History of lute-family instruments

Lutes are stringed musical instruments that include a body and "a neck which serves both as a handle and as a means of stretching the strings beyond the body".
The lute family includes not only "short-necked plucked lutes" such as the lute, oud, pipa, guitar, citole, gittern, mandore, rubab, and gambus and "long-necked plucked lutes" such as banjo, tanbura, bağlama, bouzouki, veena, theorbo, archlute, pandura, sitar, Tanbur, setar, but also "bowed instruments" such as the yaylı tambur, rebab, erhu, and the entire family of viols and violins.
Lutes either rose in ancient Mesopotamia prior to 3100 B.C. or were brought to the area by ancient Semitic tribes. The lutes were "pierced lutes"; long-necked lutes with a neck made from a stick that went into a carved or turtle-shell bowl, the top covered with skin, and strings tied to the neck and instrument's bottom.
Curt Sachs, a musical historian, placed the earliest lutes at about 2000 B.C. in his 1941 book "The History of Musical Instruments". This date was based on the archaeological evidence available to him at that time. The discovery of an apparent lute on an Akkadian seal, now in the British Museum, may have pushed the known existence of the plucked lute back to c. 3100 B.C.
The lute's existence in art was more plain between 2330–2000 B.C. (the 2nd Uruk period), when the art had sufficient detail to show the instrument clearly. The instrument spread among the Hittites, Elamites, Assyrians, Mari, Babylonians and Hurrians. By c. 1500 the lute had reached Egypt, through conquest, and it had reached Greece by 320 B.C. both through Egypt and eastern neighbors. The lute spread eastward as well; long lutes today are found everywhere from Europe to Japan and south to India.
The short lute developed in Central Asia or Northern India in areas that had connection to Greece, China, India and the Middle East through trade and conquest. The short wood-topped lute moved east to China (as the Pipa) south to India (as the Vina), and west to the Middle East, Africa and Europe as the Barbat and Oud. From these two, and from skin topped lutes known today as rubabs and plucked fiddles, instruments developed in Europe.
Europeans had access to lutes in several ways. Foreign sources came in through Byzantium, Sicily and Andalusia. In the non-literate period, they apparently experimented with locally made instruments which were referenced in documents from the Carolingian Renaissance. This was overwhelmed by incoming instruments and Europeans developed whole families of lutes, both plucked and bowed.
Lute-family instruments penetrated from East and Southeast Asia through Central Asia and the Middle East, through North Africa, Europe and Scandinavia. These days, lute-family instruments are used worldwide.
Precursors to lutes: A theory.
Theory.
In theory, families of musical instruments descend from the musical bow.
Henri Breuil surveyed the Trois Frères caves in France and made an engraving that attempted to reproduce a c. 13,000 B.C. cave painting into a black-and-white lithograph engraving. His engraving showed a mysterious figure, a "man camouflaged to resemble a bison", in the midst of a mass of herd-animals, "herding the beasts and playing the musical bow". The artwork is confused, and those who are trying to reproduce the art in color have had to work to bring out legible images. One interpretation of the "magician-hunter" image considers his hunting-bow to be a musical bow, used as a single-stringed musical instrument.
Whether the bow in the cave illustration is a musical instrument or the hunting tool in a paleolithic hunt, musicologists have considered whether the bow could be a possible relative or ancestor to chordophones, the lutes lyres, harps and zither families. Curt Sachs said that there was good reason not to consider "hunters' bows" as likely musical bows. One reason was that the oldest known musical bows were 10 feet long, useless for hunting, and that "musical bows were not associated with hunters' beliefs and ceremonies".
Sachs considered the musical bows important, however. He pointed out that the name for the Greek lute, "pandûra" was likely derived from "pan-tur", a Sumerian word meaning "small bow". He considered this evidence in support of the theory that the musical bow was ancestral to the pierced lute.
The bows used for music required a resonator, a hollowed object like a bowl, a gourd or a musician's mouth, in order to produce audible sound. Although the musical bow could be manipulated to produce more than one tone instruments were developed from it that used one note per string. Since each string played a single note, adding strings added new notes for instrument families such as bow harps, harps and lyres. In turn, this led to being able to play dyads and chords. Another innovation occurred when the bow harp was straightened out and a bridge used to lift the strings off the stick-neck, creating the lute.
Theory disputed.
This picture of musical bow to harp bow is theory and has been contested. In 1965 Franz Jahnel wrote his criticism stating that the early ancestors of plucked instruments are not currently known. He felt that the harp bow was a long cry from the sophistication of the 4th-millennium BC civilization that took the primitive technology and created "technically and artistically well-made harps, lyres, citharas and lutes".
Long-necked lutes.
