Pedro Caldeira Cabral sent me this reply to my wild Portuguese guitar theories and asked me to forward it to the list.
Frank --- Pedro Caldeira Cabral wrote: Some clariffying remarks: The word VIOLA in portuguese only appeared in the late 19th and was applied to a precise instrument: a large guitar with six or seven stopped strings and a variable number of extra bass strings up to four. The word VIOLA is used in portuguese since the 13th century to designate all eight shaped chordophones, no matter of them being plucked or bowed. In the 16th century in Portugal sometimes we find the reference to the VIOLA DE ARCO meaning most of the times a Viol (da Gamba). In castillian language the distinction between GUITARRA and VIHUELA was described by many authors, among them Bermudo in 1555, who also explained the different tunings. At the same time in Portugal we used to name VIOLA de QUATRO ORDENS, ou VIOLA DE CINCO ORDENS, what the castillians named as GUITARRA.Is this clear? The 2 best surviving examples of this type of instrument from the late 16th were made in Lisbon/Portugal , made by Belchior Dias and currently in the Royal College of Music, London and Shrine to the Music Museum, South Dakota, USA. There is also a VIOLA DE SEIS ORDENS in the Paris Musèe de la Musique, wich was found and bought by Madame la Contesse de Chambure in Lisboa in 1960.It closely resembles the instruments from Dias workshop. As to the sources in Portugal: 4 instruments survived from the 18 th century (to my knowledge) and their close examen was done by me allowing me to produce some of my conclusions. My main conclusion is that we have from the 16th onwards a continuous tradition of making and playing the Citara (Cittern) wich evolved from the renaissance carved models to the paralel deep sided type and flat pegbox with wood pegs inserted from rear side of the instruments as J.P dos Reis, Lisboa 1764, entirelly made of Pine (Pinus sylvestris), Joao Correa de Almeida , Lisboa 1776, made of Sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus), and 2 non-signed instruments one of them restored in Coimbra in 1807 with added head of the Preston type. By the way, I never said or even thought of the Guitarra Portuguesa being the mother of the English Guitar. As to the tuning mechanism used in the portuguese guitar: it is a late portuguese re-design (c.1870) of the so-called Preston system, who indeed never registered its patent. Other evidence of this double practice is the numerous references in portuguese literature and reports of foreign visitors (R.Southey, W.Beckford, J.Murphy, etc.) who refer the status of the Guitarra, being on fashion among the ladies of the best society. At the same time we have references as to the Citara status: It was usually found in barbershops, in taverns and among coloured people and prostitutes. Quoting M.Morais: "the oldest reference I found of the word Guitarra in a specific musical context was this: António Cardoso-Guitarra, Ilário Gomes-Viola" inscribed in the brotherhood of St.Cecília in 1720. Can we draw any relevant conclusion out of this? I prefer to keep on examining real instruments (I have complete detailed measurements of over 150 PGs in my files) along with iconographic evidence. Please send this to those on the list.Thank you in advance. Best regards. Pedro Caldeira Cabral To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
