Dear Citternists, I would like to sound out the suitability of the Renaissance cittern for me personally, and I'd like your help.
I've always loved "ancient musick", but the viol, the sackbut and the recorder are just too out of the way for a fretted-string player of my age to take up. I find classical guitar difficult enough, so I don't fancy the lute, but I imagine that my mandolin, classic 5-string banjo and a bit of Waldzither might give me a good start on the cittern. So I'd like to try and make some sense of what I've read recently on the Internet about the instrument. I've read up on shapes, sizes, tunings, plectra, string technology etc, etc. but I have not yet seen a cittern played nor handled one (Someone suggested restringing a normal mandolin as a "training simulator", but this would require the calculation of the correct string gauges, if the result were to feel right). So I have a couple of questions: 1. Is the cittern an all-key instrument, or is it one of those (like the classic banjo) that is very easy to play in one key, reasonably easy in a couple of more, but awkward in more distant keys? And if so, what keys are handy on the 4-course "Italian" tuning? Does the "French" tuning offer advantages or disadvantages, and if so, under what circumstances? 2. I've read about the non-equal-temperament fretting of the cittern. Does this apply to the diatonic variety with the"missing" frets, or is it used on the chromatically-fretted variant, too? And how diatonic is a diatonic cittern - one key? two keys...? 3. Must the cittern be played in a polyphonic style, or is it possible to accompany a song or an instrumental melody using chords, as on the folk guitar? I think the answers to these questions will keep my mind turning over for a while. More questions will probably arise from the answers, but I know where to ask, don't I ? ;-) Thanks in advance, Cheers, John D. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
