Round Backed Cittern
1757 (Made)
Artist/Maker | |
Place of origin |
This instrument is a late version of the cittern. It is fitted with metal frets and strings, and built with a lute-shaped back. The musician would have played it with fingers or with a quill. This example has holes in the neck into which one could screw a 'capo', a bar-like device that made it easier to play in different keys. This instrument may have been made in France, where it would have been known as a pandore.
Object details
Category | |
Object type | |
Materials and techniques | planed sycamore and ebony ribs, planed pine belly, inlaid ebony, ivory and mother-of-pearl star pattern. |
Brief description | Round backed cittern, sycamore ribs, French (or possibly English?), 1757. |
Physical description | 'Body of twenty-one ribs of sycamore and black (ebony?) intervening stringing. Six ebony hitch studs at the base. Belly with open soundhole. The neck resembles that of 11/16 [round-back cittern, Museum No.: 202-1882] but the fingerboard has seventeen frets and four capotasto holes. The marquetry star-pattern in ebony, ivory, mother-of-pearl, and a brown wood.' - Anthony Baines:Catalogue of Musical Instruments in the Victoria and Albert Museum - Part II: Non-keyboard instruments (London, 1998), pp. 55. |
Dimensions |
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Marks and inscriptions | 1757 (Written in ink on the back.) |
Object history | This instrument was purchased by the Museum for £1 - 10 - 0 (£1.50) in 1882. It had been part of the collections of Carl Engel (1818-1882), an eminent musicologist from Hanover, who published the Descriptive Catalogue of the Musical Instruments in the South Kensington Museum in 1874. The South Kensington Museum has been known as the Victoria & Albert Museum since 1899. |
Production | "The contour of the body suggests a copy of the similar, though superior, round-backed citterns by Deleplanque of Lille, dated 1766, etc., while the presence of seventeen frets also suggests French work" - Anthony Baines:Catalogue of Musical Instruments in the Victoria and Albert Museum - Part II: Non-keyboard instruments.(London, 1998), pp. 55. |
Summary | This instrument is a late version of the cittern. It is fitted with metal frets and strings, and built with a lute-shaped back. The musician would have played it with fingers or with a quill. This example has holes in the neck into which one could screw a 'capo', a bar-like device that made it easier to play in different keys. This instrument may have been made in France, where it would have been known as a pandore. |
Bibliographic reference | Anthony Baines:Catalogue of Musical Instruments in the Victoria and Albert Museum - Part II: Non-keyboard instruments. (London, 1998), pp. 55. |
Collection | |
Accession number | 197-1882 |
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Record created | June 24, 2009 |
Record URL |
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