Hallo
my brother-in-law sent me this article from Oxford University Press:
Read the last few lines: Is this your opinion, too?
There is no explanation for the thesis that the English Guittar should
not be called a cittern......
Martina
Cittern
3. History and repertory from 1500.
Beginning in the 16th century there is a wealth of information about the
cittern, and a considerable amount of published
music. Lanfranco's tuning chart of 1533 gives a relative tuning by
intervals, but not specific pitches. Assuming the top
course to be e', as it usually is in subsequent sources, the result is
a=96c'=96b=96gg'=96d'd'=96e'. The six-course tuning has a
mixture of single and double stringing, and the specific pitches were
confirmed by Cerone (1613), who used Lanfranco as the
basis of his information. He also gave pitches a fifth lower, presumably
for a larger instrument. The overall open-string
tuning comprises a hexachord starting on g. This tuning seems to have
been common, though only two sources require it
(Vincenti, 1602; MS, c1620, see =A74 below). Both of these also require
a mixed fretting with, among other chromatic and
diatonic intervals, a whole tone between the third and fourth frets.
Almost all Italian sources for six-course citterns
feature the same tuning for the top four courses, with variants for the
fifth and sixth.
Italian music for a fully chromatic instrument first appeared in a
Phal=E8se and Bell=E8re print of 1570. It requires only four
courses, tuned as the top four courses of Lanfranco's chart. The use
of a four-, rather than a six-course instrument
corresponds to northern usage, but the anonymous canzonettas and dances
are otherwise italianate.
The first Italian publication of cittern music was Paolo Virchi's Il
primo libro di tabolatura di citthara (1574). It calls
for a fully chromatic six-course instrument tuned
dd=96ff=96bb=96gg=96d'd'=96e'e'. Virchi demanded considerable technical
virtuosity.
His music is of the highest quality and includes fantasias,
intabulations of canzoni by Merulo, settings of vocal music for
solo cittern and tenor voice with cittern, as well as some pavans and
galliards. He also included two pieces for a
seven-course instrument, extending the range down to G. It was clearly
Virchi's intention to improve and refine the
cittern. The dedication to Il primo libro reads:
The citthara has always stood in some consideration among people
because, being played with a quill, it has a lively
and pleasant tone and because it has well-ordered proportion and differs
little from such instruments as the lute and
harpsichord, which have already attained perfection. But it is only now
that the citthara begins to delight such noble
personages as the Duke of Bavaria and Archduke Ferdinand of the Tyrol.
The same Archduke Ferdinand provides us with a unique and most
satisfying connection between a music source and the very
instrument on which it was played. The sole surviving copy of Paolo's
book, likely to have been Ferdinand's own copy, is
now in the =D6sterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. In the year of
its publication, Ferdinand commissioned a cittern
from Paolo's father, the famed maker Girolamo di Virchi. Ferdinand's
cittern, too, now resides in Vienna, where it is one
of the treasures of the Kunsthistorisches Museum (fig.2). The
instrument, with its string length of 44 cm, presumably was
used to play Paolo's music, which demands the same virtuoso technique
and wide left-hand stretches as later English music
by Holborne and Robinson.
In France and northern Europe the cittern was used mainly as a
four-course instrument. The earliest surviving tutor, Le Roy
and Ballard's Breve et facile instruction (1565), called for the
following tuning and stringing (assuming a top course as
e'): aa'a'=96 gg'g'=96d'd'=96e'e'. Le Roy's and several other
tablature sources, for example Viaera (1564) and Vreedmann (1568),
often idiomatically intabulate the melodic material onto the third and
fourth courses, both of which are triple strung and
in octaves (a fact frequently overlooked by modern editors). The
tablatures require mixed fretting (Le Roy's illustration
of a cittern was used in other books, but with variant fretting
patterns; in Mersenne (1636=967) it is fully chromatic: see
fig.5). The repertory comprises much the same sort of music (dances,
vocal intabulations and a few fantasias) as is found
in contemporary lute books.
