The laoúto: The Cretan expression of the finest and noblest feelings

The Cretan lute (laoúto or laghoúto, in Middle Greek: lavouto) is a long-necked fretted stringed instrument with four metal courses (pairs of strings). It belongs to plucked instruments, a subcategory of stringed instruments that are played by plucking the strings with either a finger or a plectrum and are classified under three headings: a) the Lutes, b) the Harps and c) the Zithers. The etymology of the name “lute” is not clear. It is either a corruption of the Arabic "al –‘ūd" (=the oud), which means "flexible rod" and, synecdochally, “piece of wood” or a derivation of "La" (the note A in English) and "Ut" (former name for the note "Do", C in English), namely the beginning and end of the hexachord (ut re mi fa sol la), extensively used in Western Medieval and Renaissance musical theory, the same period (14th-18th centuries A.D.) that the European lute was the most widespread musical instrument. The fluidity has been accentuated by the identical etymology of the terms “oud” and “lute”, although there have been striking differences between the two instruments.

Affiliated to the long necked Lutes family, the Cretan laoúto is a cross between the tambourás, the oud and the mandola. It takes its large round back out of the oud, but unlike the short-necked, fretless oud, more resembles the old tambourás in having a long neck with movable frets and the mandola in having four courses of strings, tuned in unison. The relation of the laoúto with the instruments of European Lute family, like the mandola, is closer on Crete, where the Venetians ruled for several centuries (1204-1669 A.D.), than on other parts of the country. In its contemporary form, the laoúto first appeared at the end of the 18th century in Western Crete, as an instrument of rhythm and accompaniment of the lyra (Cretan lyre) or the violi (violin).  Still, until the early part of the 20th century, the bulghari (the Cretan tambourás) and the mandolino (the Italian mandolin that first appeared in Naples during the 17th century, a direct descendant and diminutive of mandola) remained the most common instruments of the Lutes in Crete. The role of the Cretan laoúto has not been strictly a "passadorikos" (=accompanying) one, namely to maintain the correct tempo and rhythm of music. On the contrary, during the 20th century, a solo technique known as "berdelidhiko" playing, that means “pressing the strings down at the berdédhes (=movable frets)”, was cultivated for the rendition of the whole melody, not just the maintenance of the rhythm. Despite the difficulty of the technique and of the laoúto’s tuning, but also in spite of the prevalence of the louder lyra as an instrument of melody, berdelidhiko playing revealed the whole grandeur and the melodic value of the instrument and set off the “primadori” (=main players) school of dexterous lutanists. Nikos Manias distinguished himself in this solo technique.

The oldest recorded members of the Lutes family, belonging to the long-necked variety, are attested to have been used in the "Cradle of Civilization", the Ancient Mesopotamia, more specifically in Uruk, an ancient Sumerian city on the Euphrates, in present-day Southern Iraq, more than 6.000 years ago. However, the possibility that the immigrant Proto-Sumerians had brought the long-necked lute into Mesopotamia from their original homeland, probably India or Caucasus, cannot be excluded, thus it seems likely that the Lutes’ ancestor lies with tribes of the northeast Asia at some point lost in the mists of time, long before the Indo-European Sumerians’ arrival in Mesopotamia.

Ever since, the journey for both the Lutes categories, the long-necked and the short-necked ones, until the appearance of the Cretan laoúto, had been fascinating and multi-legged: The pantur, placed among the priceless elements of the cultural legacy that the Sumerians bequeathed to the great succeeding civilisations in the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system,, the Akkadian, the Babylonian, the Assyrian and the Hittite ones. The nefer or nofre in Pharaonic Egypt, developed in long-neck, but also in short-neck variants, while the construction of the Egyptian lutes far exceeded the Mesopotamian instruments in elegance of shape and ornamentation. The Ancient Greek types of Lutes, namely the skindapsos (four-stringed instrument) and pandhoura or pandhouris (also known as the trichordon on account of its three strings), with the etymological connection between the ancient Greek term “pandhoura” and the above-mentioned ancient Sumerian word “pantur” being more than evident. The Byzantine long necked Lutes, known as phandhoura, thambourin, thamboura or tambourin, mostly met in the late Byzantine demotic songs and metric folk tales, like the akritic ballad “Digenes Akritas”. The various Persian long-necked tars (in Farsi: “string”), used with a prefixes to indicate the number of strings; two in dotar (Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Northern Iran) or three in setar (Persian classical music), but also the short-necked barbat, transmitted from Persia north into Russia, then eastwards, across the Silk Road, into India, China and Japan, to respectively become the Balalaika, Chitraveena, Pipa and Biwa. The Arabic tanbūr, a generic term for long-necked Lutes, emerged in Central Asia and Middle East, such as the fretted dumbura or fretless dombra in Caucasia, the domra in Russia, the three-stringed tembûr in Kurdish areas and Iran, the fretless tambura in India, but also the tambour or tamburica in Eastern and Southern Europe, especially in Croatia, in Serbia and in Hungary. The also Arabic oud, a low-sounding and short-necked instrument of the Lutes family, having been the primary stringed instruments of the Arab World, with also a significant presence in Greek, Armenian and Jewish cultures. The European lute, descendant of the oud, rapidly spread throughout Europe where no other instrument, from Renaissance till Baroque era, had equaled its combined longevity and stature. The different types of instrument with rounded, pear-shaped sound-boxes, grouped under the heading of säz in Turkey [in ascending order of size, the cura (pronounced "djoura”), the cura bağlama or tambura, the çöğür säz, the bağlama, the eight stringed bozuk and, largest of all, the twelve stringed divan-sazi (=audience hall säz) and meydan sazi (=public square säz)] and of the tambourás in Greece, with clear ancient Greek roots, but also with plain Oriental/Turkish associations [the bulghari (with three strings and a plaintive sound, known as üçtelli säz in the western parts of Turkey and as bulghari to the nomads of the Taurus, having been, along with bulgariya, bulbarina, one of the names by which the säz is also known in Bulgaria), the yiongári, the kitéli or kintéli, the kavonto, the tzivouri, the karadouzeni, the gonato, and so on], most of them become extinct by the 2nd World War. The Cretan laoúto’s cousins: the medium-sized steriano/nisiotiko (=mainland/island) laoúto and the Politico one (=lute from Constantinople) or lâuta (in Turkish: lavta or lavut).

