The "Dominici Zwolff Chorige Cither" has been on my building wish list for a while now. It's actually a large-ish archicetra (ceterone) that was played by a musician Praetorius heard of in Prague. Here's what MP had to say about it (per the 1962 Harold Blumenfeld translation):
"There is yet a larger kind of cither with twelve choirs of strings. It produces a strong and magnificent sound like a harpsichord. A distinguished court instrumentalist named Domenicus has an instrument of this kind in Prague. It is said to be almost as long as a bass viol da gamba. A drawing of it is to be found on plate VII." The above indicates that Praetorius might not have actually seen the instrument he described and illustrated. The tuning MP gives for the instrument has re-entrant bass string tunings of eb, Bb, f, c, g, d, a, e, and treble strings tuned to b, g, d' and e'. Cheers, Ron Banks Ft. Worth, Texas -----Original Message----- From: Frank Nordberg [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 06, 2006 5:26 PM To: Cittern NET Subject: [CITTERN] Re: Guitar-shaped cittern Brad McEwen wrote: > james: > I,personally haven't seen this. Do you have a pic? Here it is: http://www.musicaviva.com/instruments/display.tpl?serienr=782 I haven't had time to add much info about it yet but Praetorius' illustrations are there at least. Frank Nordberg http://www.musicaviva.com To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
