To the cittern list: I am also very pleased to be on this new list. The renaissance cittern is still a very strange instrument to me, with its re-entrant tuning, yet almost identical tuning of strings (in re-entrant order, though) to the upper four strings of the modern guitar, its sometimes easy but sometimes strange left hand chordal fingerings, and its "P-shaped" neck cross section.
I have had a longstanding interest in the cittern from an iconographical point of view, being especially interested in 17th C. Dutch genre paintings, but had never spent more than a few minutes with the instrument even though I own one. I'm too busy with the lute, which I still fervently believe is one of the greatest inventions of all mankind. But more recently, I was asked to play cittern in a broken consort directed by David Douglass at the university here. Who can pass up an opportunity like that? But when I received the music it was entirely in score form, mostly as 5 part instrumental music, and NO tablatures. I've had to very quickly learn the instrument reading continuo from the bass lines and trying hard to remember that I'm NOT playing a lute! My cittern is also a self-built, but modified for improvement, Early Music Workshop kit. I guess I never took the cittern seriously enough to invest in a fully professional instrument. It has a low action and as long as I don't depress the strings with too much pressure, the intonation works well on it. The strings have broken on it from time to time and the fellow who maintains the harpsichords where I work very kindly gave me spare harpsichord wire as replacements. I use a "0.38" guitar pick (very very thin and flexible). That's all for now, Regards, Kenneth Be To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