The presence and the use of the laoúto have not been uniform across Crete, just as the cultural expression has been varying throughout the island. The laoúto has been an integral part of the traditional “zygia” (literally, instrumental pair, one of melody and one -sometimes two- of rhythm) in western Crete and, gradually since 1930's, in the eastern parts of the island. More precisely, the use of the laoúto was primarily confined in western Crete until the first quarter of the 20th century. The traditional ziyia consisted of the violi (=violin) and the laoúto, while the aforementioned bulghari expressed the urban folk song and the lyra was played mainly in the eastern of the region (Apokoronas province), where initially it coexisted with the violi. The Cretan wind instruments (aerophones) were also known in western Crete, apart from askom(p)andoura.

In Rethymno region, until the 1930's, the bulghari dominated the town, while the mandolino, the venetian mandola and the lyra did so at the villages. At the end of the 1920's, the laoúto first appeared at the outskirts with Stavros Psyllakis-Psyllos from Episkopi (and later, with Kourkoulòs from Prines and Yiannis Bernidakis or Baksevanis from Malaki).  The laoúto gradually displaced not only bulghari, but also both the mandolino as well as the mandola from the areas where the lyra- mandolino ziyia existed. In the mountainous or semi-mountainous areas, the shepherds used to play the thabioli, the m(p)andoura and (in Anoyia) the askom(p)andoura. Primadori Rethymnian lutanists (Baksevanis, Yiannis and Vangelis Markoyiannakis or Markoyiannis and Nikos Manias) made their mark on Cretan music, although they emanated from a region where the lyra was almost the absolute musical symbol, with famous lyrists like Rodinos, Lagos, Moundakis, Skordalos. As far as the singers are concerned, Yannis Bernidakis or Baksevanis was the foremost singer of the early 20th century and Nikos Manias of the late one.

In central Crete, the same succession within the typical ziyia is noted as far as the accompanying instrument is concerned, as the laoúto replaced the mandolino and the mandola. Only after the 2nd World War did the Rethymnian lutanist Yiannis Markoyiannis bring the laoúto in Heraklion for the first time. As for the lyra, after the war, it superseded the viololyra (a waisted instrument similar in shape to the violi, which primarily recorded at the Messara province in central Crete from the end of the 18th century to the interwar years) and the violi, which until then dominated the region. Leonidas Clados, a very innovative and creative Rethymnian lyrist who lived at the area of Messara, was influential in the instrument’s spread. The wind musical instruments are all very near to extinction, although some young musicians have, in recent years, taken them up and a revival of interest in them seems, hopefully, to be imminent.

In eastern regions, the laoúto never reached. The lyra had been dominant until the beginning of the 20th century, when the violi appeared as an alternative instrument of melody. Their accompaniment was mainly done by the dauláki, a small double-membrane drum, nearly until 1930s. The mandolin has been present on eastern Crete for quite a long time, while another instrument which has become popular as an accompaniment to the lyra in recent decades is the guitar. This is in many ways unfortunate, given that the guitar, with its chordal mentality, necessarily imposes western tempered tonality on an otherwise modal tradition.

Similarly unfortunate is the gradual, since the 1990’s, replacement of the berdédhes by fixed metal frets in Cretan laoúto making. The primadori lutanists, like Nikos Manias, used to temper the berdédhes according to the Maqām they were about to perform. This technique demanded high virtuosity, while this bouzouki--style replacement may have marked the abandonment of attempts to perform strictly modal modulations, and the increasing acceptance, either of a restricted, and easier, repertory of modes or of some Western European form of temperament.