(Fr. cistre; Ger. Cither, Cythar, Zister, Zitter; It. cetra, cetera, cetara; Sp. citara, cithara, citola).
A plucked instrument with wire strings that achieved its greatest importance in the 16th and 17th centuries. Although it was regarded as a classical revival of the ancient GreekKithara (from which its name derives) in Italian Renaissance humanist culture, its direct precursor was the medieval Citole.
3. History and repertory from 1500.
JAMES TYLER
The common constructional features of most citterns include a shallow depth of body, which, seen from the side, tapers from the neck towards the very shallow bottom. The strings are always attached at the bottom end and pass over a movable bridge. Frets of a hard material, such as metal, bone or ivory, are inlaid into the fingerboard (although 15th-century instruments appear to have large wooden projections applied to the neck; see fig.3 below). The body, as seen from the front, is usually pear-shaped, although pictures sometimes show guitar-shaped, or elaborately festooned instruments. (A surviving instrument of the latter shape is in the Shrine to Music Museum, Vermillion, South Dakota.) Soundboards are usually arched as a result of being glued to the slightly curved internal strut or struts, which act as counter-supports to the downward pressure of the strings at the bridge. The back, also, is slightly convex.
From the 16th-century onwards, citterns were made with the fingerboard raised and projecting over the soundboard. The 18 or 19 frets were usually placed in tapered slots and secured with hardwood wedges so that they projected just above the fingerboard, with the wooden areas between them slightly scalloped. These features were designed to ensure the accuracy of intonation needed for strings of brass and iron wire. The neck is commonly half cut away from behind the fingerboard on the bass side to form a channel along which the left-hand thumb can slide. This enables the player to execute the rapid shifting to high positions required in much of the cittern’s solo repertory.
Decorative features common to many citterns include small scrolls or half-round columns carved or glued to the points where the neck and sides meet. These appear to be vestiges of the protruberances which, on 15th-centry (and earlier) instruments, were intended to suggest a classical kithara shape. The back of the peghead typically is formed to include a large, hook-shaped protruberance from which the instrument can be hung. It is normal to have an ornamental ‘rose’, which, often, is intricately carved in a gothic style from hardwood backed with pierced parchment. The rose is set into the soundboard, not cut from it as on a lute.
Other constructional features divide citterns into types. In Italian instruments (with some exceptions), pegs are fitted from the front into a solid wood stock at the top of the neck. North European and English instruments usually have a slightly curved pegbox with the pegs inserted laterally. The body, neck and peghead of many Italian citterns are all carved from one piece of wood, with the soundboard and fingerboard glued on separately. The sides of the body taper from neck to bottom and also slope outwards from the back towards the soundboard, giving the instrument a ‘frying pan’ appearance (see fig.1). This type is usually found with a small, slotted extension to the bottom end of the body, through which the strings are hitched. The outline of the soundboard has a very rounded lower portion, with the upper portion sides nearly straight. Sometimes the back and sides are constructed from separate pieces of wood attached to a separate neck and peghead unit, in the tradition of violin-making.
Another type seems to have developed in the instrument-making centre of Brescia during the 1560s, and is exemplified by the instruments of Girolamo di Virchi (b c1523; d after 1574), G.P. Maggini (c1581–c1632) and Gasparo da Salo (1540–1609). The soundboard is much more curved and pear-shaped and the sides and back are always made of separate pieces, the sides perpendicular to the front and back; the strings are attached to metal or ivory pins or buttons inserted in the bottom end (fig.2).
Italian citterns are predominantly six-course instruments, the courses either double or a combination of double and single. In the later 16th century the larger Ceterone with up to 14 courses appeared; it was used for playing continuo. Citterns in the French and Flemish traditions are mostly of four courses, double first and second and triple (two upper octave strings and one fundamental) third and fourth. In England, four double courses were common, though some octave stringing and tripling is encountered. The fretting varied widely, with various combinations of partial and complete frets traversing the fingerboard in accordance with various temperament systems (Grijp, 1981 and Forrester, LSJ, 1983). This partially diatonic or mixed fretting is found on many Italian citterns, but is unequivocally required for the French and Flemish repertory. A completely chromatic fretting is found on instruments after the middle of the 16th century, and seems linked particularly to the Brescian school of instrument making. Many tuning systems were used, usually, though not always, featuring re-entrant patterns.
