Cithrinchen [bell guittern]

(Ger. Hamburger Cithrinchen).

A type of Cittern with a unique bell-like shape. It appeared in the second half of the 17th century, retaining many important structural characteristics of the earlier cittern, such as the very shallow soundbox tapering from the back of the neck to the bottom of the instrument. It also has the traditional cittern neck, half of which is cut away to provide a channel along which the player can slide his or her thumb, thereby ensuring stability when his or her left hand is required to make rapid shifts in position up and down the neck. As on older citterns, there were 18 chromatically placed frets inlaid into the fingerboard. It was normally played with a plectrum.

The cithrinchen is especially associated with Hamburg and its famous instrument maker Joachim Tielke, who made the earliest surviving cithrinchen (dated 1676; Royal College of Music, London). It is often assumed that Tielke invented the design and, indeed, the earliest representation of a cithrinchen is carved into the back of the pegbox of one of Tielke’s viola da gambas from about 1669 (Hellwig, 91). However, several contemporary Hamburg makers, such as Johann Kopp or his son Hinrich, could have been the original designer. The bell-shaped design (see illustration) gradually became popular among many other northern European makers, particularly in Scandinavia.

Typically, the cithrinchen had five double courses of metal strings tuned in unisons and with intervals of (from the lowest-pitched course to the highest) major 3rd–minor 3rd–major 3rd–4th. This pattern is unlike any earlier one for the cittern, but is used in all the cithrinchen’s surviving music scores. The earliest reference to specific pitches is Vockerod (1718), who gives as the normal tuning: f–a–c'–e'–a'. He also gives d–g–c'–e'–a' and f–b–d'–f'–b as two unusual tunings. The vibrating string lengths of surviving Tielke instruments range from 36 cm to 38 cm, and would be suitable for the pitches mentioned. In modern literature, a tuning a fourth lower of c–e–g–b–e' is commonly given without documentation, and it is suspected that this is an error originating with writers as early as Kinsky and Wolf (1919). A late source (MS, 1722, S-L, Wenster G30) documents a six-course ‘cittringen’ tuned: c–f–a–c'–e'–a' and A–d–a–b–e'–a'. Modern writings cite a tuning of E–G–B–d–f–b–d' (given in D-Bsb Mus.ms.40275, dated 1679–80) as being for cithrinchen, but the interval pattern is atypical and the pitches are too low for the instrument, unless the intended instrument is an unusually large one, examples of which do not survive. More likely, this is a lute tuning requiring the use of only seven courses, since the interval arrangement of the first six courses is found in several 17th-century lute sources.

Music for the instrument was written in five-line French lute tablature. In the surviving tablatures the notes are arranged on consecutive strings with no gaps in the chords (the normal cittern pattern), implying the use of a plectrum. Only four manuscripts for the cithrinchen survive: two now in PL-Kj (Mus.ms.40267, dated c1700, and Mus.ms.40622, dated 1664–80); S-L Wenster G30 (see above); and one compiled by Margaretha Ölgaard von Alefelt (D-Hs, Ms.M.A/2488, dated 1736). This last source contains many hymn settings and dances. Another manuscript, D-Hs Mus.ND VI 3241 (c1700), was destroyed in 1944; together with former Mus.ms.40267 it was a major source of the small amount of extant music from the Hamburg Opera’s first season (1678). The scarcity of tablature for the cithrinchen is perhaps explained by Kremberg’s suggestion that a five-course cithrinchen played with the fingers could be used to perform guitar music – a practice that was apparently common in the Netherlands. The 17th-century guitar had five courses and used five-line tablature; hence, any cithrinchen retuned like the guitar and played with the fingers instead of with a plectrum could have performed much of the Baroque guitar repertory.

The popularity of the cithrinchen is attested to by a fairly large number of surviving instruments made not only in Hamburg, but in several northern centres. To judge by James Talbot’s manuscript (GB-Och Mus.1187, c1695), it is possible that the instrument was known somewhat in England. He gives measurements for a ‘Bell Guittern (so called from the shape of the Belly)’, which he describes as ‘a kind of Contratenor or 2nd Treble to the Cittern it carries 18 Fretts and 5 double Courses tis much of the same size with Cittern’. In Germanic areas, from the mid-18th century, the instrument seems to have become merged with a folk instrument (Zister; Thüringer Waldzither) employing more chord-oriented tunings similar to the English guitar and the French ‘cistre’ or ‘guitare allemande’. The latter term may refer to a German cithrinchen prototype. The distinctive bell-shaped design and the use of cithrinchen tuning seems to have become obsolete by this time.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WolfH

G. Falck: Idea boni cantoris (Nuremberg, 1688)

J. Kremberg: Musicalische Gemüths-Ergötzung (Dresden, 1689)

J.A. Fokkerod: Gründlichen musikalischen Unter-richts, iii (Bielefeld, 1718)

W. Tappert: Sang und Klang aus alter Zeit (Berlin, 1906)

G. Kinsky: Musikhistorisches Museum von Wilhelm Heyer in Cöln: Katalog, ii (Cologne, 1912)

H.C. Wolff: Die Barockoper in Hamburg (1678–1738) (Wolfenbüttel, 1957)

D. Gill: ‘James Talbot’s Manuscript: V: Plucked Strings: the Wire-Strung Fretted Instruments and the Guitar’, CSJ, xv (1962), 62–9

G. Hellwig: Joachim Tielke: ein Hamburger Lauten- und Violenmacher der Barockzeit (Frankfurt, 1980)

J.O. Rudén: Music in Tablature (Stockholm, 1981)

A. Michel: Cither, Cithrinchen, Zister (Suhl, 1989)

L. Meierott: ‘Die Cithrinchen-Tabulaturen der ehemaligen Preussischen Staatsbibliothek Berlin’, Von Isaac bis Bach: Festschrift Martin Just, ed. F. Heidlberger, W. Osthoff and R. Wiesend (Kassel, 1991), 199–213

D. Kirsch and L. Meierott: Berliner Lautentabulaturen in Krakau (Mainz, 1992)

C. Meyer and F.-P. Goy: Sources manuscrites en tablature: luth et theorbe (ca.1500–ca.1800), ii (Baden–Baden, 1994)

JAMES TYLER