A TECHNIQUE FOR ANCIENT SOLO LYRE

PETER GREENHILL
ABSTRACT
Very little is known about the specifics of the techniques used and the music
produced on lyres in the ancient world. This article brings into relationship a wide
range of sources which bear, directly and indirectly, on the problem of the ancient
use of vertically-held lyres: late medieval harp music, piobaireachd and reed pipe
precursors of the bagpipe, ancient lyres for solo use in general, and one particular
technique still partly in use today in Ethiopia. The practical features of a specific
technique are identified, and a call is made for a thorough assessment of the
technique's viability in respect of how ancient vertical lyres were used to produce
independent instrumental music.

INTRODUCTION
Here I want to present an exploration of a set of ramifications of my research
work on the Robert ap Huw manuscript.1 It resulted in what appears to be the
recovery of the nature of the very backbone of music-making in the British Isles
during the Middle Ages: the courtly harp music of the bardic tradition. Prior to the
1970s, the tunes and the harmonies of the pieces in the manuscript had both
remained obscured by the difficulties of penetrating the meanings of the tablature
symbols in which they were recorded, and to such an extent that it was
commonly thought that the music was irretrievable.2 But the recovery of such a
large quantity of music as the manuscript contains has filled in some of the
absolutely vast void that the demise of the tradition, around the turn of the
seventeenth century, left in our heritage. It gives us a bridgehead into what now
appears as the extraordinarily distinctive and insular soundworld of bardic
culture. It was every bit as highly developed and highly sophisticated as we
should expect, from how highly prized it had been throughout the Middle Ages.
Piobaireachd and the Robert ap Huw Manuscript
I have already presented one of the most direct ramifications of the recovery: a
reconstruction of the rhythms of medieval alliterative poetry in performance
based on the rhythms of the harp music in the manuscript.3 But here I want to
1

Peter Greenhill, The Robert ap Huw Manuscript: An Exploration of its Possible Solutions,
1995- (dissertations deposited in the archive of the Centre for Advanced Welsh Music
Studies, Bangor University), online at
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/musicfiles/manuscripts/aphuw/.
2
Irretrievable, in the sense that the tablature was believed not to carry enough
information on the precise details of the scales, rhythms, note durations, harmonies etc. of
the pieces. That belief has led translators to abandon pursuing the historical solutions and
instead to make ad hoc choices of their own when creating arrangements, and usually
without explanation. Nevertheless, I was able to achieve substantiated answers to each
and every open question, to produce, for the first time, coherent tuneful melodies which
relate closely to folk tradition and which are supported by harmonies which operate on a
comprehensible system. For a concise and clear exposition of the main outcomes of my
research, see Paul Whittaker, Interpretation (2006), online at
http://www.pauldooley.com/aphuw_pages/intro.html.
3
Peter Greenhill, Bardic Rhythm: The Implications from Cerdd Dant Studies, Studia
Celtica, XLV (2011), 131-53.

present some rather curious but hopefully very significant indirect ramifications.
To introduce it, I need to explain some of my own personal history in the field. I
initially came to the Robert ap Huw manuscript not from a baroque or renaissance
perspective as others before me had, but from a piobaireachd one.4 I was, and
fifty years on I remain, captivated by piobaireachd because of its intrinsic
divergent qualities. It is surely hard to believe that such music could be
diffusionist and have its origins in the Mediterranean lands or the Middle East. It
bears the stamp of the Atlantic: the space of the long rhythm of its waves, the
powerful height of its waves, the huge scope of the uncharted ocean. Surely this
is music that is truly indigenous, that reflects a human response to the Insular
environment. Whether or not that implies that piobaireachds qualities are ancient
in origin does not affect the strength of the statement it makes. But of course it
does set you wondering.
Throughout the modern era there has been a keen awareness that the bagpipe
supplanted the harp as the main instrument of clan patronage in the Highlands
and Western Isles of Scotland. If there had been medieval antecedents of
piobaireachds divergent and Insular qualities, then the harp music would surely
have been where they existed; certainly not in ecclesiastical chant, for that was
demonstrably diffused from Rome, and perhaps in the Dark Ages from Egypt and
Syria.5 And I sense that chant carries the stamp of the Mediterranean, with, for
example, that seas characteristically choppy wave action reflected strongly in the
mobile melodies of chant, and particularly in its melismata. Francis Collinson had
suggested in 1966 that some aspects of the former music of the harp - some
melodic themes and its variation form - might have been taken over into
piobaireachd.6 He pointed out: This would of course offer an explanation of the
always puzzling fact that piobaireachd seems to have come into existence fully
fledged, without any of the rudimentary experiments which one could expect in
the development of so perfected a form.7 But as I sifted through the surviving
records of harp music, or of what may have once have been played on the harp,
in Scotland and Ireland, I was not struck by any immediate reappearance of any
of piobaireachds most exciting divergent qualities.8
The apparent impasse began to break as I became aware of the Robert ap Huw
manuscript.9 It was particularly Arnold Dolmetschs interpretations10 as recorded
by Alan Stivell11 that immediately struck me as containing, unmistakably, one of
the most interesting and revealing aspects common in piobaireachd - that rather
stark, abstract, geometric quality (as opposed to lyrical, voice-oriented, ornate
melody). That style of composition is rare in early music and I became convinced
4

Piobaireachd is the Gaelic term for piping or pipe music and refers to the classical music
of the great Highland bagpipe traditional to Scotland. The word is commonly anglicized to
pibroch.
5
It has been suggested, on the basis of similarities in the modern era between Scottish
Gaelic psalm-singing and Ethiopian Coptic chant, that both owe some of their origin to
ancient Coptic chant in Egypt; see John Purser, Scotlands Music (Edinburgh, 1992), 35-6.
6
Francis Collinson, The Traditional and National Music of Scotland (London, 1966), 23948.
7
Collinson, 247
8
These included the material alleged to have been formerly played on the harp in the
Angus Fraser manuscript: Edinburgh University Library MS Gen. 614.
9
The Robert ap Huw manuscript: London, British Library MS Add. 14905: written by
Robert ap Huw of Anglesey, Wales, c. 1613 and containing a large body of otherwise
unrecorded music in the form of a unique harp tablature.
10
Arnold Dolmetsch: Translations from the Penllyn Manuscript of Ancient Harp Music
(Llangefni, 1937); 'Concerning my Recent Discoveries', The Consort, 3 (Haslemere, 1934),
12-20.
11
Alan Stivell, Renaissance of the Celtic Harp (Philips LP 6414 406, 1971), track 3.

