cittern

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|footer = From left to right, 1: Archicitter, Laurent, Louis-Sigismond, c. 1774–89; 2: Bell cittern by Joachim Tielke, c. 1865; 3: Painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds of Mrs. Froude playing an English guitar or cittern, 1762

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The cittern is one of the few metal-strung instruments known from the Renaissance music period. It generally has four courses of strings (single, pairs or threes depending on design or regional variation), one or more courses being usually tuned in octaves, though instruments with more or fewer courses were made. The cittern may have a range of only an octave between its lowest and highest strings and employs a re-entrant tuning{{cite web|url=http://www.cittern.theaterofmusic.com/faq/index.html |title=The Renaissance Cittern Site: Frequently Asked Questions about the Renaissance Cittern |publisher=Cittern.theaterofmusic.com |date=2012-06-21 |access-date=2013-07-15}} – a tuning in which the string that is physically uppermost is not the lowest, as is also the case with the five-string banjo and most ukuleles for example. The tuning and narrow range allow the player a number of simple chord shapes useful for both simple song accompaniment and dances, though much more complex music was also written for it.The Oxford Companion to Music - cittern Its bright and cheerful timbre make it a valuable counterpoint to gut-strung instruments. The Spanish bandurria, still used today, is a similar instrument.

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|footer = From left to right, 1: Stringed instruments in Musical Instrument Museum, Brussels, including two citterns by Gérard Joseph Deleplanque; 2: The Sister (Deutsche Guitarre) by Johann Wilhelm Bindernagel.

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From the 16th until the 18th century the cittern was a common English barber shop instrument, kept in waiting areas for customers to entertain themselves and others with, and popular sheet music for the instrument was published to that end. The top of the pegbox was often decorated with a small carved head, perhaps not always of great artistic merit; in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost, the term "cittern-head" is used as an insult:{{cite web|last1=Shakespeare|first1=William|title=Love's Labours Lost|url=http://shakespeare.mit.edu/lll/full.html|access-date=22 January 2015}}{{cite web|last1=Dilworth|first1=John|title=How well did Shakespeare know the violin?|url=http://www.thestrad.com/cpt-latests/how-well-did-shakespeare-know-the-violin/|access-date=22 January 2015|orig-year=2009|date=21 April 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150122121603/http://www.thestrad.com/cpt-latests/how-well-did-shakespeare-know-the-violin/|archive-date=22 January 2015|url-status=dead}}

:: HOLOFERNES: What is this?

:: BOYET: A cittern-head.

:: DUMAIN: The head of a bodkin.

:: BIRON: A Death's face in a ring.

Just as the lute was enlarged and bass-extended to become the theorbo and chitarrone for continuo work, so the cittern was developed into the ceterone, with its extended neck and unstopped bass strings, though this was a much less common instrument.

Gérard Joseph Deleplanque (1723-1784) was a luthier from Lille who made a [https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/504251 wide variety of instruments], including citterns.

The instrument maker Johann Wilhelm Bindernagel (around 1770-1845), who worked in Gotha, made a [http://www.studia-instrumentorum.de/MUSEUM/zist_sister.htm mixed guitar-cittern] under the name "Sister" or "German Guitar", which was equipped with seven gut strings.

The leading 18th-century Swedish songwriter Carl Michael Bellman played mostly on the cittern, and is shown with the instrument (now in the National Museum, Stockholm) in a 1779 portrait by Per Krafft the elder.{{cite book | url=https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/1842/5776/4/Poulopoulos%202011.pdf | title=The Guittar in the British Isles, 1750-1810 (PhD Thesis) | publisher=University of Edinburgh | author=Poulopoulos, Panagiotis | year=2011 | pages=199}}

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|header = Modern citterns

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|footer = (Left): Portuguese guitar at a music shop, 2010; (right): Hamburger Waldzither

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In Germany, the cittern survives under the names Waldzither and Lutherzither. The last name comes from the belief that Martin Luther played this instrument. Also, the names Thüringer Waldzither in Thüringer Wald, Harzzither in the Harz mountains, Halszither in German-speaking Switzerland are used.{{cite web|url=http://www.atlasofpluckedinstruments.com/cittern.htm |title=cittern |publisher=ATLAS of Plucked Instruments |access-date=2013-07-15}} There is a tendency in modern German to interchange the words for cittern and zither. The term waldzither came into use around 1900, to distinguish citterns from zithers.

The cittern family survives as the Corsican cetara and the Portuguese guitar. The guitarra portuguesa is typically used to play the popular traditional music known as fado. In the early 1970s, using the guitarra and a 1930s archtop Martin guitar as models, English luthier Stefan Sobell created a "cittern", a hybrid instrument primarily used for playing folk music, which has proved to be popular with folk revival musicians.{{cite book|title=American Lutherie: The Quarterly Journal of the Guild of American Luthiers|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qxw9AQAAIAAJ|year=2006|publisher=The Guild|page=9}}{{cite book|title=Frets|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8E_aAAAAMAAJ|year=1980|publisher=GPI Publications}}

{{See also|Lute#History and evolution of the lute}}

• Chitarra Italiana
• English guitar
• Russian guitar
• Stringed instrument tunings
• Martina Rosenberger

• Musick's Delight on the Cithren, John Playford (1666).
• Musick's Delight on the Modern Cittern, Robin Alexander Lucas, Vol.I. (2021) ISBN 9781838438500; Vol.II. (2022) ISBN 9781838438517; Vol.III. (2023) ISBN 9781838438524; Vol. IV. (2024) ISBN 9781838438531.
• [https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k319108n/ Méthode pour Apprendre à Pincer du Cistre, ou Guitare Allemande], Charles Pollet (1786).

{{Reflist}}

{{Commons category|Cittern}}

• [http://cittern.theaterofmusic.com/ Renovata Cythara: The Renaissance Cittern Pages]
• [http://www.sobellinstruments.com/ Stefan Sobell website]
• [http://www.docrossimusic.com/ Doc Rossi website]
• [http://www.studia-instrumentorum.de/MUSEUM/zistern.htm Zistern: Europäische Zupfinstrumente von der Renaissance bis zum Historismus]
• [https://cittern.co.uk Cittern Press] (publisher of printed tune books for the modern cittern)

Citterns and cittern research at the Musikinstrumenten-Museum der Universität Leipzig

• [http://orgs.usd.edu/nmm/PluckedStrings/Citterns/English/13500/Cittern13500.html Cittern, possibly by Petrus Raitta, England, 1579] at the National Music Museum
• [http://orgs.usd.edu/nmm/PluckedStrings/Citterns/Italian/3386/Cittern3386.html Cittern, Urbino, ca. 1550] at the National Music Museum
• [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/musd/ho_1985.124.htm Decorated Cittern by Joachim Tielke, Hamburg, ca. 1685] at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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