The most ancient lutes had long necks. These survived into the modern era as the tanbur, which Sacks said "faithfully preserved the outer appearance of the ancient lutes of Babylonia and Egypt". Sachs, one of those who created the widespread system of musical instrument classification idea today, categorized long lutes with a "pierced lute" and "long neck lute". The "pierced lute "had a neck made from a stick that pierced the body (as in the ancient Egyptian long-neck lutes, and the modern African gunbrī). The "long lute" had an attached neck, and included the sitar, tanbur and tar (dutār 2 strings, setār 3 strings, čatār 4 strings, pančtār 5 strings).
Musicologist Richard Dumbrill today uses the word lute more categorically to discuss instruments that existed millennia before the term "lute" was coined. Dumbrill documented more than 3000 years of iconographic evidence for the lutes in Mesopotamia, in his book "The Archaeomusicology of the Ancient Near East". According to Dumbrill, the lute family included instruments in Mesopotamia prior to 3000 BC. He points to a cylinder seal as evidence; dating from 3100 BC or earlier (now in the possession of the British Museum) the -seal depicts on one side what is thought to be a woman playing a stick "lute". Like Sachs, Dumbrill saw length as distinguishing lutes, dividing the Mesopotamian lutes into a long variety and a short. His book does not cover the shorter instruments that became the European lute, beyond showing examples of shorter lutes in the ancient world. He focuses on the longer lutes of Mesopotamia, various types of necked chordophones that developed throughout ancient world: Greek, Egyptian (in the Middle Kingdom), Iranian (Elamite and others), Hittite, Roman, Bulgar, Turkic, Indian, Chinese, Armenian/Cilician cultures. He names among the long lutes, the pandura and the tanbur
Experts who study the people from ancient civilizations in Mesopotamia region argue as to which people the long-necked people originated. Candidates include "East Semites" of Akkad, peoples in Elam and "West Semites". The instrument was probably distributed by the Hittites, Hurrians and Kassites, rather than invented by them.
Examples from 2334 to 2000 B.C. (Uruk period 3) exist from Ischali, Eshnunna (Tell Asmar), Kish, Mesopotamia, Iran, Iraq, Tello, Susa. Later examples exist from 2000 to 1500 B.C. (Uruk period 4). Examples were found in Khafage, Mari, Isin or Larsa, Iran, Babylon, Tell Mamabaqat Syria, Susa, and Alaca Huyuk. In period 5 from 1500 to 1000 B.C., the Egyptians acquired the lute and their art also contributed to our knowledge, as well as actual lutes found in graves.
Prehistoric roots in Sumer, westward to Egypt.
Sumerians, Babylonians, Kassites, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks all ruled the Mesopotamian area between Tigris and Euphrates rivers where the earliest examples of lutes have survived in clay and stone artwork. Sachs described the Mesopotamian lutes as having "very small bodies, long necks with many frets, two strings attached without pegs and were played with a plectron". The long lute entered Egypt after its conquest of Southwest Asia, when it began receiving tribute in the form of "singing and dancing-girls with their instruments", illustrated in paintings at Tell El-Amarna.
The paintings of the Egyptian lutes are detailed enough to provide a better understanding of ancient long lutes. Furthermore, original lutes survived in tombs, some still with strings attached. The Egyptian pierced-lutes had a carved wooden bowl for the instrument's body, "usually oval", covered with rawhide. A stick which acted as the instrument's neck pierced the instrument's body. The stick was threaded through cuts in the top of the rawhide to the end of the bowl. It was attached to the strings through a "triangular opening cut in the skin" at the bottom of the bowl. Besides being woven through the skin-soundboard, the stick was supported underneath by "wooden crosspieces" that ran crosswise underneath the stick, to the edges of the bowl on either side. The strings were "wound around the top of the handle" and tied with thongs, the tassels visible in some surviving artwork.
Nora E. Scott gave more details about the Egyptian lute's construction, saying that the lute had two bridges, the triangular bridge at the bottom, attached to the stick and protruding through the skin, and another on the neck. The string passed over the second bridge and was tied down to the neck with linen cord to keep its tension. The player tuned the lute by pulling the string tight over the second bridge and tightening the linen cord to hold. The second bridge corresponds in function to the nut on a guitar or mandolin. The soundboard skin could have as many as six soundholes.
Sachs points out one significant difference between the Egyptian lutes and other pierced lutes of the ancient world. The non-Egyptian lutes had a stick handle piercing the bowl on both ends (), rather than having one end resting inside the bowl (). He also gave consideration to African skin-topped instruments that survived into the 20th century, noting that those in Morocco and Senegambia, such as the gunbri, might be descendants. He said the instruments "degenerated" from the Egyptian instruments, but then were developed after the Arab conquest of North Africa. Other differences he noted include different body shapes, attaching strings to "lateral pegs" (rather than tying strings directly to the neck) and reducing the instrument's size.
