• Drums and percussion instruments like castanets were common in dancing styles of music.

DRUMS

• Drums and percussion instruments like tympani and castanets, the Egyptian sistrum, and brazen pans, served various musical and other purposes in ancient Rome, including backgrounds for rhythmic dance, celebratory rites like those of the Bacchantes, military uses, hunting (to drive out prey), and even for the control of bees in apiaries. Some Roman music was distinguished for its having a steady beat, no doubt through the use of drums and the percussive effects of clapping and stamping. Egyptian musicians often kept time by snapping the fingers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

www.personal.psu.edu/users/w/x/wxk116/muse/