Crossword-Solution: KITHARA 7 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 14

The fifteen strings of the _kithara_ were tuned according to this scale, and the A, recurring three times in it, acquired something of the importance of a tonic or key note.

Meanwhile, as might have been expected, instrumental music became more and more independent, and musicians, especially the flute players, prospered; for we read in Suidas that they were much more proficient and sought after than the lyre and kithara players.

Its great development, as well as the use of many small instruments (kithara, flute, etc.), go far to prove that music must have formed a larger part of woman's domestic life than the actual records show.

The main feature of the Greek _kithara_, its shallow sound-chest, being the most important part of it, is also that in which developments are most noticeable; its contour varied considerably during the many musical ages, but the characteristic in respect of which it fore-shadowed the precursors of the violin family, and by which they were distinguished from other contemporary stringed instruments of the middle ages, was preserved throughout in all European descendants bearing derived names.

The pear-shaped outline was possibly borrowed from the Eastern instruments, both bowed as the rebab and twanged as the lute, so common all over Europe during the middle ages, or more probably derived from the _kithara_ of the Greeks of Asia Minor, which had the corners rounded.