(Fr. citole; Ger. Zitôl; It. cetra, cetera, cetula; Sp. cítola).
A plucked lute of the Middle Ages, particularly the period 1200–1350, related to the Fiddle. It evolved into the Cittern in the 15th century. It was mistakenly called Gittern by Galpin, and is still referred to as such in many modern works. There is an early 14th-century example of a citole in the British Museum (fig.1).
LAURENCE WRIGHT
The body, neck and pegbox were made from one piece of wood, as in the medieval fiddle and gittern. The belly outline shows considerable variety, but there are four common types: (1) the ‘spade-fiddle’ shape, with the shoulders swept upwards to form points (e.g. the carving at the Baptistry of Parma); (2) the ‘fiddle’ shape, an oval with sides either straight or slightly waisted; (3) the ‘holly-leaf’ shape, with sides forming points at the intersections of six concave curves or straight lines; and (4) the ‘shouldered’ shape, with the lower part rounded as in the second type and the upper part forming shoulders as in the third. All types usually have a protuberance at the bottom to which the strings are attached.
The pegbox is either bent back from the neck at an angle varying from a few degrees to a right-angle, or curved forwards from the neck, terminating in an animal’s head. The bent-back pegbox may take three forms: a solid board, circular or straight-sided; a circular box hollowed from underneath with pegs inserted from the top and strings passing underneath (as on many fiddles); or a narrow, straight-sided box with pegs inserted laterally (as on the British Museum citole and on instruments with a sickle-shaped pegbox like the gittern). The forward-curving pegbox appears in manuscript illustrations (notably the Queen Mary, Peterborough and Lisle psalters) without a clear indication of constructional details, but not in sculpture. It is possible that the manuscript illustrations are distorted representations of the bent-back, sickle-shaped pegbox: similar distortions occur in some depictions of the gittern.
The bent-back pegbox is sometimes reinforced by a bracket or arm connecting it to the body, or by a triangle of wood between it and the neck, as in the Ormesby Psalter. Some citoles have a ‘filled-in’ neck, where the whole area between pegbox and body is a solid mass, with a hole for the player’s thumb (figs.1 and 2a). On some instruments with ‘filled-in’ neck the sides of the body taper sharply; on others the taper is much more gradual, or the sides begin to taper only at the bottom end.
The soundboard appears more or less flat, although the British Museum citole was fitted with a convex one at some later date. There is usually one central, circular soundhole (as on many plucked instruments) with a decorative rose, or two lateral soundholes of varying shapes (as on the fiddle). Very occasionally a second central soundhole is shown (e.g. in the carving on the west front of St Maurice at Vienne). Some citoles shown in Spanish manuscripts have small marks on the belly which might indicate additional soundholes, but could equally well be decorative inlays.
The bridge is occasionally in the middle of the soundboard between two lateral soundholes (e.g. in the Angel Choir at Lincoln Cathedral and at Bazas in south-west France), as is common on the fiddle, but much more often it is close to the bottom end, as on the lute and gittern. The bridge was sometimes incorporated in the tailpiece (see Remnant and Marks, 1980).
The strings, usually four but sometimes three or five, are attached either directly to a projection at the lower end of the body or indirectly via a tailpiece like that of the fiddle. The small circle visible in some pictures (e.g. fig.2a) may represent a metal ring linking the strings to a thong passed around the projection. The strings were made of sheep gut (according to a not wholly reliable reference in Le bon berger, written in 1379 but surviving only in later adaptations). Tinctoris, on the other hand, described an instrument with metal strings (De inventione, c1487): ‘Yet another derivative of the lyra is the instrument called cetula by the Italians, who invented it. It has four brass or steel strings usually tuned: a tone, a fourth, and back again a tone, and it is played with a quill’. However, this instrument is probably the Renaissance cittern rather than the citole.
In depictions from the 13th century onwards, the fingerboard of the citole is higher than the belly and extends on to it, but this is not the case in earlier representations, such as the above-mentioned carving at Parma and the Beatus manuscript illustrations. Up to six frets are usually shown in manuscripts and stained glass, but these are absent in sculptures, with the notable exception of the Parma example. Here the frets stand proud of the fingerboard, suggesting that they are bars of wood, as described much later by Tinctoris on what was probably the cittern: ‘Since the cetula is flat, it is fitted with certain wooden elevations on the neck, arranged proportionately, and known as frets. The strings are pressed against these by the fingers to make a higher or a lower note’. However, the frets shown in manuscripts and stained glass look more like tied-on, gut frets, so it is possible that wooden frets were unique to Italy.