Citterns varied considerably in size, with vibrating string lengths on surviving instruments ranging from 38 cm to 62 cm, with the majority between 42 cm and 49 cm.
The cittern seems to have been a direct development, in 15th-century Italy, of the citole, with which it shares many physical features: the tapering body, a fretted fingerboard extending on to the soundboard, a human or animal head ornamenting the peghead, the ‘wings’ at the base of the neck, and strings attached at the bottom of the body. But new features and refinements of the older instrument developed rapidly: although there are no surviving instruments from this period, there are iconographic sources, including intarsie and one documentary source, to help in the reconstruction of the early cittern.
A very early example appears in a Neapolitan school miniature from a late 14th-century manuscript of Seneca’s tragedies (Testi, 1969, pl. opposite p.147). Two instruments are shown with almond-shaped soundboards, six large frets, animal heads carved on the pegheads, and a slotted stringholder at the bottom; one is being played with a plectrum. Other details, such as the stringing, are not clear. A singing-gallery (1431–8), sculpted by Luca della Robbia for Florence Cathedral, now in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, has a pair of citterns played by two women in Greco-Roman attire (see Winternitz, pl.13). The instruments have oval soundboards, ‘wings’ projecting from the bases of the necks, strings attached to a slotted end fastener, five courses of double strings, nine pegs, human heads on the pegheads, and a new, distinctive arrangement of the frets. These appear to be five in number; they are rather large and chunky lengths of wood attached to the surface of the neck (or slotted into it), which diminish in height, step fashion, from first to fifth (fig.3). The ends of the frets on the bass side extend prominently beyond the neck itself, and diminish in length from first to last. Their number and size suggest a strictly diatonic fretting, while the free-standing ends of each suggest that they can be removed or adjusted into various interval patterns, as required by different modes. These ‘block frets’ became a common feature of the early cittern.
The instrument is often depicted in a classical or mythical context. Citterns with block frets are shown in Agostino di Duccio’s sculptures (1449–56) of Greek gods in the church of S Francesco, Rimini (see Winternitz, pls.4–5). The printed tarocchi cards (c1467), once attributed to Andrea Mantegna (British Museum), include two representations of Terpsichore playing a guitar-shaped instrument with block frets and end-fastened strings.
The association of the cittern with learning, philosophy and science is shown in various Italian intarsie of the late 15th and early 16th centuries (fig.3). In these, instruments with block frets, pronounced wings and many of the now-expected features are depicted. The composer and theorist Johannes Tinctoris seems to be describing this very type of instrument in 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. 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 lower note.
Tinctoris provides the first concrete information on a cittern tuning. His wording implies a distinctive re-entrant tuning with the second and third courses a fourth apart, surrounded by a second on either side, the first course being a tone higher than the second, and the fourth a tone higher than the third. Surprisingly, this arrangement is required in a Spanish cittern tablature manuscript from as late as the early 18th century.
Beginning in the 16th century there is a wealth of information about the cittern, and a considerable amount of published music. Lanfranco’s tuning chart of 1533 gives a relative tuning by intervals, but not specific pitches. Assuming the top course to be e', as it usually is in subsequent sources, the result is a–c'–b–gg'–d'd'–e'. The six-course tuning has a mixture of single and double stringing, and the specific pitches were confirmed by Cerone (1613), who used Lanfranco as the basis of his information. He also gave pitches a fifth lower, presumably for a larger instrument. The overall open-string tuning comprises a hexachord starting on g. This tuning seems to have been common, though only two sources require it (Vincenti, 1602; MS, c1620, see §4 below). Both of these also require a mixed fretting with, among other chromatic and diatonic intervals, a whole tone between the third and fourth frets. Almost all Italian sources for six-course citterns feature the same tuning for the top four courses, with variants for the fifth and sixth.
