- Source: Rotte (psaltery)
See Rotta for the medieval lyre, or Rote for the fiddle
During the 11th to 15th century A.D., rotte (German) or rota (Spanish) referred to a triangular psaltery with at least 10 strings, held like a harp in front of the musician. The playing position was different from other psalteries, as the Rotte might be held like a harp, leaned sideways (flat against the musician's chest), or rested on the lap. Two styles of rotte have been inferred from images: the first is a triangular box with strings on one side, the other has strings on both sides (both hands playing at once, resembling a harp). The instruments are shown played with both plectrum and with fingers.
The names chrotta, rotte, rotta, rota and rote have been applied to different stringed instruments, including a psaltery, lyre and to a Crwth (necked lyre played as a fiddle or lute). In the 15th century it was also used to name a fiddle, synonymous with the rebec.
Knowing a rotte (psaltery) from a triangular harp in the medieval minatures can be challenging; rottes may have sound holes visible, if the artist is putting that level of detail into the painting. Similarly, harps show background through the strings if the artist painted sufficient detail.
Harp versus zither
See Psaltery for more versions & Ancient Greek harps for earlier psalterion
Another complication in interpreting images involves the writers and artist from the past. The artists and church in the 4th-5th centuries A.D. wrote about a triangular-shaped psalterium, holy to them because the 3 sides represented the Trinity. This fondness for the idea of the psalterium didn't overcome the early church's (1st-2nd century A.D.) overall program of shunning the use of musical instruments, which they associated with paganism. They were so successful in this that the harp was largely unknown in Christian Europe for centuries. In the Carolingian Renaissance, they looked at images and descriptions of the triangular-shaped psalterium and didn't realize that it was an "open, vertical, angular harp" of Asian style, once familiar to Christians. These religious academics understood the contemporary (for them) rotte triangular psaltery, which they illustrated in the hands of King David, but they did not understand the details of the ancient psalterium (Ancient Greek harp).
Harps in Europe
According to the New Grove Encyclopedia of Musical Instruments, there are no evidence in images or sculpture to "suggest the existence of harps in western Europe" between the 4th century BCE and the 8th century CE. Ancient examples in "Italo-Greek" vases in the 5th to 4th centuries BCE depict Asian harps. Christian art furnished examples of the existence of the harp in the late 8th to early 10th century CE, in the Dagulf Psalter made in Aachen and the Utrecht Psalter. The Harley Psalter, copied the Utrecht Psalter, but the artist changed the look of the instruments.
