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Crwth
The crwth (/kruːθ/ KROOTH, Welsh: [kruːθ]), also called a crowd or rote or crotta, is a bowed lyre, a type of stringed instrument, associated particularly with Welsh music, now archaic but once widely played in Europe. Four historical examples have survived and are to be found in St Fagans National Museum of History (Cardiff); National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth); Warrington Museum & Art Gallery; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (US).
The name crwth is Welsh, derived from a Proto-Celtic noun *krutto- ("round object") which refers to a swelling or bulging out, a pregnant appearance or a protuberance, and it is speculated that it came to be used for the instrument because of its bulging shape. Other Celtic words for violin also have meanings referring to rounded appearance. In Gaelic, for example, "cruit" can mean "hump" or "hunch" as well as harp or violin. Like several other English loanwords from Welsh, the name is among the few words in the English language in which the letter W alone is used to indicate a vowel.
The traditional English name is crowd (or rote), and the variants crwd, crout and crouth are little-used today. In Medieval Latin it is called the chorus or crotta. The Welsh word crythor means a performer on the crwth. The Irish word is cruit, although it also was used on occasion to designate certain small harps. The English surnames Crewther, Crowder, Crother and Crowther denote a player of the crowd, as do the Scottish names MacWhirter and MacWhorter.
For this article's purposes, crwth denotes the modern, or most recent, form of the instrument (see picture).
The crwth is a very old instrument, which Aenantius Fortunatus, as early as about 609 A.D, specifies as British (chrotta Britanna canit). The chrotta was originally strung with three, later with six, strings, and was played with a bow. It is quite possible that the chrotta is the oldest bowed instrument and the antecessor to the violin.
A variety of string instruments so designated are thought to have been played in Wales since at least Roman times. Continuous, clear records of the use of crwth to denote an instrument of the lyre (or the Byzantine bowed lyre) class date from the 11th century.[citation needed] Medieval instruments somewhat resembling the crwth appear in pictures (first in Continental Europe) as far back as the 11th century, shortly after bowing was first known in the West. In Wales, the crwth long took second place to the harp in the musical hierarchy.
Schlesinger in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica mentioned the crwth in an article about transition of instruments from the lyre to plucked and bowed instruments:
...The rotta represents the first step in the evolution of the cithara, when arms and cross-bar were replaced by a frame joined to the body, the strings being usually restricted to eight or less...The next step was the addition of a finger-board and the consequent reduction of the strings to three or four, since each string was now capable of producing several notes...As soon as the neck was added to the guitar-shaped body, the instrument ceased to be a rotta and became a guitar (q.v.), or a guitar-fiddle (q.v.) if played with the bow."
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Crwth
The crwth (/kruːθ/ KROOTH, Welsh: [kruːθ]), also called a crowd or rote or crotta, is a bowed lyre, a type of stringed instrument, associated particularly with Welsh music, now archaic but once widely played in Europe. Four historical examples have survived and are to be found in St Fagans National Museum of History (Cardiff); National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth); Warrington Museum & Art Gallery; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (US).
The name crwth is Welsh, derived from a Proto-Celtic noun *krutto- ("round object") which refers to a swelling or bulging out, a pregnant appearance or a protuberance, and it is speculated that it came to be used for the instrument because of its bulging shape. Other Celtic words for violin also have meanings referring to rounded appearance. In Gaelic, for example, "cruit" can mean "hump" or "hunch" as well as harp or violin. Like several other English loanwords from Welsh, the name is among the few words in the English language in which the letter W alone is used to indicate a vowel.
The traditional English name is crowd (or rote), and the variants crwd, crout and crouth are little-used today. In Medieval Latin it is called the chorus or crotta. The Welsh word crythor means a performer on the crwth. The Irish word is cruit, although it also was used on occasion to designate certain small harps. The English surnames Crewther, Crowder, Crother and Crowther denote a player of the crowd, as do the Scottish names MacWhirter and MacWhorter.
For this article's purposes, crwth denotes the modern, or most recent, form of the instrument (see picture).
The crwth is a very old instrument, which Aenantius Fortunatus, as early as about 609 A.D, specifies as British (chrotta Britanna canit). The chrotta was originally strung with three, later with six, strings, and was played with a bow. It is quite possible that the chrotta is the oldest bowed instrument and the antecessor to the violin.
A variety of string instruments so designated are thought to have been played in Wales since at least Roman times. Continuous, clear records of the use of crwth to denote an instrument of the lyre (or the Byzantine bowed lyre) class date from the 11th century.[citation needed] Medieval instruments somewhat resembling the crwth appear in pictures (first in Continental Europe) as far back as the 11th century, shortly after bowing was first known in the West. In Wales, the crwth long took second place to the harp in the musical hierarchy.
Schlesinger in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica mentioned the crwth in an article about transition of instruments from the lyre to plucked and bowed instruments:
...The rotta represents the first step in the evolution of the cithara, when arms and cross-bar were replaced by a frame joined to the body, the strings being usually restricted to eight or less...The next step was the addition of a finger-board and the consequent reduction of the strings to three or four, since each string was now capable of producing several notes...As soon as the neck was added to the guitar-shaped body, the instrument ceased to be a rotta and became a guitar (q.v.), or a guitar-fiddle (q.v.) if played with the bow."