Italian music for a fully chromatic instrument first appeared in a Phalèse and Bellère print of 1570. It requires only four courses, tuned as the top four courses of Lanfranco’s chart. The use of a four-, rather than a six-course instrument corresponds to northern usage, but the anonymous canzonettas and dances are otherwise italianate.
The first Italian publication of cittern music was Paolo Virchi’s Il primo libro di tabolatura di citthara (1574). It calls for a fully chromatic six-course instrument tuned dd–ff–bb–gg–d'd'–e'e'. Virchi demanded considerable technical virtuosity. His music is of the highest quality and includes fantasias, intabulations of canzoni by Merulo, settings of vocal music for solo cittern and tenor voice with cittern, as well as some pavans and galliards. He also included two pieces for a seven-course instrument, extending the range down to G. It was clearly Virchi’s intention to improve and refine the cittern. The dedication to Il primo libro reads:
The citthara has always stood in some consideration among people because, being played with a quill, it has a lively and pleasant tone and because it has well-ordered proportion and differs little from such instruments as the lute and harpsichord, which have already attained perfection. But it is only now that the citthara begins to delight such noble personages as the Duke of Bavaria and Archduke Ferdinand of the Tyrol.
The same Archduke Ferdinand provides us with a unique and most satisfying connection between a music source and the very instrument on which it was played. The sole surviving copy of Paolo’s book, likely to have been Ferdinand’s own copy, is now in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna. In the year of its publication, Ferdinand commissioned a cittern from Paolo’s father, the famed maker Girolamo di Virchi. Ferdinand’s cittern, too, now resides in Vienna, where it is one of the treasures of the Kunsthistorisches Museum (see fig.2). The instrument, with its string length of 44 cm, presumably was used to play Paolo’s music, which demands the same virtuoso technique and wide left-hand stretches as later English music by Holborne and Robinson.
In France and northern Europe the cittern was used mainly as a four-course instrument. The earliest surviving tutor, Le Roy and Ballard’s Breve et facile instruction (1565), called for the following tuning and stringing (assuming a top course as e'): aa'a'– gg'g'–d'd'–e'e'. Le Roy’s and several other tablature sources, for example Viaera (1564) and Vreedmann (1568), often idiomatically intabulate the melodic material onto the third and fourth courses, both of which are triple strung and in octaves (a fact frequently overlooked by modern editors). The tablatures require mixed fretting (Le Roy’s illustration of a cittern was used in other books, but with variant fretting patterns; in Mersenne (1636–7) it is fully chromatic: see fig.5). The repertory comprises much the same sort of music (dances, vocal intabulations and a few fantasias) as is found in contemporary lute books.
Published music for cittern in Germany is represented by Sixt Kargel, beginning in 1569 with two volumes now lost. One of them, Renovata Cythara, is found in three later editions, the last from 1580. It requires the tuning, stringing and fretting arrangement of Le Roy and Vreedman, and includes the latter’s playing instructions both in the original Latin and in German translation. Kargel, together with J.D. Lais, published Toppel Cythar in 1575 (reprinted 1578). This toppel cythar (double cittern) is a six-course instrument with an expanded open string range requiring a completely chromatic fingerboard (see Tyler, p.25). The tuning is bb–Gg–dd'–gg–d'd'–e', which is unique in that the top four courses are not in the typical re-entrant pattern of almost all other cittern tablatures. The music is of high quality and comprises a fantasia, Italian and German dances, and intabulations of madrigals, chansons and lieder by Lassus, Arcadelt, Rore, Senfl and others.
The cittern continued to be popular in Germany in the 17th century. Praetorius suggested using citterns to double certain parts in his vocal publication Polyhymnia (1619), playing from single-line staff notation. A later 17th-century German development is a small, bell-shaped instrument, known as the Cithrinchen, which does not use re-entrant tuning and has its own repertory, but which retains most of the classic characteristics of the cittern. Indeed, in south Germany and the German-speaking areas of Switzerland the cittern remained in use until the early 20th century, although with triadic tunings similar to those of theEnglish guitar. The late instrument often retained some of the constructional features of earlier citterns and was used in traditional music. The names for it vary: Bergzither, Bergmannszither, Zister, Zitter, Sister and, from the mid-19th century and the 20th, Waldzither, Thüringer Waldzither, Lutherzither, Wartburlaute etc. (Michel).
