Doc: Rant away. That's what this list is for, isn't it? It seems to me that there are so many different variations of any given musical instrument over any given area and period of time that an endless evolution of them naturally occurred. Evolution is possibly a good analogy, as the conditions fofa paticular area (cultrue, climate, etc.) would play a part in determing the type of variation. It's fascinating and very appealing to attempt to discover a pattern of development and to map that pattern. But if we can't do that with modern "Celtic" (for lack of a better word) citterns, how can we do so with historical ones? Look at all the discussion about scale length, tunigns, string gauges, etc. on the other citternlist. That's modern. How would it have been two hundred or more years ago? Brad
Stuart Walsh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > > > The more instruments I've seen travelling around the more I see just how > varied instruments were in terms of size, shape, number of strings, > tunings, and quality of construction. For years I've been advocating a > chronological and zig-zag history for the cittern, similar to that of the > guitar. I think the separation between early citterns and the so-called > English guittar was perpetrated in great part by the Grove dictionary. The > writers there consistently insist that the English guittar is not a > cittern; I've never found their argument convincing (in part because thy > don't really say why). > > > > I'll stop before I start ranting... > > > > Doc Rossi > > > I'm nor sure what you are ranting about. If it's connected with what I wrote, I think I simply talked about different kinds of cittern and the history of that instrument. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --------------------------------- How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates. --
