On 28/01/2013 13:44, Martyn Hodgson wrote:
Dear Stuart,
I hope I'm not sceptical just because it's not mentioned in an early
English language source!
No! I just meant that the chitarra italiana isn't mentioned (to my
knowledge) by any British or US (etc!) researchers such as James Tyler
and many others writing about plucked instruments Europe in the 16th
and 17th centuries. I wonder if there is a sort of anglophone
perspective on this.
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.........
Yes, it would be really interesting. Perhaps we're just going around in
circles - but the evidence claimed for the Barberis instrument being a
lute-like instrument is the existence of a tradition of naming
instruments. From the perspective, say of 1600 and looking backwards
for hundreds of years, instruments with guitar/chitarra type names,
named a little lute as well as the new figure-of-eight instrument. We,
looking back from 2013 are inclined to see an unbroken tradition of the
figure-of-eight guitar going back to the middle of the 16th century and
it seems strange to refer to a lute-like instrument as a kind of
guitar.
Stuart
Stuart
regards
Martyn
--- On Mon, 28/1/13, WALSH STUART [1]<[email protected]> wrote:
From: WALSH STUART [2]<[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [LUTE] Re: 4 course guitar in Italy
To: "Martyn Hodgson" [3]<[email protected]>
Cc: [4][email protected], "Davide Rebuffa"
[5]<[email protected]>, "Monica Hall"
[6]<[email protected]>, "Lutelist" [7]<[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
--
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