In einer eMail vom 02.11.2006 01:02:41 Westeurop=E4ische Normalzeit schreibt [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
> The cittern is especially problematic here of course. How much of the > instrument's history is still undiscovered or even lost forever simply > because it keeps being confused with all kinds of other instruments? > Yes, the cittern is an instrument with a relatively long history, and for much of that time, the citternists in one country could not exchange views as freely with those in another country as we can on this list! So the study of the cittern is really a branch of history. And history deals a lot with written sources. And written sources can be as much a source of confusion as a source of light! The obvious problem is the language of the written source. An English-speaking researcher, for instance, has to be able to read the relevant sources in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, etc. Very few of us can read the languages of all the countries in which the cittern has been made and played. So we often have to rely on translations. Now, I'm a technical translator by trade myself, and believe me, historical musical instruments are very much on the fringe of a translator's perception. With the usual orchestral and jazz instruments, which are part of one's general knowledge, an accurate translation is to be expected. But unless a translator knows from experience or study what a Portuguese means when he writes "guitarra" and what a Spaniard means when he writes "guitarra", and what an Englishman thinks of when he reads "guitar" - well, confusion is assured! The next problem is the age of the written source. The same word in the same language can mean different things at differnt times. If I encounter the word "Zither" in a German text, for instance, I must check the date of writing. If it was before about 1750, I'd translate it as "cittern" - if after 1850 as "zither". Between that, I'd have to do some serious research. The change of meaning didn't take place in all regions of Germany at the same time. In some places, the Zither - as in Waldzither, Halszither - is still a cittern, even if someone familiar with them leaves off the "Wald-" or "Hals-" for convenience. Then there's the quality of the information. Not all texts that refer to musical instruments were written by musicologists, luthiers or musicians. A traveller describing a local musical evening, and ignorant of what the local instruments were called, might refer to them as "a sort of _____", substituting the name of a vaguely similar instrument that was familiar to him. For instance, an English traveller in North America in the 18th century might mention the Negro slaves playing on "their guitars" - not mentioning that these "guitars" had skin heads. We might ponder long about whether the Englishman was talking about the Spanish guitar or the English guittar - while in fact what he had seen were banjos! A further source of uncertainty is the copying of information. Even "experts" cite written sources, and may thus base their technically very sound arguments on false premisses. Historians tend to favour the "oldest" version of an account, because it has been copied less often and potentially contains fewer misunderstandings on the part of copyists. OK, when you've inspected your source for reliabiliy along the above lines, you can draw conclusions about the exisence of a certain build of instrment with a certain tuning in a certain place at a certain time! Fortunately, we musicians are not restricted to written sources alone - we have pictorial evidence and musums full of old instruments to cross-check with. And we should do just that! A useful hint from the archaeology fraternity is to try to reconstruct what you consider to be an early artefact, and see if it really works. Development of musical instruments (like all artefacts) is driven by the limitations and capabilities of the existing examples - not by some theoretical consideration. Actually playing historical or reproduction instruments may provide insights into developments. Long posting, but it seems to boil down to sitting down and playing music! Cheers, John D. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
