final attempt to send....
Frank Nordberg wrote:
(Rocky and Stuart: I don't suppose this message will appear on the
vihuela list since I'm not s*******ed to it. If so, could one of you
forward it to the list? - If you think it's interesting enough that is.)
Frank, it did appear on the vihuela list.
The bell cittern was fairly common in Scandinavia throughout the 18th
century and the six course variant seems to have been at least as
common as the regular five course one up here. Bellman played a six
course bell cittern he had inherited from his grandfather through
most of his career.
As far as I know, Storm is the only one to mention a seven course
cittern. Whether Storm's cittern was a Hamburger citrinchen is a
mystery that may never be resolved.
Both the citrinchen and the English guittar were common in Norway and
the two seems two have been used interchangably (a practice that
eventually led to the unique "Norwegian cittern" hybrid between the
two.) However, Storm wrote the ms while living in Copenhagen and it
should probably be reagrded as part of the Danish rather than the
Norwegian cittern tradition. Although I haven't investigated the
matter, I believe Denmark was much more German oriented than Norway
was at that time.
So what size instrument are we talking about? A small bell cittern or
something bigger? I was in the V&A a couple of weeks ago and one
there is really very small but it's from the 17th century. Rocky gives
a tuning with a top d'' which implies a small thing. Ages ago you
(Frank,or was it Are) said that Bellman had two citterns: a bell
cittern from his grandfather and a smaller (!) instrument. But you
couldn't get much smaller than an instrument with top d''? So there
were larger bell citterns?
And the Storm MS cittern is obviously for fingerstyle play but
evidently the existing tablatures for the bell cittern imply plectrum
technique (tiny pluckies usually do). Perhaps then the Storm MS is for
a larger instrument?
In the Storm MS the instrument is described as 'zitter' but don't
Norwegians use the term 'sister'? I seem to remember that Germans
called their cittern, the 'zitter' (but I can't find where I got this
idea from.) Maybe cyster, sister,sittra, zitter, zither are just as
interchangeable as guitar, guittar, cetra, citra etc in Britain.
The manuscript gives the exact tuning. That is, according to the
people who's seen the whole ms it does. I've only seen the pages with
music. There are also a couple of pages with instructions how to play
but I only know them second hand.
About two months ago on the cittern list Andrew Rutherford mentioned
a mid 18th C. manuscript with chorales for an instrument (most likely
a Hamburger citrinchen) tuned GCEGBE so apparently Storm isn't the
only one to use lower pitched tunings with these intervals.
...
> Does the tablature unambiguously show seven courses?
No, it doesn't.
Storm mentions both six and seven course instruments in the
manuscript and it's not clear which the music is written for.
Some of the letters underneath the five tablature lines are slashed
through, others aren't. All of the under-the-system notes seems to
belong to a low F course though so it's likely the instrument had
just six courses and the difference between slashed and "clean" bass
course letters are just a result of quirky handwriting.
Mm..interesting. So perhaps a fruitful and intriguing difference of
opinion between your interpretation of the MS and Rocky's?
Stuart
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