ii

that it was not coincidence, but that in the manuscript we have material relevant
both to piobaireachd and to the lost harp music common to Wales, Ireland and
Scotland described by Gerald of Wales in the twelfth century.12 It was a
revelation, and in the following year, 1972, I arrived as an undergraduate at
Bangor University with the intention of studying the tablature.13 As I began to
engage with the tablature I kept a watchful eye open for the possibility of the
hallmarks of piobaireachd emerging out of it: familiar melodic motifs, the singling
and doubling formula that links pairs of variations, the formulaic runs of
gracenotes, the cadence E appoggiaturas, the rlar-with-variations method of
constructing pieces. By 1975 I had the tunes very much as I have them today, as
fully-fledged, tuneful melodies, but I had found none of those piobaireachd
hallmarks. Before I continue here with the consequences of that fact, I will set
down briefly the salient features that I did find the harp music had in common
with piobaireachd: Extended form, although most harp pieces are much longer.
Variations. In harp pieces, earlier variations tend to be melodic,
particularly winding up the scale in a manner rather reminiscent of the
thumb variation of piobaireachd. Later variations tend to be rhythmic in
nature. Some of the ways of forming variations were formulaic and bore
names.
Heavy, if not exclusive, reliance on set pieces.
Heavy reliance on melodic formulas, both within and between pieces.
Melodic tonality. The harp pieces tend to be in these modes mainly (in
order of frequency): Mixolydian, Dorian & Ionian, the flavours of which
are relatable to piobaireachd.
Double-tonic construction. A common one of the many patterns (or
measures) used by the harp pieces, corffiniwr, is also detectable in
piobaireachd.
High degree of repetition.
Broken rhythms, somewhat reminiscent of the snap rhythms and amach of piobaireachd.
Complexity of structure. Informed and disciplined analytical scanning is
necessary in order to become familiar with a piece. Both types of music
have a very strong contemplative element.
Strong focus on minute details and differences.
Heroic ethos. This really derives from many of the above points. I would
classify both types of music as divergent rather than diffusionist, in a
way which might be characterized as heroic rather than romantic when
placed into the wider European context. Formality, grandeur, majesty,
are all qualities easily ascribed to both.
Nevertheless, the differences were such that it was immediately apparent that it
could never be valid to extrapolate between the two idioms. I had to rule out the
possibility of using the harp music as a simple means of shedding light on the
nature of early piobaireachd, and vice versa. One particular area I struggled with
coming to understand was the historically surprising lack of correspondence
between the two in respect of particular measures. The Welsh records detail
about sixty patterns or measures, which underpinned the harp music. Rather like
DNA sequences, they can be used to gauge, at the deepest level, the degree of
relatedness of any double-tonic material from elsewhere. They show a satisfyingly
close relationship with double-tonic dance music in general, yet significantly not
with piobaireachd. There are profound differences. One very revealing one I
found is that where the harp music has a propensity to build melodic sequences
12

Giraldus Cambrensis, Topographia Hibernica (c. 1185).

Bangor then was already something of a central point for its study, dating back to
Dolmetschs involvement.
13

iii

in a pattern with two repeated segments: ABCDBD, piobaireachd achieves the

same but in the different order: BDABCD; the ABCDBD formula is rare in
piobaireachd. Clearly, the historical relationship was far more distant than a
father-son one.
It was becoming clear that the differences were such that Collinsons suggestions
were losing their appeal. It may be possible that some piobaireachd pieces
contain motifs borrowed from harp tunes but, although the pieces in the
manuscript are in variation form, they do not use the particular rlar-led
variation form of piobaireachd. The recovery of the nature of the medieval harp
music rendered Collinsons suggestions as to how one might deduce that from
piobaireachd redundant anyway,14 but of course it left unanswered the mystery of
the origins of piobaireachd. In fact it deepened the mystery, by raising the
question: how is it that piobaireachd developed on such different lines from the
harp music? Could it be that there had been a temporal gap between them? Did
the medieval harp music die out in Scotland earlier than we might suppose, and
did piobaireachd develop there later than we might suppose? Was piobaireachd a
conscious revival of half-remembered features of medieval music?
Alternatively, was it that the medieval harp music and piobaireachd had
coexisted, but the differences can be explained by there having been an
organological gap between them? That piobaireachd was developed in the Middle
Ages on reed pipe precursors of the bagpipe? The discovery of the depth of the
differences between the harp music and piobaireachd makes that more likely as a
possibility.
Reed pipe precursors of the bagpipe
It has been the lateness of the evidence for the appearance of the bagpipe in
Gaelic Scotland, along with the paucity of evidence of the development of highstatus piobaireachd, that has prompted the speculation about piobaireachds
origins on instruments other than the bagpipe. But given that medieval records
concerning music in Gaelic Scotland are very scarce, and that some short
piobaireachd pieces have been handed down which lack the more elaborate
variations, it certainly remains possible that there was plenty of time available for
piobaireachd to be developed and extended into its full high-status art form,
either quite rapidly in some period between 1400 and 1570, or very slowly if the
bagpipe was introduced much before 1400 or if its pre-existing music was also
imported and adopted as the basis for piobaireachd. From Wales, however, where
early records are relatively plentiful, comes evidence that mouth-blown pipes,
precursors of the bagpipe and no doubt powered by circular breathing, had had
high status.
The plain Welsh term for pipes, pibau, is generally taken, no doubt correctly, to
have referred to bagpipes. I have come across only one reference to bagbibau.15
But an important early instance of pibau in the Welsh triads (c. 1330) is of bagless mouth-blown pipes:
Teir prifgerd megin ysyd, nyt amgen: organ, a phibeu, a cherd y got.16

14

Collinson, 242-8.
A poem by Ieuan Deulwyn, fl. c. 1460: Ifor Williams (ed.), Casgliad o Waith Ieuan
Deulwyn o wahanol ysgriflyfrau (Bangor, 1909), XLIII.
16
Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS Peniarth 20, c. 1330.
15

