Hi Damien,
I hope this works. I attach a photo of a postcard sent me some ten years ago from Crete by Patrick Delaval. It seems to be evidence that citterns were at least still a folk-memory, even if not still in use. Best wishes, Peter On 28 Nov 2008, at 20:13, Damien Delgrossi wrote: > Dear all, > > Two weeks ago I spent some good times with a Cretan group who was on > tour in Corsica. They played many Cretan and Greek flutes, Laouto > (Cretan wire-strung lute similar to italian mandoloncello), Bulgari > (built by ning member Dimitris Rapakousios), Lavta (Constantinople > Lute, more or less fretted arabic oud to explain it simply) etc etc... > > The plucked instruments player from Crete, Vangelis Tsagarakis, told > me a very interesting thing : A long, long time ago Crete also had the > "cetra". He told me that because I had my cetera with me and he said > that they used to have exactly the same instrument on the island of > Crete. I was wondering if they used to have the same 8 course cittern > or the renaissance 4 or 6 course cittern, popular in Italy and Europe > during the Renaissance and after. He told me that the cetra in Crete > probably had 4 courses. > > So I have my own idea about this without any information nor sources > except this oral one. > Candia (the old name for Crete) was administrated, colonised and > directed by the Venitian Republic after the taking of Constantinople > by the crusaders from 1204 to 1669. The Venitian Republic held Crete > for about 4 and a half centuries. > I think that the cittern was in Crete because of this strong Italian > influence. > > Does anybody have any information, sources or anything to say about > this? > > Thanks, > > Damien > > > > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > --
