Doc: Very interesting. I wondered what had ahppened to you. For my own part, I am not disputing Pedro; I'm very interested in this. AND, I'm certainly not trying to defend the notion of the British style guittar" being the sole influence on the Portuguese. I think it very unlikely that there would not have been any similar instruments in Portugal, considering that the mandolin, laud, bandurria, and vrious other small, double strung instruments proliferated throughout continental Europe..possibly more so thanin Britain at the time. It merely piques my curiosity. Tthe fact that the earlier Portugues Gittarras are so very similar to the "English" guittars to me suggests that yes, the instrument imported from England had an influence on instruments already in use in Portugal. As in all our discussions abour the evolutionof citterns in general, provenence and evidence is crucial to supporting any theory. Brad
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Howdy Folks, I'm on the road at the moment and don't have regular access to the internet so I haven't been able to keep up with the recent threads - I haven't even been able to read everything yet! Two things I wanted to say: RE Ron's (beautiful) cittern: Has anyone mentioned fake labels? A few years in Evora we saw several "ancient" citterns, many of which were 19th and 20th century fakes, and many of them were similar to the instruments shown in one of the early links supplied in the thread (not very helpful, I know...). I have to agree that the binding on Ron's cittern is rather bright, but I'm not at all sure that that is decisive for dating it. RE Pedro's theory: There is an essay in Portuguese published in 1936 that also claims that the Portuguese guitar is based on the earlier cittern in Portugal. I'm sorry I can't give you the bibliographic details just now - maybe someone else can, or perhaps it's already been mentioned. Doc -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . 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. --