iv

There are three principal types of wind music, namely: organ, and pipes,
and bag(pipe) music.
Since pibau here is plural, these will have been double pipes: chanter and drone,
or triple pipes: chanter and two drones or two chanters and drone. And since
cerdd fegin - wind music - is itself classified in another triad alongside cerdd dant
and cerdd dafod - string music and tongue music - both of which had high status,
there is an implication that the music of wind instruments was also, at least in
part, of high status. So earlier instances of pibau will presumably refer to
mouth-blown pipes, and they bear out that pipes indeed had had high status.
These are found in the Welsh Laws, which survive in c. 1250 copies but are much
earlier in origin. They state that a pencerdd shall receive from the king either a
telyn, a crwth or pibau, according to his usage.17 That the Laws should provide for
a pencerdd - a master craftsman - of the pibau demonstrates that pipers and
piping were organised on the same formal basis as cerdd dant and cerdd dafod
were, with their penceirddiaid and accompanying administrative structures, that
is, with high status.18 From this it is not surprising that the same three
instruments are those listed in Gerald of Wales account c. 1185 of the
instruments used in Wales, in his section of glowing praise on the distinctive
instrumental music of Wales, Scotland and Ireland: cithara (harp), chorus (crwth)
and tibiae (pipes). He does not notice the pipes in relation to Scotland or Ireland,
but that may be merely a result of him being a native of Wales whilst at the time
of writing he had only visited Ireland once and had not visited Scotland. The
three instruments telyn, crwth and pibau also occur together in some of the
accounts, c. 1330, of a great festival held at court at Aberteifi in 1176, at which a
contest for a chair was held between the three types of performers, with the
implication that the music each type played was at the least comparable and
therefore of similar status.19
What was played on the pipes? I suggest it is more probable that it was closer in
nature to piobaireachd than to the harp music. The piobaireachd piper Barnaby
Brown has been performing early-style piobaireachd on triple pipes with two
chanters and one drone, demonstrating that it is practically possible and also that
it appears to be artistically credible.20 Essentially, if one were to develop highstatus listening music rather than dance music on pipes, limited to around just
nine notes, one would be hard put to do so without resorting to the sorts of
gracenote runs and means of forming variations that piobaireachd uses. We can
imagine, then, that early piobaireachd might well have existed alongside the
medieval harp music throughout the existence of the latter, and not just for a
brief period between the introduction of the bagpipe and the extinction of the
medieval harp music. In Wales the pipes had lost their high status certainly by
the fifteenth century if not before, so any proto-piobaireachd that was played on
them had probably been abandoned there altogether. But for all we know in
Gaelic Scotland the pipes and their music could have been gaining in status and
popularity in the period after the time of Gerald. The politico-cultural conditions
there were very different from those in Wales.

17

See W. S. Gwynn Williams, Welsh National Music and Dance (London, 1933), 28.
Sources cited in Sally Harper, Music in Welsh Culture Before 1650: A Study of the Principal
Sources (Aldershot, 2007), 40.
18
The core financial basis of the piobaireachd tradition was a continuance of the cerdd
dant one, in that the composer-teacher-musician held his land free of dues. For the office
of pencerdd see Gwynn Williams, 18-29 and Dafydd Jenkins, Pencerdd a Bardd Teulu,
Ysgrifau Beirniadol, XIV (Denbigh, 1987), 19.
19
Gwynn Williams, 36-7.
20
http://www.triplepipe.net/

From the Welsh records it is clear that the music produced by the crwth and the
timpan was essentially of the same nature as the harp music. In the High Middle
Ages then, the probability is that there were two fundamental varieties of highstatus instrumental music, one for the stringed instruments - known in Welsh by
the collective term cerdd dant (string music) - and another for the pipes. If we
project back what we know of cerdd dant and piobaireachd from later, both
varieties of music in the High Middle Ages would have shared many
characteristics but with significant differences. But what can we imagine of the
Early Middle Ages? Certainly the crwth, and probably the frame harp, had not
been developed or introduced; yet the timpan had, so that instrument may
already have been the bearer of what we know later as cerdd dant. But what of
that surely most ancient of Northwest European stringed instruments, the lyre?
The cruit
If it were that proto-cerdd dant, the timpan music, was alone in our projected
vision of the musical landscape of the Early Middle Ages, then we would have no
reason to suppose that the same would not have been played on the lyre. But the
identification of some sort of high-status proto-piobaireachd being also in
existence, at least in the High Middle Ages, means there are two contenders for
what was played on the lyre, not just one. The use of lyres also telescopes into
two broad categories. The performance of poetry was accompanied by the lyre,
and in Wales that continued until the fourteenth century, during which the lyre as
the traditional instrument with which vocalists accompanied themselves was
supplanted by the harp.21 The probability is that such lyres had around six
strings, and the accompaniment they provided will have been similar in nature to
that of the harps that replaced them, which is to say, referring to parts of the
Robert ap Huw manuscript,22 partially if not wholly involving chordal
accompaniment. But Irish records which relate to the Early Middle Ages refer not
just to the three-stringed timpan but to other high-status stringed instruments
designated cruit, with around nine strings. Technically, these could have been
frame harps, but, with so few strings, they were almost certainly lyres. They
presumably produced some form of high-status instrumental music, as did some
types of lyres in the Ancient Mediterranean civilisations, and not, or not entirely,
accompaniment music. Their music need not, therefore, necessarily have taken
the same form as the proto-cerdd dant of the timpan.
In those first few years I spent working on the Robert ap Huw manuscript, it
became apparent that there was no evidence there of counterparts to the
gracenote runs of piobaireachd, not in the melodic lines23 nor even in broken
chords in the bass.24 Yet the knowledge from Welsh sources that piping had been
of high status in the High Middle Ages and therefore that piobaireachd, with its
appearance of antiquity, might have ancient roots led me to consider if the lyre
might have been used to make music of a similar nature. After all, the cruit and
pipes are mentioned together in the early Irish literature, and certain types of
plectrum action on a lyre can sound very like the gracenote runs and introductory
cadences of piobaireachd. The need to work out the most viable stringing set-up
and fingering for the lyre led me on the long, winding trail described in the

21

See Peter Greenhill, The Forgotten Silver-Voiced Harp of Wales: The Accompaniment
Lyre & the Accompaniment Harp (2005), 2, at
http://www.pauldooley.com/aphuw_pages/silvervoice1.html
22
Most notably, the two short pieces: Cainc Ruffudd ab Adda and Cainc Dafydd Broffwyd.
23
Greenhill, The Robert ap Huw Manuscript, Part 6: Rhythm (1998), 33-51, 95-6.
24
Greenhill, The Robert ap Huw Manuscript, Part 4: Technique (1996), 116-9.

vi

following excerpt from my dissertation on various instruments in relation to the

Robert ap Huw manuscript.25
My own impression, from experimenting with various set-ups and fingerings on
the lyre, is that my recommendations below offer the most viable solution to the
problem and that they bear out my proposition that a form of proto-piobaireachd
could have existed on the cruit in the Early Middle Ages. But the probability of
that having actually been the case is more a matter for specialists in early
piobaireachd to assess. To that end, Barnaby Brown has now also begun to
explore the various fingering options that the lyre offers in relation to
piobaireachd, and it is to be hoped that eventually the matter will have been
pursued thoroughly enough to enable the specialists collectively to arrive at some
definite conclusions as to whether or not the cruit was actually used to play a
form of proto-piobaireachd. The issue is, of course, not just important because of
the insights that it might offer on the nature of early bagpipe piobaireachd, but
because of the insights it might offer on lyre music and lyre technique throughout
the ancient world.