Greece and Rome, pandura.
The long-necked lute traveled west as well as east. In the 5th century B.C. the Egyptian lute made it into Greek sculpture, recognizable as a pierced lute, stick running into an oval body, with triangular bridge at base of instrument and two lines of soundholes parallel to the stick, on either side of it. A century later at Mantineia, the pierced lute would be changed, with a broader neck, somewhat shorter than the earlier Egyptian style lute, but still a long-necked instrument, with the neck longer than the soundbox. A second version at Tanagra in 200 B.C. was carved from a single piece of wood, neck and soundbox, pear-shaped much as the short-lutes that later arrived from Central Asia. Still another form of the pandura would have a one-piece carved triangular body with skin stretched across it.
Sachs describes the pandura as having three strings, tied still to the neck as there were no pegs, and a small body. The Greeks called the lute by multiple names, including "trichordon" (3-stringed) and "pandura". He looks as the latter name as evidence that the instrument was foreign to Greece, introduced from the East; the name was derived from "pan-tur", a Sumerian name meaning "small bow". Sachs said that the instrument could be called "alternatively an Assyrian, a Cappadocian and an Egyptian instrument".
While examples exist across 1100 years, the pandura was rarely covered in Greek and Roman art, compared to the cithara, harp and lyre. One possible reason had to do with cultural values. In the Mesopotamia and in Egypt, the lute had been associated with dancing girls and with entertainment. Sumerian pottery and clay statues show that the lute players were often naked performers, with sexuality a part of the performance. The Egyptian girls are similarly scantily clad, dancing for their lords and ladies.
A millennium later at Rome in the 5th century A.D., the pandura was a low-class instrument with a "disreputable association with frivolity and low merry-making". A story about St Theodoulos the Stylite says that he was tested by God, forced to associate with Cornelius the pandouros (pandura player). According to the story, "Theodoulos is horrified at being associated with a man from the theatre" and more horrified to find "Cornelius at the Hippodrome, holding his instrument with one hand, and with the other, a bareheaded prostitute".
Lack of artwork does not necessarily mean absence of the lute in Roman and Greek society. What images have survived of Greek and Roman pandura players are from high-class art. In the statuary, plaques and a mosaic in the Byzantine emperor's palace, players are dignified and clothed. The art, made for the wealthy upper classes doesn't show the lower-class places where Theodoulos was shocked.
Tanbur family.
Tanburs have been present in Mesopotamia since the Akkadian era, or the third millennium BC.
Three figurines have been found in Susa that belong to 1500 BC, and in hands of one of them is a tanbur-like instrument.
Also an image on the rocks near Mosul that belong to about 1000 B.C. shows tanbur players.
Playing the tanbur was common at least by the late Parthian era and Sassanid period, and the word 'tanbur' is found in middle Persian and Parthian language texts, for instance in "Drakht-i Asurig, Bundahishn, Kar-Namag i Ardashir i Pabagan," and "Khosrow and Ridag".
In the tenth century AD Al-Farabi described two types of tanburs found in Persia, a Baghdad "tunbūr", distributed south and west of Baghdad, and a Khorasan "tunbūr". This distinction may be the source of modern differentiation between Arabic instruments, derived from the Baghdad "tunbūr", and those found in northern Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sindh and Turkey, from the Khorasan "tunbūr".
The Persian name spread widely, eventually taking in long-necked string instruments used in Central Asian music such as the Dombura and the classical Turkish tambur as well as the Kurdish tembûr. Until the early twentieth century, the names "chambar" and "jumbush" were applied to instruments in northern Iraq. In India the name was applied to the "tanpura" (tambura), a fretless drone lute. Tanbur traveled through Al-Hirah to the Arabian Peninsula and in the early Islam period went to the European countries. Tanbur was called 'tunbur' or 'tunbureh/tunbura' in Al-Hirah, and in Greek it was named tambouras, then went to albania as tampura, in Russia it was named domra, in Siberia and Mongolia as dombra, and in Byzantine Empire was named pandura/bandura. It travelled through Byzantine Empire to other European countries and was called pandura, mandura, bandura, etc.
Later the Iranian (Kurdish) tanbur became associated with the music of the Ahl-e Haqq, a primarily Kurdish ghulat religious movement similar to a Sufi order, in Kurdish areas and in the Lorestān and Sistan va Baluchestan provinces of Iran, where it is called the 'tembûr'.
