lutes-of-the-world

[lutes-of-the-world]

Sharing for musical instrument etymology, specifically qatros and qytrws.

Here is the kwitra/kouitra, a lute of Algeria:

Names for lyres and lutes were often the same.

It's interesting when you can see history reflected in language. Case in point: Daniel 3.

The book of Daniel is the youngest book in the Hebrew Bible, written in the 160s BCE, in the Hellenistic period, and it's about Daniel, a Judahite exile during the Babylonian exile, in the 6th century BCE. Much of it is in Aramaic, not Hebrew, including the third chapter, in which the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar builds a golden statue that's sixty cubits high (~30 m) and six cubits wide. Then:

וּנְבוּכַדְנֶצַּר מַלְכָּא שְׁלַח לְמִכְנַשׁ לַֽאֲחַשְׁדַּרְפְּנַיָּא סִגְנַיָּא וּֽפַחֲוָתָא אֲדַרְגָּזְרַיָּא גְדָבְרַיָּא דְּתָבְרַיָּא תִּפְתָּיֵא וְכֹל שִׁלְטֹנֵי מְדִינָתָא לְמֵתֵא לַחֲנֻכַּת צַלְמָא דִּי הֲקֵים נְבוּכַדְנֶצַּר מַלְכָּא׃ ûnəḇûḵaḏneṣṣar malkāʔ šəlaḥ ləmīḵnaš laʔăḥašdarpənayyāʔ siḡnayyāʔ ûp̄aḥăwāṯāʔ ʔăḏargāzrayyāʔ ḡəḏāḇrayyāʔ dəṯāḇrayyāʔ tip̄tāyēʔ wəḵōl šilṭōnê məḏînāṯāʔ ləmēṯēʔ laḥănūkkaṯ ṣalmāʔ dî hăqêm nəḇûḵaḏneṣṣar malkāʔ. And Nebuchadnezzar the king sent to gather the satraps, the deputies, and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the judges, the magistrates(?), and the all the rulers of the provinces, to come to the dedication (ḥanukka) of the image which Nebuchadnezzar the king had erected.

This is an interesting list of officials. Two of them are Akkadian loans: siḡnayyāʔ 'the deputies' from Akk. šaknu(m) 'governor' (from šakānu(m) 'to establish'), and paḥăwāṯāʔ 'the governors' clipped from Akk. bēl paḫāti 'lord of the regions -> governor'. Most of the rest are Old Persian/Median: ʔăḥašdarpan 'satrap' from Median *xšaθrapāwan- 'realm-protector -> satrap' (not the Persian cognate xšaçapāvān-); ʔăḏargāzēr 'counselor' from OPers. *ādrangāžara- 'announcer of financial obligation -> tax collector?' (not 'diviner'—the derivation from √gzr 'to cut, determine' is Midrashic nonsense); gəḏāḇar 'treasurer' from OPers. *gandabara- 'treasure-bearer -> treasurer' (cf. Hebr. גִּזְבָּר gizbār 'treasurer, Caspar', probably from the Median cognate *ganǰabara-); and dəṯāḇar 'judge' from OPers. *dātabara- 'law-bearer'. Lots of reconstructions here but they're pretty secure.

The Persian period immediately followed the Babylonian exile, of course, but both are a distant memory by the time Daniel is written. It's possible the writer uses the Persian terms purely to evoke the general sense of foreignness of the Babylonian administration, or maybe they genuinely don't know the difference, or maybe they just wanted a lot of terms to create a rhythm and their Akkadian vocabulary ran out.

Note that one of the Akkadian words, səḡan, is actually Assyrian rather than Babylonian, too: 〈š〉 was [s] in Assyrian, and Babylonian 〈š〉 [ʃ] would have been borrowed as Aramaic 〈š〉. The Neo-Assyrian period lasted much longer than the Neo-Babylonian one that followed it, and many immediate neighbours of Judah (and, to some extent, Judah itself) ended up in the Neo-Assyrian administrative hierarchy—the Northern Kingdom/Samaria itself had Assyrian governors in the 7th century. This loanword must predate the exile.