25

Greenhill, The Robert ap Huw Manuscript, Part 2: Instruments, in progress but

outlined in Greenhill, The Robert ap Huw Manuscript: An Exploration of its Possible
Solutions: Synopsis (1995), 6.

vii

CHAPTER XIII: VERTICAL LYRES

[excerpt from The Robert ap Huw Manuscript: An Exploration of its Possible
Solutions, Part 2: Instruments]
The cruit of nine strings
Some detail emerges from early records in Ireland of instruments with a greater
number of strings than the six of the common lyre used for accompaniment.1
Instruments designated cruit are referred to in a passage in the twelfth-century
tale Agallamh na Seanrach in the Book of Lismore as nine-stringed.2 The number
nine occurs again in the tale The Destruction of D Dergas Hostel as the kings
individually-named nine cruit players, who are very convincingly interpreted by
Frans Buisman as personifications of the nine strings of the instrument.3 Nine
cuslennach - pipers - are also named, of which six relate to the cruit players
names. An association of the cruit with the number nine is also found in the tale
of the Dagdas cruit: he calls it from its place on the wall and as it flies to him it
kills nine men in passing.4 Nine strings is still well within the range used by lyres
and stands far below the range recorded for harps in Europe, such as, most
importantly here, the twenty-five strings the music in the Robert ap Huw
manuscript requires5 and also the twenty or so strings of the angular harp or
chang, such as is illustrated in the thirteenth-century Cantigas de Santa Maria of
Spain. If, as some have thought, the nine-stringed cruit was what we know as a
harp, the great opportunity presented by both triangular frame harp and angular
harp designs, unlike that of the quadrangular lyre, to afford a great many strings
covering a very wide compass had been passed over. Peter Crossley-Holland
concluded that the cruit was indeed a lyre,6 in part following OCurry and Galpin
on a range of evidence, such as the name the Dagda uses to summon the cruit:
Coir-cethair-cuir: Quadrangular Sounding One in OCurrys translation,7 Four
Angled Music in Stokes translation,8 Four Point Adjustment in others.
One difficulty here is that in Ireland the term cruit appears to have been used
sometimes as a generic term for stringed instruments, as a passage in an eighth-

My conclusion that the apparently common six-stringed lyre was used for accompaniment
arises from the fact that accompaniment was itself common, that accompaniment requires
few strings and that six was the number of strings on the lyre used for accompaniment by
Bishop Gille-Pdraig of Dublin in the eleventh century: for which see Joan Rimmer, The
Irish Harp (Dublin, 1969), 25-6. For its relationship to cerdd dant see Peter Greenhill, The
Robert ap Huw Manuscript: An Exploration of its Possible Solutions, Part 4: Technique
(1996), 143-4.
2
Ann Buckley, What was the Tiompn? A Problem in Ethnohistorical Organology: Evidence
in Irish Literature, Jahrbuch fr Musikalische Volks- und Vlkerkunde, 9 (Cologne, 1978),
57.
3
Frans Buisman, The Pipers and Harpers in D Dergas Hostel: paper delivered at the
Fifth conference of the Centre for Advanced Welsh Music Studies, Bangor, 1 August 1999.
4
Peter Crossley-Holland, Telyn Teirtu: Myth and Magic in Medieval Wales (Bangor, 1997),
12.
5
See Greenhill, The Robert ap Huw Manuscript, Part 4: Technique (1996), 129, and Part
3: Tuning (2000), 143-4.
6
Peter Crossley-Holland, Telyn Teirtu: Myth and Magic in Medieval Wales (Bangor, 1997),
12.
7
Eugene OCurry, On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, W K Sullivan (ed.),
(London, 1873), III, 214.
8
Whitley Stokes, Cath Maige Tured II: The Second Battle of Moytura, Revue Celtique, 12
(Paris, 1891), 109.

century Irish text demonstrates. In relation to the title of his book on the origin of
the Book of Psalms, the author explains:
Nabla [is its name] in Hebrew; Psalterium in Greek ; Laudatorium, or Organum, in the Latin. It is asked, why it was
named by that name? Answer. From the Cruit through which
David chaunted the psalms; for, Nabla was its name in Hebrew,
Psalterium in Greek, Laudatorium, or Organum in Latin; in as
much as Organum is a generic name for all musical instruments,
because of its great nobleness. Nabla, however, is not a generic
name for every musical instrument, but Cithera is the generic
name for Cruits. Cithera, that is, Pectoralis; that is, the breast
instrument; for as much, as that it is at the breast it is played.
The Nabla is a ten-stringed Cruit; that is, which is furnished
with ten strings, which are played with ten fingers; in which
the ten commandments are concentrated. It is down upon it
[that is at top] that its belly [or sounding chamber] is placed;
and it is downwards it is played, or that music is performed on it.9
From the description of the soundbox positioned above, the writer is evidently
identifying Davids nabla with the angular harp, where the soundbox overhangs
the strings. That such a feature was noteworthy and needed explaining suggests
that his intended readership was more familiar with the soundbox positioned
below, as it is in the case of lyres, or - just possibly, in the eighth century - the
triangular frame harp may have already been developed.
As it happens at the limited range of nine strings, there is no playing method, and
no resultant music, that either the one or the other instrument - lyre or harp can accommodate which is excluded on the other. Although block-and-strum
technique has no appeal on a harp with many strings, over just nine strings it is
potentially very useful, and a plucking technique or any mixture of the two
techniques are equally available no matter if it be a lyre or a harp. This is to say
that in practical terms it makes no difference what the design of the frame was,
as long as the strings were fully accessible to both hands. It is true that a
quadrangular lyre affords much greater opportunities for re-entrant tunings than
does a harp, but there is no evidence of re-entrant tunings for European lyres.
Even the advantage the harp normally has over the lyre in terms of tone
production, on account of having strings of different lengths for different pitches,
can be broadly matched on a lyre with an oblique yoke, such as the asymmetrical
lyres depicted in Ireland.10 Accordingly, I do not propose to pursue the issue of
the morphology of the frame of the nine-stringed cruit here, but to concentrate
on the musical possibilities it might offer. For convenience I will refer to it as a
lyre.
To what extent is a terminus a quo for cerdd dant as we know it dependent upon
the dating of the introduction or the development of the triangular frame harp?
Alternatively, was there an antecedent of the many-stringed harp music of the
cerdd dant in the manuscript on the early instruments: timpan and cruit? The
timpan, as discussed before, was evidently capable of producing music of an
adequate standard for classical professionalism, but, as a lyre-with-fingerboard, it
will have developed from and, therefore, after the lyre. What is so interesting
about the cruit is that it appears to have also been an instrument of classical
professionalism, presumably in its most developed, nine-stringed form, so the
question arises: could that instrument have produced an antecedent of the cerdd
dant we are presented with in the Robert ap Huw manuscript?
9

OCurrys translation, OCurry, 238.

See Joan Rimmer, The Irish Harp (Dublin, 1969), 18-19.