The plectrum is large, apparently of bone or ivory, and sometimes carved at the upper end into an ornamental shape such as a trefoil. It recalls the pecten of the Roman kithara, and might represent a survival, or revival, of classical usage. One drawing (B-Br 21069, f.39r) shows a cord attaching the plectrum to the neck of the citole, just as the medieval harp’s tuning-key is sometimes attached.
The origins of the citole are obscure, and the evidence seems to lead in two different directions. On the one hand, Winternitz saw it as deriving from the classical kithara: a fingerboard would have been added, as in the 9th-century Vivian Bible of Charles the Bald (F-Pn lat.1, f.215v) and the 9th- or 10th-century Utrecht Psalter (NL-Uu 32), and the ‘wings’ or pointed extremities of some citoles would represent the atrophied arms of the kithara. On the other hand, the ‘shouldered’ shape without wings, as depicted in Spanish sources (e.g. fig.3) might be traced back to that found in the 9th-century Stuttgart Psalter (D-Sl Bibl. fol.23; fig.2b): this type, which bears little resemblance to the kithara and must be related to the fiddle, may derive from some oriental necked instrument such as the 1st-century example at Ayrtam in Uzbekistan (see Guitar, fig.2). However, the similarity of body outline does not necessarily prove that the Ayrtam instrument is a direct ancestor of the citole.
An argument against both these derivations is that there are no signs of continuous evolution of the citole but, rather, an obvious gap of over 200 years between the three Carolingian manuscripts of the 9th–10th centuries and the iconographical evidence from around 1200 onwards (the sculpture at Parma is dated c1198, and no Spanish depiction, in sculpture or in manuscripts, can be dated with certainty earlier than the late 12th century). Furthermore, the citole’s name cannot be traced back any earlier. In contrast, representations of the fiddle and references to it are frequent throughout the 12th century and possibly earlier, so if the citole evolved from a Carolingian instrument, why was it absent during this period?
One possible solution to this problem of a ‘missing link’ is to interpret some of the illustrations in Beatus Apocalypse manuscripts (9th–13th centuries) as representing citoles. In one late example (fig.4) the instruments are obviously citoles with ‘fiddle’-shaped bodies. Two have pegboxes that are clearly the bent-back type, seen sideways on. Similar pegboxes can be found in earlier manuscripts (e.g. the 10th-century US-NYpm 644, f.174v); one might even hypothesize that the T-shaped pegboxes so often seen in such illustrations are also the same type, represented slightly differently. However, all these pegboxes could also be interpreted as belonging to lutes, and the oval or pear-shaped bodies usually associated with them have often been taken as such. The evidence, in short, is inconclusive, because the representations are so stylized; one cannot state with any certainty that the instruments shown in the earlier manuscripts are citoles. Nevertheless, the possibility cannot be excluded, and one might therefore have to envisage the early citole with an oval or pear-shaped body, such as the three-string plucked instrument shown on the cover of the 8th-century Dagulf Psalter (in the Louvre), which also appears in the late 10th-century psalter of Ivrea and the early 11th-century psalter at Amiens (Bachmann, 1969, pls.17 and 18). In other words, the earlier Beatus illustrations do not necessarily lead back to the kithara or to the instruments of the Stuttgart Psalter, but to a third type. It is probably wise to accept that the citole may have had several different body-shapes at various periods of its history and to be prepared to consider certain pear-shaped plucked instruments of the 13th and 14th centuries (e.g. that shown in fig.5) as possible citoles.
In the period 1200–1350, by contrast, evidence for the citole is reasonably plentiful and shows that it spread northwards from the Mediterranean. Whether Italy or Spain was the starting-point for this expansion is not certain. Italian origin is suggested by the Parma sculpture, by the instrument’s name and by a statement by Tinctoris regarding its invention, yet each of these items of evidence presents problems. Benedetto Antelami’s work at Parma provides the earliest datable sculpture of a citole, and one of the finest. If its body-shape and fret-design were found elsewhere, it would strengthen claims for Italian origin. The same ‘spade-fiddle’ shape occurs in a 14th-century Italian Bible (Remnant and Marks, 1980, pl.67), but the only similar example (i.e. in body-shape alone) outside Italy is at Cogges (ibid., pl.66).