Persians have another naming system for differentiating different styles of the instrument, using the word "tar" with a number for the number of strings or courses of strings. Instruments named this way include the dutar (2 strings/courses), setar (three strings/courses), cartar (4 strings/courses) and panctar (five strings/courses). A course is multiple strings played together, so that a setar can have 6 strings altogether, but the strings are divided in three rows or courses.
The pegs on the long-lutes are different than on short lutes (such as the oud) where a pegbox has pegs accessed from the sides. On long lutes, some are inserted from the front, some from the side. Sachs felt that the pegs were an indication of mixed origins for tanbur. Front and side elements came from Arabo/Persian instruments, rear pegs from Turkish.
The tanbur family includes
Instruments not included on this list provide a chance to think about the instruments' evolution. Early Mesopotamian long-necked lutes would have had skin tops and sound-bowls that were either carved from wood or made from a turtle shell. There was a divergence; modern tanburs have wood tops, while rubabs have skin tops. One instrument straddled the line, the Byzantine or Coptic lute. These appear to have been successors of the middle east long-lute tradition, in which Egypt participated. They have a wooden soundboard (a tanbur trait), however, the neck is hollow (a rubab trait). Also the Byzantine lute from Qasr Libya, in Libya, has barbs on its top, a rubab trait. The Coptic lute also overlaps with an instrument that Curt Sachs called a pandura, the instrument illustrated in the mosaic in the Byzantine emperor's palace in Constantinople.
The other long lutes not included here are because of their rubab orientation are the dotara, dramyin, rawap and pamiri rubab. They have soundboards of skin and may also have hollow necks.
Chinese sanxian.
It has been suggested that the sanxian, a form of spike lute, may have its origin in the Middle East, and older forms of spike lute were also found in ancient Egypt. Similar instruments may have been present in China as early as the Qin dynasty as "qin pipa" ("pipa" was used as a generic term in ancient China for many other forms of plucked chordophones) or "xiantao" (弦鼗). Some thought that the instrument may have been re-introduced into China together with other instruments such as "huqin" by the Mongols during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), however, an image of a sanxian-like instrument was found in a stone sculpture dating from the Southern Song period (1217–79). The first record of the name "sanxian" may be found in a Ming dynasty text.
The instrument was transmitted to other East Asian countries, for example to Japan as "shamisen".
Mathematics and music.
Strings are mathematical.
The lute is tied to the mathematics related to pitches. Unlike the harp, in which a string produces a single note, a lute string produces more than one note. Placing a finger on a string divides the string into measurable parts. Measuring those parts leads to mathematical ratios, useful in placing frets on the neck of the lute. An instrument such as the setar uses moveable frets to hit whole notes, half notes and quarter notes.
It isn't known when frets were first used. Some ancient images discovered in the Middle East from before 1000 B.C.E. appear to show frets. These are rare and most images do not show frets on the early lutes.
A rare example from about the 3rd century C.E. was discovered in 1907 in the Niya ruins in Xinjiang, China, a broken lute's neck with two gut frets intact. The neck and pegbox of the lute are similar to the lute painted on the wall in the Dingjiazha Tomb No. 5 (384–441 A.D.), which also has frets. Buddhist artworks from the 6th-10th centuries C.E. in the Mogao Caves (558-907 C.E.) and Yulin Caves (618-907 C.E.) appear to have frets. Some long lutes in the Utrecht Psalter (ca. 850 C.E.) in France also appear fretted, as do citoles from Spain in the Cantigas de Santa Maria (ca. 1280).
Bringing order to infinite number of pitches.
Richard Dumbrill talked about the earliest known systems of musical notes, and what makes them feel natural. He concluded that what makes a mode "feel intrinsic is centuries of usage". For the Sumerians, natural was a five-note system. For the Akkadians, natural was a nine-note system and then a seven-note system, "the basis for our modern [western] system".
With a seeming infinite number of possible pitches to create modes, musicians had to choose which notes to use, and which to play together. One way of bring order to the infinite number of tones was to examine music with mathematics.
The Sumerians and Akkadians, the Greeks, and the Persians all used math to create notes used on lutes and lyres and other stringed instruments. Using the idea that a plucked or bowed string produces a note, they noticed the difference in tone when a string is stopped. "The great discovery" was hearing the double octave, that halving a string produces a note one octave above the string. Written as a ratio 2:1.
They measured the ratios of string lengths on one side and the other of where the string was pressed, creating ratios. Those ratios allowed them to compare sounds, for example third intervals, fourths, fifths. They were able to tune one string against another in those intervals on lutes, lyres, harps, zithers. Those lutes that had frets gave them the further ability to reliably find those intervals on a played string, by marking points on the neck at mathematically spaced distances based on the ratios. Unlike modern instruments, where frets may be permanently fixed into the neck, as on a guitar, the older instruments used gut strings tied around the neck for frets, and this made their instruments adjustable. Early musicians could tune their instruments to different modes. Lute players could tune the strings to different intervals, and could further adjust the frets for the modes.
