With a slab of cherry wood, a 3D printer, and her grandma’s scarf, Sabrina Ferrell ’28 spent her Winter Study bringing new life to a 2,000 year old instrument: the ancient Greek lyre.
Typically, the lyre, a stringed instrument central to ancient Greek music, has seven strings and is made of animal horns, a tortoise shell, and gut strings — dried sheep intestines that are stretched taut. In ancient Greece, the lyre’s ethereal tone was used to accompany poetry and song in both private and public spaces.
Ferrell thought that creating a lyre over Winter Study would be the perfect intersection between two of her passions: music and studying ancient Greece. “I play the violin, and I have for a long time,” she said. “So I was like, ‘What’s a good thing in between my ancient Greek [interests] and violin [interests]?”
Throughout the project, Ferrell, who had no prior woodworking experience, had a hard time finding any instructions on how to make the ancient instrument. Though the lyre is traditionally made of animal-based materials, Ferrell wanted to make her lyre vegan.
First, Ferrell had to learn how to use unfamiliar technology. “I had never used carving tools or a 3D printer or anything,” she said.
Ferrell persisted. The project, she recounts, became all-consuming. “Every day, every night, I would be trying to go through the process in my head, kind of just in the air, picturing it,” she said.
Ferrell built her lyre with a traditional design, but used modern materials to ensure the instrument remained vegan. Using bandsaws — a loop of toothed metal band stretched across two wheels — and a wood lathe to rotate the instrument, she made the frame from cherry wood. She 3D printed a tortoise shell for the hollow body of the lyre, used nylon strings from a ukulele, and affixed a polyester banjo head instead of animal skin on the instrument’s soundboard.
Ferrell noted that the vegan lyre is the first of its kind that she knows of. Her telamon, the strap the player uses to secure the instrument, was made from a scarf belonging to her grandmother.
Ferrell enlisted support from the College and local community for both the background research of the project and the construction of her instrument. “It was such a team effort,” she said. “There were so many people.” Academic Technology Programs Specialist David Keiser-Clark, who manages the Makerspace and FabLab, assisted in the 3D-printing. In addition, instructors Seth Rolland ’86, Chris Mullen ’85, and Richard Song ’86 of the Winter Study course, “Introduction to Woodwork: Art, Design and Craft,” helped Ferrell craft the cherry-wood frame and tuning mechanism. Ferrell also sought guidance from Steve Sauve of Sauve Guitars, which is a guitar repair and restoration business in North Adams, Mass.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics Marissa Henry also worked closely with Ferrell, and the two met often to discuss the history of the lyre and its use. After completing the construction of the instrument, Henry and Ferrell took a day trip to meet John Franklin, a professor of classics at the University of Vermont and lyre player for The Call of Kinnaru, a self-described “new ancient Greek music” group. The group performed at the College last year at an event hosted by the classics department. Henry also performed folk, rock, and pop songs.
According to Henry, it is impossible to truly know what these ancient instruments would have sounded like, but projects like Ferrell’s are a form of experimental archaeology, by which technologies from the past are recreated to help scholars better understand them. “You can get a lot of insight into the ancient world just by doing something like trying to physically make the same object that they had,” Henry said.
Ferrell succeeded in bringing the instrument to life, and made it her own. “I have named her Erato, the muse of lyric poetry,” she said.