In England cittern music can be traced back to the mid-16th century in the ‘Mulliner Book’ which, in addition to music for other instruments, contains eight pieces for four-course cittern and one piece for five-course cittern. The tablatures require the tuning of Le Roy, but with a chromatic fretting. The first published music was an English translation (1568, now lost) of Le Roy’s tutor of 1565. But the Italian influence proved stronger than the French, for the tuning bb–gg–d'd'–e'e' (the top four courses of Italian citterns) became standard in England. There is some evidence that the third course occasionally might have been tripled and that, in some cases, octave stringing may have been employed. Normally, fretting was completely chromatic.
The manuscripts copied by Mathew Holmes (c1595–7) contain cittern music of a very high quality and which requires considerable technical skill. A few pieces from Paolo Virchi’s 1574 book are copied into one of them, as well as some excellent works by Robinson, Holborne and others. Anthony Holborne’s The Cittharn Schoole was published in 1597 and Thomas Robinson’s New Citharen Lessons in 1609. The music in these two books represents the highest point in English writing for the instrument.
The demanding left-hand stretches required for the music of Holborne, Robinson and others has led to the suggestion (Abbott and Segerman, 1975) that players in England used a small instrument tuned an octave higher to b'b'–g'g'–d''d''–e''e''. But although Praetorius (1618) claimed to have heard an Englishman play a very small cittern with the tuning f''f''–a'a'(b'b')–d''d''–g''g'', there is no existing documentation anywhere for a very small cittern with the e'' pitch level. Further, the tuning of the very small cittern that Praetorius heard is unique and unprecedented for a cittern, although it is similar to one of the tunings for the Italian mandolino (see Mandolin, §2). And Virchi’s music, which requires the same stretches, is most likely to have been played on the normal-sized cittern, with the pitch level at e'.
From around the second quarter of the 17th century in England, the high standards set by Holborne and Robinson are no longer found, and the cittern seems to be associated solely with undemanding popular music (fig.6). By the mid-17th century, the instrument was being restrung, tuned like a four-course guitar, played with the right-hand fingers instead of a plectrum and called a gittern. This use of the term should not be confused with that of the 16th and early 17th century when it referred to the four-course guitar (see Guitar, §3).
Another English wire-strung instrument is the English guitar, developed in the mid-18th century. But this instrument differs from the cittern structurally, has a triadic tuning and is played with the fingers. Although it is the custom today, this instrument should not be called a cittern.
The following list is arranged to show the development of cittern music and includes both solo and ensemble sources (mostly in tablature).
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J. S. Schlumberger: Cythare germanice tabulature (?Mainz, 1525 or 1532) [lost] |
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A. Le Roy: Briefve et facile instruction (Paris, 1551) [lost] |
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G. Morlaye: Quatriesme livre (Paris, 1552) |
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S. Vreedman: Carmina quae cythara … Liber I (Leuven, 1563) [lost] |
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A. Le Roy: Second livre de cistre (Paris, 1564) |
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F. Viaera: Nova et elegantissima in cythara (Leuven, 1564) |
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A. Le Roy and R. Ballard: Breve et facile instruction (Paris, 1565) |
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S. Vreedman: Nova longeque elegantissima cithara (Leuven, 1568) |
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J. Rowbotham: The Breffe and Playne Instruction (London, 1568) [lost] |
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S. Kargel: Carmina italica (Mainz, 1569) [lost] |
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S. Kargel: Renovata cythara (Mainz, 1569) [lost] |
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S. Vreedman: Carminum quae cythara (Leuven, 1569) |
