The fact that the painting dates from 1620 doesn't prove that Barberiis'
instrument was figure of 8 shaped. Barberiis' book was printed in 1549 not
a century or so earlier and the instrument he refers presumably did not sink
without trace in 1550.
Your suggestion that the descriptor (Italian?)
might simply mean a small 4 course guitar (of whatever shape) to
differentiate it from the larger 5 course instrument
smacks to me of chop logic.
Why should the 4-course guitar be referred as Italian, rather than Spanish
if it was Spanish in origin? Or even French. The only reason for referring
to it as Italian was presumably because there was something specifically
Italian about it.
How you manage to deduce from this that it is differentiating bewteen the 4-
and
5-course guitars I don't know.
The Vocabulario della Crusca gives two definitions of the term Chitarra -
to wit
1. Liuto piccolo, che manca del basso e del soprano
A small lute which lacks the bass and soprano (courses)
2. Specie di liuto, ma piu piccolo e con meno corde
A kind of lute but smaller and with fewer strings.
In the entry for Liuto it gives the Latin equivalent "Testudo".Anyone
cross-referencing the terms might be somewhat confused.
And so on and so forth. But this thread is getting so long that we are
losing it in a maze which may well lead us to the Minotaur but not to any
new revelations.
As ever
Monica
----- Original Message -----
From: "Martyn Hodgson" <hodgsonmar...@yahoo.co.uk>
To: "William Samson" <willsam...@yahoo.co.uk>
Cc: "Lute List" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2013 11:29 AM
Subject: [LUTE] Re: 4 course guitar in Italy
Dear Bill,
Do you know the precise date and nationality/origin of this picture? -
it looks to me early 17th century from the costume. We discussed it in
this thread before and wondered if it had much to tell us about the 4
course instrument Barberiis expected a century or so earlier......
As you'll know, the early 17th century was a time of much
experimentation and this might indeed be playing music for a 4 course
Italian guitar, but it might also be a mandore or similar.....
Statements such as the ' "chitarra italiana" is the lute shaped type
of "kythara".' are of course simple assertions (and the subject of this
long and toruous thread) - as previously pointed out the descriptor
might simply mean a small 4 course guitar (of whatever shape) to
differentiate it from the larger 5 course instrument.
regards
Martyn
--- On Sat, 26/1/13, William Samson <willsam...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
From: William Samson <willsam...@yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: [LUTE] Re: 4 course guitar in Italy
To: "Andreas Schlegel" <lute.cor...@sunrise.ch>
Cc: "Lute List" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Date: Saturday, 26 January, 2013, 20:38
And just to drop another rock in the crocodile pool, I'll just
mention
that there doesn't seem to be any obvious octave stringing on this
instrument.
I'll also ask the collective wisdom if they know of any solo Italian
repertoire for this instrument before I go and make one.
Bill
PS It seems to me that it shares the looks (on a smaller scale) of
one
of the surviving gallichons.
From: Andreas Schlegel <[1]lute.cor...@sunrise.ch>
To: William Samson <[2]willsam...@yahoo.co.uk>
Sent: Saturday, 26 January 2013, 20:18
Subject: Re: [LUTE] Re: 4 course guitar in Italy
It's anonymous, Galleria Doria Pamphilj in Rome. Meucci dates it on
"1620 ca.".
By the way: I think it's dangerous to speak from "guitar" in this
context, because the modern meaning of that term is not the same as
the
old one with the "kythara" background. If we hear "guitar", it's an
8-shaped instrument in our thinking. If we speak from "chitarra"
(with
quotation marks) it's exactly the double meaning: "chitarra
spagnola"
is the 8-shaped and "chitarra italiana" is the lute shaped type of
"kythara".
Andreas
Am 26.01.2013 um 20:52 schrieb William Samson:
Thanks Andreas! Do you know who the artist is, and date perhaps?
Bill
From: Andreas Schlegel <[1][3]lute.cor...@sunrise.ch>
To: William Samson <[2][4]willsam...@yahoo.co.uk>
Sent: Saturday, 26 January 2013, 19:50
Subject: Re: [LUTE] Re: 4 course guitar in Italy
That's figure 7 in Meucci's paper "New light on the origin of the
chitarrone and related instruments" in: Christian Ahrens & Gregor
Klinke (ed.): Laute und Theorbe. Symposium im Rahmen der 31. Tage
Alter
Musik in Herne 2006, Muenchen & Salzburg (Katzbichler) 2009, p.
10-29.
It's so simple: The word "kythara" (from which many different new
word
creations like chitarra, gittern etc. were made) means in the
Renaissance a plucked instrument in general - lute shaped or
8-shaped -
and was adopted to both shapes. It's a modern idea, that modern
versions of the term "kythara" only means 8-shaped instruments.
Take the term "Chitarrone" who means a big chitarra - and have a
look
on the shape of that instrument.
Andreas
Am 26.01.2013 um 19:50 schrieb William Samson:
> I came across this picture of a lute with 4 courses. Could this
be
one
> of the lute-shaped guitars?
>
> [1][3][5]http://sdrv.ms/10Q9ifI
>
> Hope you can see this link to my Skydrive.
>
> Bill
>
> --
>
> References
>
> 1. [4][6]http://sdrv.ms/10Q9ifI
>
>
> To get on or off this list see list information at
> [5][7]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
--
References
1. mailto:[8]lute.cor...@sunrise.ch
2. mailto:[9]willsam...@yahoo.co.uk
3. [10]http://sdrv.ms/10Q9ifI
4. [11]http://sdrv.ms/10Q9ifI
5. [12]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
--
References
1. http://us.mc817.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=lute.cor...@sunrise.ch
2. http://us.mc817.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=willsam...@yahoo.co.uk
3. http://us.mc817.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=lute.cor...@sunrise.ch
4. http://us.mc817.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=willsam...@yahoo.co.uk
5. http://sdrv.ms/10Q9ifI
6. http://sdrv.ms/10Q9ifI
7. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
8. http://us.mc817.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=lute.cor...@sunrise.ch
9. http://us.mc817.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=willsam...@yahoo.co.uk
10. http://sdrv.ms/10Q9ifI
11. http://sdrv.ms/10Q9ifI
12. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
