Dear Stuart, I agree: it does clearly show 5 courses which, if a 'chitarra', would make it a candidate to play the 'alla Spagnola' repertoire - except, as you point out, no sign of octave courses much less re-entrant tuning.
Like you, I wonder if the instrument depicted is anything to do with chitarra (or even some mandora type of instrument). Is it something of a sport at a time of great change in plucked instruments?: ie simply a 5 course lute used to provide simple song accompagnement and the like. We seem to be nudging towards a position that any Italian lute shaped instrument with 4 (and now 5 ) courses is being regarded by some as the 'chitarra' or even the 'Chitarra Italiana' named in early sources. I don't know, but suggest a bit of caution. Regarding the much later mandora/gallichon: the instrument invented first was the large one, typically with a string length around 90/95m and tuned mostly with top course at a; the smaller version (top course d' [or e']) was developed later. The availability of overwound strings in the later 17th century seems to have been a major factor in its development - allowing strong basses with a relatively short string length. regards, Martyn --- On Thu, 31/1/13, WALSH STUART <[email protected]> wrote: From: WALSH STUART <[email protected]> Subject: [LUTE] Re: chitarra italiana To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Cc: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Date: Thursday, 31 January, 2013, 22:24 On 31/01/2013 22:03, [1][email protected] wrote: > I've extracted an interesting chitarra italiana image from a youtube > video: > > [2]http://polyhymnion.org/mus/chitarra-it.jpg > > RT > > > Very interesting Any idea of the date/provenance? It looks like five-course (and definitely not re-entrant) and cittern-like peg box. Odd-looking left-hand position. I still don't understand that if this is a 'chitarra' and chitarra relates to what other places called 'gittern' (with all the spelling variants), how these things are this big? Stuart > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > [3]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > -- References 1. http://us.mc817.mail.yahoo.com/mc/[email protected] 2. http://polyhymnion.org/mus/chitarra-it.jpg 3. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
