On 28/01/2013 12:19, Martyn Hodgson wrote:
Dear Davide,
Thank you for this: but why are you so sure it is a 'chitarra italiana'
and not a mandore or, indeed, any other small lute? Such an assertion
and identification is rather begging the precise question we have been
trying to tackle in this (tortuous) thread
regards
Martyn
Martyn
I tend to think of these threads as more like casual conversation rather
than strict debate. Where the subject matter ends up may be quite
different from where it started.
But it does seem to me that there is a substantive issue here about the
existence (or not) of a small lute-like instrument in the 16th and 17th
centuries (the chitarra italiana and/or a late form of the medieval
gittern, and neither thought to be the same thing as a mandore). Neither
the chitarra italiana nor the lute-like gittern appear (so far as I'm
aware) in histories of the lute and plucked instruments of the 16th and
17th centuries written in English.
I'm sure, Martyn, this is partly why you are so sceptical.
Sticking for the moment just with the chitarra italiana (as a lute-like
object related to the medieval gittern as proposed by R. Meucci): there
may be compelling evidence for its existence, or it may forever be only
a reasonable conjecture to explain, for example, nomenclature in
inventories.
Or, at the other end of the spectrum, the supposed existence of an
instrument could be be based on misinterpretation of scant evidence or
the evidence could be so slight as to make its existence not even a
reasonable conjecture.
Stuart
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