The second item of evidence is linguistic: the term ‘citola’ found in Provençal and Spanish has two features less typical of these languages then they are of Italian, namely the presence of ‘t’ between two vowels, and (in Spanish, at least) the stress falling on the first of three syllables. However, these features might also be the result of a learned influence, and furthermore it is the word ‘cetra’ or ‘cetera’, not ‘citola’, that occurs in medieval Italian literature. Yet, strangely, Tinctoris referred to ‘the instrument called cetula by the Italians, who invented it’: if one concludes from this that ‘cet(e)ra’ was not the only Italian name, why is ‘cetula’ not attested in literature?
Finally, as to Tinctoris’s statement that the instrument was invented by the Italians, this most probably refers to the development that took place in the 15th century and transformed the citole into an early form of the cittern. Nonetheless, it is strange that he described it as an instrument unfashionable among the nobility, when other 15th-century evidence suggests (see below) that it enjoyed a much higher status: ‘The cetula is used only in Italy by rustics to accompany light songs and to lead dance music’. It is just possible, but highly unlikely, that Tinctoris could be referring to the old citole in its decline and that he was unaware that a new instrument had evolved. At all events, there is no positive justification for saying that his remark about the invention of the cetula refers to the origin of the citole. It would seem, therefore, that there is no firm evidence that it was from Italy that the citole spread to the rest of western Europe.
Spain, on the other hand, obviously cultivated the citole widely, and seems the most likely starting-point for its northward migration. There is the same variety in bodyshapes as is soon found elsewhere: the waisted ‘fiddle’ shape in a Beatus manuscript (fig.4) of the late 12th or early 13th century; the ‘holly-leaf’ shape at Carboeiro (? late 12th century); and the ‘shouldered’ shape in a sculpture (dated 1238–66) in the Palacio de Gelmírez at Santiago, and also in 13th-century manuscripts such as the Cantigas de Santa María (E-E b.1.2; fig.3), dated c1270–90. The names of three citole players at the Castilian court in the 13th century are known, two of them (Lourenzo and Citola) under Alfonso el Sabio, for whom the Cantigas manuscripts were compiled. Literary references are not lacking, and include two mentions of the citole being played by shepherds; this shows that it had spread throughout Spanish society and was not confined to courts.
In France the first reference to the citole occurs in the late 12th-century Provençal poem Daurel et Beton. Further north, the citole makes its appearance in French (i.e. langue d’oïl) literature around 1230, and by the end of the 13th century it is common throughout France. The poet Giles li Muisis recalled how in his childhood (around 1280) he saw Parisian students making merry with citoles as they left their colleges, and the Rôle de la Taille, a list of Parisian tradespeople drawn up in 1292, includes four citoleeurs (citole makers or players). French manuscripts, sculptures and wall-paintings of the 13th and 14th centuries depict citoles of the same three shapes as those found in Spain. An interesting variation occurs as the instrument travels north: the corners or shoulders develop into large protuberances or ‘wings’, sometimes of trefoil shape, in some French, German and English examples.
Around 1275 the citole occurs in German literature and remains until about 1325. Cologne Cathedral has a carving of a ‘holly-leaf’ citole dated c1320, and Strasbourg Cathedral no fewer than three of basically ‘holly-leaf’ shape (one with ‘wings’), dated slightly earlier.
In England the citole appears with particular frequency in sculptures and manuscript illustrations of around 1300–40, suggesting a real fashion for the instrument. Also, the unique surviving citole was made in England during this period. Dating from before this are carvings in Westminster Abbey and in the Angel Choir of Lincoln Cathedral (begun 1255). At the beginning of the 14th century the popularity of the citole coincided with a period of fine manuscript-production and church-building, which may partly account for the large number of representations. Still, even these do not compare in number with those of fiddles and harps, so the citole’s popularity must not be exaggerated. Only one citoler is listed among the 92 musicians at the Feast of Westminster in 1306 (as against 26 harpers and 13 fiddlers), and only two appear in the Wardrobe Books between then and 1326 (see Bullock-Davies, 34). Despite the favour which the citole obviously enjoyed in England for a brief time, it does not seem ever to have become really commonplace.
