Violin very full, sonorous sound which is particularly appropriate to late Romantic music. This is often indicated in the music by the marking, for example, "sul G" or "IV" (a Roman numeral indicating to play on the fourth string; by convention, the strings are numbered from thinnest, highest pitch (I) to the lowest pitch (IV). Even without an explicit instructions in the score, an advanced violinist will use her/his discretion and artistic sensibility to select which string to play specific notes or passages. If a string is bowed or plucked without any finger stopping it, it is said to be an
Cretan lyra plates was reported in 2006. The old model of the Cretan lyra (also called "lyraki" ~ small lyra), is tuned 5-1-4. That is, the middle string is the lowest in pitch and the others are a 4th and a 5th above it. The performer plays the melody on the 1st and 3rd string, using the 2nd string as a drone (Magrini 1997), similarly to the Byzantine lyras from ca. 1190 AD, found in the excavations of Novgorod (Anthony Baines, 1992). The contemporary lyra modelled after Stagakis' design is tuned in fifths to (d-a-e'), and like the violin, it uses no