Dear Stuart, I hope I'm not sceptical just because it's not mentioned in an early English language source! My doubts,and, as I keep saying this is all they are, is the lack of conclusive evidence that small lute shaped 4 course instruments were generally (always?) called guitars (chitarra etc) in Italy.
My initial question was around the instrument expected by Barberiis (in 1546) but this area of discussion has been mostly sidelined and the debate seems now to be about small lute shaped instruments depicted in the late 16th/early 17th centuries. With the Barberiis it seems there's really no evidence either way but on the other issue, later pictures of small lutes seem to give rise to much speculation/imagination about their naming. I really don't know if these latter instruments are Italian mandores, Italian small lutes, Italian lute shaped 4 course guitars or whatever, but do think that blind assertion (ie that small Italian lutes in some paintings are chitarra italiana) is simply this and a passing fashion for such ad-hoc speculation shouldn't influence us either way in reaching any conclusions - if that were possible. I hope we might see new 'discoveries' in due course......... regards Martyn --- On Mon, 28/1/13, WALSH STUART <[email protected]> wrote: From: WALSH STUART <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [LUTE] Re: 4 course guitar in Italy To: "Martyn Hodgson" <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected], "Davide Rebuffa" <[email protected]>, "Monica Hall" <[email protected]>, "Lutelist" <[email protected]> Date: Monday, 28 January, 2013, 13:11 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 -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
