κύμβαλα, κρουστό όργανο, αποτελούμενο, όπως και τα νεότερα κύμβαλα (piatti), από δύο κοίλα ημισφαιρικά μετάλλινα πιάτα. Τα κύμβαλα ήταν ασιατικής προέλευσης και στην αρχή χρησιμοποιούνταν στις οργιαστικές λατρείες της Κυβέλης και αργότερα του Διόνυσου (Βάκχου). Πλούτ. (Γαμήλια παραγγέλματα 144Ε): "οι δέ κυμβάλοις και τυμπάνοις άχθονται" (και ενοχλούνται με τα κύμβαλα και τα ταμπούρλα). Άλλη λέξη για το κύμβαλο ήταν το βακύλιον ή βαβούλιον .
Τα κύμβαλα δεν είχαν για τους Έλληνες καμιά πραγματική μουσική αξία.
κυμβαλίζω· παίζω κύμβαλα.
κυμβαλιστής και κυμβαλοκρούστης, ο εκτελεστής των κυμβάλων· θηλ. κυμβαλίστρια.
κυμβαλισμός· το παίξιμο των κυμβάλων.
κυμβάλιον· υποκοριστικό του κυμβάλου· μικρό κύμβαλο.
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Cymbals
In Europe the cymbal appears in many ancient Greek and Roman iconographical sources (see Cymbala). A pair of small bronze cymbals from Greece (c500 bce) survives. The instrument is also clearly portrayed on a marble statue of the Hellenistic period (3rd century bce), and on a mosaic found at Pompeii dated 73 ce. An illustration from Herculaneum shows a pair of cymbals connected by a strap. In contrast, on an ancient Greek drawing of a female centaur and a bacchante, the centaur holds a cymbal in her left hand which she strikes against an identical instrument held in the bacchante's right hand, to assist, it is supposed, in the musical activity concerned with an orgy. Greek cymbals were closely associated with such rites, particularly the ancient orgiastic rites of the goddess Cybele, and the raucous rites connected with the worship of Dionysus (or, in Rome, Bacchus). In many cultures cymbals, in addition to their use in religious and secular life, have been credited with remarkable powers. This subject, and the use and properties of antique cymbals in Greek, Roman and Jewish history, were discussed at length by F.A. Lampe in De cymbalis veterum (1700) and R. Ellys inFortuita sacra quibus subjicitur commentarius de cymbalis (1727).
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Cymbala
(Lat., from Gk. kumbalon).
(1) A type of ancient cymbals (an Idiophone). Ancient cymbala were a pair of small, plate-shaped or more often cup-shaped bronze cymbals. (See Cymbals and Tympanum (i) for illustrations.) They were associated in Greco-Roman culture with orgiastic religious rites, where they played ecstasy-inducing music together with the tympanum and the Aulos. They became particularly prominent in Rome after the introduction of the Magna Mater, Cybele, from Asia Minor in 204 BCE. They appear on numerous vases and in murals and reliefs; a typical literary reference is that of Catullus who had a young votary of the goddess exclaim: ‘Come follow me to the Phrygian house of Cybele, to the Phrygian grove of the goddess, where the voice of the cymbalum sounds, where the tympanum echoes, where the Phrygian tibia player sings on his deep-toned curved reed, where they celebrate the sacred rites with shrill cries, where the milling crowd of her worshippers rushes to and fro’. Roman conquests in the East and increasing luxury among the ruling classes brought many foreign artists to the capital in the early days of the empire. Exotic dances in taverns and in the streets were performed to the accompaniment of crotala, cymbala, tympana and foreign wind instruments. The instrument was used in biblical times, and early Christian writers when they mention cymbals clearly mean cymbala, as, for example, St Augustine in his commentary on the psalms – the sound as they touch ‘can be compared to our lips’.
Bibliography
F.V.M. Cumont: Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain (Paris, 1906, 4/1929; Eng. trans., 1911/R)
J. Smits van Waesberghe: Cymbala: Bells in the Middle Ages, MSD, i (1951)
G. Fleischhauer: Etrurien und Rom, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, ii/5 (Leipzig, 1964, 2/1978)
H. La Rue: ‘The Problem of the Cymbala’, GSJ, xxxv (1982), 86–99
T.J. Mathiesen: Apollo's Lyre: Greek Music and Music Theory in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Lincoln, NE, 1999), 170–71
James W. McKinnon (1), Hélène La Rue (2)
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