Knowledge passed back and forth between cultures.
Western scholarship has traditionally credited the Greeks, including Pythagoras (c.  570 – c.  495 BC), with discovery of this math to determine notes on strings, called Pythagorean tuning,
which covers western tuning based on perfect 5ths and octaves. However, as modern scholars have looked at cuneiform texts, it is clear that the Greeks were not the first; recorded thinking in Mesopotamia about the mathematical ratios of strings predates the Greek thinking by at least 1500 years. Furthermore, a form of written music came out of that era, called the Hurrian songs, currently the oldest known written music, and is based on modes of music, recorded in cuniform string ratios.
Once the Persian and Arab thinkers from the Umayyad and Abbssid periods (7th to 13th centuries A.D.) had translations of Greek manuscripts, they began to study music as a science as part of "mathematical arts."
Some Muslim musicians came to have access to more than one mathematically created scale, such as the Persian scale, the Arab scale and the Pythagorean scale.
Thinkers and polymaths of Central Asia and Arabia.
The mixing cultures of Central Asia and Arabia produced several thinkers who wrote about music, including something about the lute in their works, including Al-Kindi (c. 801 – c. 873), Ziryab (789–857), Al-Farabi (c. 872 – c. 950), Avicenna (c. 980 – 1037), and Safi al-Din al-Urmawi (1216–1294). They wrote in Arabic, what had become the useful lingua-Franca of their time, and took part in Muslim society and culture. The weren't sole working in the Middle East; Islam was spread wide and some of the thinkers were from Central Asia.
The Arabs had a musical scale, described by al-Farabi, in use by some through the 13th century A.D. That tanbar scale, which divided the string into "40 equal parts" may have been a leftover from Babylon and Assyria. However, the Arabs traded with and conquered the Persians, and they adopted Persian scales for their lutes, just as they adopted Persian short-necked lutes.
Ziryab moved from Baghdad to al-Andalus, where he set up a school of music and was one of the first to add a fifth string or course to oud, "between 822 and 852). Al-Andalus, where he settled would become a center of musical instrument development for Europe.
Al-Kindi was a polymath who wrote as many as 15 music-related treatises. He was among the first to apply Greek musical theory to Central Asian-Arabian short lutes. He added semi-tones between the nut and the first string. He also added a fifth string to his oud in the east, as Ziryab had done in the west.
Al-Farabi "fully incorporated the works of Aristoxenus and Ptolemy into his theory of tetrachords", and wrote among books in many subjects, the Kitab al-Musiqa al-Kabir, the "Major Book of Music", in which he detailed how to tune an oud, using mathematical ratios. He gave instruction for both 10 frets and 12, telling where to place the tied (and moveable) gut-string frets on the neck. His way of tuning allowed a "12-fret ‘ud tuning — which results ... 'double-octave' scale", with 22 notes in each octave.
Short-necked lutes.
Although the oldest iconographic evidence concerning lutes deals with long lutes in Mesopotamia and Egypt, some long-necked lutes are shorter than others. Comparatively, the Greek and Byzantine pandura is shorter than the tanbur, even though both are long lutes. Shorter lutes exist among the long-necked lutes today, including the tanburica, cura and komuz.
A short necked lute does not necessarily a small lute, as a guitar or pipa can be a large instrument. Guitars have a sound box as long as the neck. Some members of the rubab family with their long sound-boxes fit into the group of short-necked lutes.
The line of short-necked lutes developed to the east of Mesopotamia, in Central Asia, places like Bactria and Gandhara. There a short, almond-shaped lute surfaced, carried east and west by Sogdiana merchants, become the Chinese pipa and Middle Eastern oud. Curt Sachs talked about the depictions of Ganharan lutes in art, where they are presented in a mix of "Northwest Indian art" under "a strong Greek influence". The short-necked lutes in these Gandhara artworks were "the venerable ancestor of the Islamic, the Sino-Japanese and the European lute families". He described the Ganhara lutes as having a "pear-shaped body tapering towards the short neck, a frontal stringholder, lateral pegs, and either four or five strings". 
While the earliest may be in the Gandhara region, Northern India itself also has ancient short-necked lutes in sculpture, such as one found at Pawāyā, Madhya Pradesh, India, that dates to the Gupta period, 400–499 A.D. Southern India too has early images of lutes, including 2nd-3rd century CE artwork at the Amaravati Stupa, where a large bodied, short-necked lute is carved into the relief sculpture. Another South India artwork showing a lute is found in the 450-490 C.E. painting, "" in the Ajanta Caves.