Anyway, the satraps, the deputies, and the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the judges, the magistrates, and the all the rulers of the provinces show up, and then:

וְכָרוֹזָא קָרֵא בְחָיִל wəḵārôzāʔ qārēʔ ḇəḥāyīl And the herald called loudly

Kārôz 'herald' is a Greek loan. The word in the Hellenistic Koine is κῆρυξ /kɛːryks/, but this seems to reflect an earlier dialectical form κᾶρυξ /kaːruks/, which is attested in Aeolic and also the expected form in most other dialects (not Attic-Ionic). This must therefore be quite an old loanword, which as a diplomatic term of art is not unexpected.

The herald commands them:

בְּעִדָּנָא דִּי־תִשְׁמְעוּן קָל קַרְנָא מַשְׁרוֹקִיתָא קַתְרוֹס סַבְּכָא פְּסַנְתֵּרִין סוּמְפֹּ֣נְיָה וְכֹל זְנֵי זְמָרָא תִּפְּלוּן וְתִסְגְּדוּן לְצֶלֶם דַּהֲבָא דִּי הֲקֵים נְבוּכַדְנֶצַּר מַלְכָּא׃ bəʕīddānāʔ dî-ṯišməʕûn qāl qarnāʔ mašrôqîṯāʔ qaṯrôs sabbəḵāʔ pəsantērîn sûmpōnyā wəḵōl zənê zəmārāʔ tīppəlûn wəṯisgəḏûn ləṣelem dahăḇ��ʔ dî hăqêm nəḇûḵaḏneṣṣar malkāʔ. At the time when you hear the sound of the horn, whistle, lyre, harp, psaltery, symphonia, and all kinds of music, you will fall down and worship the image of gold that Nebuchadnezzar the king has erected.

Most of the musical instrument here are Greek: qaṯrôs 'lyre', which is qytrws in the ketiv, is *κιθάρος (standard κιθάρα, which is also the source of English guitar and zither); sabbəḵā is σαμβύκη 'sambuca' (the stringed instrument, not the liqueur); pəsantērīn is ψαλτήριον 'psaltery'; sûmpōnyā 'symphonia' is συμφωνία (a musical instrument and not, as some translations render it, 'symphony'). Suchard has argued convincingly that these aren't loanwords but code-switching; Greek was certainly the day-to-day language in 2nd-century Palestine.

Also zənê 'kinds', sg. zan, is a loan from Old Persian zanah = Lat. genus, Gk. γένος, but the author probably isn't aware of that at this point. It also ended up in Hebrew.

(And qarnāʔ 'horn' may or may not be related to e.g. Latin cornu and English horn, but if it is it's a loan from PIE *k̑r-n-o- as Proto-Semitic *ḳarn-.)

Anyway, the herald continues:

וּמַן־דִּי־לָא יִפֵּל וְיִסְגֻּד בַּהּ־שַׁעֲתָא יִתְרְמֵא לְגוֹא־אַתּוּן נוּרָא יָקִדְתָּא׃ ûman-dî-lāʔ yīppēl wəyisgūḏ bah-šaʕăṯāʔ yiṯrəmēʔ ləḡôʔ-ʔattûn nûrāʔ yāqīḏtāʔ. And whomstsoever that does not fall down and worship will immediately be thrown into the middle of a furnace of blazing fire.

ʔattûn is another code-switch here, and it's Akkadian atūnu, a variant of utūnu 'kiln'. Unlike with the Greek, in this case the audience clearly isn't expected to be familiar with the word: every time it's used it's qualified with the Aramaic nûrāʔ yāqīḏtāʔ 'of blazing fire'. Undoubtedly it's being used to remind people that Nebuchadnezzar is a Babylonian king who speaks Akkadian.

The story continues as you would expect, with three exiles refusing to worship the statue when they hear the sound of the horn, whistle, lyre, harp, psaltery, symphonia, and all kinds of music and being thrown into the furnace of blazing fire and being unharmed because of God, big yawn.

But what we have here is a story that is in Aramaic because it started as a popular story when Aramaic had already replaced Hebrew as the popular language among the (post-)exiles because Aramaic was the language of the Babylonian court during the Babylonian exile, but that is now being told in a place and time where Greek is the popular language, and that tries to use marked loanwords to create a foreign atmosphere and ends up taking you on an unintentional tour of Judahite history. I generally don't care about the Hellenistic period at all—everything interesting that ever happened happened before 604 BCE—but you don't get this kind of language contact in the early Iron Age.

