Barbiton

The barbiton, or barbitos (Gr: βάρβιτον or βάρβιτος; Lat. barbitus), is an ancient stringed instrument related to the lyre known from Greek and Roman classics.

The Greek instrument was a bass version of the kithara, and belonged in the zither family, but in medieval times, the same name was used to refer to the barbat; a different instrument that is a variety of lute.

Error in the use of names

The barbat or barbud, began being translated into Latin as barbiton sometime during the late Middle Ages, a mistaken practice which has passed into English and other European languages through long misuse. The barbat is an unrelated lute-family instrument developed in Persia, whereas the barbiton (a bass kithara) was developed in Greek-speaking western Anatolia, where it was popular, and spread into the rest of the Aegean.

Throughout this article barbiton refers only to the Anatolian / Aegean instrument, and barbat is the only name used to refer to the lute-family instrument from Persia.

{ | class=wikitable

|+ Differences between the barbat and the barbiton

|-

! Barbat

! Barbiton

|-

| The barbat has always had a finger board for changing the pitch of the strings. | The barbiton has never had a finger board; its strings’ pitch could not be changed without retuning. |- | Like all instruments in the lute family, different chords are played on the barbat by fingering the pitch of the strings. | Like all instruments in the lyre / kithara family, different chords were played on the strings by resting fingers against strings for the unwanted notes, to silence them. |- | For most chords all of the strings of the barbat would sound for any one chord. | For all chords, only a few of the barbiton's strings would sound; most of its strings were silent for any one chord. |}

Since neither instrument was familiar to European musicians of the late Middle Ages – both had fallen out of use in the occident sometime between the mid-Imperial period and the end of the Roman empire – the error was neither caught nor corrected. The mistake seems to be perpetually dredged up from the earlier erroneous texts.

Descriptions of the Ancient Greek barbiton

The barbiton (bass kithara) was rare and considered exotic in the Hellenic world – only popular in Anatolia and the eastern Aegean. There are much fewer descriptions of it than the well-regarded kithara, and some depictions of it on painted vases were made by painters and sculptors who may have rarely seen them themselves, if any. Consequently, ethno-musicologists struggle to sort out the few available texts, vase paintings, and statuary.

String count

The Sicilian poet, Theocritus (xvi. 45), calls the barbitos an instrument of many strings, i.e. more than seven, which was by the Hellenes considered to be a perfect number, and matched the number of strings customary in the kithara.

Pitch

Anacreon (a native of Teos in Asia Minor) sings that his barbitos "only gives out erotic tones" – a remark which could have been metaphorical, but could also be a literal reference to the instrument's being tuned in the Greek harmonia called (Iastian).

Pollux calls the barbiton a barymite instrument (from , "heavy", and , "string"); both the literal and figurative meanings describing an instrument that produces very deep sounds. These would have been re-enforced by the barbiton's larger soundbox, compared to a kithara or a much smaller phorminx (folk lyre). The strings were twice as long as those of the phorminx and hence sounded about an octave lower.

Pindar (in Athen. xiv. p. 635), in the same line wherein he attributes the introduction of the instrument into Greece to Terpander, tells us one could magadize, i.e. play in two parts at an interval of an octave on the two instruments.

Popularity

Although in use in Asia Minor, Italy, Sicily, and Greece, it is evident that the barbiton never won for itself a place in the affections of ancient Greeks; it was regarded as a barbarian instrument affected by those only whose tastes in matters of art were unorthodox. It had fallen into disuse in the days of Aristotle, but reappeared under the Romans. The word barbiton was frequently used for the kithara or lyre.