Much of short lute development happened in the Central Asian area between India, China and Persia. Early short lutes were carved out of a single block of wood (monoxle), not built up in a box or bowl-like modern lutes. An example is the barbat which has been called ancestral to both skin-topped instruments like the gambus as well as to larger wood-topped instruments such as the oud. Names were reused or used across multiple instruments over the millennia; the rabab group is an example of that. The family included short lute-shaped instruments, to larger lutes with multiple chambers (some covered with wood, some with skin), to long-necked lutes that retained the multiple sound chambers and skin over the bowl. Some rababs were plucked, some bowed.
Central Asia, the crossroads of civilizations.
It has been argued that Central Asia, a crossroads of multiple civilizations, the Middle East, Europe, China and India, could itself constitute a center of world civilization. It was described by the Greek geographer, Strabo, as "a land of 1000 cities." The peoples there could be loosely called Iranians, the historic tribes, not only citizens of the modern country. Over a period of centuries Central Asia was conquered by people from different cultures including the Greeks, Kushans, various Turkic tribes, Persians (themselves an Iranian tribe), and Arabs. The result was a blending of the cultures, and Central Asia grew prosperous in spite of the invasions.
When the Arabs conquered Central Asia, they were conquering a culture that specialized in taking things, evaluating them for their potential value and improving on them. Their habit of evaluating applied to products to sell and to ideas. Central Asia was pluralistic and diverse and had some of the biggest cities on the planet, with books being "numerous and widespread", and a high rate of literacy, in which even women could read and write. The culture of literacy and evaluation continued after the Arabs burned the Central Asian libraries (an attempt to do away with competing ideas). Arabic became a lingua-franca, joining Central Asia with the wider Muslim academic world. When the Greek classics were translated into Arabic, Central Asian polymaths worked with the translated Greek science and philosophy, making scientific discoveries that wouldn't be duplicated until the European Renaissance.
Among the products manufactured and exported to China were "lutes, harps, transverse flutes, both plucked and bowed stringed instruments, and even Central Asian dances."
One of the peoples, the Sogdians were successful merchants for centuries and traveled to Europe, China and India. They took their music and dances with them, and the Sogdian Whirl, became popular in China. Another group from Central Asia was the people of Kucha, whose music and dances were popular in the Imperial Court, and which have survived in the Japanese Imperial Court into the modern era.
Pipa, ruan and yueqin.
Pipa.
The pear-shaped pipa is likely to have been introduced to China from Central Asia, Gandhara, and/or India. Pear-shaped lutes have been depicted in Kusana sculptures from the 1st century AD.
The pear-shaped pipa may have been introduced during the Han Dynasty and was referred to as Han pipa. However, depictions of the pear-shaped pipas in China only appeared after the Han Dynasty during the Jin Dynasty in the late 4th to early 5th century.
A small "pipa" was found in murals of tombs in Liaoning (遼寧) province in northeastern China. The date of these tombs is about late Eastern Han (東漢) or Wei (魏) period (220–265 AD). However, the pear-shaped "pipa" was not brought to China from Dunhuang (敦煌, now in northwestern China) until the Northern Wei period (386–524 AD) when ancient China traded with the western countries through the Silk Road (絲綢之路). Evidence was shown on the Dunhuang Caves frescoes that the frescoes contain a large number of pipa, and they date to 4th to 5th century.
Pipa acquired a number of Chinese symbolisms during the Han Dynasty – the instrument length of three feet five inches represents the three realms (heaven, earth, and man) and the five elements, while the four strings represent the four seasons.
Depictions of the pear-shaped pipas appeared in abundance from the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420 to 589) onwards, and pipas from this time to the Tang Dynasty were given various names, such as Hu pipa (胡琵琶), bent-neck pipa (曲項琵琶, quxiang pipa), some of these terms, however, may refer to the same pipa. Apart from the four-stringed pipa, other pear-shaped instruments introduced include the five-stringed, straight-necked, wuxian pipa (五弦琵琶, also known as Kuchean pipa (龜茲琵琶)), a six-stringed version, as well as the two-stringed hulei (忽雷). From the 3rd century onwards, through the Sui and Tang Dynasty, the pear-shaped "pipas" became increasingly popular in China. By the Song Dynasty the word pipa was used to refer exclusively to the four-stringed pear-shaped instrument.
Ruan and yueqin.
Another type of lute in China is the yueqin, a round-bodied instrument with flat top and back. According to tradition, the instrument was invented in China during the 3rd to 5th century A.D. Jin Dynasty. The ruan, another Chinese instrument, is the ancestor of the yueqin. The period overlaps with the period of immigration of ancient non-Han Chinese peoples and invasions, by groups such as the Five Barbarians.
