string instrument from Greek classical antiquity
Factsheet
(Composite chordophone sounded with a plectrum)
(Composite chordophone sounded with a plectrum)
Lyre buying guide, FAQ, and learning resources (updated for 2021)
This is amazing! I did a ton of research on many lyres, many of which I found you listed! By far the best and most comprehensive guide to finding a lyre for you in 2020, going on 2021
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If you're reading this, maybe you're considering taking up the lyre! In this post we'll answer a few basic questions about this beautiful and ancient instrument.
What is a lyre?
Without getting into a huge organological debate, at its simplest and in layperson's terms, a "zither" is a box with strings running across it, a "harp" is a box with an arm from which strings enter directly into the box at an angle, a "lyre" is like between a harp and a zither, where the "head" that holds the strings is stretched out by (generally) two arms, and the strings run across the gap between arms and the body.
What musical traditions use the lyre?
With modern hindsight, the lyre is heavily associated with the Ancient civilizations of the Middle East (including the Israelites), Ancient Greece, and the Middle Ages of Europe. Lyres died out in many places, but survived to relatively recent time in Sub-Saharan Africa, parts of the Middle East, Scandinavia (the bowed lyres), and in other small niches.
How many strings does a lyre have?
Arguably 1 to infinity strings, but the vast majority of lyres will have 5-16 strings, above 20 generally being considered large lyres, in some cases held and played much like a small harp, but considered lyres for technical reasons.
Is the lyre easy to learn?
It's all relative, but broadly I would say yes. A lyre (bowed lyres being the exception) basically has only as many notes as it has strings, so it's pretty easy to keep track of your notes and hard to hit a wrong one. We can debate this in individual threads, but as a broad generalization I'd say they're relatively easy to learn, but with plenty of potential for challenge, so I'd happily recommend the lyre to people with zero musical background, as well as to experienced musicians wanting a new challenge.
Buying Guide
Money doesn't grow on trees, so "how much do lyres cost?" is an issue I expect readers want to raise. The good news is they're easy to build, so run really quite affordable compared to other string instruments. Speaking broadly, for $30-$99 you can buy some lyres which are are of basic but playable quality, $100-400 gets you a really solid basic lyre depending on size and design, budgets of $600-999 can get you a really good model of just about anything short of amazing large and/or custom stuff.
For details on recommended models at different tiers, see our Lyre Buying Guide. If you want to browse more widely, or already kind of know what you want and need to find who makes such, check out our Directory of lyre makers/sellers
Lyre Books
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Lyre Wiki: Directory of lyre books
Materials for other instruments that can apply to some lyres
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Lyre Wiki: directory of books for other instruments, that can be applied to the lyre
Other discussion forums
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r/BowedLyres (for lyre-type instruments played with a bow, largely Welsh or Scandinavian)
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r/KoraHarp (for African harps and lyres)
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Facebook Group: The Lyre
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Facebook Group: Bowed Lyre
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Facebook Community: Anglo-Saxon Lyre
This is amazing! I did a ton of research on many lyres, many of which I found you listed! By far the best and most comprehensive guide to finding a lyre for you in 2020, going on 2021
I didn't want to make the OP too crowded, so I'll add in some miscellaneous observations about some other options here about a few mass-produced Ancient lyre options.
For Ancient Mediterranean lyres, the old-school Pakistan workshops make several models which are broadly Greek-is and Levantine-ish and whatnot, and a full-size Kinnor ($250) and the Mini Kinnor ($80). Generally these would be by either Roosebeck or Mid-East Manufacturing, but as is common with these imports they're often sold unnamed and just by model. Mid-East also sells the Nevel ($245), which is supposedly a reconstruction of an Israelite instrument with the same 10 nylon strings as the Kinnor, but with a circular drum-head body, basically a " banjo lyre." For all these, Mid-East/Roosebeck has kinda patchy quality control, but there are musicians who play their gear. I'll note Michael Levy is a serious lyre guy and says ME stuff is decent, though I will note he's done some content sponsored by that company. I'm not saying absolutely don't get these, just saying be vigilant about checking them out and prepared to either return a dud one or put some elbow-grease into tweaking it to get it playing right. Cool designs though. And lastly on these I'll note it appears some Chinese workshops have cloned the Mini Kinnor (but haven't seen the full size copied yet) and are selling it under the standard Chinese import lyre brands for about $99.
One option that I don't know much about is the "Old World Lyre" sold my Musicmakers for $260 in kit form or $460 in completed form. It's a 10-string nylon or steel lyre based on an Iberian design and reconstructed by luthier Juan Ramirez Vega. I haven't tried one so can't attest to the quality of the MM one, though they do generally decent stuff. Also it seems Pakistan or China has cribbed the design so you can randomly run across nylon copies online for maybe $150-250, presumably same QC risks of the usual imports if you buy a clone. Basically the same way Pakistan appears to have cribbed the Lynda Lyre design from MM and made a half-price version that probably is a bit rougher. Depends how adventurous you feel about upgrading a rough one.
All these mentioned here are things I haven't tried (except I had a Mini Kinnor that was unusable because the tuning pegs had zero grip, I could've fixed that but passed it off to another musician who wanted to monkey with it). So I left these out of the OP partially because I felt I needed to contextualize them a lot and didn't want to crowd the OP, and also because I feel these are a potentially decent option for some people, but not the average reader.