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Bowed lyres

Some instruments called "lyres" were played with a bow in Europe and parts of the Middle East, namely the Arabic rebab and its descendants, including the Byzantine lyra.

After the bow made its way into Europe from the Middle-East, it was applied to several species of those lyres that were small enough to make bowing practical. The dates of origin and other evolutionary details of the European bowed lyres continue to be disputed among organologists, but there is general agreement that none of them were the ancestors of modern orchestral bowed stringed instruments, as once was thought.

There came to be two different kinds of bowed European lyres: those with fingerboards, and those without.

The last surviving examples of instruments within the latter class were the Scandinavian talharpa and the Finnish jouhikko. Different tones could be obtained from a single bowed string by pressing the fingernails of the player's left hand against various points along the string to fret the string.

The last of the bowed lyres with a fingerboard was the "modern" (c. 1485–1800) Welsh crwth. It had several predecessors both in the British Isles and in Continental Europe. Pitch was changed on individual strings by pressing the string firmly against the fingerboard with the fingertips. Like a violin, this method shortened the vibrating length of the string to produce higher tones, while releasing the finger gave the string a greater vibrating length, thereby producing a tone lower in pitch. This is the principle on which the modern violin and guitar work.