Lyra (Cretan)
Various models of the Cretan Lyra at the Museum of Greek Traditional Instruments, Athens.
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| Other names | Cretan lyra/lira, Aegean lyra |
| Hornbostel–Sachs classification | 321.321-71 (Necked bowl lute sounded by a bow) |
| Developed | 10th century AD (est) |
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The Cretan lyra (Greek: Κρητική λύρα) is a Greek pear-shaped, three-stringed bowed musical instrument, central to the traditional music of Crete and other islands in the Dodecanese and the Aegean Archipelago, in Greece. The Cretan lyra is considered as the most popular surviving form of the medieval Byzantine lyra, an ancestor of most European bowed instruments.
The Cretan lyra is closely related to the bowed Byzantine lyra, the ancestor of many European bowed instruments and of rabāb found in Islamic empires of that time (Baines Anthony, 1992). The 9th-century Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih (d. 911), in his lexicographical discussion of instruments, cited the lyra as a typical instrument of the Byzantines along with the urghun (organ), shilyani (probably a type of harp or lyre) and the salandj (probably a bagpipe) (Margaret J. Kartomi, 1990).
The Byzantine lyra spread westward through Europe with uncertain evolution; a notable example is the Italian lira da braccio, a 15th-century bowed instrument and possibly the predecessor of the modern violin. Bowed instruments similar to the Cretan lyra and direct descendants of the Byzantine lyra have continued to be played in many post-Byzantine regions until the present day with small changes, for example the Gadulka in Bulgaria, the bowed Calabrian lira in Italy and the Classical Kemenche (Turkish: Armudî kemençe, Greek: Πολίτικη λύρα) in Istanbul, Turkey.
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