Lyre-guitar
- Matanya Ophee
Extract
A plucked, guitar-like string instrument with a sound box shaped in the image of the ancient Greek lyre. It is classified in the Hornbostel-Sachs system as a chordophone. Its popularity grew in mid-18th-century France out of the fashionable infatuation among the upper classes with Greek antiquity. The instrument was also adopted by the emerging middle classes after the revolution, and with the general expansion of French influence during the Napoleonic era it spread to Italy, Germany, Russia, Sweden and, to a lesser degree, to Spain, England and the United States....
