Stuart Walsh wrote:
> I'm not joined up to this ning thing
I can undrstand that. I too prefer the maillist. ;-)
> - and so I'm in the position of
> anyone searching the Internet for information on citterns - the
> information is hidden. Is the instrument in the ning photo (and,
> presumably in the painting) a bell cittern?
Woops! Seems the photos aren't there anymore. At least I can't find 'em.
The instrument in the painting was a bell cittern and I'm pretty sure
the one preserved in the Moravian museum was too.
> Is it tiny - or large - like Bellman's?
Ah, that reminds me! I never got the dimensions of Bellman's cittern
from the Stockholm museum. Perhaps I should contact them again. (The
portrait of Bellman turnsout to be worthless in this respect. It was
quite common for painters at that time to scale the size of objects up
or down to fit the composition of the painting so the fact that it looks
so huge in the picture doesn't really mean anything.)
> And, if not (pace the 'late' 1790s Storm MS) citterns are
> more likely to have been tuned chordally by the mid 18th century?
I got the three German sources I listed from studia-instrumentorum.de
and I can only quote what dr. Michel says at that site. The oldest of
the two manuscripts are dated 1664, the other "c. 1700" while
Vockerodt's reference is - as mentioned - 1718. So we're talking late
17th and early 18th century here. Only Vockerodt, the latest of the
three sources, mentions open chord tunings as an alternative.
> 'Absolute proof' sounds just a bit too tricky,
You're right. The Storm ms. and the German sources all clearly state
they're about citterns but apparently the Moravian ms. is not that
helpful. The only way to determine beyond any doubt what instrument the
music was intended for, would be to connect it historically to one
specific instrument and that's easier said than done.
> So maybe the tablature really is for the more popular mandora.
That's still a possibility. However, the evidence connecting it to the
cittern may be strong or weak, but at the moment it's definitely far
stronger than any connection we have to the mandora.
> Fancy part writing isn't generally the cittern's strongest point.
That's true. But perhaps the North Gernab maj7 tuning was developed
especially to make multipart playing easier?
Frank
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