"Plectrum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... how they looked, for pictures of them, or at least of similar instruments, are found on Egyptian and Babylonian monuments. The harp was probably like a large guitar, only it was played like a mandolin, with a plectrum. The psaltery or lute was a larger-sized harp. The cornet or trumpet was simply a curved ram's horn blown with the lips like our cornets; there was also another form made out of brass, long and straight. The Hebrews also used a wind instrument like our flute, a pipe with holes on the side ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... with coloured handkerchiefs. Three of the elder geisha in plain grey kimonos squatted behind the dancers, strumming on their samisens. But there was very little music either in the instrument or in the melody. The sound of the string's twang and the rattle of the bone plectrum drowned the sweetness of the note. The result was a kind of dry clatter or cackle which is ingenious, ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... could play were the organ, the guitar, the syrinx or panpipe, and the lyre, which she struck not with her fingers, but a plectrum represented beside it. Observe, between the lyre and the banjo her little satchel of music-books, and below the syrinx a lamb and palm. This is the only sign on the monument that could in the least lead to a supposition ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... three seasons—spring, summer, and winter—into which it was the custom of the Greeks to divide their year. Some authorities claim that the strings numbered four. Others say there were seven. No one knows. The Greek harp was played by picking the strings with the fingers or with a plectrum. The latter was a small piece of bone or metal, held in the fingers, with which the strings were snapped. Sometimes a short piece of wood was ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover |
