In einer eMail vom 27.10.2006 09:07:42 Westeurop=E4ische Sommerzeit schreibt
[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
> Just trying to learn this strange foreign language (English) here: is
> there a difference between an arched and a vaulted back/top or are they
> just two words for the same thing?
>
Frank,
Your English is excellent - I particularly like the Tudor spelling in your
subject line! ;-)
To my mind, terminology is the bane (curse) of organology. A *-JPG is worth a
thousand words, and there's nothing like taking an instrument in your hands
and getting the look and feel of it.
Failing that, just let me describe my Waldzither. Forgive my not giving exact
dimensions, but I've just lent it to someone:
It has a tear-drop body outline, very similar to the English and Portuguese
guitars, and a 9-screw, fanned tuning machine with square ends for the key.
The neck joins the body at the 10th fret, the upper part of the fingerboard
being glued to the top and ending with a curve parallel to the edge of the
round sound-hole, which has no rosette.
The bridge that was on it when I bought it is made of glass.
The body is much deeper at the pin-block than at the neck joint. The bottom
edges of the ribs (the members perpendicular to the top) have a gentle, convex
curve.
The back is built of 7 parallel staves, which are apparently slightly wider
in the middle than at the ends, because the back has a slight but noticeable
curve from side to side, as well as from end to end. It is sort of "spherical"
or "lens-shaped".
My first impression on seeing this instrument in a junk shop was that the
body was "a cross between a guitar and a lute". The vertical ribs of the guitar
body are there, but the "vaulting" (as I term it) of the back means that it is
stable without the guitar's internal cross bracing. The statics are thus
similar to the lute's.
What breed of Waldzither is this? (Marion?)
Interestingly, I also possess a new (1980s), cheap, eastern European,
electric-acoustic mandoline which, apart from the Embergher headstock, the
kidney-shaped sound-hole and the inductive pick-up, is a perfectly scaled-down
version
of my Waldzither. The staves of the back are roughly the same width as the
Waldzither's, so there are only 5 instead of 7, but the central one is fitted
to
the heel of the neck in exactly the same way.
Is this what one would call a "Waldoline" copy?
Then I have a German Mandriola ("12-string mandolin"), which is almost
identical to the cheap mandolin in size, shape and style of headstock, and
proportions of the ribs. However, its back is not made of staves, but rather of
lozenges and triangles of different woods arranged radially around a central
button.
Two friends of mine have mandolins of similar build. They have the same
"vaulted" back as the version with parallel staves.
How would one categorise these instruments?
Didn't some Renaissance citterns also have backs built of staves, rather than
the more usual wide panels?
In my own modest collection, I have three distinct body types in fretted
instruments:
The lute and Neapolitan mandolin, with a back consisting entirely of
self-supporting, barrel-like staves, without ribs;
The Spanish guitar, with vertical ribs and a back made of wide, flat,
book-matched panels with internal bracing, and parallel to the top;
And the Waldzither and cheap mandolin with vertical ribs and a
self-supporting, "vaulted" back built of curved staves, not parallel to the top.
I regard the radial panels of the Mandriola as a variant of the Waldzither
build. I have seen photos of Mandriolas with the staves arranged as a fan,
converging on the heel of the neck - which I see as another variation on the
Waldzit
her form.
These are what I personally mean when I talk about "lute/bowl", "flat" and
"vaulted " backs.
Cheers,
John D.
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