I am getting more confused as the day wears on....
Monica
----- Original Message -----
From: "WALSH STUART" <[email protected]>
To: "Monica Hall" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 7:50 PM
Subject: Re: [LUTE] Re: Bransle Simple for guitarne et guiterne (Gervaise
1557)
On 25/01/2013 17:23, Monica Hall wrote:
Why is it called a guitarne?
Monica
Monica
I was being slightly mischievous. But Pieter wrote in a recent email:
"If the source is French and from after 1540, be careful as it might be
either for "guitar" or "gittern". Interestingly enough, some inventories
of instrument makers like the Denis builders seem to have tried to make a
distinction between a "guitarne" and a "guiterne" (where the guiterne has
"fondz de lut" or a lute back). I therefore would place it that a source
putting an "a" guitar(n)e in France in the second half of the
16th century is not referring to the lute-like instrument."
So if Pieter knows what he is talking about, there are grounds for
'guitarne' = figure-of-eight guitar, at least in mid 16th C France. He
continues:
"This however doesn't discount that there are numerous cases where the
figure-8 shaped instrument was called guiterne in French sources of the
same period. It can however be a good guideline if come across that
particular spelling with an "a". However in some cases even this
rule can't be followed, the inventory of yet another instrument builder,
Pierre Aubry in 1596, has "viels lucs de guitarne" - suggesting the
old lute-like gittern."
Do you know who Pieter is? Nice job if he spends all day researching
gitterns!
Interesting response just now form Gary Boye on the chitarra italiana. I
hope some day you can translate the second part of Meucci. Interesting
that Gary Boye notes that in Italy the chitarra italiana was a four-course
instrument.
So we have the 'guiterne' (the lute-like medieval gittern) surviving until
the end of the 16th century (if Pieter is right), the mandore from the
1580s (which Pieter thinks is not simply the old gittern) and the chitarra
italiana (which is perhaps the old gittern, the chitarino of Pietrobono in
teh 15th century. And buzzing away in the background, the bandurria!
Stuart
This 'guitarne' is a actually a five-course guitar- or should that be
vihuela? We haven't gone over that for a while. Both instruments made by
Bill Samson.
Stuart
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