A large lyre with wooden soundboard (it is classified as a Chordophone). When the term was first used in ancient Greece, it mostly referred to the large flat-based lyre – that shown on Attic vase paintings of the period c625–400 bce; this instrument is now usually known as the ‘concert’ kithara (Winnington-Ingram, 14; West, 50). The term has also been used more broadly in modern scholarly literature to designate a variety of large lyres, and has even been applied to large flat-based lyres outside Greece (see M. Duchesne-Guillemin: ‘L’animal sur la cithare: nouvelle lumière sur l’origine sumérienne de la cithare grecque’, Acta iranica, ix, 1984, pp.129–41). In addition to the concert kithara there are the ‘Thamyras’ and ‘Italiote’ kitharas (see below) and the ‘cylinder’ kithara (see Lyre, §2(ii)).
From the late 7th century bce the concert kithara was the instrument associated in the visual arts with the god Apollo. The kithara is the Greek version of the various flat-based wooden box lyres known much earlier in Egypt and Asia Minor; Strabo noted that it was often called ‘Asiatic’, an adjective in fact applied to the kithara in the 5th century bce. Its distinctive shape is discernible in a Cypriote-Geometric style vase, in the Nicosia Museum, dating from about 900 bce from Kaloriziki (see Lyre, fig. 4d ), and can be seen in Greek vase paintings as early as the late 8th century; but the word kithara, a later form of the Homeric word kitharis, is not found until the beginning of the 5th century and is used relatively infrequently until after about 425 bce.
The term kitharis appears only a few times in the Iliad and Odyssey, and in most cases seems to mean lyre playing in general (as in the statement that kitharis and song are gifts of the gods); phorminx is the word commonly used when a specific instrument is picked up and played. In the Archaic period, when Apollo was gradually less often represented with the phorminx and more frequently with the kithara, the words kitharis and phorminx were both used in connection with his lyre playing; but well into the 5th century, writers continued to prefer to call Apollo’s instrument the phorminx.
In the few 7th-century representations of the kithara most of the details of its construction and fittings are already clear: it is a large instrument with a soundbox that tapers slightly towards its flat base; it has a crossbar with knobs at the ends, and it usually has seven strings wound over leather strips (kollopes) on the crossbar. The tops of the arms rise wide and straight above the crossbar, while curving outwards below it, where their inner edges are sculpted in an intricate design. The player supports the instrument with a sling tied around his left wrist and around the outer arm of the instrument, its free ends hanging loose (in later paintings these long strands sometimes seem to be a separate sash). In his right hand he holds a plectrum attached with a cord to the base of the instrument. A 6th-century marble relief at Delphi provides evidence for the surprising depth of kithara soundboxes: in this side view the players’ left arms lie over bulging soundboxes that grow shallower only towards the base. Of the kithara’s accoutrements only one is not seen until the 6th century: the long, elaborately patterned and often fringed cloth that hangs down behind it and may be attached to one of the arms. Whether it served a protective purpose or was merely decorative is not known, but of the other lyres only the Thracian kithara (see below) has such a cloth.
While it is possible that a few vase paintings made before about 525 bce represent mortal performers or legendary figures such as Orpheus and Amphion (see Amphion (i)), most of them show Apollo, who appears in processions, presides at the birth of Athena or walks beside the chariot of Athena or Dionysus. Between 525 and 500 bce the kithara appears more than any other instrument, especially in paintings on amphoras and water jars in the older black-figure style. These paintings often depict Apollo accompanying chariot processions, particularly wedding processions. Another kithara player seen in black-figure paintings, Heracles, is often portrayed as a contestant, although he wears his traditional lion-skin garb rather than the formal costume of the Kitharode, and plays in the presence of Athena and sometimes other gods.
On vases in the new red-figure style, mortal kithara players, mostly contestants or players in sacrificial processions, are not uncommon, although mythological scenes are still far more frequent. In one commonly found scene, Apollo stands with his kithara at an altar and holds out a shallow drinking dish that his sister Artemis fills from a pitcher. He accompanies chariot processions celebrating weddings, or Heracles’ introduction to Olympus, and is often portrayed among other gods.
