Upon this instrument also certain harmonized compositions could be played.

The pictures of these two lyres show that they looked much like viols and were played with bows.[27] An eighth century manuscript shows an instrument with a body like a mandolin, a neck without frets and a small bow.

This instrument is entitled "lyra" in the manuscript.

If now we come down to the period when the modern opera was taking form we learn that Galilei sang his own "Ugolino" monody and accompanied himself on the viola.

Various pictures show us that small instruments of the bowed varieties were used by the minnesingers, and again by jongleurs in the fifteenth century.