10

Looking, firstly, into the possible capabilities of a nine-stringed cruit, the curious
fact immediately emerges that a total of nine possible notes is, from the cerdd
dant perspective, a very small number. Looking at the entirety of each piece in
the manuscript, Caniad San Silin is the piece that uses the smallest number of
strings: thirteen, followed by Caniad Cadwgan: fifteen, and Caniad y Gwyn
Bibydd: sixteen. One of the main features of the music which distinguishes it so
clearly from instrumental folk music is the way in which it achieves length in a
piece, and this is commonly done by exploiting, in long drawn-out ways, the large
compass offered by a harp of twenty-five strings.11
It is not immediately apparent, then, that the nine-stringed cruit is an obvious
and strong candidate as a platform for an antecedent to our many-stringed harp
cerdd dant. But it is worth going into its possible capabilities in detail, for reasons
that will become apparent later. The following outline of them is based on the
single surviving playing tradition of the large types of lyres used by ancient
civilisations: that of the bagana of Ethiopia, whilst bearing in mind the ancient
lyres, particularly the kithara of Ancient Greece and Rome.
Early bagana technique
The large ten-stringed lyre, the bagana,12 is viewed in Ethiopia as having been
brought there in remote antiquity from Israel where it had allegedly been the lyre
of King David. It is, unequivocally, the Ethiopian equivalent of the various
instruments in European depictions of David as musician, depicted in iconography
beginning in the early fifteenth century. Although the instrument is now
commonly played using the left hand only, it is apparent that the right hand used
to wield a plektron, by which I mean a fairly rigid plectrum rather than a very
flexible one, shaped with a rounded tip so that the strings are sounded against a
curved edge, and the left hand used to be used for damping not just for plucking.
It is unclear to what extent the full details of the original plektron technique have
been handed down, but I have the impression that at some point, perhaps during
the Italian occupation of 1936-1943, much was lost. Of most significance is the
abandonment of the tuning up and full sounding of half of the strings. To the
knowledge of Stphanie Weisser,13 the author of the Doctorate thesis on the
bagana,14 there was only one player in 2004-5, the master Alemu Aga, who still
used the plektron, and it is from his plektron technique that its basic elements, so
vital in unlocking the ancient use of large lyres, can be understood.15
The technique is a combination of plucking and strumming, with subsequent
damping of particular strings. The thumb and middle finger of the left hand are
used to pluck a particular string assigned to each (string 1 and string 6
respectively, counting 1 as that nearest the player). The plektron is used by the
right hand to either strike a single string (6, 8 or 10), a run of three adjacent
strings (8 to 10 or 6 to 8) or five adjacent strings (8 to 4). In the case of a run
from 8 to 4, all the strings but the last string of the run (4) are subsequently
damped by the fingers of the left hand, by bringing them forward from their rest
position on the strings beyond (6 to 9). The left hand is fixed in position such that
11

See Peter Greenhill, Melodic Formulas in the Robert ap Huw Manuscript, Welsh Music
History, 3 (Cardiff, 1999), 217-36, especially 220-3.
12
Also spelt baganna, begena, beguena.
13
Stphanie Weisser, personal communication, 3.1.2008.
14
Stphanie Weisser, Etude ethnomusicologique du bagana, lyre dEthiopie (Universit
Libre de Bruxelles, Ph.D. thesis, 2005).
15
Stphanie Weisser, personal communication, 3.1.2008. I am extremely grateful to Dr.
Weisser for providing this information, so pivotal to my research.

each digit strikes or damps only one string (string 1 = thumb, string 5 = index
finger, string 6 = middle finger: string 7 = ring finger, string 8 = little finger)
whereas the plektron in the right hand is mobile, used over strings 4 to 10.
Strings 2, 3, 5, 7 and 9 are the ones no longer tuned up to produce musical pitch,
and of these only 5, 7 and 9 are activated, and then only in passing during a run,
when they produce the friction noise of the plektron sliding over them. All the
slack strings act as the physical rests for the plektron or the thumb or middle
finger after their strokes on adjacent strings. The plektron strokes can be in
either direction.
This is an entirely idiomatic technique. It is dependent on two important design
characteristics of the bagana which distinguish it from all the other lyres still in
use in the region and from the six-stringed North European lyres. Firstly, rather
than being held horizontally or at an angle between horizontal and vertical so that
the palm is flat and the fingers are parallel, or nearly so, to the strings, the
bagana is positioned vertically or nearly so. This provides the hand with the
opportunity to address the strings at an angle which is comfortable for plucking,
by the left hand and by the plektron. Secondly, rather than being bunched quite
closely together, the strings are more widely spaced and less splayed-out into a
fan shape than on other lyres. This enables the plektron to be used selectively, on
any selected single string or series of adjacent strings, and dragged across at a
controlled pace, rather than swept briskly across all of them.
It is to be hoped that information on the full plektron technique when all ten
strings were tuned up and sounded might yet be recovered. Michael Powne,
writing in 1963, remarked that a plectrum is almost always used16 and that the
tuning system reported in 1798 and 1922 for all ten strings appears to be the
one used even today17. It differs radically from that in current use in the ordering
of the notes the strings are tuned to, although both systems are re-entrant and
pentatonic.
Kithara technique
It is very significant that the technique appears to match what we understand of
ancient kithara technique: the right hand uses the plektron, whilst the left
performs the three functions mentioned by the first century classical writer
Quintilian: it plucks (trahunt), damps (continent) and presents (praebent) i.e.
leaves a string open to sound.18 There are two further similarities. Some of the
names of the seven strings of the kithara are suggestive of a similar fixed position
for the four fingers of the left hand around the middle of the series of strings.
String 3 is named with the adjective lichanos - index finger; string 4 mese middle, which may refer to its position in the middle of the strings or to the
middle finger, or to both; string 5 trite - third, which may refer to its position
third from the furthest string from the player or to the third finger, or to both.
Secondly, string 1 is named hypate, highest or first, a term that was in general
use to denote the thumb as the highest of the digits. As we have seen, string 1
on the strummed bagana is plucked by the thumb. Although it is clear here with
the kithara that the index finger controlled string 3 and no other string, there is a
pairing in the names of strings 1 and 2: hypate and parahypate - next to hypate,
16

Michael Powne, Ethiopian Music: An Introduction (London, 1968), 57. Pownes field work
was between 1954 and 1960.
17
Powne, 58. The 1798 reference is to the field work of M. Villoteau, Description de
lgypte (Paris, 1808) and the 1922 reference is to C. Mondon-Vidailhet, La Musique
thiopienne, in A. Lavignac & L. de la Laurencie (eds.), LEncyclopdie de la Musique
(Paris, 1922).
18
Quoted in M. L. West, Ancient Greek Music (Oxford, 1992), 69.

