Characteristics
The Byzantine lyra had rear tuning pegs set in a flat peg similarly to the medieval fiddle and unlike the rabāb and rebec. However, the strings were touched by the nails laterally and not pressed from above with the flesh of the finger such as in the violin. The lyra depicted on the Byzantine ivory casket of Museo Nazionale, Florence (900 - 1100 AD) has two strings and pear-shaped body with long and narrow neck. The soundboard is depicted without soundholes and as a distinct and attached piece, however this might be due to stylistic abstraction. The lyras of Novgorod (1190 AD) are closer morphologically to the present bowed lyras (see gallery): they were pear-shaped and 40 cm long; they had semi-circular soundholes and provision for three strings. The middle string served as a drone while fingering the others by finger or fingernail alone, downwards or sidewards against the string, for there was no fingerboard to press them against: a method which gives the notes as clearly as the violin and remains normal in lyras both in Asia as well as on present bowed instruments in post-Byzantine regions such as the Cretan lyra.
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