Music at Sutton Hoo and elsewhere

The Mail Online has an account of the identification of a fourth century lyre discovered in an archaeological dig in 1973 in Kazakhstan as being of the same type as that found at Sutton Hoo in 1939. Sutton Hoo is a seventh century site, but, along with other similar finds on the continent, the evidence suggests a common type of lyre whose use stretched much further than hitherto thought. Different from those of the Greek world this was a type that was apparently used from Britain across the North European Plainsnd east to Central Asia. I suppose this begs the question, probably unanswerable ( but then it is not my subject ) as to how much commonality there was to the music played upon these instruments.

Quite apart from the specifics of musicological history the general point is so important to note. The world of Sutton Hoo was a much wider one than just that of East Anglia or of the British isles or of Western Europe but of a world that stretched to the Mediterranean, Byzantium and further east.

The article about the Kazakh lyre can be read at Sutton Hoo lyre has a COUSIN 2,485 miles away, study reveals