Peter Forrester wrote: > Not the same, but may be relevant: > > Juan José Rey and Antonio Navarro. "Los Instrumentos de pua en > España", p 78 (in the chapter 'El siglo XIX') has a four-course, > twelve string instrument called citara.
That may well be the direct predecessor to the Julve cittern. The idea that they eventually removed one string from each course seems quite likely. > My Spanish is now non-existent, but there seem to be also > two six-course tunings for the same instrument called 'citara > moderna'. Perhaps a modification inspired by the Portuguese? Or maybe the laud? Or maybe somebody just decided that with so many strings it would be a good idea to cut a new nut and bridge to get six courses. I have this vague idea that something similar occured in Germany during the evolution of the renaissance cittern into the waldzither. The Julve catalog also has a twelve-stringed, six course, fixed bridge instrument called the "sonora." It doesn't seem much different from a laud but perhaps it's Navarro's citara moderna. Brad McEwen wrote: > What's the tuning and scale lenght of this thing? Tuning I don't know but I got an off list reply from Henny, the webmaster of the plucked instruments atlas ( http://www.atlasofpluckedinstruments.com/ ). He too mentions Navarro's book and says that the picture gives a size between bandurria and laud. --- There's some interesting nomenclature here. Apparently the Spanish cittern comes in three different sizes, each named after a reasonably well known historical stringed instrument: Large size: laud (lute) Medium size: citara (cittern) Small size: bandurria (bandora) Not sure what to make out of that. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
