Damien DELGROSSI wrote: > Good Morning the Cittern list, > I write mail to find an important information and I am sure somebody can help > me in my research. A friend of mine who is a corsican cetera player has an > Archicittern. This Cittern teorbato is french from the middle of the 18e > century make in Paris by the lutemaker LAURENT. The problem is to find the > tuning, he can not tune his arcicittern and we do not find any information > about that. His instrument has 5 doubles courses bass outside the instrument, > 5 others double courses and one single "chanterelle" (please excuse my bad > english I hope you understand me). If somebody has a tune to propose to me, > or any information or any musician I can contact please let me know if you > can.Thank you very much , I wish to all the members of this list a happy > december Best regards, > Damien Delgrossi. > -- > > Does your friend's arch-cittern look something like this?
http://www.studia-instrumentorum.de/MUSEUM/ZISTER/0629.htm These instruments were popular in France in 1770-1790. The cittern of the time was known as the 'cistre ou guittare allemande' (with slightly different spellings for 'cistre' and 'guittare'). A typical 'cistre' of the time had seven courses of strings: E, A, d, e, a, c#', e'. The top four treble strings were pairs and the lower strings are single basses. I've never seen one with a single top string (chanterelle). The higher strings are in pairs and the lower ones are singles - quite different from a lute. The instrument shown above (from the studia-instrumentorum site) is typical of a cistre with extra basses. There is obviously a peg missing in this instrument. The first peg box has 11 pegs: 8 pegs for the top four strings and 3 pegs for the lower three. The second pegbox has five pegs, descending diatonically: D#, D, C#, B', A'. (Benoit Pollet claims to have invented this particular way of tuning the cistre.) I have seen several cistres set up like this: made by Laurent, Le Blond, Deleplanque and others. But you say that your friends' cistre has five double courses off the fingerboard (exmanche) and five double courses plus a single chanterelle that are on the fingerboard (manche). That is twenty-one strings in all. Could your friend be mistaken and be thinking of the tuning of an eleven-course Baroque lute? Are you sure you friend meant five double courses on the second pegbox? If he meant five single basses then the the eleven strings in the first pegbox should be arranged as normal with the top four courses doubled and the lower three as single. Here is the full tuning from lowest to highest: A', B', C#, D#, D, E, A, d, ee, aa, c#'c#', e'e'. Cistre music is usually written for a seven-course instrument and the lower notes are indicated by octave signs so the music can be played on both a seven-course instrument or an instrument with extra basses. (J. Carpentier wrote for an eight-course instrunent tuned like a seven-course with a low D.) There is a lot of attractive music - songs, solos, duets - for the instrument published by Pollet and Carpentier and some others. Carpentier (1770s) wrote about 'cythres en boyeau': gut-strung cistres. I've never come across one but perhaps your friend's instrument is one of these. I don't know how they were strung. But all the cistre music that I have seen all requires seven courses to be on the fingerboard, all top seven courses need to be fretted. Please write again if you haven't understood me. Does your friend have any cistre music? I could send some. Stuart To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
