Dear Bill, Do you know the precise date and nationality/origin of this picture? - it looks to me early 17th century from the costume. We discussed it in this thread before and wondered if it had much to tell us about the 4 course instrument Barberiis expected a century or so earlier......
As you'll know, the early 17th century was a time of much experimentation and this might indeed be playing music for a 4 course Italian guitar, but it might also be a mandore or similar..... Statements such as the ' "chitarra italiana" is the lute shaped type of "kythara".' are of course simple assertions (and the subject of this long and toruous thread) - as previously pointed out the descriptor might simply mean a small 4 course guitar (of whatever shape) to differentiate it from the larger 5 course instrument. regards Martyn --- On Sat, 26/1/13, William Samson <[email protected]> wrote: From: William Samson <[email protected]> Subject: [LUTE] Re: 4 course guitar in Italy To: "Andreas Schlegel" <[email protected]> Cc: "Lute List" <[email protected]> Date: Saturday, 26 January, 2013, 20:38 And just to drop another rock in the crocodile pool, I'll just mention that there doesn't seem to be any obvious octave stringing on this instrument. I'll also ask the collective wisdom if they know of any solo Italian repertoire for this instrument before I go and make one. Bill PS It seems to me that it shares the looks (on a smaller scale) of one of the surviving gallichons. From: Andreas Schlegel <[1][email protected]> To: William Samson <[2][email protected]> Sent: Saturday, 26 January 2013, 20:18 Subject: Re: [LUTE] Re: 4 course guitar in Italy It's anonymous, Galleria Doria Pamphilj in Rome. Meucci dates it on "1620 ca.". By the way: I think it's dangerous to speak from "guitar" in this context, because the modern meaning of that term is not the same as the old one with the "kythara" background. If we hear "guitar", it's an 8-shaped instrument in our thinking. If we speak from "chitarra" (with quotation marks) it's exactly the double meaning: "chitarra spagnola" is the 8-shaped and "chitarra italiana" is the lute shaped type of "kythara". Andreas Am 26.01.2013 um 20:52 schrieb William Samson: Thanks Andreas! Do you know who the artist is, and date perhaps? Bill From: Andreas Schlegel <[1][3][email protected]> To: William Samson <[2][4][email protected]> Sent: Saturday, 26 January 2013, 19:50 Subject: Re: [LUTE] Re: 4 course guitar in Italy That's figure 7 in Meucci's paper "New light on the origin of the chitarrone and related instruments" in: Christian Ahrens & Gregor Klinke (ed.): Laute und Theorbe. Symposium im Rahmen der 31. Tage Alter Musik in Herne 2006, Muenchen & Salzburg (Katzbichler) 2009, p. 10-29. It's so simple: The word "kythara" (from which many different new word creations like chitarra, gittern etc. were made) means in the Renaissance a plucked instrument in general - lute shaped or 8-shaped - and was adopted to both shapes. It's a modern idea, that modern versions of the term "kythara" only means 8-shaped instruments. Take the term "Chitarrone" who means a big chitarra - and have a look on the shape of that instrument. Andreas Am 26.01.2013 um 19:50 schrieb William Samson: > I came across this picture of a lute with 4 courses. Could this be one > of the lute-shaped guitars? > > [1][3][5]http://sdrv.ms/10Q9ifI > > Hope you can see this link to my Skydrive. > > Bill > > -- > > References > > 1. [4][6]http://sdrv.ms/10Q9ifI > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > [5][7]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. mailto:[8][email protected] 2. mailto:[9][email protected] 3. [10]http://sdrv.ms/10Q9ifI 4. [11]http://sdrv.ms/10Q9ifI 5. [12]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. http://us.mc817.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected] 2. http://us.mc817.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected] 3. http://us.mc817.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected] 4. http://us.mc817.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected] 5. http://sdrv.ms/10Q9ifI 6. http://sdrv.ms/10Q9ifI 7. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html 8. http://us.mc817.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected] 9. http://us.mc817.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected] 10. http://sdrv.ms/10Q9ifI 11. http://sdrv.ms/10Q9ifI 12. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
