A long-necked lute deriving from the Middle Eastern Tanbūr, which was absorbed into Italian popular music beginning in Naples around the middle of the 16th century and from thence spread to other European countries. It is characterized by a small body and a long, narrow neck with 16 to 24 frets, usually carrying two or three strings of metal or gut which are plucked with a plectrum. Early descriptions and illustrations are given by Mersenne (1636–7), Kircher (1650) and Bonanni (1776); a Turkish provenance is often adduced. Bonanni wrote that ‘it has either two or three very long strings, and the very small body produces a raucous sound’. According to Mersenne, the strings of the bichord were tuned a 5th apart; for the three-string colascione he gave the re-entrant tuning c'–c''–g''. According to Mersenne’s drawing (fig.2) the frets were not arranged chromatically.
Surviving instruments – the earliest is dated 1535 – are of varying dimensions, from a total length of 56·5 cm to 190 cm (see Fryklund). The smaller type, tuned an octave higher and referred to as colasciontino, was often played in duet with the colascione or the guitar, and in this fashion the instrument was introduced into northern Europe by two pairs of touring brothers, Colla and Merchi. A manuscript with six Sonatas for colasciontino by Domenico Colla is preserved in Dresden (D-Dl). While visiting Naples (1770), Burney noted both forms of colascione accompanying voices, together with a violin or mandolin. He described a vivid style of playing, with fast-moving passage-work and surprising skills in modulation.
An impression of an improvisational style over a drone bass is rendered in a piece entitled Colascione in Libro IV d’intavolatura di chitarrone (1640) by G.G. Kapsperger, and in two 17th-century works for keyboard (‘Colascione’, MS, I-Rvat Chigi Q.IV.28, f.41; ‘A colascione’, MS, P-BRp 964, f.228) described by Silbiger (1980).
Considerable confusion has been caused by the use of the terms Calichon, Gallichon etc. by 18th-century German writers for the newly developed six-course instrument also known as Mandora, which was by then in common use as a continuo and solo instrument. Although Mersenne translates colascione as colachon, the two instruments should be clearly distinguished. When the Colla brothers were touring Europe in the 1760s and 70s, the colascione and colasciontino were regarded as novelties, quite unrelated to German colichons and mandoras.
BurneyFI
MersenneHU
A. Kircher: Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650/R)
G. Ceruti, ed.: F. Bonanni: Descrizione degl'istromenti armonici d'ogni genere (Rome, 1776/R)
D. Fryklund: ‘Colascione och Colascionister’, STMf, xviii (1936); pubd separately (Stockholm, 1937)
R. Lück: ‘Zur Geschichte der Basslauten-Instrumente Colascione und Calichon’, DJbM, v (1960), 67–75
A. Silbiger: ‘Imitations of the Colascione in 17th-Century Keyboard Music’, GSJ, xxxiii (1980), 92–7
D. Gill: ‘Alternative Lutes: the Identity of 18th-Century Mandores and Gallichones’, The Lute, xxvi (1986), 51–62
DIETER KIRSCH