The
origins of the
renaissance cittern lie in the medieval citole,
an
instrument which
Tinctoris in his “De
inventione et usu musicae”
(ca. 1487) describes as being invented in Italy, having a flat
body,
fitted with fixed frets, strung with brass and steel strings
and tuned
to the intervals of a whole tone, fourth, whole tone and
played with a
plectrum. This already shows many of the characteristics of
what Michael Praetorius in 1619 describes as the “old
Italian”
cittern, which by the beginning of the 16th century
had increased the number of its strings from 4 single strings to 6
courses (sets of 2-3 strings), now tuned a/a,
c'/c', b/b, g/g'/g', d'/d', e'/e'.
These
corresponded to the 6 notes of the hexachord, the basic building block
of renaissance music theory.
Outside
of Italy a four course "French cittern"
tuned a/a'/a',
g/g'/g', d'/d', e'/e',
became the dominant form
and this being the instrument called for in the earliest
surviving cittern source from
Elizabethan England, the
Mulliner Manuscript (ca. 1560).
A
notable innovation
can be seen in Paolo Virchi 1574 publication “Primo
Libro….Di Citthari”,
with its use of a
fully chromatic instrument.
Earlier citterns both in and outside of Italy had used “diatonic”
fretting, which entirely
omitted the fourth
fret and used a number of the partial frets did not cross
the entire
fingerboard, thus making some notes unplayable.
The
late Elizabethan
cittern (tuned b/b,
g/g'/g', d'/d', e'/e'
) as used by Anthony
Holborne in his 1597 “Cittharn
Schoole” or Thomas
Morley’s 1599 “The
First Booke of Consort Lessons”
combines elements of the 4
course continental
cittern with the tuning and chromatic fretting of late Italian
instruments.
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