Published music for cittern in Germany is represented by Sixt Kargel,
beginning in 1569 with two volumes now lost. One of
them, Renovata Cythara, is found in three later editions, the last from
1580. It requires the tuning, stringing and
fretting arrangement of Le Roy and Vreedman, and includes the latter's
playing instructions both in the original Latin and
in German translation. Kargel, together with J.D. Lais, published Toppel
Cythar in 1575 (reprinted 1578). This toppel
cythar (double cittern) is a six-course instrument with an expanded open
string range requiring a completely chromatic
fingerboard (see Tyler, p.25). The tuning is
bb=96Gg=96dd'=96gg=96d'd'=96e', which is unique in that the top four
courses are not in
the typical re-entrant pattern of almost all other cittern tablatures.
The music is of high quality and comprises a
fantasia, Italian and German dances, and intabulations of madrigals,
chansons and lieder by Lassus, Arcadelt, Rore, Senfl
and others.
The cittern continued to be popular in Germany in the 17th century.
Praetorius suggested using citterns to double certain
parts in his vocal publication Polyhymnia (1619), playing from
single-line staff notation. A later 17th-century German
development is a small, bell-shaped instrument, known as the
Cithrinchen, which does not use re-entrant tuning and has its
own repertory, but which retains most of the classic characteristics of
the cittern. Indeed, in south Germany and the
German-speaking areas of Switzerland the cittern remained in use until
the early 20th century, although with triadic
tunings similar to those of the English guitar. The late instrument
often retained some of the constructional features of
earlier citterns and was used in traditional music. The names for it
vary: Bergzither, Bergmannszither, Zister, Zitter,
Sister and, from the mid-19th century and the 20th, Waldzither,
Thuringer Waldzither, Lutherzither, Wartburlaute etc.
(Michel).
In England cittern music can be traced back to the mid-16th century in
the `Mulliner Book' which, in addition to music for
other instruments, contains eight pieces for four-course cittern and one
piece for five-course cittern. The tablatures
require the tuning of Le Roy, but with a chromatic fretting. The first
published music was an English translation (1568,
now lost) of Le Roy's tutor of 1565. But the Italian influence proved
stronger than the French, for the tuning
bb=96gg=96d'd'=96e'e' (the top four courses of Italian citterns) became
standard in England. There is some evidence that the
third course occasionally might have been tripled and that, in some
cases, octave stringing may have been employed.
Normally, fretting was completely chromatic.
The manuscripts copied by Mathew Holmes (c1595=967) contain cittern
music of a very high quality and which requires
considerable technical skill. A few pieces from Paolo Virchi's 1574
book are copied into one of them, as well as some
excellent works by Robinson, Holborne and others. Anthony Holborne's
The Cittharn Schoole was published in 1597 and Thomas
Robinson's New Citharen Lessons in 1609. The music in these two books
represents the highest point in English writing for
the instrument.
The demanding left-hand stretches required for the music of Holborne,
Robinson and others has led to the suggestion (Abbott
and Segerman, 1975) that players in England used a small instrument
tuned an octave higher to b'b'=96g'g'=96d''d''=96e''e''. But
although Praetorius (1618) claimed to have heard an Englishman play a
very small cittern with the tuning
f''f''=96a'a'(b'b')=96d''d''=96g''g'', there is no existing
documentation anywhere for a very small cittern with the e'' pitch
level. Further, the tuning of the very small cittern that Praetorius
heard is unique and unprecedented for a cittern,
although it is similar to one of the tunings for the Italian mandolino
(see Mandolin, =A72). And Virchi's music, which
requires the same stretches, is most likely to have been played on the
normal-sized cittern, with the pitch level at e'.
>From around the second quarter of the 17th century in England, the high
standards set by Holborne and Robinson are no
longer found, and the cittern seems to be associated solely with
undemanding popular music (fig.6). By the mid-17th
century, the instrument was being restrung, tuned like a four-course
guitar, played with the right-hand fingers instead of
a plectrum and called a gittern. This use of the term should not be
confused with that of the 16th and early 17th century
when it referred to the four-course guitar (see Guitar, =A73).
Another English wire-strung instrument is the English guitar, developed
in the mid-18th century. But this instrument
differs from the cittern structurally, has a triadic tuning and is
played with the fingers. Although it is the custom
today, this instrument should not be called a cittern.
=A9 Oxford University Press 2004
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