Hi David et al.,
I'm not a regular member of the lute list these days, but I had to
rejoin for a while now that the cittern has surfaced here! (Yes, there
are spies everywhere...) I'd have expected a cittern post on the
cittern list, but I'm at least glad to see it is interesting enough to
be discussed on the lute forum.
Your post is interesting because, if I understand it correctly, it
comes from the assumption that the cittern was not normally fretted in
meantone, and hence you are exploring the theory of how/whether it can
be done. Something that should be noted, however, is that the 16th and
early 17th century cittern (as we understand it, based on surviving
instruments) was *always* fretted in meantone, usually something
approximating 1/6 to 1/5 comma. One can see this clearly from any of
the photos in the "old instruments" section on my site:
[1]http://www.cittern.theaterofmusic.com/old/
We also have a fair amount of information about the tuning, the most
common of which appears to be (as you mentioned) those with a top
course e', though there is some evidence for tone low, fourth low,
fifth low, and fourth high tunings. Regardless, all surviving
instruments (despite size differences) appear to have the same
arrangement of frets, including the large first fret. (For a diagram of
the fretting, see Peter Forrester's "Fretting notes"
http://cittern.theaterofmusic.com/articles/fretting.html ).
This raises the specter of your question: What's the deal with the
first fret, 3rd course, Ab? This is where one must flee the realm of
theory and look to the practical. Having examined nearly all of the
extant music for cittern (whether chromatic or diatonic, 4,5, or 6
course, or "French" or "Italian" tuning), I can state that the 1st fret
on the 3rd course was simply rarely used! Oddly enough, when it was
(only a very small number of instances for both tunings, on the order
of you could count it on one hand with several fingers missing) it
appears as a part of an Emaj chord in which the Ab (instead of the
required G#) simply does not work [1st example French tuning, 2nd
Italian]:
-a- or -a-
-c- -c-
-b- -b-
-c- -a-
In these contexts, the chord even more rarely dwells on the note and
either quickly changes chord or adds a passing tone to something else.
From this we can conclude that either a) some citterns were fretted
with an alternate fret position for the 1st course 3rd fret, or b) some
citterns might not have been fretted in meantone, or c) that the
players just weren't that bothered by it. So far we have not discovered
proof of a) or b), and substantiating c) might be impossible.
At the end of the day, that citterns were commonly fretted in meantone
(as, it appears, were orpharions and, likely, bandoras) should raise
some questions for lute players about historical fretting practice for
lutes, especially those played in consort with wire instruments!
Best regards,
AMH
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:59:36 -0800
To: "lute-cs.dartmouth.edu" <[email protected]>
From: David Tayler <[email protected]>
Subject: [LUTE] the cittern in meantone
Everyone loves the cittern. But suppose you want to play in
meantone?
Specifically, alternating major and minor semitones such as in
this
delicious photo?
[1]
[2]http://www.cittern.theaterofmusic.com/old/img_1600/34cm_citternsc
ale
.jpg
Let's look at a few possibilities.
The French 4 course tuning
aa'a' gg'g'd'd'e'e'
and the Italian
bbggd'd'e'e'
And let's assume this is tastini free--puh-leeze--
Right away, we see the the G makes an A flat on the first fret of
both
tunings. Rats, shades of F minor.
And right away we see that the Italian tuning is no good because
there
is a both a B and a G.
But if we tune the French tuning up a fifth--and adjust the
strings--
we get the pitch set
E D A B
Which gives the following scales
E F F# G G# A
D Eb E F F# G
A Bb B C C# D
B C C# D D# E
This gives good meantone for chords, and has both an E flat and a
D
sharp, although for solo music the the E on the top course is a
bit
high, this is mitigated by the the lowness of the open string.
For the Italian tuning, a single extra fret would help the G
sharp, as
it does on the baroque guitar.
dt
--
References
1.
[3]http://www.cittern.theaterofmusic.com/old/img_1600/34cm_citternsc
ale.jpg
To get on or off this list see list information at
[4]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
--
References
1. http://www.cittern.theaterofmusic.com/old/
2. http://www.cittern.theaterofmusic.com/old/img_1600/34cm_citternscale
3. http://www.cittern.theaterofmusic.com/old/img_1600/34cm_citternscale.jpg
4. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
