Thus Ecprepes the ephor, on observing that the cithara of Phrynis had two strings more than the allowed number, immediately cut them out; and the(1511) same thing is said to have happened to Timotheus at the Carnean festival.
It is well known that a Spartan decree is supposed to exist,(1516) on this real or fabulous transaction respecting the eleven-stringed cithara of Timotheus.
The Cithara of the Middle Ages was a poor thing enough, in the form of a large P, with ten strings in the oval part; but it had movable pegs, and could be easily tuned.
He made a cithara and a guitar for himself with only such tools as a boy can command.
About the twelfth hour she perceived, in the depths of the sycamore trees, a blind old man with one hand resting on the shoulder of a child who walked before him, while with the other he carried a kind of cithara of black wood against his hip.
The moon rose; then the citharaand the flute began to play together.
There remain then the lyre and the cithara for use in our city; and for shepherds in the country a syrinx (pan's pipes).
The absence of Dorian from the list given by the Anonymus is curious: but it seems that at that time it was equally unknown to the cithara and the water-organ.
Plutarch says of the ancient music of the cithara that it was characterised by perfect simplicity.
The development of the cithara showed itself in the increase, of which we have good evidence even before the time of Plato, in the number of the strings.
The Hypo-phrygian is the nearest approach made by any specimen of Greek music to the modern Major mode,--the Lydian or c-species not being found even among the scales of the cithara as given by Ptolemy.
According to a tradition mentioned by Pausanias, the Spartans condemned Timotheus because in his cithara he had added four strings to the ancient seven.
And we have the decisive fact that of the six scales of the cithara given by Ptolemy (see p.
Players on the cithara tune their instrument to these four, viz.
The Hypo-dorian octave is seen in two of the scales of the cithara given by Ptolemy (p.
Give command to cithara players to come to the supper, and afterward we will talk of Antium.
To thecithara players and the singers he had ordered beforehand liberal pay.
At the wallscithara players and Athenian choristers were waiting for the signal of their leader.
Roman Cithara in transition, of the Lycian Apollo (Rome Mus.
One of the principal items at these contests for aulos and cithara was the Nomos Pythikos, descriptive of the victory of Apollo over the python and of the defeat of the monster.
Utrecht Psalter, in which the evolution of the cithara is traced at some length.
Cithara or Phorminx, from a vase in the British Museum.
Plutarch[8] states that this contrivance was added to the cithara in the days of Cepion, pupil of Terpander.
The construction of the cithara can fortunately be accurately studied from two actual specimens found in Egypt and preserved in the museums of Berlin and Leiden.
Like the lyre the cithara was made in many sizes, conditioned by the pitch and the use to which the instrument was to be put.
Both types were common in Europe until the 14th century, some played with a bow, others twanged by the fingers, and bearing indifferently both names, cithara and rotta.
Semitic type bearing a rotta which he holds horizontally in front of him in the Assyrian manner, and quite unlike the Greeks, who always played the lyre and cithara in an upright position.
The cithara may be regarded as an attempt by a more skilful craftsman or race to improve upon the lyre (q.
The slender fingers plucking at the cithara faltered.
The principal feature of both lyre and cithara was the peculiar method of construction adopted in the sound-chest, which may be said to have been almost independent of the outline.
The lyre and chelys on the one hand, and the cithara and phorminx on the other, were similar or nearly identical.
In this painting, which both Rosellini and Lepsius have reproduced, an undoubted Semite carries a seven or eight-stringed lyre, or rathercithara in transition, similar to the rotta of the middle ages.
The rotta or improved cithara had a body either rectangular with the corners rounded, or guitar-shaped with incurvations, back and sound-board being nearly or quite flat, joined as in the cithara by ribs or sides.
The confusion doubtless arose from the fact that from the 11th century cithara is glossed hearpan in Anglo-Saxon MSS.
In Irish of the 8th and 9th centuries (Zeuss) cithara is always glossed by "crot.
The form of the cithara in the beginning is said to have been like the human breast, because as the voice was uttered from the breast so was music from the cithara, and it was so-called for the same reason.
They say that in the Hyperborean regions when cithara players lead, many swans fly up and sing very harmoniously.
During his visit the god himself played the citharaand danced without ceasing from the spring equinox to the rising of the Pleiades.
St Pelagia seated on an ass holds a rotta, or citharain transition, while one of the men-servants leading her ass holds her guitar.
From such evidence as we now possess, it would seem that the evolution of the early guitar with a neck from the Greek cithara took place under Greek influence in the Christian East.
It was derived directly from the classical cithara introduced by the Romans into Spain, the archetype of the structural beauty which formed the basis of the perfect proportions and delicate structure of the violin.
The construction of the instrument is of paramount importance in assigning to the guitar its true position in the history of musical instruments, midway between the cithara (i.
The first stage in the transition is shown by a cithara or rotta[5] in which arms and transverse bar are replaced by a kind of frame repeating the outline of the body and thus completing the second lobe of the Spanish guitar.
The transitions whereby the cithara acquired a neck and became a guitar are shown in the miniatures (fig.
The pipe grew silent; the voices of the sonorous tympanum and the murmuring harp died away; and as if the strings had burst, the cithara answered with a tremulous, broken note.
And music played the tympanum and the pipe, the cithara and the harp.
The elegy is the first regularly cultivated branch of Greek poetry, in which the flute alone and neither the cithara nor lyre was employed.
He encouraged the study of mathematics and music, and considered singing to the cithara as best fitted to produce that mental repose and harmony of soul which he regarded as the highest object of education.
The Greeks had a story that their god Apollo had overcome with his cithara the flute-player of the Phrygians, and had flayed him in punishment for his presumption in entering on the contest.
That the Greeks made use of the Lydian flute, and subsequently of the Lydian cithara (both the cithara with three strings and that with twenty strings), and the Lydian harmonies to enrich their own music, is an established fact.
Apollo played upon the cithara and Marsyas upon the flute, and the Muses were the umpires.
A celebrated lyric poet and cithara player of Methymna, in Lesbos, about B.
Claudia ceased; the accompaniment on the cithara died away in soft full chords.
A slave girl had meanwhile brought in the nine-stringed cithara and the ivory plectrum; Claudia took them from her with some eagerness, put the ribbon of the lute round her neck and sat upright on her easy-chair.
She fetched the cithara out of its carved case and returned, lightly tuning the strings.
A little apart from the Mothon, who, resting his cithara on a fragment of rock, appeared to be absorbed in reflection, stood the men of the East.
Hellenes accounted the perfect number, as in the cithara of the best period.
Doni[8] mentions the barbiton, defining it in his index as Barbitos seu major chelys italice tiorba, and deriving it from lyre and cithara in common with testudines, tiorbas and all tortoiseshell instruments.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "cithara" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