which might possibly indicate that the thumb had responsibility for string 2 as
well as string 1. Similarly, the pairing of string 7 - nete - the last or lowest - and
string 6 - paranete - might indicate that a finger, surely the little finger, had
responsibility for those two strings. It is not secure, then, that the kithara had an
entirely fixed left hand position. The thumb and the little finger may each have
acted as toggles, now allowing one string to sound, then allowing its neighbour to
sound. But if that was the case, then two strings would be left open to sound, and
on current understanding of Ancient Greek music that seems unlikely, although
many depictions of kithara playing show several strings left open, and a broad
sweeping action with the plektron hand.
Cruit technique
The number of strings on the nine-stringed cruit suggests that the combination
technique of the bagana would have been used on it, the technique standing as it
does half-way between the plucking technique of harp-type instruments with,
usually, many more strings and the strumming technique of smaller lyres with six
or so strings. There is within it certainly enough latitude and scope for complexity
to accommodate sophisticated extended solo music, such as we know the kithara
was used for in the Ancient World, rather than it being limited to accompaniment
to the voice. In particular, the ability to drag the plectrum across several adjacent
strings in a controlled way, including varying the speed during the strum, favours
the development of a wide vocabulary of idiomatic, formulaic runs of notes, either
to play simply a succession of plain notes or to create runs of grace notes, or
mixtures of the two. A string can be approached from beyond or in front, with a
single strike of an adjacent string or a whole series of them. In the case of a
series, the notes do not have to be of equal duration and some or all of the
strings involved can be pre-blocked, or post-damped at some chosen point in
time, or left to sound. The ability to block or damp is of course contingent on a
string being one which is covered by the left hand, and on the bagana that is
restricted to just four strings, although there is no physical constraint that
dictates the left hand should not be mobile. There can also be fairly rapid multiple
strikes of a string by the plectrum moving back-and-forth on it.
If the left hand is fixed in position and there is a division but with some overlap
as to which strings are plucked by the left hand and which by the plectrum, and,
if the plectrum drags and left-hand damping are limited to certain strings, then
the context, the phrasing, of each string would necessarily be entirely unique to
it. The music produced, if it exploited these niceties, would be distinctively
idiomatic to the instrument and highly idiosyncratic.19 The kithara and the ninestringed cruit, limited to small numbers of notes, would have needed to exploit
these same characteristics to their maximum potential in order to develop highly
refined solo music, concentrating in particular on runs of grace notes rather than
a wide gamut, to provide variety and sustain interest in extended performances.
If indeed Buismans interpretation, introduced before, of the nine cruit players in
the tale of D Dergas Hostel as personifications of the strings and notes of the
cruit is correct, their individual names supplied there can be taken as implying
that the instrument produced nine different notes, but give little indication of
whether the tuning was re-entrant or not. At present the etymology and musical
significance of the names has yet to be investigated.

19

Most notably here the fixed left hand would tend to cause the resulting music to be
laced with melodic formulas which were fixed in pitch, as they are in piobaireachd, not
which change with the contours of melody as they normally do in the harp music, for which
see Greenhill, Melodic Formulas in the Robert ap Huw Manuscript, 223-5.

A particularly idiosyncratic feature of a lyre with fairly widely-spaced strings,

when a fairly rigid plectrum is dragged across several strings, is the rippling effect
of the sound produced. This is true when the strings are left open and equally so
when they are damped as the last string is struck, as is the case today on the
bagana. The sound is more percussive if some of the strings leading to the last
string of the run are blocked before being struck. The rippling effect is very
strong indeed, and attractively so, if alternate strings are blocked, since each
sounding string is framed by the dud sound of the blocked strings that precede
and follow it, so that each rippling note is surrounded by something of a rattle. In
this case, unless those strings that sound are subsequently damped, on an
instrument that has a tuning in a diatonic series rather than a re-entrant one,
thirds will sound. So far as we can tell, that would not have been appropriate on
the kithara (which was arranged in ascending serial order) in a Greek or Roman
context, but of course it might well have been appropriate on the lyre in a Celtic
context.20 The rippling effect still remains pronounced if it is not alternate strings
that are blocked but some other pattern, where the rippling effect has an
asymmetry to it. It is a very distinctive, elaborate sound, and one that is
surprisingly different from the driving, percussive sound where blocking is used
on lyres with narrower string spacing, less strings and more flexible plectrums,
where all the strings are swept together in one strum. It is much more markedly
rippling than a broken chord played on a harp, where there is no blocking. It can
be replicated to some extent on lyres and psalteries with narrow string spacing, if
the strumming is very slow and the plectrum is not too flexible, and with wider
string spacing, the strumming needs to be faster. The rattling aspect is enhanced
on the bagana by the presence of the buzzing mechanism - a bridge table against
the top edge of which the strings are caused to vibrate intermittently, through the
position of the strings above that edge being finely adjusted up or down with a Ushaped piece of leather that lies underneath each string and above the bridge
table. This is the lyre equivalent of brays on a harp. The same bridge table can be
made out on some depictions of the kithara.
Piobaireachd and the cruit
Now I have long believed that I can hear a very close parallel to that peculiar
rippling in the idiomatic runs of piobaireachd, within which there tends to be,
characteristically, an alternation of muted notes that blend into the drone
harmonics with notes that stand out sharply from them, so that the latter appear
to sound as momentary pitched clicks quite detached from one another. Further,
the reed and the conical chanter of the great Highland bagpipe are such that
there is a distinctive, percussive rattling or crackling aspect to the ripples, which
is quite absent when the same figures are played on any other reed pipe (for
example, the practice chanter), flute or whistle, where the crackling is replaced
by a popping.21 To me, the resemblance of the crackling to some sounds

20

The harmony in the Robert ap Huw manuscript suggests that it would have been so. For
in-depth analysis of that harmony built up from intervals of a third, see Paul Whittaker,
Harmonic Forms in the Robert ap Huw Manuscript, Welsh Music History, 7 (Cardiff, 2007),
1-34.
21
The absence of the crackling aspect on other pipes holds also for the Sardinian triple
pipes. They produce a popping but not a crackling when used for piobaireachd gracenote
runs. If the crackling on the great Highland pipes is to be associated historically with the
lyre then it would probably be necessary for mouth-blown reed pipe precursors of the
Highland bagpipes to have also crackled. I wonder, then, if Insular triple pipes were very
different from Sardinian ones in respect of whatever design features are critical in this
respect. I myself am not clear about what factors produce the crackling on the Highland
pipes: the reed material, the conical chanter, their dimensions, the high level of air

