minstrel: guitar history???

[Tadhg O Cuileannain]

Oh well--my misspeak.  Because my own personal period
is pre-1400, I left out the cittern, which came later.
 It is the direct descendant of the citole, and some
would say the ancestor of the guitar (a kind of
cittern was sometimes called the "English Guitar"). 
My own tentative belief (and I won't bother to defend
it in depth, because I'd have a lot of trouble
documenting it) is that the guitar family as we have
it today is the result of a fantastic series of
hybridizations and mutations among lutes, viols, and a
family that is probably best called "kitharas."  But
that's just my wacko theory.

Tadhg

--- nickolas kaugon <ollaimh at yahoo.com> wrote:
> hello
> 
> 
> there isa whole family of metal strung plucked
> instruments in period. for a while they superceded
> the
> lute.
> 
>  the cittern family. i play them i hae a modern
> celtic
> cittern, a renaiscance one and a medieval one that
> all
> play fine and a baroque one made about 1700 that is
> beautiful, with a lovely carved head, but
> unplayable.
> 
> the citterns were more popular for the  common folk
> throughout period as they were louder and better for
> the tavern music or out door fires of period. lutes
> are very quiet and like stone roonms to have much
> umph.
> --- Tadhg O Cuileannain <tadhg at flash.net> wrote:
> > My research indicates that almost all plucked
> string
> > fingerboard instruments were strung with gut, with
> > the
> > single (and possibly partial) exception of the
> , it seems clear that all the guitar
> > ancestors were gut-strung, the steel-string guitar
> > being a 19th century American invention.
> > 
> absolutey not.
> the ancestor of the steel string guitar is clearly
> the
> cittern, with the laud from spain being the
> transitory
> instrument.the types of metal used in strings did
> change, and is in fact the real limiting factor.
> 
> in the medieval period they had bronze brass and
> iron
> strings. they are very low tension and very quiet.
> as
> time progressed better quality strings allowed
> better
> use of the instriments possibilities. over wound
> srtings like those modern were very late period and
> very expensive. they used to twist two and three
> strings together to get this affect previously and
> it
> is of partial success. it does create a sweet
> buzzing
> sound sort of like a sitar. the lack of over wound
> strings is the reason for reentrant tunings. that is
> tuning where the strings on the upper hlaf--which
> would be base now were higher than the middle
> strings
> in pitch. cittern tunings werer a varried as the
> strings available. they were much more tempermental
> than the gut but much louder.
> > 
> > >
> 
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Tadhg O Cuilleannain of One Thousand Eyes
Tim Connor of Idaho Falls, Idaho
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