Rotte (lyre)

Rotte
Germanic lyre

Sutton Hoo Lyre replica, British Museum
String instrument
Other names	Germanic lyre[1] Round lyre[2] Viking lyre, Scandanavian lyre[3] harpa, hörpu (ONorse)[4][5] Anglo-Saxon lyre[3] hearpe (OEng)[6][3] cruð (OEng)[7] cruit (OIrish),[7][8][9] crot[7][10][11] crowd (MidEng)[12] chrotta (OHGer, Latin)[7][13] hruozza (OHGer)[14] rota (OProv)[15][16] rotta (OHGer, OProv, MedLatin)[15][17] rote (OFr, MidEng)[15][18] rotte (MidHGer)[15][19] sambuca (MedLatin)[20]
Hornbostel–Sachs classification	321.21 (Yoke lutes. Composite chordophone in which the strings run in a plane parallel to the sound table, with a yoke (a cross-bar and two arms) that lies lying in the same plane as the sound-table, with a bowl-shaped resonator)
Developed	descendant of the ancient lyre which originated in western Asia; cousin to Asian instruments adopted in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece[15]
Related instruments
Plucked lyres: List Phorminx Kinnor Kithara Lyre Bowed lyres: List Chrotta Crwth Giga Gue Jouhikko Stråkharpa Talharpa

See Rotte (psaltery) for the medieval psaltery, or Rote for the fiddle

Rotte or rotta is a historical name for the Germanic lyre, used in northwestern Europe in the early medieval period (circa 450 A.D.) into the 13th century.^[15] The plucked variants declined in the medieval era (spreading less often in manuscripts in the 13th century), while bowed variants have survived into modern times.^[15]

Non-Greek or Roman lyres were used in pre-Christian Europe as early as the 6th century B.C. by the Hallstatt culture, by Celtic peoples as early as the 1st century B.C., and by Germanic peoples.^[15] They were played in Anglo-Saxon England, and more widely, in Germanic regions of northwestern Europe. Their existence was recorded in the Scandinavian and Old-English story Beowulf, set in pre-Christian times (5th-6th century A.D.) and written or retold by a Christian scribe about 975 A.D.^[21][22] The Germanic lyre has been thought to be a descendant of the ancient lyre which originated in western Asia.^[15] That same instrument was adopted in Ancient Egypt and also by the Ancient Greeks as the cithara.^[15] The rotte is shaped differently than these, however, and discoveries from further east has led to the possibility that it arrived with invading tribes.^[23]

The oldest rotte found in England dates possibly before 450 AD and the most recent dates to the 10th century.^[24] The Germanic lyre was depicted in manuscript illuminations^[25][26][27] and mentioned in Anglo-Saxon literature and poetry (as the hearpe).^[3][28][21] Despite this, knowledge of the instrument was largely forgotten, and it was confused with the later medieval harp.^[3] Then in the 19th century, two lyres (Oberflacht 84 and 37) were found in cemetery excavations in southwest Germany, giving concrete examples of the Germanic lyre's existence.^[29] These discoveries, followed in 1939 by the archaeological excavation at Sutton Hoo and the correct reconstruction of the Sutton Hoo instrument (as a lyre, not a harp) in 1970, brought about the realization that the lyre was "the typical early Germanic stringed instrument."^[30][31]

Differing from the lyres of the Mediterranean antiquity, Germanic lyres are characterised by a long, shallow and broadly rectangular shape, with a hollow soundbox curving at the base, and two hollow arms connected across the top by an integrated crossbar or ‘yoke’. From northwestern Europe—particularly from England and Germany—an ever-growing number of wooden lyres have been excavated from warrior graves of the first millennium A.D.

"Evidence of manuscript illustrations and the writings of early theorists suggest that, in Anglo-Saxon and early medieval times...the words hearpe, rotte and cithara were all used to describe the same instrument, or type of instrument."^[15] The direction of the spread of the instrument is uncertain. The instrument may have developed in several locations.^[15] Other possibilities include an Irish instrument that spread eastwards to Germany, or an instrument of central Europe that spread northwest.^[15] Across Europe, lyres were named with etymologically related variations: crwth, cruit, crot (Celtic); rote and crowd (English); rota, rotta, rote, rotte (French, English, German, Provencal).^[15]

The instrument disappeared in most of Europe, surviving in Scandinavia, and elsewhere remembered in medieval images and in literature.^[3] In 1774 it was featured in a work of religious musical scholarship by Martin Gerbert, who found an illustration in a 12th century A.D. manuscript and labeled the instrument the Cythara Teutonica.^[2] After archeological finds, the instrument has been recreated and studied anew, labeled Germanic round-lyre, Anglo-Saxon lyre, Germanic lyre and Viking lyre today.^[32][1][33] Historical names include rotta (and variations rota, rotte, rote, Hörpu (Old Norse) and hearpe (Old-English).^[3][4][15]