Frank: there is no evidence that I know of that suggests that fretted instruments were used by the Irish peasantry (who were, after all, the people that continued the use of what we now call Irish music) They were also very unlikely to have been able to afford such instruments, due to their often crushing poverty. Instruments like the guittar, although made or imported by Gibson of Dublin, seem to have been used soley by the educated middle and upper classes of Anglicized Dublin. I'm not making an Irish vs English statement. It's merely that British controlled eastern Ireland was every bit as class-ridden as Britain itself was. Any guittars in Ireland would have been used to play the music played on them elsewhere, such as CPE Bach, Oswald, Geminiani, etc. as well as some current popular tunes, as Doc has previously suggested. Perhaps some Irish tunes were plyed on them, as Oswald used Scottish tunes within the fabric of his Divertimentos. But the thought that there was any sort of indigenous Irish cittern has, to my knowledge to evidenc to support it. Brad
Frank Nordberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Brad McEwen wrote: > However, I really don't feel that I am exagerating the differences between the baroque and renaissance citterns. both have different approaches to body depth and general shape, string length and groupings, tuning and playing technique. They could hardly be more different. In fact, they are totally different instruments! I don't think we disagree as much as it may seem. The renaissance cittern is definitely a different instrument from the various baroque citterns (with the possible exception of the Th�ringer Zither). But there is also a very clear family relationship. (Btw, am I the only one who feels a bit uneasy about the term "baroque cittern?" Seems to me it's mostly used for cittern variants more associated with the post-baroque galant/classical period.) > The so-called "Irish" cittern was invented (or developed) by Stefan Sobell, who built a variation of a Portugues guittarra he had and called it a cittern because it basically looked like and old cittern. In that case the answer to the original question is clear: The "Irish" cittern evolved from a recognised member of the cittern family, its construction shows all the characterisitcs of a cittern and it is generally known under the cittern name. In other words it's definitely a true cittern. But here's a different story, the one that seems to have been most widely accepted accepted as "true": http://www.flatpicker.com/bullock/article02.htm Yet another story I've heard tells how John Pearse came across a bouzouki with a broken back and sent it to repair to a luthier who didn't know how to make a bowl back, so he gave it a flat one instead. That story too seems to imply that the "Irish" cittern is simply a variant of the "Irish" bouzouki. (And of course it'll make both instruments even less "Irish" since we're not even on the same continent anymore.) Personally I tend to prefer the Portuguese guitar connection. The idea that the Irish cittern and the Irish bouzouki started off as the same instrument simply doesn't seem to fit the facts. > The name stuck. Simple as that. No direct descent from any Irish instruments or from lutes Umm, maybe a slight misunderstanding: the lute in this case was the bouzouki, not the traditional European lute. > That's pure wishful thinking. Guittars or citterns were used in the houses of the Anglo-Irish in Dublin and the Pale, not in the native Irish. I'm not going into any discussion about British/English vs Irish. I have neither the right nor the knowledge to do that. However, if I'm allowed to speak as an outsider about British as a whole (meaning the British Isles, not any particular nation), there's still something that puzzles me. We know that cittern-like instruments have been used for doubling melodic lines in British ensembles since around 1970. We know a cittern (the English guittar) was used in more or less the same role from the middle of the 18th and well into the 19th century. We know the lute at least (if not the cittern) was used the same way at the end of the 16th century. Is there really no continuous line of tradition between these three points? Oh yes, we also know Irish emigrants to the USA during the 1920s (and possibly earlier) picked up the US banjo and used it in much the same rather idiomatic way. Was that something they thought of after crossing the pond or was it an adaptation of traditions from their home country to a new environment? These are not rhetorical questions btw. I ask because I have no idea what the answers are and would really like to know. > Calling it an Irish insrument is a miapplication, Yes, that was my impression too. However, as I said I don't feel qualified to have an opinion about this so I just go along with what names seem to be the most common ones - trying to remember to use as many quotation marks as possible. ;-) Frank Nordberg http://www.musicaviva.com To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site! --
