Rotte (lyre)

See Rotte (psaltery) for the medieval psaltery, or Rote for the fiddle

Rotte or rotta is a historical name for the Germanic lyre, used in northwestern Europe in the early medieval period (circa 450 A.D.) into the 13th century. The plucked variants declined in the medieval era (spreading less often in manuscripts in the 13th century), while bowed variants have survived into modern times.

Non-Greek or Roman lyres were used in pre-Christian Europe as early as the 6th century B.C. by the Hallstatt culture, by Celtic peoples as early as the 1st century B.C., and by Germanic peoples. They were played in Anglo-Saxon England, and more widely, in Germanic regions of northwestern Europe. Their existence was recorded in the Scandinavian and Old-English story Beowulf, set in pre-Christian times (5th-6th century A.D.) and written or retold by a Christian scribe about 975 A.D. The Germanic lyre has been thought to be a descendant of the ancient lyre which originated in western Asia. That same instrument was adopted in Ancient Egypt and also by the Ancient Greeks as the cithara. The rotte is shaped differently than these, however, and discoveries from further east has led to the possibility that it arrived with invading tribes.

The oldest rotte found in England dates possibly before 450 AD and the most recent dates to the 10th century. The Germanic lyre was depicted in manuscript illuminations and mentioned in Anglo-Saxon literature and poetry (as the hearpe). Despite this, knowledge of the instrument was largely forgotten, and it was confused with the later medieval harp. Then in the 19th century, two lyres (Oberflacht 84 and 37) were found in cemetery excavations in southwest Germany, giving concrete examples of the Germanic lyre's existence. These discoveries, followed in 1939 by the archaeological excavation at Sutton Hoo and the correct reconstruction of the Sutton Hoo instrument (as a lyre, not a harp) in 1970, brought about the realization that the lyre was "the typical early Germanic stringed instrument."

Differing from the lyres of the Mediterranean antiquity, Germanic lyres are characterised by a long, shallow and broadly rectangular shape, with a hollow soundbox curving at the base, and two hollow arms connected across the top by an integrated crossbar or ‘yoke’. From northwestern Europe—particularly from England and Germany—an ever-growing number of wooden lyres have been excavated from warrior graves of the first millennium A.D.

"Evidence of manuscript illustrations and the writings of early theorists suggest that, in Anglo-Saxon and early medieval times...the words hearpe, rotte and cithara were all used to describe the same instrument, or type of instrument." The direction of the spread of the instrument is uncertain. The instrument may have developed in several locations. Other possibilities include an Irish instrument that spread eastwards to Germany, or an instrument of central Europe that spread northwest. Across Europe, lyres were named with etymologically related variations: crwth, cruit, crot (Celtic); rote and crowd (English); rota, rotta, rote, rotte (French, English, German, Provencal).

The instrument disappeared in most of Europe, surviving in Scandinavia, and elsewhere remembered in medieval images and in literature. In 1774 it was featured in a work of religious musical scholarship by Martin Gerbert, who found an illustration in a 12th century A.D. manuscript and labeled the instrument the Cythara Teutonica. After archeological finds, the instrument has been recreated and studied anew, labeled Germanic round-lyre, Anglo-Saxon lyre, Germanic lyre and Viking lyre today. Historical names include rotta (and variations rota, rotte, rote, Hörpu (Old Norse) and hearpe (Old-English). Medieval clerics sometimes used lyra, recalling classical Greece and Rome.