Brad McEwen wrote:
> Is any particular version then any more "true" to a name with such a
flexible and elastic application throughout time?
I'm sure there are instruments we all agree do not belong to the cittern
family even though they have names derived from the same root. The
regular guitar for example. And also the German/Scandinavian Zither (the
dulcimer kind that is) and the Indian sitar (assuming the name
similarity is more than a coincidence).
The modern "Irish" cittern is a rather interesting topic though. I've
heard at least three widely different stories how it was invented, all
of them absolutely true and all of them confliciting with each other.
One of the stories firmly establishes it as a descendant of a member of
the "true" cittern family. The two other as a decendant of the lute
family. None of them actually suggest that it should belong to the
mandola family from a historical point of view.
Classifying musical instruments by their ancestory is however extremely
difficult and sometimes completely impossible so personally I wouldn't
put to much significance into it. The important thing is what the
instrument is, not where it comes from.
The mandola family is a good example here. I think we all agree it
exists (although some will call it the mandolin family of course), but
historically it really makes no sense at all. Various mandos have widely
different origins, some evolved from various branches of the lute
family, some from the cittern family and some you just can't tell. Even
so we bundle them all up as a single instrument family.
> Because the modern cittern has a mandolin/violin based tuning hardly
makes it any less true than a Renaissance or Baroque cittern, both of
which were instruments that were extremely different from each other.
I think you exaggerate the differences between citterns of the
renaissance and baroque periods a bit, but apart from that I have to
agree. The tuning is definitely not a good basis for classifying
instruments and besides the Irish cittern is rarely tuned in fifths anyway.
-------
By coincidence, yesterday just before this discussion started, I wrote
this article for one of my web sites (not sure which one yet).
***Lutes, citterns, guitars, mandolas - what's the difference?***
Traditional instruments classification systems usually organise most
fretted, plucked stringed instruments in western music into four main
families: lutes, citterns, guitars and mandolas (or mandolins). There
are some exceptions, like the banjo, but since there is rarely any
confusion between it and the four largest families, we can ignore it
(and some others too) for now.
This classification works well for a broad overview, but once we start
to look in detail at the multitude of instruments known through the
ages, we run into serious problems. This is by no means a situation
unique to the four main families of stringed instruments. We find
exactly the same everywhere we look in the world of musical instruments.
The four families mentioned serves as a good example to illustrate the
situation though.
At first glance it seems the only even marginally coherent way to
organise different instruments, is by their construction. Playing style
can change even for exactly the same instrument, historical relations
are often too unclear (and the different families have a strong tendency
to "interbreed") and common use is - although quite often a good
indication - not nearly as common as one may think.
There seem to be three construction features that define the four
families, the body shape, the back and the bridge:
Body Back Bridge
Lutes Oval Bowl Fixed
Citterns Oval (more or less) Flat/arched Floating
Guitars Narrow-waisted Flat/arched Fixed
Mandolas Oval - Floating
This overview is quite straight forward and looks quite convincing at
first glance. There are however a number of serious problems with it.
First of all there are instruments that won't fit. How about the archtop
guitar and the chitarra battente with narrow waisted bodies and floating
bridges? Or the bandora with a flat back and fixed bridge? Also of
course, since it's impossible to define a standard back shape for the
mandola family (which historically and technically isn't really a family
of its own, but rather an amalgation of different branches of the lute
and cittern families) a flatback, oval shaped, floating bridge
instrument would fit both the cittern and the mandola families.
Even if we somehow managed to modify the system to give all known
instruments an unambigious place, there's still the matters of
historical relationships and common use. Although these factors are far
too volatile to be used as the basis of a classification system, they
can't be completely ignored either.
Of course there's also the question of what exactly an instrument type
is. Exactly how much differences must there be between two individual
instruments to regard them as two different kinds of instruments?
In the end, any classification system must necessarily be highly
subjective. That means it's always open to discussions, disagreements
and refinement. his may seem like a problem, and indeed it is. Then
again, what really matters is the music we make with our instrument, not
how we classify them or what we call them. Very often the confusion is a
creative confusion, allowing instrument makers to come up with new
innovations and musicians to use the instruments in new and wonderful
way. In the end it's definitely worth all the trouble.
Frank Nordberg
http://www.musicaviva.com
http://www.online-guitarist.com
http://www.gitar-siden.com
http://www.tablatvre.com
http://www.mandolin-player.com
http://www.roarogfrank.com
To get on or off this list see list information at
http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
