Return to `Full Text of Recent Publications'
Along with the noteworthy names of Guarneri, Testore, and the many Amatis in the Witten family collection of early Italian stringed instruments recently purchased by The Shrine to Music Museum, came a few anonymous surprises. One of those surprises was a mid-16th century Italian cittern. It came to the Museum in a disassembled but unmolested state, and has now been reassembled and tentatively attributed to the maker of the 1582 Paduan cittern at the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is signed Augustus Citaraedus Urbinas.
The Shrine to Music Museum cittern displays the gothic features typical of earlier Italian examples of the instrument, but it is not so extravagantly mannerist as the famous cittern by Virchi at the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum. While the Virchi cittern seems to cross the grey boundary between cultural implement and art object, the Urbino instruments were made to be played upon. This can be verified by the deep wear pattern on the left edge of the soundboard caused by rubbing motions of the right forearm, a very worn spot just to the right of the bridge where the right hand and little finger would have rested when playing with a plectrum, and the deeply worn brass frets and fingerboard. Also, the rose was somewhat torn about the place from where the plectrum might slip, or miss, the strings.
Along with the Victoria and Albert Museum Urbino instrument, The Shrine to Music Museum instrument shares many similarities with another cittern, by Franciscus Citaraedus(no date) in the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum. Both of these other instruments are shaped in typical Paduan "teardrop" body outline - the Victoria and Albert Museum cittern with carved "money moulding" around the sides, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum instrument with a small amount of floral relief carving at the top of the body on both sides. The shape of the Shrine to Music Museum cittern is anything but typical, its contours and corners seemingly based on a personal fancy.
The body, neck and peghead of both the Victoria and Albert Museum and Shrine to Music Museum instruments were carved from a single block of wood, probably sycamore or pear, and both have had a piece of wood joined to the front of the peghead from which the scroll was carved. The Kunsthistorisches Museum cittern has not been examined, but its scroll is very similar to the other two. The three instruments also share similarly shaped combs on the backs of their pegheads. The Victoria and Albert Museum cittern's comb is more or less rudimentary compared to the others, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum instrument perhaps somewhat more developed. The Shrine to Music Museum cittern's comb is much more developed, with the carving ending with a grotesque of a man's head on top, and a smaller griffin-like head just above the large hook at the bottom of the peghead. The Shrine to Music Museum cittern is also decorated with a carving at the heel of the neck. It is of a grotesque man with a very long tongue, seeming to blow a strong gust of air from his mouth.
The Shrine to Music Museum cittern was once owned by Lord Astor, and it presumably adorned a trophy wall in Hever Castle. It was sold at an auction of Hever Castle instruments to E.M.W. Paul in 1963. Mr Paul then sold it to Mr Witten some years later. At some point the instrument lost its pegs, strings and bridge, and was disassembled, or came apart by neglect. It was in this state that it came to the Museum. Since only one early Italian cittern of the period, the Virchi, is known to have its original pegs and bridge, those parts were more or less copied for our instrument. Though the cittern shows evidence of having been used with as few as 10, and possibly as many as 15 strings, the most typical number and arrangements is six double coursed, and it is that way that our instrument was set up.
This instrument shows evidence of much use, and its usefulness and quality are attested to by the fact that it was altered and refitted for several styles of stringing. There is also some evidence that it was not made with a chromatic fingerboard, but was converted from a more typical diatonic style with incomplete or omitted frets at some positions. It is now without the typical decorative finial at the end of the fingerboard, that part having been sawn off just below the 19th fret.
Our cittern was treated like a relic, and given the least amount of treatment possible to make it reasonably complete for display purposes in the Museum. The instrument was reassembled with very weak hot glue, and purposefully undercleaned. The fittings and stringing were finally completed with the helpful advice of the eminent Dutch cittern expert, Dr Louis Peter Gripp.
Read at the CIMCIM Meeting, Berlin, 11-17 April 1988.
Address for further information
© CIMCIM 1989.
This page updated: 31.12.98