TY  - SER
AU  - Scardina,Placido
AU  - Li Castro,Emiliano
TI  - The Double Curve Enigma  
PY  - 2011///
CY  - New York
PB  - Research Center for Music Iconography RCMI
KW  - Iconografía musical
N2  - RESUMEN: The earliest depiction of a chordophone in Etruria, a sort of proto-kythara (or phorminx) with seven strings and played with a plectrum, appears on an amphora from 670 BC attributed to the Heptachord Painter, kept at the Martin-von-Wegner Museum in Würzburg. The round-based instrument has both arms shaped in a peculiar double curve. This distinctive features distinguishing only a few other depicted instruments from the eastern Mediterranean area, spanning a wide geographical and chronological limits. Comparisons come, for instance, from Cyprus (Hubbard amphora, end of the eight century BC), eastern Crete (terracotta group from Palaikastro (LM IIA2 context; 1410-1365 or 1325-1275 BC), and southern Turkey/Syria (cylinder seal from Mardin, ca. 1800 BC). At least two more vases, one found in Cyprus (amphora from Kaloriziki, ca. 900 BC) and the other in western Crete (clay pyxis from Chania, early LM IIIB ca. 1350 or 1250 BC), show the same double curves, but these are coupled with more usually shaped arms.      The strange double curve shown on the arms of these chordophone possible has a structural purpose and it might be related to the physics of the weapon bow with the double curved which profile provide more resistance to the tension produced by its bending what in turn generate higher energy to propel its through. One way to improve the acoustic quality of a string instrument is tightening thicker strings to the instrument. However, when the thickness of strings rises and their number increases, the tension applied to the instrument's frame tends to break its arms. A solution to the problem could be an elastic structure, acting in a way similar to the weapon bow, fixed to the arms which would dynamically react to the stronger tension absorbing the additional load. This concept which seems to start its development in Ancient Near East during the second half of the third millennium BC, became more evident in the Eastern Mediterranean area during the second millennium, and possibly reached its most refined version with the complex structure often depicted inside the arms of the great concert kithara on black- and red-figure Attic vases.
ER  -