On 29/01/2013 09:45, William Samson wrote:
The chitarra Italiana on p.91 of 'The Lute in Europe 2' has: 59.5 cms. I thought that this was overall length but I think it means string length. This instrument has nine pegs and presumably five pegs. Bill's latest find is also a five-course lute-like instrument (next to a rather dodgy looking psaltery). Bill's earlier image - the rather androgynous-looking boy (liminal instrument for a liminal creature) - is a four-course instrument. All three are not exactly small...By the way, for what it's worth, I've attempted to measure the string length of the 4c instrument the boy is playing in the first image, assuming a pupil separation of about 7cm. It comes out at something like 55 - 60 cm. Not accurate, but a ballpark figure.Bill -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
It helps me, anyway, to think of chitarra Italiana as 'Italian gittern'. I'm sure that this is what R.Meucci is arguing: that the chitarra Italiana is a descendent of, or a part of a continuing tradition, of gittern making and playing going far back.
Well, I can see how he (and others) will say that the mandore is quite different from the chitarra Italiana. Mandores are piddlers and these three examples (if they are so) of the chitarra Italiana are much larger.Mandores came in different sizes - but they are all much, much smaller than thse three instruments.
But: what is the story of the fact that they are so big, that they go so big? Medieval gitterns came in different sizes too - small and tiny. My lute in G has a string length of 60cms. So the chitarra Italiana is about the same size as a Renaissance lute? That seems very odd.
If the chitarra Italiana is related in some way to the old medieval gittern, how is it related?
Stuart
