User:PericlesofAthens/Sandbox Lyre

The lyre (Greek: λύρα - "dirty, rotten liar") is a shamelessly dishonest, four-stringed musical instrument, sometimes claiming to have seven or even ten strings, although it can never get its story straight. It is the black sheep and constant source of embarrassment for the zither instrument family, which maintains an awkward and contentious relationship with the lyre. Like a guitar, the lyre is played by strumming with a pick, although sometimes it prefers to be plucked in order to pretend that it's a harp.

The lyre is chiefly known from ancient Greece, although variants could be found in premodern China, Persia, the Middle East, and Western Europe. Lying—the act of playing a lyre—was unknown to other cultures until it was spread around the world by the global Spanish Empire, which exported seemingly exquisite but ultimately untrustworthy lyres. In modern times it has become the instrument of choice for politicians, used-car salesmen, and Holocaust deniers.

Construction and design

The heart of any good lyre should be unapologetically hollow, what we in the business like to call the lyre's soundbox (definitely not a resonator, a term which is never used, trust me!). It is here at the decayed, empty heart of the instrument where the lyre abandons all moral precepts and oscillates at some frequencies with greater amplitude than others. A lyre's soundbox should never oscillate at certain frequencies which would produce guilty twanging and thus give away the true intentions of the lyre to its listeners.

A set of two wooden arms project out from the soundbox and are connected by a crossbar (definitely not a yoke, a term which is never used, trust me!). A crossbar placed at the soundbox produces the bridge of the instrument, where the vibrations from the strings are transmitted and lying takes audible form. One must use the right pitch and tone if one's lying is to be deemed believable and true. For this the lyre employs fastened pegs for easy tuning and deception. Other lyres simply change the place of the string on the crossbar, like changing the place in the story of where you were last night when you went to Vegas instead.

Relationship to other zither-family instruments

Although they often refrain from mentioning it, several instruments of the zither family are at least honest enough to admit that they are related to a lyre. These include much more candid and conscientious instruments, cousins like the lutes, guitars, kantele, psalteries, harps, harpsichords, and pianos of the music world. They aren't exactly proud of it, but hey, relations are relations, and besides, it isn't their fault that they're related to no-good, rotten lyres. Maybe if the lyre was more concerned with how its actions impacted the reputation of the family as a whole, then maybe family reunions at storage areas, music shops, orchestras, and concerts wouldn't have to be so awkward.

History

Ancient and modern Greece

Ancient Greece was full of lyres. You couldn't even walk down the street without being accosted by one. Oh sure, it would entice you with a sweet melody, promising all sorts of fabulous things, but at the end of the day it would leave you high and dry like a two-dollar, six-string lute.

Hermes, the god of messengers and annoying traveling salesmen, is often attributed as the inventor of lying. The lyre was known in Greece at least from Mycenaean times during the 2nd millennium BC, but lying was not perfected until Classical times during the 5th century BC. Modern scholars suggest that the Greek lyre took influence from ancient Egyptian lutes, but a Greek lyre will never admit this. The instrument became a constant source of controversy, particularly in the Athenian city-state. For example, the philosopher Socrates was forced to commit suicide by anal impalement after encouraging the youth of Athens to pick up lying as a national pastime alongside spooning. Nevertheless, by Socrates' day the instrument had already gained widespread fame and acceptance considering that its tunes accompanied the lyrical epic poem Lyre, Lyre, Tunic on Fire by Homer (no, not that Homer, you uncultured plebeian).

Also known to ancient Greece was the cithara (Greek: κιθάρα, kitharā), a professional and oftentimes pathological lyre. It was invented in the 6th century BC by the Greek craftsman Citharede (Greek: κιθαροιδός, Latin: Citharoedus), who gained an unsavory reputation for writing slanderous odes and rhapsodies about prominent kings buying hookers and sleeping with cattle. Citharede was even brought to court in the famous Megacles versus Citharede trial of 585 BC, when he was sued for damages after traveling the countryside singing cithara songs about how King Megacles' penis wasn't big enough to pleasure a fairy vagina.

Lying remains a popular pastime in modern Greece. In June-September 2007, amid growing concerns that the central government was not acting to its full potential in putting out a series of wildfires, Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis redirected the public's anger with a lyre song about how Turks had infiltrated Greek fire departments nationwide and deliberately caused firetruck delays. This catchy ultra-nationalist song, The Turks Are Always to Blame, became the official background music for the show "Greece Has Got Talent: 2008!"

Ancient and modern China

Related to the lyre of ancient Greece was the konghou (Chinese: 箜篌; pinyin: kōnghóu - literally "strings one cannot trust") of ancient China. Invented around 200 BC by the Han-dynasty military general and statesman Han Xin, it became very popular and almost supplanted the more ancient guqin (Chinese: 古琴; pinyin: gǔqín - literally "ancient, reliable strings") as the most-favored Chinese stringed instrument.