The yueqin is a type of ruan, what may be China's oldest lute. Ruans may have a history of over 2,000 years, the earliest form may be the qin pipa (秦琵琶), which was then developed into ruanxian (named after Ruan Xian, 阮咸), shortened to ruan (阮).[1][2] In old Chinese texts from the Han to the Tang dynasty, the term pipa was used as a generic term for a number plucked chordophones, including ruan, therefore does not necessarily mean the same as the modern usage of pipa which refers only to the pear-shaped instrument. According to the Pipa Annals 《琵琶赋》 by Fu Xuan (傅玄) of the Western Jin Dynasty, the pipa was designed after revision of other Chinese plucked string instruments of the day such as the Chinese zither, zheng (筝) and zhu (筑), or konghou (箜篌), the Chinese harp.[3] However, it is believed that ruan may have been descended from an instrument called xiantao (弦鼗) which was constructed by labourers on the Great Wall of China during the late Qin Dynasty (hence the name Qin pipa) using strings stretched over a pellet drum.[4]
The antecedent of ruan in the Qin Dynasty (221 BC – 206 BC), i.e. the Qin pipa, had a long, straight neck with a round sound box in contrast to the pear-shape of pipa of later dynasties. The name of "pipa" is associated with "tantiao" (彈挑), a right hand techniques of playing a plucked string instrument. "Pi" (琵), which means "tan" (彈), is the downward movement of plucking the string. "Pa" (琶), which means "tiao" (挑), is the upward movement of plucking the string.[5]
The present name of the "Qin pipa", which is "ruan", was not given until the Tang Dynasty (8th century). During the reign of Empress Wu Zetian (武則天) (about 684–704 AD), a copper instrument that looked like the "Qin pipa" was discovered in an ancient tomb in Sichuan (四川). It had 13 frets and a round sound box. It was believed that it was the instrument which the Eastern Jin (東晉) musician Ruan Xian (阮咸) loved to play.
Nowadays, although the "ruan" was never as popular as the "pipa", the "ruan" has been divided into several smaller and better-known instruments within the recent few centuries, such as "yueqin" ("moon" lute, 月琴) and "qinqin" (Qin [Dynasty] lute, 秦琴) . The short-necked "yueqin", with no sound holes, is now used primarily in Beijing opera accompaniment. The long-necked "qinqin" is a member of both Cantonese (廣東) and Chaozhou (潮州) ensembles.
Gallery: Asian plucked lutes, long and short-necked.
Musical instruments came into China from Central Asia, such as the pipa, or may have been invented locally such as the Qin-Pipa or sanxian. China became a source of instruments for (or shares instruments in common with) other cultures, including Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Three ways to categorized these are:
Entering the Middle East, Northern Africa and Europe, the barbat and oud.
Bactria and Gandhara became part of the Sasanian Empire (224–651), the last empire of the Persians. Under the Sasanians, a short almond shaped lute from Bactria came to be called the barbat or barbud, which was developed into the later Islamic world's "oud" or "ud". The lute was brought from Al-Hira in Persia to Mecca by Nadr ibn al-Harith, probably prior to 602 A.D. and was adopted by the Quraish, a mercantile Arab tribe. He taught the instrument and the song (ghina) that accompanied it to his people, where the instrument and song "were adopted by singing girls". Early musicians to use the lute include the Persian Sa'ib Khathir (died 683 A.D.), who brought the lute to Medina and Ibn Suraij in Mecca, said to have been the first to sing Arab songs on a lute "built in the Persian style" in 684 A.D.
When the Moors conquered Andalusia in 711, they brought their ud or quitra along, into a country that had already known a lute tradition under the Romans, the pandura.
During the 8th and 9th centuries, many musicians and artists from across the Islamic world flocked to Iberia. Among them was Abu l-Hasan ‘Ali Ibn Nafi‘ (789–857), a prominent musician who had trained under Ishaq al-Mawsili (d. 850) in Baghdad and was exiled to Andalusia before 833 AD. He taught and has been credited with adding a fifth string to his oud and with establishing one of the first schools of music in Córdoba.
By the 11th century, Muslim sections of Spain, or Al-Andalus, had become a center for the manufacture of instruments. These goods spread gradually to Provence, influencing French troubadours and trouvères and eventually reaching the rest of Europe. While Europe developed the lute, the "oud" remained a central part of Arab music, and broader Ottoman music as well, undergoing a range of transformations.
