Andrew Rutherford wrote:
Re the cittern and the Moravians, Lanie Graf published something in a
recent Moravian Archives journal all about citterns, Moravians and
Frederick Hintz, the furniture maker turned guittar maker. You can
find the relevent (sp?) info on her ning page.
By the way, Hintz claimed to have "invented" the English guitar. I
think he may have invented the major-chord tuning for the cittern when
he moved to England... andy r
Andy
What is the reference for the claim by Hintz, that he invented the
English guitar? And what date?
I think the chordal tuning may well pre-date the 1750s. But definitely
something happened in Britain the 1750s.Well lots of things happened
then - but in the world of citterns. Several contemporary accounts
describe the (English) guitar/guittar as new or newly introduced, and,
as far as I know, no instruments and no publications date from before
the 1750s. And the typical (English) guitar/guittar has a chordal
tuning, on six courses of wire strings with the top four courses paired
and the bottom two, single. As far as I know, no cittern with that
tuning and stringing arrangement exists before the 1750s. And the
instrument tended to be called a guitar/guittar and the music is not in
tablature.
I've tended to suppose that the immediate origin is a four-course
instrument - four pairs of strings, tuned chordally, gceg, probably
German, probably played with the fingers, not a plectrum.And then
someone in Britain, probably in London, added the two single basses and
somehow started a huge fashion for the instrument among the well-off. So
that many, many instruments were made and lots and lots of music
published for the next 20-30+ years.
Maybe Hintz was the man! Maybe he thought of the idea of an elegant but
simple instrument for well-off amateurs. He added two single basses to
extend the range of notes of C major. He discarded the tablature concept
and just had almost everything in C major. Hintz made instruments, he
published some music and, I can't remember, but perhaps he was a
publisher of music too. But he (or whoever it was) must have had very
good connections for the fashion to take off so well amongst the more
well-to-do.
Hintz also published some hymn tunes. I wrote out a few of them ages
ago. They are quite unlike most EG music, three-part block chords,
rather than running single lines. But they're not like the Moravian
choralbuch either.
Stuart.
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