Signs of a decline can be seen in the second half of the 14th century, as representations become rare. There are two sculptures, at Gloucester Cathedral (after 1350) and Vienne (late 14th century), and one manuscript illustration, in the Petites heures of Jean, Duke of Berry (c1388). Then the citole seems to disappear from the visual arts, doubtless displaced by the gittern, which resembles it in size and in the number of strings and was by then very popular. In literary references the word ‘citole’ is mainly used to denote the kithara of antiquity, as if it were by then a thing of the past. Thus, Chaucer referred to it only in The Knight’s Tale (c1385; set in antiquity), where it is held by the statue of Venus.
In Spain, however, the citole appears to have remained in use much longer. At the court of Navarre, payments were made on 9 August 1412 and 13 June 1413 to Arnaut Guillem de Hursua, juglar de cítola. An interesting aspect of the citole is revealed by two further payments to the same Arnaut Guillem on 27 and 29 June 1413 as a player of the violla darco: one man is recorded as playing both instruments, in the same month. The citole and bowed fiddle are known to have been associated because they are often mentioned together in poetry and depicted together in art, sometimes with identical details of construction (e.g. frets), as if they formed matching pairs. Equipping the fiddle with frets (a comparative rarity except in association with the citole) would certainly have made it easier for musicians to play both instruments.
The revival of the citole in the form of the Cittern began in Italy in the 15th century (for examples of cittern-like instruments of this period see Winternitz, 1967). Like the earlier Italian citoles, early citterns have ‘wings’ swept upwards (rather than sideways, as in examples in France, England and Germany), but they differ in that the body is more almond-shaped and the wooden frets are no longer widely spaced but normally touch one another and slope to form leading edges. Another new feature is that some of the frets extend sideways beyond the edge of the neck. It must undoubtedly be to this instrument that Tinctoris, writing around 1487, referred in the passages quoted above, yet his statement that it was played only by shepherds conflicts with the impression of its status created by these depictions: it is shown to be fit for the gods Mercury and Apollo, for Musica and for angels, and is included among items reflecting the pursuits of a learned and prestigious duke. Far from being relegated to rusticity, the new instrument was part of the intellectual revolution known as the Renaissance.
A comparison of the 16th-century cittern with the citole shows that many features still survive: a fretted fingerboard extending on to the belly; tapering body-depth (found on some citoles but not all); a beast’s head on the pegbox; and a hook on the back, which is a relic of the piece which once connected it to the body and enclosed the player’s thumb. The scrolls at the base of the neck of the cittern may derive from the citole’s ‘wings’. The flat pegboxes, shown in 15th-century depictions, that form an angle with the neck and have pegs inserted from the top resemble those of many citoles from the Parma example onwards; and the pegboxes that have a central peak and two sloping faces, found in 16th-century citterns, find forerunners in Spanish citoles of the 13th century.
R. Menéndez Pidal: Poesía juglaresca y juglares (Madrid, 1924)
A. Baines: ‘Fifteenth-Century Instruments in Tinctoris’s De inventione et usu musicae’, GSJ, iii (1950), 19–26
W. Bachmann: Die Anfänge des Streichinstrumentenspiels (Leipzig, 1964, 2/1966; Eng. trans., 1969)
R. Rastall: ‘The Minstrels of the English Royal Households’, RMARC, iv (1964), 1–41
M. Remnant: ‘The Gittern in English Medieval Art’, GSJ, xviii (1965), 104–9
E. Winternitz: Musical Instruments and their Symbolism in Western Art (New York, 1967, 2/1979)
F.V. Grunfeld: The Art and Times of the Guitar (New York, 1969/R)
L. Wright: ‘The Medieval Gittern and Citole: a Case of Mistaken Identity’, GSJ, xxx (1977), 8–42
C. Bullock-Davies: Menestrellorum Multitudo: Minstrels at a Royal Feast (Cardiff, 1978)
M. Remnant and R.Marks: ‘A Medieval Gittern’, Music and Civilization, British Museum Yearbook, iv (London, 1980), 83–134