The lira da braccio (or ''lira de braccio'' or ''lyra de bracio''Michael Praetorius. Syntagma Musicum Theatrum Instrumentorum seu Sciagraphia Wolfenbüttel 1620) was a

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

an bowed

string instrument In musical instrument classification, string instruments, or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer strums, plucks, strikes or sounds the strings in varying manners. Musicians play some ...

of the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

. It was used by

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

poet-musicians in

court A court is an institution, often a government entity, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between Party (law), parties and Administration of justice, administer justice in Civil law (common law), civil, Criminal law, criminal, an ...

in the 15th and 16th centuries to accompany their improvised recitations of

lyric Lyric may refer to: * Lyrics, the words, often in verse form, which are sung, usually to a melody, and constitute the semantic content of a song * Lyric poetry is a form of poetry that expresses a subjective, personal point of view * Lyric, from t ...

and

narrative poetry Narrative poetry is a form of poetry that tells a story, often using the voices of both a narrator and characters; the entire story is usually written in metered verse. Narrative poems do not need to rhyme. The poems that make up this genre may ...

.Howard Mayer Brown and Sterling Scott Jones. "Lira da braccio", ''

Grove Music Online ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language '' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and t ...

'', ed. L. Macy (accessed November 11, 2006)
grovemusic.com
(subscription access) It is most closely related to the medieval fiddle, or

vielle The is a European bowed stringed instrument used in the medieval period, similar to a modern violin but with a somewhat longer and deeper body, three to five gut strings, and a leaf-shaped pegbox with frontal tuning pegs, sometimes with a fig ...

, and like the vielle had a leaf-shaped pegbox with frontal pegs. Fiddles with drone strings are seen beginning in the 9th century (

Byzantine lyra The Byzantine lyra or lira () was a medieval bowed string musical instrument in the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire. In its popular form, the lyra was a pear-shaped instrument with three to five strings, held upright and played by stopping ...

), and the instrument continued to develop through the 16th century. In many depictions of the instrument, it is being played by mythological characters, frequently members of

angel An angel is a spiritual (without a physical body), heavenly, or supernatural being, usually humanoid with bird-like wings, often depicted as a messenger or intermediary between God (the transcendent) and humanity (the profane) in variou ...

consorts, and most often by

Orpheus In Greek mythology, Orpheus (; , classical pronunciation: ) was a Thracians, Thracian bard, legendary musician and prophet. He was also a renowned Ancient Greek poetry, poet and, according to legend, travelled with Jason and the Argonauts in se ...

and

Apollo Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...

. The ''lira da braccio'' was occasionally used in ensembles, particularly in the '' intermedi'', and may have acted as a proto-continuo instrument. The instrument was shaped essentially like a

violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

, but with a wider fingerboard and flatter bridge. Generally, it had seven strings, five of them tuned like a violin with a low d added to the bottom (that is, d–g–d'–a'–e'') with two strings off the fingerboard which served as drones and were usually tuned in octaves.

Michael Praetorius Michael Praetorius (probably 28 September 1571 – 15 February 1621) was a German composer, organist, and Music theory, music theorist. He was one of the most versatile composers of his age, being particularly significant in the development of ...

shows the instrument with

fret A fret is any of the thin strips of material, usually metal wire, inserted laterally at specific positions along the neck or fretboard of a stringed instrument. Frets usually extend across the full width of the neck. On some historical inst ...

s, although he is the only one to do so (see image at right). The wide fingerboard and flat bridge, along with long, strongly curved bows, facilitated chordal playing on the instrument. Although Praetorius depicts the instrument as ''lyra de bracio'' with various

viol The viola da gamba (), or viol, or informally gamba, is a bowed and fretted string instrument that is played (i.e. "on the leg"). It is distinct from the later violin family, violin, or ; and it is any one of the earlier viol family of bow (m ...

s "da gamba" (see

image An image or picture is a visual representation. An image can be Two-dimensional space, two-dimensional, such as a drawing, painting, or photograph, or Three-dimensional space, three-dimensional, such as a carving or sculpture. Images may be di ...

), it was in fact played on the shoulder, as is implied by its name, which refers to the arm, or '' braccio'' in Italian. From the few treatises and compositions which survive, it seems that the lira was played with triple and quadruple stops. The player was somewhat limited in terms of what inversions they could play, and it is believed that the top strings may have been used for melody, and the lower strings for chordal playing. In addition, it is believed that when accompanying singing, the instrument played at a higher pitch than the performer sang. Eventually in the late 16th century a fretted bass version of the lira da braccio with an expanded number of strings was developed, the '' lirone'', also known as the ''lira da gamba'', which was played "da gamba", or between the legs.

History

The lira da braccio was first cited in 1533 by Giovanni Maria LanfrancoGiovani Maria Lanfranco (1533): ''Sentille di Musica'', p.136 ff (using the term "seven-stringed lyra"), also describing its tuning: -c' / g-g'-d'-a'-e Lira was devised to accompany humanist sung verse by poets, such as the 14th century

Petrarch Francis Petrarch (; 20 July 1304 – 19 July 1374; ; modern ), born Francesco di Petracco, was a scholar from Arezzo and poet of the early Italian Renaissance, as well as one of the earliest Renaissance humanism, humanists. Petrarch's redis ...

and his later imitators, and was popular in the North Italian city-states such as Florence, Ferrara, Mantua, Venice and so on. In this role, the Lira enjoyed a prestige among instruments that it was never quite to achieve again. Amongst its exponents at the time were several great painters, notably

Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 - 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested o ...

, who according to Emmanuel Winternitz, was widely held to be the doyen among performers upon the Lira. The rise of the

madrigal A madrigal is a form of secular vocal music most typical of the Renaissance (15th–16th centuries) and early Baroque (1580–1650) periods, although revisited by some later European composers. The polyphonic madrigal is unaccompanied, and the ...

, and its counterpart, the instrumental consort, as well as the meteoric rise of the more vocal Violin, soon toppled the Lira from its pre-eminent position at court, and by the 1530s it had been relegated to stage use, in the great Renaissance festivals held by the city states and their powerful ruling dynasties. Here it was typically found onstage associated with the presence of the god Apollo, or blended in proto-continuo offstage ensembles. The Pesaro Manuscript, from the mid-16th century, an important document in the history of the Lira, records a Passemezzo Moderno, (contemporary dance measure) written in lira tablature. Discovered in the town of Pesaro, on the Adriatic coast, this strange, mutilated script is the sole surviving example of written music for the Lira. It suggests at least the possibility that the instrument was being used as a dance instrument by this time. Its harmonic character, and useful range of home keys would have been ideally suited to render the fashionable dance music of the day. The Italian musicologist Disertori showed that it was possible to reconstruct highly convincing examples of the lira da braccio in its early forms, from the meticulous paintings and drawings of Leonardo da Vinci,

Raphael Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), now generally known in English as Raphael ( , ), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. List of paintings by Raphael, His work is admired for its cl ...

Giovanni Bellini Giovanni Bellini (; c. 1430 – 29 November 1516) was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. He was raised in the household of Jacopo Bellini, formerly thought to have been his father, ...

Vittore Carpaccio Vittore Carpaccio ( , , ; – ) was an Italian painter of the Venetian School (art), Venetian school who studied under Gentile Bellini. Carpaccio was largely influenced by the style of the early Italian Renaissance painter Antonello da Messina ...

and many other artists from the late 15th/early 16th century, thus opening many exciting possibilities relating to the re-creation of late 15th century performance practice. There are up to ten surviving examples of the later, violin-like Lira, though their authenticity is still in, somewhat acrimonious, contention.

History

See also

References

Further reading