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S. Gorlier: Livre de tabulature de cistre (Lyons, 1560s) [lost] |
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A. Le Roy: Troisieme livre de cistre (Paris, 1560s) [lost] |
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P. Phalèse and J. Bellère: Hortulus cytharae (Leuven and Antwerp, 1570) |
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P. Virchi: Il primo libro di tabolatura di citthara (Venice, 1574) |
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S. Kargel: Renovata cythara (Strasbourg, 1575) [lost] |
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S. Kargel and J.D. Lais: Toppel cythar (Strasbourg, 1575) [lost] |
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P. Phalèse: Hortulus cytharae (Leuven, 1575) [lost] |
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Jardinet de cistre (?Paris, 1575) [lost] |
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S. Kargel: Renovata cythara (Strasbourg, 1578) |
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S. Kargel and J.D. Lais: Toppel cythar (Strasbourg, 1578) |
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S. Kargel: Renovata cythara (Strasbourg, 1580) |
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A. Brambilla: Anleitung die Zither zu spielen (1582) [lost] |
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P. Phalèse and J. Bellère: Hortulus citharae (Antwerp, 1582) |
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J. Bellère: Le jardinet du cistre (Antwerp, 1592) [lost] |
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W. Barley: A New Booke of Citterne Lessons (London, 1593) [lost] |
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J. Danter: A Moste Perfect and True Instruction (London, ?1593) [lost] |
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A. Holborne: The Cittharn Schoole (London, 1597) |
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R. Alison: The Psalmes of David in Meter (London, 1599) |
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T. Morley: The First Booke of Consort Lessons (London, 1599) |
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J.P. Sweelinck: Niew chyterboek (?Amsterdam, 1602) [lost] |
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G. Vincenti: Secondo libra d’intavolatura di citara (Venice, 1602) |
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T. Robinson: New Citharen Lessons (London, 1609) |
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P. Rosseter: Lessons for Consort (London, 1609) |
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T. Morley: The First Booke of Consort Lessons (London, 1611) |
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W. Leighton: The Teares or Lamentacions of a Sorrowfull Soule (London, 1614) |
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P.P. Melli: Intavolatura di liuto attiorbato, libro quarto (Venice, 1616) |
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M. Praetorius: Polyhymnia caduceatrix (Wolfenbüttel, 1619) |
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A. Valerius: Neder-landtsche Gedenck-Clanck (Harlem, 1626) |
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M. Mersenne: Harmonie universelle (Paris, 1636–7) |
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A. Kircher: Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650) |
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J. Playford: A Booke of New Lessons for the Cithern & Gittern (London, 1652) |
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J. Playford: Cithren and Gittern Lessons (London, 1659) [lost] |
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J. Playford: Musick’s Delight on the Cithren (London, 1666) |
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Mulliner Book, after 1558, GB-Lbl Add.30513 (French tablature, four- and five-course; also incl. two pieces for gittern) |
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Willoughby MS [formerly cited as Lord Middleton’s Lutebook], c1575, GB-NO mi LM 16 (French tablature, four-course; incl. eight cittern pieces) |
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c1580, F-Pn F.C. Rés. 1109 (French tablature, four-course; MS leaves in Aristotle, De moribus, quae etica (Paris, 1576), for lute with eight cittern and five guitar pieces) |
