Hi: ah,yes. Therein lies the crux of the problem. Is it a cittern because it looks like one or is it a mandola because it's tuned like one? I like Doc's idea of citterns not being any one instrument bur rather a braod family. Mayb even the criteria should in fact be vague. Brad
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In einer eMail vom 28.10.2006 20:32:32 Westeuropäische Normalzeit schreibt [EMAIL PROTECTED]: If we are going to include the English Guittar and Portugese Guittara as Citterns then I feel we should also include flat-back Mandolas and Mandolins, I agree. A while back in this discussion somebody put foreward that the common features of a Cittern were a flattish back and wire strings. If the above are to hold true, then the awkwardly-named 'Irish Bouzouki' should also be included as a type of Cittern, shouldn't it ? Kevin, I think you've fallen prey to the "Snapshot View" of instrument development. Remember that the original GDAE-tuned mandolin was the Neapoitan, which (like earlier mandolin types) is a lute-buiilt instrument, and that the "Irish bouzouki" is a variant of the Greek bouzouki (same number of courses, same scale length, same variability of tuning), which is also a lute-built instrument. So, from the point of view of their inception and development, flat-back mandolins and Irish bouzoukis are in fact lute-type instruments that have adopted one feature that is typical of the citterns - the flat back. One could argue that the flat back of the Irish bouzouki is more infliuenced by the ubiquitous guitar than by the obsolete cittern! It's also good to remember that the Greek bouzouki (as played in Greece) also has a number of different tunings associated with it. Cheers, John D. --------------------------------- Cheap Talk? Check out Yahoo! Messenger's low PC-to-Phone call rates. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
