Dear Davide,
Yes - but I wish it were that simple: in the tablature collections the
5 course guitar of the period is not just known as 'Chitarrino' it's
also more generally known as the Chitarrina alla Spagnola (and similar
names like Chitarrino alla spagnola, La Chitarra Spagnola, etc), or
simply Chitarra, or chitarra a cinque ordini, and others.
Interestingly Calvi's (1646) collection is 'Intavolature di Chitarra, e
Chitarriglia.....' suggesting two different (but similar in purpose)
instruments. Is this difference stringing, size, shape, manner of
playing, or what? Of the tablature pieces (ie not just those in
Alfabeto) Calvi says that 'The following Suonate can also serve for the
Chitarriglia, but they are really for the Guitar' (or at least this is
my translation of 'Le seguente Suonate possono servire anche per la
Chitarriglia, ma sono veramente per la Chitarra' is my translation OK?)
so we know either instrument was able to play the pieces but that's
about it.
And also, as mentioned before, in the Florentine celebrations of 1589
(when surely the 5 course instrument was still a novelty in Italy) for
the Cavalieri's famous 'O che nuovo miracolo (later popular as aria del
Gran Duca) they referred to two instruments by different names when
describing who sung and played what ' .... e sonavano Vittoria
(Archilei) e Lucia (Caccini) una Chitarrino per uno, una alla Spagnola,
e l'altra alla Napolettana,...... So already in 1589 a distinction was
made betwwen guitar types - but whether this was to do with size,
number of courses, shape, manner of play remains open to question.
Incidentally, is a Chitarrino Napolettana the same as a Chitarrino
Italiana? - I don't know.......
Whatever we may personally choose to call the instrument depicted in
Bill's picture, it doesn't follow that we really yet know what the
player called it.
More discoveries to follow perhaps.
regards
Martyn
--- On Tue, 29/1/13, Davide Rebuffa <davide.rebu...@fastwebnet.it>
wrote:
From: Davide Rebuffa <davide.rebu...@fastwebnet.it>
Subject: Re: [LUTE] Re: Bad url for 4c guitar in Italy etc
To: "Martyn Hodgson" <hodgsonmar...@yahoo.co.uk>
Cc: "Lute List" <lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>, "William Samson"
<willsam...@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Tuesday, 29 January, 2013, 11:09
Dear Martyn,
we can discuss about which music they played on this lute shaped guitar
and which music was played on the figure-eight small renaissance guitar
but not about its name in Italy during the XVIIth century.
When the spanish 5 course guitar became well known in Italy there was
no more reason to call it chitarra italiana, and it was simply called
chitarrino or sometimes 5 course mandola ( which is quite confusing
because mandola was mainly used to call the 5 course baroque
mandolino)but mandore or mandora was never used in Italy.
Have a look at Evaristo Baschenis' inventory (1677) - who painted
this instrument 127 among 128 of his paintings - where it is called
chitarrino to distinguish it from the other 2 spanish guitars.
regards,
Davide
PS: you could also have a look at what I wrote about guitar's history
in books published by Il Salabue (The Guitar: four centuries of
masterpieces 2008 and Passioni di un collezionista, dai liuti ai
violini 2011(italian/ english)
and in my recent new book on the lute history (Il Liuto L'Epos, Palermo
2012).
Il giorno 29/gen/2013, alle ore 10:45, Martyn Hodgson ha scritto:
>
> Thank you Bill. Interesting - but what is it! Or, rather more to
the
> point, what did its player call it?
>
> regards
>
> Martyn
>
> PS Alexander Batov has come up with some pretty convincing pics for
> figure 8 Italian 4 course guitars.
> --- On Tue, 29/1/13, William Samson <[1]willsam...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:
>
> From: William Samson <[2]willsam...@yahoo.co.uk>
> Subject: [LUTE] Bad url for 4c guitar in Italy etc
> To: "Lute List" <[3]lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
> Date: Tuesday, 29 January, 2013, 9:36
>
> Sorry - The permissions seem to have gone haywire for the URL I
> gave.
> This one should work . . .
> [1][1][4]http://sdrv.ms/WcD8fZ
> Good luck!
> Bill
>
--
References
1. http://us.mc817.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=willsam...@yahoo.co.uk
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@cs.dartmouth.edu
4. http://sdrv.ms/WcD8fZ
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