[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Hi Stuart,
>
> At the risk of repeating myself again (and boring everyone to death):
>
> I think one of the reasons terms other than cittern were used so often is
> that the composers were Italian, for
> example, so they used the proper word for cittern in their dialect, spelled
> in a way they (or the printer) thought fit.
Some Italians such as Geminiani and Marella used the terms citra,
cetra etc. And occasionally those terms crop up in other places too. One
Pocket book for the 'guitar' also uses the term 'citra' for a duet and
'guittar' for another duet. Merchi didn't use either 'cetra' or 'citra'
but used the Italian for guitar, 'chitarra'.
But anyway there were plenty of other people - Rush, Thackray, Oswald,
Zuchert, Schuman etc etc writing, arranging and compiling music and they
mostly used the terms 'guittar' and guitar'.
I've compiled a small collection of (mainly) front pages of 18th century
English guitar publications and put them up as a temporary webpage. Tell
me if you think it is an unfair representation:
www.tuningsinthirds.com/EG/
>
> (I've also spent a lot of time (grad, post grad and post doc) at the BL and
> several other libraries and archives, as I
> think you know.)
>
> Look at a Renaissance guitar, then an 18th-c guitar. Quite a difference,
> no? Look at a Renaissance cittern and an
> 18th-c cittern. Again, quite a difference. Most people have no problem
> calling the guitars guitars, so what's the
> problem with the citterns?
The problem is that it begs the question. What is the problem of calling
an English guitar a guitar? Or a German guitar , a Portuguese guitar or
Polish guitar, a guitar?
What was the problem of people in the 18th century who seemed determined
to call these things guitars and not citterns? Or they wanted to refer
to them equivocally - like Marella's 'Compositions for the Cetra or
Guittar'. Or the French practice of calling their variant the 'cistre ou
guittare allemande'. Or the guitarra in Portugal, and references in
other parts of Europe to the englische Guittare, and the Polish guitar.
This practice predates the1750s. The image of a 'guitar-spieler' in
J.C.Weigl's 'Musicalische Theatrum' - an image of a bloke holding a
you-know-what, but he's called a guitar player. The practice even
predates the 18th century: the seventeenth century guittern and
bell-guittern in England.
Doc - of course, I can see your point. An English guitar is much more
like a cittern than a guitar. But there is no such thing as a cittern
essence.If people in the past wanted to conceptualise the instrument as
a guitar ('lesser guitar', 'common guitar' or whatever ) then I think we
have to respect that. Joseph Carpentier in France in the 1770s was
absolutely adamant that the instrument was not a 'cistre' but a
'cythre' ('cythre ou guitharre allemande) - something quite different.
And Pedro's distinction between the "english Guittar" and the cittern
reflects the same sentiment today.
Recently I found something from a long time ago, written by Jeremy
Montagu (Britain's grand old man of organology and ethnomusicology).
Writing about the EG in FOMRHI: "If it doesn't look like a cittern, then
it isn't one. And it doesn't." It's a high-handed opinion but it's yet
another expression of the view that EG-type instruments aren't so easily
classified as citterns.
So that's the problem with citterns.
> Renaissance-style citterns continued to be made,
> and this attests to the popularity and
> usefulness of the form. The later style instrument has lasted a rather
> long time as well.
>
> I think it's a good idea to keep in mind that cittern, guitar, and the many
> variants in other languages, come from a
> common root. That doesn't mean the instruments are the same, but that the
> words could be interchangeable if
> certain distinctions aren't that important (Foucault has some interesting
> things to say about this). Rather than
> preparing a table showing uses of cittern and similar terms, why not do a
> table of guitar tunings used over the
> centuries? I don't really think the tuning makes the instrument different.
> If I tune my guitar like a lute, it's still a
> guitar. (If I tune my orpharion like a bandora, however, things might get a
> little tricky.) I say that the Renaissance-
> type of cittern is one type of cittern; the EG and PG types are other types
> of citterns, as are waldzithers, halszithers,
> and several other instruments around the world. Renaissance guitar, Baroque
> guitar, guitarra batente, classical,
> steel-string, 12-string, archtop, electric (solid, semi-acoustic and
> hollow body) are all types of guitar. What is the
> problem with having different types of cittern?
>
> I think if we want to get into a philosophical discussion about time's
> arrow, or better yet, parallel movement, we'd
> better do that on our own.
>
Yes. Sorry about that Doc. One drink too many.
Stuart
> Ciao,
>
> Doc
>
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