Beside the introduction of the lute to Spain by the Moors, another important point of transfer of the lute from Arabian to European culture was Sicily, where it was brought either by Byzantine or later by Muslim musicians. There were singer-lutenists at the court in Palermo following the Norman conquest of the island from the Muslims, and the lute is depicted extensively in the ceiling paintings in the Palermo’s royal Cappella Palatina, dedicated by the Norman King Roger II of Sicily in 1140. His Hohenstaufen grandson Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor (1194–1250) continued integrating Muslims into his court, including Moorish musicians. By the fourteenth century, lutes had disseminated throughout Italy and, probably because of the cultural influence of the Hohenstaufen kings and emperor, based in Palermo, the lute had also made significant inroads into the German-speaking lands.
Although the major entry of the short lute was in western Europe, leading to a variety of lute styles, the short lute entered Europe in the East as well; as early as the sixth century, the Bulgars brought the short-necked variety of the instrument called Komuz to the Balkans.
Additionally, the Byzantine Empire bordered on both Europe and Persia. The Central Asian lute, now middle Eastern, can be seen in Byzantine artwork from the 9th or 10th century.
Muslim and European instruments, blended tradition.
Fusion, instruments and music.
Instruments from approximately the 12th and 13th centuries in Spain and Sicily, areas conquered by Muslims and then European Christians. Instrument identities are educated guesses, even by experts, as none of these were labeled and historical descriptions of different types are vague. Places where cultures interact is a breeding ground of new ideas, where experimentation creates new instruments, the same process that blends different types of music to create new music by fusion. A similar process happened in Central Asia, over centuries of repeated trade by different cultures and conquests by different tribes.
Even after the Muslims were conquered in Spain or driven out, the process of experimentation continued, leading to a number of European instruments, including the guitar. A similar process occurred in Italy. Both Spain and Italy experimented with the viol or vihuela which led to bowed viols, violas vielles, and guitars. Other experiments led to the citole and cittern or Portuguese guitar, the gittern and vandola (mandore, mandola) which also led to the guitar, but also to the mandolin family. Spanish instruments that survived in Spanish colonies include the tiple.
Portuguese experiments led to the Portuguese guitar, and other instruments seen today in places that Portuguese ships landed, including the cavaquinho and ukulele.
Indo-Persian culture.
In areas around the Himalayas, variations of the rubab developed, part of Indo-Persian culture. From India, north through Pakistan, Nepal, into Persian/Turk areas of Central Asia, a group of barbed lutes and double-chested, skin-topped lutes developed. Today these include both plucked and bowed instruments, the sarod, rubab, sarinda, rebab, tungana.
Like the barbat and oud, these instruments went both east and west. Eastward towards Nepal, Tibet, Southeast Asia and China. Westward, the instruments traveled through Arabia (and on boats from there to Southeast Asia), across Northern Africa to the Iberian peninnsula.
Gambus and rabâb, skin tops plucked and bowed, rebab, rubab rabâb, robab.
In "The History of Musical Instruments", Sachs talked about a second kind of short lute found in the "Islamic Near East", carved from a single piece of wood, no distinct neck and a pegbox that was sickle shaped. There was also a kind with "an inferior stringholder".
The instruments that would become the gambus with sickle shaped pegbox traveled east "as far as the Celebes in Southeast Asia and southwards to Madagascar off the east coast of Africa". Another scholar thinks they traveled across the Indian ocean as well on Yemeni ships, as the Yemeni quanbus The gambus is among the last of the family of skin-topped lutes. Sachs names the instruments gambus, kabosa and qūpūz.
The gambus is plucked, but many of the variants are bowed. By the time the instrument became bowed, it was named rabâb, a name that has been used for long-necked skin topped instruments as well. The Cantigas de Santa Maria in Southern Spain had examples of both bowed and unbowed instruments.
The early instruments traveled west to enter Europe through Andalusia and Eastern Europe where they gained wooden tops and became lyras. In Yemen, the instrument was known as the quanbus. It traveled to Southeast Asia with Yemeni sailors. Over time, some of these became intertwine with spike fiddles. Variations of these instruments can be found in China, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and Europe.
Variations include the rebabs that spread via Islamic trading routes over much of North Africa, the Middle East, parts of Europe, and the Far East. The Medieval European Rebec, Croatian Lijerica, Cretan Cretan lyra, Bulgarian Gadulka and Russian Gudok, the Gusle used in Serbia, Romania, Albania and Bulgaria, the Eastern Mediterranean Kemenche and Persian Kamancheh, the Kazakh Kobyz, Bangladeshi Ektara are variations.
Gallery: skin topped lutes and rubabs.
These can blur the line between long-necked instruments and short necked. The soundbox is, in some cases, so long that it effectively adds to the instrument's scale-length, like a long neck.