produced by plektron action on a lyre is eerie. Can it be that the resemblance

here is not coincidence? Might the origins of the formulaic figures of piobaireachd
- its idiomatic gracenote runs and other runs - lie in the lyre?
The Scottish music scholar Francis Collinson suggested in 1966 that some aspects
of the former music of the harp - some melodic themes and its variation form might have been taken over into piobaireachd. He pointed out: This would of
course offer an explanation of the always puzzling fact that piobaireachd seems to
have come into existence fully fledged, without any of the rudimentary
experiments which one could expect in the development of so perfected a form.22
His suggestion has caught the imagination of many, yet the harp music in the
manuscript differs from piobaireachd in fundamental ways. Most significantly, to
form variations it does not use changes of time signature or changes of gracenote figurations.23 Instead it is able to rely heavily on the incremental raising of
notes,24 which piobaireachd, limited as it is to a compass of nine notes, cannot
use beyond one or two variations in a piece.25 In contrast, one is hard put indeed
to imagine how extended variation sets on a nine-stringed lyre could be achieved
without resorting to the changes of time signature or of grace-note figurations
used subsequently by piobaireachd. Given that the possible options for nine notes
are so limited, it would not be in the least bit surprising if the same routes had
been discovered twice over, independently.26 Nevertheless, we are confronted
with such a remarkable similarity in sound that it may have been that
piobaireachd evolved in the presence of fully-mature solo lyre music and is an
imitation of it.27 Again, I draw attention to the evidence of the late survival of the
lyre discussed in Chapters III and IV, and particularly that relating to the
Highlands of Scotland in the sixteenth century.28 The concept that piobaireachd
might have borrowed from the lyre rather than the harp has appeal of course, in
that it is much easier to entertain the prospect of a variety of music with nine
notes borrowing from that of a nine-stringed precursor rather than from that of a
twenty-five- to thirty-stringed one.
The application of lyre technique to early piobaireachd material
Amongst the many types of gracenote clusters in piobaireachd, I have long been
impressed by the rather extraordinary fact that there is one type in particular
which conforms closely to a plectrum sweep of lyre strings where those strings
are arranged in sequential scalar order, not re-entrant order. The bagana is reentrant, but the Ancient Greek kithara was sequential and so was the lyre tuning

pressure on the reed, etc., but it is an important issue when it comes to reconstructing
Insular mouth-blown pipes. The conical, flared Indian shenai comes close to crackling.
22
Francis Collinson, The Traditional and National Music of Scotland (London, 1966), 247.
23
The pieces in the manuscript do display the divisions method of forming variations,
where former single notes become divided into two or more notes, but those notes are not
so brief as to qualify as gracenotes; see Greenhill, Melodic Formulas in the Robert ap
Huw Manuscript, 220-221.
24
Greenhill, Melodic Formulas in the Robert ap Huw Manuscript, 221.
25
These most commonly involve the introduction of the highest of the nine notes, High A,
as a plain note, in thumb variations; so-called because the note is produced by removing
the thumb from the chanter.
26
That is, once on the cruit and a second time on the pipes after the cruit and its music
had been abandoned.
27
Piobaireachd may well have evolved on the bagpipes, but it might have evolved on
mouth-blown reed pipe precursors of the bagpipe long before its introduction (as explained
above in the Introduction).
28
The reference is to Chapters III and IV of this work, not included here.

provided by Hucbald,29 the only source for medieval lyre tuning in Europe.30 We
could perhaps afford to discount the conformity as mere coincidence, were it not
for the fact that this type of cluster stands out from the remainder as more
mysterious and more idiosyncratic. It is also less comprehensible in terms of the
bagpipe. The runs in question are the much discussed introductory cadences, by
which is meant a run of notes which is entirely descending (in contrast to the
ripple effect of clusters with alternating high and low notes) and which prefaces
important stressed melody notes, especially those at the beginnings and ends of
phrases. They are considered to be in some sense extraneous to the melody and
indeed have been considered by some to be, to some extent, at the option of the
player as to whether they should be played or not, or as to where in a piece they
should be played. They are mysterious in the sense that they are surely the most
outstanding of the musics many peculiarities, particularly since, unlike its other
formulaic clusters, they are not particularly suggested by the nature of the
bagpipe.31 That mysteriousness is surely reflected in the complexity of the
historical record concerning their use in the tradition: from the outset of the
records there have been disparities in the relative durations of the notes. The
disparities seem to have multiplied through time, to also include the notes used,
the circumstances that trigger the use of certain notes, and whether the notes
take their time from the following plain note or the preceding plain note, or
whether they draw time that is more-or-less extraneous to both. Most of the
particular runs that used to be used have been dropped and have, in most
instances, been replaced by the variety known today as cadence E.32
The introductory cadences offer the clearest and most obvious practical point of
entry into piobaireachd for the application of the combination lyre technique: that
that combines plucking, blocking and damping by the left hand with the plectrum
action of the right hand. This is because these cadences are so simply realisable
in that way, and because they are (along with continuously ascending runs) the
most obvious musical figures to produce on a sequentially-ordered lyre of nine
strings using that technique. Indeed, for those reasons I suggest that the cruit
was set up and handled in the following way irrespective of whether or not there
was a historical link between the cruit and piobaireachd. I offer here an
explanation of how I have found they can be played effectively on the lyre, by
using the crucial principle provided by the old bagana technique of a fixed
position for the four fingers of the left hand to cover a series of four adjacent
strings. I have applied the technique to the whole range of introductory cadences,
including those used by Joseph MacDonald in the late eighteenth century,
examined in detail by Roderick Cannon.33
Each of the cadences comprises a sequence of notes running down the scale and,
because they appear not to have been played as fast throughout as typical
29

Hucbald, De Institutione Harmonica, c. 900, quoted and discussed in Christopher Page,

Anglo-Saxon Hearpen: Their Terminology, Technique, Tuning and Repertory of Verse
(University of York, Ph.D. thesis, 1981), 188-91. It refers to a six-stringed lyre.
30
That depictions of lyres in the British Isles contain quite a high proportion of examples
with asymmetrical yokes supports the thesis of sequential scalar ordering in general.
31
Unless an explanation is to be found in the continuous flow of sound that the bagpipe
produces. I imagine that it is just possible that these cadences might have originated as
substitutes, as fill-ins, for pauses for breath that occurred either whilst singing or whilst
playing music on wind instruments that were not, or not entirely, powered by circular
breathing.
32
Cadence E is so-called because in the modern tradition the note E in such runs is
invariably played as an appoggiatura, and in stressed position.
33
Roderick D. Cannon (ed.), Joseph MacDonalds Compleat Theory of the Scots Highland
Bagpipe (c.1760) (Glasgow, 1994), 14-16.