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Dallis Lutebook, after 1583 EIRE-Dtc D.3.30/I (French tablature, four-course; incl. one cittern piece and tuning table) |
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‘Schone Psalm und Geistliche Lieder auf der Cither’, Sammenhammer MS, 1590, PL-Tm J.40.342-102682 (Italian tablature, four-course) |
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Walsingham Consort MS, c1590, US-OAm (French tablature, four-course; consort partbook) |
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c1590, US-Cn vm 1734.5.G37 (French tablature, six-course; German provenance) |
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‘Tablatur Buch auff der Cythar. Johannes Georgius Hertzogk u Sachssen’, c1592–1605, former D-Dl Mus.J.3 7 (destroyed 1944) (French tablature, six-course) |
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M. Holmes MS, c1595, GB-Cu Dd.4.23 (French tablature, four-course, solos and consort parts; Italian tablature, six-course, three pieces from Virchi, 1574) |
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M. Holmes MS, before 1595, GB-Cu Dd.14.24 (French tablature, four-course; consort parts) |
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late 16th century, CZ-Bsa, MS cited in Wolf, 1919, p.146 as in the library of Fürst in Dietrichstein, Mikulov (French tablature, six-course; also contains lute music) |
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‘Tablature Buch auff dem Instrument, Christianus Hertzogk zu Sachssen’, late 16th century, D-Dl J.307m (French tablature, six-course) |
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Matthew Otley’s cittern book, c1600–50 US-CAward, sold at Sotheby’s, London, 1977 (French tablature, four-course; solos) |
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1607–23, I-Nc 7664 (Italian lute tablature containing six pieces for a six-course ‘cetra’) |
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Nauclerus MS, c1607–20, D-Bsb Mus.40141 (French lute tablature, four-course; with four cittern pieces) |
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after 1609, MS additions to T. Robinson: New Citharen Lessons (London, 1609, GB-Lbl K.2.D.2 (French tablature, four-course; two pieces) |
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c1620, Italian MS, GB-Lspencer (French tablature, six-course cittern, lute and five-course guitar) |
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c1629, MS additions to T. Robinson: New Citharen Lessons (London, 1609), J-Tn BM-4540-ne (French tablature, four-course; twenty-two pieces) |
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after c1653, GB-Lbl Add.4388 (two English pieces in a music treatise) (French tablature, four-course) |
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mid-17th century, MS additions to J.T. Freigins: Paedagogus (Basle, 1582), GB-Cjc G.13.28 (French tablature, four-course; six pieces) |
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Boteler Cittern Book, mid-17th century, US-CAward (formerly GB-BEcr D.D.7/2) (French tablature, four-course) |
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John Ridout’s Commonplace Book, mid-17th century, US-CAward (French tablature, four-course; solos and grounds) |
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Millar/McAlman MS, mid-17th century GB-En 9477 (French tablature, four-course; vocal music with six cittern pieces; possible finger technique) |
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Robert Edwards Commonplace Book, mid-17th century, GB-En 9450 (formerly Panmure 11) (French tablature, four-course; with twenty-three cittern pieces) |
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Early 18th century, Spanish MS with playing instructions (item no.592 in catalogue 956, Maggs Bros. Ltd, London, 1974) (Italian tablature, four-course) |
BrownI
MersenneHU
PraetoriusSM, ii
WolfH, ii
G.M. Lanfranco: Scintille di musica (Brescia, 1533/R; Eng. trans. in B. Lee: Giovanni Maria Lanfranco’s ‘Scintille di musica’ and its Relation to 16th-Century Music Theory, diss., Cornell U., 1961)
A. Le Roy and R. Ballard: Breve et facile instruction (Paris, 1565)
P. Cerone: El melopes y maestro (Naples, 1613)
J. Playford: A Booke of New Lessons for the Cithern & Gittern (London, 1652)
R.T. Dart: ‘The Cittern and its English Music’, GSJ, i (1948), 46–63
A. Baines: ‘Fifteenth-Century Instruments in Tinctoris’, De inventione et usu musicae’, GSJ, iii (1950), 19–26