There are almost no representations of a kithara-playing Apollo with women identified as Muses until about 425 bce; when Apollo is accompanied by one or two pairs of unidentified women playing krotala (clappers), they may represent not Muses but maenads, female followers of Dionysus. The kithara seems to have had some connection to the cult of Dionysus, for there is a large number of paintings in both red- and black-figure style in which a satyr, sometimes accompanied by krotala-playing maenads, plays the kithara in the presence of Dionysus.
The kitharode or singer to the kithara, a highly trained or professional musician, always male, who wore a distinctive formal costume, stood while he played (see illustration; performers on the other lyres sometimes played seated). He held his instrument upright, using his left elbow to press it to his side. Since his left wrist was in the sling that helped support the instrument, the movement of his left hand was restricted; but it was used to pluck the strings between thumb and first finger or middle finger, or to dampen the strings or touch them lightly to produce harmonics. Both kinds of hand position are visible in 5th-century vase paintings, although it is not possible to tell which strings are being touched.
The kitharist (kitharistēs; Lat. citharista, fidicen: ‘player of the kithara’) is typically shown posed with his right hand holding a plectrum near or just beyond the outer edge of the instrument, as though he has just completed an outward motion across the strings (probably not a gentle strum: the works of Aristophanes provide two onomatopoeic words imitating kithara sound, ‘toplatotrat’ and ‘trettanelo’, both with hard ‘t’ sounds that suggest a more percussive striking).
Several references of the 4th century and later mention psilokitharistikē, ‘bare’ kithara playing, apparently an elaborate kind of solo playing (the only kind documented) invented in the 6th century; prizes for it were awarded at the Panathenaia. It seems to have had only a limited role.
Kitharists tuned their instruments, not by turning the knobs at the ends of the crossbar (which seem to be merely decorative), but by adjusting one of the kollopes around the crossbar with the thumb and first two fingers of the right hand. A pin possibly called the strobilon secured each string and its kollops, and no doubt helped to turn them. The player may have sat or, if standing, lifted his knee to support the instrument while he tuned.
Another form of the flat-based lyre, called by modern scholars the Thracian or Thamyras kithara, has some of the features of the standard kithara: knobs, the usual fittings and a patterned cloth hanging behind it (a Thracian zigzag-stripe pattern seems to have been favoured). But its arms remain narrow below the crossbar, often have small bumps or ridges all along both sides and do not share the highly sculpted design of the inner edges of the standard kithara (except in an instance where the two instruments have been conflated – an indication that this instrument was indeed thought of as a kithara). Its soundbox is broad and rounded in a convex curve at the top, where there is often an ornamental border, and the lower corners of the soundbox typically have quarter-circle indentations.
All known representations of the Thracian lyre were made by Athenian 5th-century vase painters, who clearly associated it with Thrace. In about a third of the paintings it is shown in the hands of Thamyras, the legendary musician who boasted that he could win a contest with the Muses (the subject of a play by Sophocles). In another third of the known scenes, a contestant stands on (or mounts) a podium, and there is nothing to indicate that it is Thamyras who is represented; but two other legendary Thracian musicians are depicted holding the instrument: Orpheus, on a vase in the National Museum in Athens; and Musaeus, on one in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
In the course of the 4th century bce kitharas of the standard shape were relegated to mythological scenes such as Apollo’s contest with Marsyas; in other contexts the slimmer, less ornamented, longer-bodied Hellenistic kithara began to be seen. Near the middle of the century a completely rectangular kithara, with plain straight arms and a rectangular soundbox, began to appear in vase paintings from the Greek colony of Apulia. This Italiote kithara, seldom found in other parts of the Greek world, typically appears in Apulian wedding scenes. On a marble relief from Mantinea in the Athens museum, the only 4th-century representation from Greece proper, it is held by one of the Muses.
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MARTHA MAAS