Hello, I am also happy to have the cittern list. I have a cittern which is not the greatest one ever built. It was intended to be temporary until I could get another instrument and now 15+ years later I still ahve it, intonation problems and all. I also have a very nice orpharion built by Peter Biffen, which doesn't seem to have any intonation problems as long as you don't pull the strings out of line.
Ken - you should have no trouble reading from the chords for the broken consort cittern parts. Do the chords and add a few cadential figures. The parts from the existing consort repertoire for cittern as often so easy, you sometimes wonder why they wrote them out. Nancy Carlin >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 Nancy Carlin Associates P.O. Box 6499 Concord, CA 94524 USA phone 925/686-5800 fax 925/680-2582 web site - www.nancycarlinassociates.com Administrator THE LUTE SOCIETY OF AMERICA web site - http://LuteSocietyofAmerica.org --
