Similarly, the ‘ovoid’ or oval shaped lute moved across Central Asia and was introduced to China where it became known as the ‘pipa’. Nana is frequently depicted with a horizontal crescent the shape of which is reflected in the sound holes of the short necked Central Asian lutes. These same crescent shapes are present in depictions of lutes at Buddhist rock cut caves such as those at Ajanta and Amaravati. However, the instrument later disappeared from the iconography of the Indian Subcontinent and was not reintroduced until around the 12th century CE. Furthermore, depictions of lutes contained within sculpture from Sogdiana, Bactria, and Gandhara dating from the Kushan period (30 – 375 CE) frequently depict women playing the lute, often in a religious context and incorporating images of, or symbols associated with, the Bactrian goddess Nana. However, when the lute was introduced to Egypt around 1500 BCE it appears to have become an instrument played predominantly by women and this change remained when the instrument was re-imported into Central Asia. A lute can refer to any plucked string instrument with a neck, which can be long or short, and a deep round back enclosing a hollow cavity which usually has an opening to allow sound to escape. Typically made from wood, lutes were important instruments in the development of music theory across Eurasia having been used by Pythagoras in the 3rd millennium BCE to codify musical mathematics. Later, Islamic scholars built on this work using the ‘oud’ a similar stringed instrument which was exported back to Europe where it became extremely popular and formed the basis of much Renaissance music. Lutes can be played fretted or unfretted (with the strings ‘open’) and their modern descendants include instruments such as violins, guitars, mandolins, and banjos.įrom its origins in the classical world the lute spread across Eurasia and parts of Africa, changing in small ways at it transfused, evolving incrementally into new types of string instruments, and taking on different cultural associations. There were three main variants of stringed instrument which spread across Eurasia along with the movement of people across the Silk Roads, the traditional lute, the ‘ovoid’ lute, and the ‘pipa’. In the earliest surviving depictions of lutes, which come from Mesopotamian terracotta, they are depicted as long necked instruments, with small drum-like bodies, and are always played by men. The lyre enjoyed high cultural status in Mesopotamia and the Classical Greek and Roman world where it was associated with ideas of art, love, the human spirit, and interaction with the natural world. Although characteristic of the Mediterranean region the lyre spread far beyond its region of origin and representations of the instrument have been uncovered from sites in the North of the Indian Subcontinent, Bactria, and other Central Asian regions along the Silk Roads.Īnother example of a stringed instrument which was widely transmitted and transformed as it spread to new regions along the Silk Roads was the ‘lute’. Some of the earliest stringed instruments known were harps and lyres (which resemble small harps), speculated to have been first derived from hunting bow whose strings make a sound as they vibrate. Indeed, many musical instruments that were common in Silk Roads regions were very flexible and could be used to play a variety of styles of music. String instruments were amongst some of the most popular, versatile, and widespread across Eurasia, and much of the evidence for their transmission across the Silk Roads survives in the form of paintings, reliefs, and statues, which have been used to trace their movement and evolution. In turn, those travelling these routes absorbed the different musical influences of the regions they passed through. Different forms of music and the various instruments used to create it, spread beyond their regions of origin, accompanying people as they moved along the Silk Roads.
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