Frank: Thank you. Brad Frank Nordberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Brad McEwen wrote:
> However, this is only a superficial overview, as I have no academic > credentials. I'd say your overview is quite good. Academic credentials are sometimes highly overrated and I've read books from respected scholars who didn't have nearly as good a grasp on the issue as this. ------- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > There are three uses of the word "lute": Indeed there is and we have to be conscious which of the definition we use in any given context. I think it's clear from context we don't use the wide "any instrument with strings across a neck" definition here but just in case, we ought to make that absolutely clear. Victorian organologists tended to separate plucked stringed instruments into two categories: lutes (bowl shaped back) and guitars (not bowl shaped back). This actually makes a lot of sense but it's rather coarse (they weren't that interested in plucked strings anyway) and when we start going more into details we soon run into serious trouble with this system. According to the Victorian classification system, the cittern would be a variant of the guitar rather than the other way round. ------- *** Morphology *** Damien Delgrossi wrote: > according to him "Guitar is in reality a cittern which had lots of > transformations during many centuries. This is not an instrument of > the lute family." Brad McEwen wrote: > I think that the guitar has a complex history and that th answer is > not simplistic. Not really. From the perspective we're discussing here, the guitar's history is quite simple - at least compared to most other instruments. An instrument with that name first appeared at the beginning of the 16th century and it was simply a small plucked viola. Size and some construction details have changed since then but for the most part the modern guitar is surprisingly similar to the 16th C. variant. (Digression: why do organologists even today insist - against better knowledge - that the vihuela and the viola were two different instruments?) So from a purely morphological or historical point of view, the guitar is neither a cittern nor a lute. It's a viola. I always hate to draw conclusions like this but there's no real doubt in this case. The guitar started off as a scaled down version of the fingerpicked variant of the late 15th/early 16th C. viola and it still retains most of its design and construction features from that origin. However, morphology isn't the only factor that should be taken into account when classifying instruments. ------- *** Nomenclature *** Another factor especially relevant here is naming. Where did the guitar get its name from? There's no doubt that the early guitarists recognized their instrument as a treble viola da mano (or vihuela da mano if you insist) so why didn't they just call it that? There is no shortage of examples how one instrument can "borrow" the name from another (all the wildly different instruments called "musette," the German/Swiss Scheitholzs and psalteries that suddenly were named "zither" etc., etc.). But there are always a reason for such name changes. Not necessarily a good one but some kind of reason all the same. Brad McEwen wrote: > I would venture to say that the name guitar comes from the same root > as the cittern, Yes, I think it probably is some connection. We still need to establish exactly what it is though. It seems to be generally agreed that the cittern name derived from "kythara" - the name of an ancient Greek lyre. In fact, it's quite likely (although by no means certain) the cittern itself is a direct ancestor of the kythara - via crwth style "lyres with fretboards" and the medieval citole. As for the origin of the name "guitar" the two theories that have been most common through the years are: 1) The name (and the instrument itself) comes from the medieval guittern. This started out as an interesting hypothesis worth investigating and is still maintained by many scholars too busy with important research to have time to check the actual facts. 2) The name comes from the Arabic tar. It's an interesting theory and doesn't necessarily contradict the assumption that the words "cittern" and "guitar" are related (it just moves the possible connection back into antiquity). However, the only arguments for this theory that have been forwarded so far are: a) It's self-evident b) Everything of value originates in the Middle East Call me a sceptic if you like but I feel we need a tiny little bit more than that to draw a conclusion. There is a third possibility that I don't think anybody has suggested before: In Spain and Portugal there was a special variant of the cittern with a vaguely guitar-like "key-hole shaped" body with wide shoulders, similar to the medieval citole. I don't know of any direct evidence that this instrument existed at the beginning of the 16th century but there are several 18th and 19th (and even 20th) century references to this Iberian "citara" and with it's obvious similarities with medieval instruments it's hard to believe there wasn't a continuos tradition. Could this be the instrument that gave the guitar its name? This theory has the distinctive advantage over the two other theories mentioned above in that it actually seems to fit all known facts. It even makes sense geographically and chronologically. We don't know nearly enough yet to draw a firm conclusion though and unless somebody can locate an example of early 16th C. Spanish "keyhole shaped" cittern clearly labelled as a "citara" we may never know for sure. ------- *** Tuning, strings etc. *** Brad McEwen wrote: > The essential tuning of the guitar/vihuela is from the lute, We don't know that. It's just as likely that it was the other way around. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > But then there are the strings. In Europe we have: > > Materials: > 1. Gut or nylon > 2. Wire > > Arrangement: > 1. Single-course > 2. Multiple-course > > Tunings: > (Too numerous to mention!) We're moving into a quagmire here but it's one we can't really avoid. Such "superficial" construction features are so volatile we simply can't build any coherent instrument classification system based on them, yet they're so important factors we can't just ignore them. In the end I suppose the only answer is that your opinion is as good as anybody else's - as long as you remember there is no such thing as "true" or "false" in this context. ------- *** Playing technique and musical context *** If tuning and such was a quagmire, this aspect is sheer quicksand. Take the 16th C. viola da mano and tenor viola da gamba for example: Same origin, same name, same size, same tuning, very similar construction. They're still often regarded as completely different instruments simply because one is fingerpicked while the other is played with a bow. Me and a friend of mine sometimes amuse ourselves (and to some degree other orchestra members) during rehearsals by strumming continuo chords on our violas. It's tempting to classify instruments according to how they're used. That often makes sense within a limited musical context but the whole system falls apart once we broaden our minds a little bit. At an Irish folk music session the flute and the fiddle can e regarded as brothers since they have the same basic function in the music. Bring them into a symphony orchestra and suddenly they're not related at all! Frank Nordberg http://www.musicaviva.com http://stores.ebay.com/Nordbergs-Music-Store?refid=store To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html --------------------------------- Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now. --
