Stuart Walsh wrote:
Just to be absolutely clear about this connection - what was it that
linked the GCEGBE tuning with this lute-bellied cittern? (I've literally
lost the thread on this one!)
The Moravian Archives in Betlehem, PA. They have a c. 1750 book with
chorales in tablature for that tuning and also a lute-cittern from the
same time period. Andrew Rutherford posted a message about it on this
group about a month ago and he and Lanie Graf have added quite a bit of
information about the Moravian cittern tradition at the ning, including
pictures of the instrument mentioned and photos of a painting that
includes two ladies playing lute-citterns.
I don't see this...yet. Certainly the instrument has 11 pegs but is
there any reason to think that the strings were arranged in four doubles
and 3 singles?
Sorry, that was a typo. It should be the other way round: four double
courses and three single basses. It's fairly clear if you look at the
nut on the large photo.
From what can be seen in the Krafft painting, this instrument doesn't
really look anything like a cithrinchen?
The painting doesn't show the most distinctive part of the instrument -
the tail end - but the shape of the part we do see is consistent with
the preserved Bellman cittern and with the only Hamburger citrinchen at
the Studia-Instromentorum site:
http://www.studia-instrumentorum.de/MUSEUM/ZISTER/0639.htm
However, now that you mention it, the *details* in the painting does fit
the surviving Bellman instrument! The fretboard, the lining and the
rosette are all very different and the cleaner scan I posted first:
http://hem.passagen.se/iblis/bellman.jpg
seems to show twelve tuning pegs!
This is really strange. It is commonly accepted knowledge among Bellman
experts that he only played two instruments throughout his lifetime (the
other one was a theorbised cittern with extended bass strings) and that
the cittern in the Krafft painting is the one preserved at the Stockholm
museum.
What does this mean? Is the Stockholm cittern a fake? Is the painting
*that* inexact? Did Bellman actually own more than the two citterns we
know of? Did he just borrow somebidy else's cittern when he posed for
the painting? Looks like we have to challenge a century-old well
established historical fact here.
All things considered, I think we can be 99.9 percent certain that it
was common during the 18th C. to fingerpick the Hamburger citrinchen.
Even if it was tiny?
Good point.
First, I wasn't thinking only of the common small Hamburger citrincehnn
but also this still hypothetical larger bell cittern. I should have been
more precise there.
But let's see:
We know of other small historical stringed instruments (renaissance
citterns and 17th C. mandolins/mandolas) being played fingerstyle so the
suggestion may not be quite as drastic as it may seem at first sight.
At the moment it seems as if the Storm ms. was written for - if not a
Hamburger citrinchen - at least a cittern of the same size and tuning. I
think we all agree the music there has to be played fingerstyle.
Bellman learned to play on the cittern his grandfather had bought in
Hamburg - I think we can be fairly certain of that. Even if he did
switch to a different instrument later, it's not very likely he'd change
his playing style.
Then again, what *did* grandpa get in Hamburg? How likely is it that a
18th C. singer/singwriter would perform only accompanied with something
roughly equivalent to a modern mandolin in pitch and size?
The 'Moravian' lute-bellied cittern isn't a cithrinchen.
No but the lute-cittern was designed around 1700 as a hybrid between a
cittern and a lute. It was almost certainly based on a specific existing
cittern tradition and the evidence so far indicates that this was the
Hamburger citrinchen (or at least a close relative). The Moravian info
suggests the two shared the same tuning and, according to Michel, Gdansk
- a city with strong connections to Hamburg - was the geographical
center of the lute-cittern.
Frank Nordberg
http://www.musicaviva.com
http://stores.ebay.com/Nordbergs-Music-Store?refid=store
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