A.W. Byler: ‘The Music for Cittern and Gittern in the Mulliner Book’, JAMS, v (1952), 142 only
D. Stevens: The Mulliner Book: a Commentary (London, 1952)
F. Lesure, ed.: Recueils imprimés, XVIe–XVIIe siècles, RISM, B/I/1 (1960)
D. Gill: ‘James Talbot’s Manuscript, v: Plucked Strings – the Wirestrung Fretted Instruments and the Guitar’, GSJ, xv (1962), 60–69
H. Charnassé: ‘Sur la transcription des recueils de cistre’, RdM, xlix (1963), 184–202
I. Waldbauer: The Cittern in the Sixteenth Century and its Music in France and the Low Countries (diss., Harvard U., 1964)
E. Winternitz: Musical Instruments and their Symbolism in Western Art (New York, 1967, 2/1979)
B. Jeffery: ‘Anthony Holborne’, MD, xxii (1968), 129–205
F. Testi: La musica italiana nel Medioevo e nel Rinascimento (Milan, 1969)
W. Boetticher: ‘On Vulgar Music and Poetry Found in Unexplored Minor Sources of Eighteenth-Century Lute Tablatures’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Music: a Tribute to Karl Geiringer, ed. H.C.R. Landon and R.E. Chapman (New York and London, 1970), 76–85
R. Hadaway: ‘The Cittern’, EMc, i (1973), 77–81
M. Kanazawa, ed.: The Complete Works of Anthony Holborne, ii (Cambridge, MA, 1973)
G.A. Weigand: ‘The Cittern Repertoire’, EMc, i (1973), 81–3
C. Dobson, E. Segerman and J. Tyler: ‘The Tunings of the Four-Course French Cittern and the Four-Course Guitar in the 16th Century’, LSJ, xvi (1974), 17–23
J. Tyler: ‘A Checklist for the Cittern’, EMc, ii (1974), 25–9
D. Abbott and E. Segermann: ‘The Cittern in England before 1700’, LSJ, xvii (1975), 24–48
D. Gill: Wire-Strung Plucked Instruments Contemporary with the Lute, Lute Society Booklets, iii (London, 1977)
E. Segerman and D. Abbott: ‘A Reasoned and Practical Approach to Mean-Tone Fretting’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.9 (1977), 54–8
E. Segerman: ‘On Medieval and Early Renaissance Tunings and Fretting Patterns’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.9 (1977), 62–6
W. Boetticher, ed.: Handschriftlich überlieferte Lauten- und Guitarrentabulaturen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts, RISM, B/VII (1978)
I. Harwood: ‘Thomas Robinson’s “Generall Rules”’, LSJ, xx (1978), 18–22
W. Stauder: ‘Zur Entwicklung der Cister’, Renaissance-Studien: Helmuth Osthoff zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. L. Finscher (Tutzing, 1979), 233–55
D. Fabris: ‘Composizioni per “cetra” in uno sconosciuto manoscritto per liuto del primo seicento’, RIM, xvi (1981), 185–206
L.P. Grijp: ‘Fret Patterns of the Cittern’, GSJ, xxxiv (1981), 62–97
D. Fabris: ‘Prime aggiunte Italiane al volume RISM B/VII: intavolature mss per liuto e chitarra’, FAM, xxix (1982), 103–21
J.M. Ward: ‘Sprightly & Cheerful Musick: Notes on the Cittern, Gittern and Guitar in 16th- and 17th-Century England’, LSJ, xxi (1979–81) [whole issue]
P. Forrester: ‘Citterns and their Fingerboard’, LSJ, xxiii (1983), 15–20
P. Forrester: ‘Some Notes on Cittern Fingerboards and Stringing’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.32 (1983), 19–22
P. Forrester: ‘Citterns and chitarra battente’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.44 (1986), 63–4
H. Charnassé: ‘La reception de la musique “savante” dans le monde des amateurs: les recueils de cistre au XVIe siècle’, IMSCR XIV: Bologna 1987, 59–67
P. Forrester: ‘The Cittern in Italy’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.50 (1988), 59–63
P. Forrester: ‘The Morley Consort Lessons and the English Cittern’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.56 (1989), 46–50
A. Michel: Cither, Cithrinchen, Zister (Suhl, 1989)
U. Ravasio: ‘Il fenomino cetera in area bresciana’, Liuteria e musica strumentale a Brescia tra Cinque e Seicento: Salò 1990, i, pp.123–56
D. Fabris: ‘Il primo libro di Tabolatura di Citthara di Paolo Virchi (1574)’, Liuteria e musica strumentale a Brescia tra Cinque e Seicento: Salò 1990, ii, pp.65–89
E. Segerman: ‘The Instruments of the Consort’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.82 (1996), 43–9
P. Forrester: ‘The Cittern in Consort’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.83 (1996), 65–74
E. Segerman: ‘Reply to Peter Forrester’s Comm. 1445 on English Citterns’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.84 (1996), 43–50 [see also Forrester, ibid., no.85 (1996), 27–9; no.86 (1997), 21; E. Segerman, ibid., no.86 (1997), 22–4