[lutes-of-the-world]

Pearl inlaid mulberry wood biwa lute, China or Japan, 8th century AD

from The Shoshin Repository

[lutes-of-the-world]

Munir Bashir, oud

From Baghdad to Granada

[lutes-of-the-world]

My field is historical music performance. I play 15th-18th century European music on copies of historical instruments.

I am a social democrat and an antifascist and antiracist.

Almost all of my colleagues are left wing. Many are openly LGBTQ. Many are in multiethnic relationships.

Occasionally, a self-styled fascist into Nordic black metal will commission an historical luthier to make a medieval Anglo-Saxon lyre, or a similar oddball will show up in a social media group for historical music. These people are not taken seriously and they have no presence in academe.

The funny thing is, these fascist cosplayers don't tend to know much about the European culture they seek to protect. It's almost like they don't care enough about it to study it.

Anyway, culture is good, and preserving it is necessary, even European culture. What's bad is claiming a certain culture is better than others. That's what separates a cultural preserver from a fascist.

Furthermore, one can make objective statements about, for example, the state of the arts in the Italian Renaissance vs in the west today. It is not a statement of fascist nostalgia to say that when popes and monarchs patronized the arts, the arts flourished.

The main benefit of being an artist today is having unprecedented access to records of the past. It's never been easier to study the old masters.

One only has to stay focused, and ignore the noise.

Look I get that culture and heritage can be complicated topics for a lot of reasons, but ultimately I just don't think there's a way to phase We Must Preserve Our Noble Heritage Against The Forces Of Modern Degeneracy that doesn't make you sound like a Nazi.

Actually for that matter a lot of you are just repeating conservative propaganda word for word except you've replaced "modern degeneracy" with "capitalism"

[lutes-of-the-world]

Two Ladies of the Lake Family

Artist: Sir Peter Lely (Dutch, 1618-1680)

Date: c. 1660

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom

Description

This picture is associated with the Lake family, who lived in Cannons house and estate in Middlesex. Portraits of women by Lely, like this one, tend to conform to the standards of ideal beauty which were current at court. The artist was more concerned with asserting a sense of glamour and sophistication than conveying individual personalities. The woman on the left is playing a French-made guitar, the latest fashion to arrive from Paris. Lely was the leading portrait painter of his generation.

[lutes-of-the-world]

A musical company in an interior, 17??, Museum of the Netherlands

Musicerend gezelschap in een interieur. Een man speelt op de cello, een vrouw op de luit en een andere vrouw zingt met een blad muziek in de handen. Rechts staan een man en een vrouw bij een schouw waarboven een schilderij met een zeegezicht hangt. Links op de voorgrond een zittende man op de rug gezien.

http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5097

[lutes-of-the-world]

A Georgian Woman [Painter's Sister] Playing the Chonguri - Ivan Gugunava

[lutes-of-the-world]

what can't women do when we decide to do it together

[lutes-of-the-world]

Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-87) - Sonata for Viola da gamba and Harpsichord in G-Major, WKO 149, II. Allegro. Performed by Thomas Fritzsch, viola da gamba, and Shalev Ad-El, harpsichord, on period instruments.

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Jean de Sainte-Colombe (1640-1700) - Les Couplets - Bergeronnette preste

Hille Perl, viola da gamba

[lutes-of-the-world]

Passagalia in G Minor

[lutes-of-the-world]

I was wondering as well. In context they're probably weirdly written "d"s. Occam's razor.

Elizabeth Cromwell very much wants you to know that this is her gittare book.

MS Mus 130

Houghton Library, Harvard University

[lutes-of-the-world]

An easy minuet.

Elizabeth Cromwell very much wants you to know that this is her gittare book.

MS Mus 130

Houghton Library, Harvard University

[lutes-of-the-world]

Christoph Schaffrath (1709-1763) - Duetto in D-Minor

Poco Allegro; Adagio; Allegro

Performed by Eric Miller & Phillip Serna - violas da gamba

[lutes-of-the-world]

Iranian tar.

NO WAR WITH IRAN

[lutes-of-the-world]

Michel de Bethune (1607 - 16..?) : "Pieces pour theorbes Francaises"

Jose Miguel Moreno, theorbo

[lutes-of-the-world]

Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757) - Sonata for Mandolin and Harpsichord in g-minor, K. 35. Performed by Anna Schivazappa, mandolin, and Fabio Antonio Falcone, harpsichord, on period instruments.