gracenote clusters are, they can be read as running at the speed of a relaxed
sweep of the plectrum, with each note being voiced by the lyre for a carefully
controlled duration. They all have in common the consecutive sounding of various
notes in the limited range of high A down to D, followed by a plain note which is
itself below the last short note of the run, in the range E to low G. If the left hand
of the lyre player is fixed with its four fingers capable of blocking or damping the
four strings: high G, F, E and D, the basic cadences can be played economically
as follows: for high G-F-E-D: those four notes are swept in one stroke and
damped by the left-hand fingers, and for high G-F-E and high G-F: the same
actions but shorter sweeps. The other cadences would require blocking of some
strings, shown here bracketed: high G-(F)-E-D, high G-(F-E)-D, high A-(high GF)-E-D, high A-(high G-F)-E, high A-(high G)-F. Since, as Cannon penetratingly
identifies, there used to be a meaningful tendency for those cadences that begin
on high G to be used in G major contexts and those that begin on high A to be
used in A major contexts,34 those beginning strings should perhaps be left open
rather than damped, at least until the last note of the run is sounded. Indeed
there is no means available of damping high A here anyway. But Cannon points
out one instructive early setting of a piece in which each high A cadence has its
high A held markedly longer than the very short high G of each high G cadence,
implying perhaps that this is a relic of an early style and that only the latter
should be damped on the lyre.35
It remains to account for the means of sounding the plain note to which each
cadence drops. In many cases this note is not adjacent to the last note of the run
down, and in these cases it would be necessary to sound the plain note with the
left thumb, since there is not enough time to skip the intervening strings to reach
its string with the plectrum. This requires the thumb to cover strings for three
notes: low G, low A and B. It might be helpful, to match the timbre of those, if
the thumb was used as well to pluck C, D and E when those are the plain note,
although covering a range of six strings is perhaps asking for too much mobility
from the thumb. Obviously, the thumb being used for these low plain notes
dictates that the lyre be strung with the lowest string nearest the player, and that
gives us the direction of the plectrum stroke for these cadence runs: toward the
player. There is slightly greater physical control over such an inward plectrum
sweep than there is over a outward one, giving greater ability to vary the
durations of each note as the plectrum passes over the strings, and that is a
feature that appears to have been important in the expression of these cadences.
It follows that if asymmetrical lyres were ever put to the purpose of such music,
they would have needed to have the longest arm nearest to the player. That
accords with the instrument depicted on the late eighth-century St. Martins
Cross, Iona, although it is the reverse of the Irish depictions of asymmetrical
instruments on the Cross of Muireadach at Monasterboice, the Durrow Cross and
the Cross of Patrick and Columba at Kells,36 and also that on the Mal Lumkun
Cross at Kirkmichael on the Isle of Man, eleventh century.37
Moving out from the area of the introductory cadences, the various gracenote
clusters can be addressed by ignoring those gracenotes that provide a single very
quick click-like percussive articulation or cut, and by sounding the remainder. It
34

Cannon, Joseph MacDonalds Compleat Theory, 14-15.

Angus MacKays setting of MacRaes March; see Cannon, 15.
36
Illustrated in Ann Buckley, Musical Instruments in Ireland from the Ninth to the
Fourteenth Centuries: A Review of the Organological Evidence, in Gerard Gillen & Harry
White (ed.), Irish Musical Studies, I (Dublin, 1990), 30, 32-33.
37
It is not known whether the nine-stringed cruit would itself ever have been
asymmetrical, or whether these depictions are intended to be exotic instruments with
Biblical associations.
35

has to be appreciated that separating out those two categories is fraught with
historical difficulty, since the record has ambiguities and conflicts in the timing
and in the significance of the component notes of many clusters. A plectrum
sweep can be used where the notes are consecutive and where those that need to
be damped can be covered by the left-hand fingers, as in the grip known in
canntaireachd as embari: E-F-high G. Elsewhere, a combination of plectrum and
the thumb or the middle finger, or of forward-and-back strikes by the plectrum or
the thumb, makes most clusters possible. The thumb could damp where needed,
for example where low G is followed by low A, or where C is followed by B. I offer
suggestions for playing some of the more complex stereotypical clusters as
follow.
Dithis and siubhal: plectrum plucks initial plain note, thumb plucks last note if it is
low, plectrum if it is high.
Leumluath: plectrum sweeps across D (damped by forefinger) and E (damped by
middle finger)
Taorluath: as above followed by thumb plucks low A (or low G where
appropriate).
Crunluath: plectrum sweeps across D (damped by forefinger), E (damped by
middle finger) and F (damped by ring finger), thumb plucks low A (or low G
where appropriate), followed by middle finger plucks E.
Crunluath breabach: as above, followed by thumb plucks low A (or low G where
appropriate), plectrum plucks final note.
Crunluath fosgailte: thumb plucks both initial plain notes, plectrum sweeps across
E (damped by middle finger) and F (damped by ring finger), followed by middle
finger plucks E.
As regards drone A, the left thumb is commonly unoccupied elsewhere, leaving it
free for plucks of the low A string, which is conveniently placed within easy reach
of the thumb. It could also add touches of low G to support the melody where
appropriate, and also restore some low G to those piobaireachd clusters that
include gracenotes on low G. Two strikes of low G by forward and back movement
of the thumb could be used for many grips, such as in ibari. It could also damp
the sounding of low G, albeit not very quickly.
Setting all these suggestions into a broad context, it is notable that my suggested
fit relies on all the precise features taken from the bagana:
1) A tuning in a diatonic series with the lowest notes nearest the player, as was
the case with Ancient Greek lyres but not with the re-entrant Ethiopian bagana.
2) The left hand being fixed in position, as may have been the case with the
kithara and is the case with the bagana, and covering strings 5 to 8 as they
currently are on the bagana.38
3) Plucking by the left thumb, most commonly of the strings nearest the player,
and by the middle finger of the string it covers, no. 6 sounding E here, as on the
bagana. The middle finger is the strongest of the fingers.
4) Both inward and outward strikes and sweeps of the plectrum, as on the
bagana, requiring free mobility of the right hand.
I think the extent to which these features enable the playing of so many
meaningful and close approximations to piobaireachds gracenote clusters is
remarkable. There are not a lot of clusters that do not lend themselves to the
38

I suspect a possibility that it was once strings 4 to 7 that were covered by the four
fingers, since these had a special designation boz (fools) on the bagana in the time of
Mondon-Vidailhet, 1922. Mondon-Vidailhet suggested this was because they reproduced
(by octave doubling) notes given by other strings, but strings 2 and 8 also duplicated a
note and its octave doubling; see Powne, 58. Currently, the boz are the five strings that
are not tuned up.

10

technique: I notice the grips dare and darodo in this regard. It is also perhaps
surprising that the lyre does not simply accommodate redundant A in the
taorluath and crunluath, since that note was significant in some early styles,
albeit not especially so in Joseph MacDonalds. Perhaps it should be played, by
the thumb, as part of the general working-in of drone A suggested above.
My hope is that these suggestions will prompt detailed explorations and enable
some conclusions to be drawn, as to whether solo lyre playing would have had a
significant impact on the shaping of piobaireachd in its early development, or
whether it would have taken a form substantially unrelated to piobaireachd and
perhaps more akin to our frame-harp cerdd dant. In turn this affects whether we
should imagine our late medieval cerdd dant as having had a precursor played on
the nine-stringed cruit, on the angular harp or on the timpan (as suggested in
Chapter X), or even that it had been forged anew on the frame harp.

11