Those of you who belong to the Lute Society will have received the latest number of Lute News. (Apologies to those of you who aren't members). This has a reproduction of the portrait of the actress Dorothy Jordan playing an arch-cittern - which looks a bit like an English guitar with additional diapasons. There is a commentary by Peter Holman.
There are one or two things which I think experts on these instruments might be able to clarify for me. The first of these is where he mentions the possibility that the colour coded strings are harp strings and then says "this would mean that Jordan tuned them in a diatonic sequence rising from CC. According to both the Oxford Concise and Harvard Dictionaries there is no such thing as CC. C alone would indicate that the lowest diapason was tuned to the note C below the bass clef - i.e. with 2 leger lines. C1 is an octave below that which seems a bit unlikely. So what is the lowest note? Is "CC" a misprint for "C". The other question is about the music on p.7. I'm assuming that both parts are supposed to be played on a single instrument. If so the notes on the lower stave will occasionally overlap with those on the upper stave. Are we supposed to read the lower stave an octave lower? Hope I have made myself clear. Monica -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