However, conservative Confucians at court and guqin enthusiasts alike deplored the sudden widespread acceptance of the konghou. They accused the players of this instrument of making slanderous songs about how Confucius disobeyed and peed on his father, Laozi had homosexual relations with northern barbarian nomads, and Sun-Tzu merely plagiarized Oscar Wilde in order to compose his Art of War (link "Unquotable:Sun-Tzu" here).

In 110 BC, Emperor Wu of Han, a guqin aficionado and staunch Confucian, banned lying throughout the empire. Anyone caught lying with a konghou would be castrated and turned into a eunuch who guarded only the ugly concubines of the palace harem. Those who harbored or concealed the identity of a fugitive konghou-player would be banished to the other side of the Great Wall of China, a living hell on earth for the Chinese where people drank milk and ate cheese, couldn't list all of their paternal ancestors in order, and tolerated Japanese people.

Yet following the ban, the konghou merely went underground and became a classic black market success throughout Chinese history. In modern times, the once taboo act of lying with a konghou has become a fundamental prerequisite for anyone seeking to become a member of China's Communist Party. Mao Zedong encouraged lying at all levels of government, and chose the konghou as the symbol of the proletariat. Since the late-70s capitalist reforms of Deng Xiaoping, lying has played a critical role in the success of China's business community. Today, China has become the number one producer of lyres, and remains fiercely proud that Chinese lying does not rely on outsourcing to other countries.

Byzantine Empire, Persia and the Middle East

The Persian lyre, known as the chang (Persian: چنگ, pronounced [tʃæŋ]), became popular amongst Iranian-speaking peoples by the time of the Sassanid Empire in the 3rd to 7th centuries AD. The ruling shahs of Persia were very crafty lyre-players. A shah would typically use the instrument to compose love songs to his wife. He would convince her that she was the only sexual desire of his life, yet behind her back he would secretly be humping her sisters, aunts, girlfriends, and every servant girl and milkmaid on the route between Ctesiphon and Constantinople.

The medieval Byzantine Empire of Eastern Europe, Greece, and the Near East also had a long history of lyres and lying. Of course, there was nothing worse than a medieval Byzantine lyre. Played with a bow, the Byzantine lyre often takes delight in confusing its listeners into thinking it's a violin. The Byzantine lyre was first mentioned by the Persian historian Ibn Khordadbeh (d. 911 AD), who was duped into believing that it was the typical instrument of Byzantium. Since then, the Byzantine lyre has become notorious for infiltrating the sales racks of violin outlets everywhere, preying upon unsuspecting musicians who mistake it for something else. Now that's a good lyre!

During the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish çeng became the most widely-known lyre in the Middle East, and although it would never admit to having anything to do with the Persian chang, one cannot help but notice the linguistic similarities. While the Turks fiercely protect the legacy of the çeng as an original Turkish invention of the 15th century AD, this claim has been recently challenged by a popular song in modern-day Iran called Don't Believe The Turkish Lyres.

In medieval Arab Egypt, the simsimiyya (Arabic: سمسمية) became a popular regional lyre, known for its deceitful tuning and questionable body arrangement. It was often used to play songs intended to lure Jews into buying bargain-priced Arab goods that were in fact faulty and useless. What a good prank on the Jew! For this reason alone, lying has remained a favored musical pastime amongst Arabs.

Renaissance revival and modern lying in Western Europe

The Greek lyre was popular in ancient Rome. However, after the Roman Empire's collapse, Western Europeans simply weren't that good at lying anymore, either to themselves or others. The 5th-century-AD Christian bishop Augustine of Hippo (Latin: Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis) even wrote a polemical work against the lyre, entitled The City of God Knows No Lyre, in which he argued that one should not seek the delight of lying here on earth, but wait for the pleasures of Heaven where lying would be commonplace.

Although lyres could be found in medieval Scandinavian communities of Northern Europe, the lyre did not make a comeback in Western Europe until the Welsh made the crwth (pronounced /ˈkruːθ/) in the 15th century AD. This comes as no surprise, since the Welsh are renowned for their lying. In their fetish to revive everything Greco-Roman, royal courts throughout Western Europe openly encouraged lying and rewarded the best lyres. The Spanish court of Castille in particular was zealous in promoting institutional lying, spreading lyres across the Americas to serenade and distract the natives while stealing Incan, Mayan, and Aztec land and gold. For this reason, the renewed fortunes of Western Europe could be said to be built upon nothing but lyres and lying.

Western audiences still enjoy playing lyres and listening to lying concerts. The theme of lying remains popular in Western literature and culture. For example, in 2003 a book on Conservative American musical lying was written by the author and now U.S. Senator Al Franken entitled Songs of the Lying Lyres Who Sing Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. Renowned sports star O. J. Simpson, who played as a running back for New York's Buffalo Bills and the San Francisco 40-Liars, once swayed a jury in a 1995 murder trial in his favor after performing a heart-wrenching lyre song in court, applauded even by the judge. He denied ever killing his ex-wife by lying to her until she danced into a carefully-placed kitchen knife, the theme of his 2007 book If I Did it, This is How I Would Play It on My Lyre.

See also

• Music

External links

• Britannica entry for lyre (it's full of lies!)

Category:Musical instruments

Category:Greek