Yes I know....
It being a quiet day at the office (so far) I found myself googling about 15th and 16th century instruments. This came about because Richard Thompson, who you'd think had had a busy enough year already, is undertaking a short tour under the leadership of Philip Pickett (musical director at the Globe theatre in London) which will feature songs from Shakespeare's London (I understand covers are a bit of a hot topic around these parts at the moment ?, but how else do you present this kind of music to a new audience, and it seems a shame to let it just die or become museum pieces)
So the ensemble is going to use all these weird sounding instruments like the "rebec" and the "cittern". What is all this stuff?
Himself has had a special guitar made for this tour.
More details at
http://www.philippickett.com/RenaissanceGuitar.htm
This has 4 courses of 2 strings each. Apparently it is tuned like the first 4 string of a modern guitar EXCEPT that way back then everything was pitched a bit lower and so the whole ensemble is going to tune to a system that has "A" at 392 hz, not the 440 that we are used to.
Then there's the CITTERN.
I've actually seen one of these in action, so know a little bit about it. This is a flat backed instrument, cheaper and easier to make than round backed instruments such as the lute. This is a direct ancestor of some current instruments such as the Portuguese Guitarra and the Irish Bozouki. It has re-entrant tuning - IE the strings do not run exactly from high to low (Ukeleles and 5-string banjos also have re-entrant tuning).
This was quite a popular instrument in the late 16th century, sort of a commoner's instrument. Cheap, portable and easy to play at a rudimentary level - although some quite sophisticated pieces were written for it. Apparenly barbers used to keep a cittern for the waiting patrons to amuse themselves with.
There's also the BANDORA which is basically a bass cittern, but is not tuned in a re-entrant manner.
The REBEC turns out to be an ancestor of the violin. Curved back, usually 3 strings (though 4 and 5 string rebecs were not uncommon).
They're not using one for this show, but you also get an instrument referred to (depending on country, language and the way it is tuned) as a THEORBO or a CHITTARONE.
(shown here in the hands of one Lynda Sace who is part of the ensemble that Pickett has assembled).
This is a lute with extra non-fretted bass strings. The bass strings, again, are usually tuned in re-entrantly, but there are different tunings for different schools of music (English musicians typically used a different tuning than, say, Italian musicians).
The theorbo was developed because of a demand for bass instruments in the accompaniment for early opera.
This is where it gets interesting. There weren't always violins, cellos, double basses and so on. There weren't always guitars and even when there were guitars they were not that similar to the modern 6-string guitar and were tuned differently. There is a Stradivarius guitar on display at the Ashmolean museum in Oxford - it has 4 courses of strings (similar to Thompson's latest instrument) and gut frets (which could be moved and also fairly easily replaced).
All the instruments that we know now evolved over time. Some of the ancestors have disappeared or are no longer widely used. The Incredible String Band's song "Chinese White" made prominent use of the GIMBRI which is a north-african bowed instrument, an early ancestor of the violin. The gimbri was bought to Europe by the Moors and slowly evolved. It is still used by folk musicians in North Africa (which is where Robin Williamson of the ISB discovered and learned it). Davy Graham developed the DADGAD tuning in an attempt to transpose Moroccan tunings and thus Moroccan harmonies onto the modern guitar.
The banjo is usually perceived as a very American instrument, but historians now believe that it evolved from tradtional instruments bought to the then American colonies by slaves from Africa. Banjo ace Bela Fleck toured Africa to learn more about the history and roots of his instrument. Interestingly he now has a 5-string instrument made by Mervyn Davis that is built pretty much like a guitar but has the neck of a 5-string banjo. Of course coming from Mervyn Davis it looks kind of African and primitive. Fleck made a DVD documenting his travels in Africa - "Throw Down Your Heart". I hope I get it this Christmas.
Anyhow... the instruments that are familiar to us today will most likely continue to evolve, and in a few centuries contemporary instruments may be thought of as "quaint" or "antique".
Details of this short tour (the show is titled "Nutmeg and Ginger") at
http://www.richardthompson-music.com/catch_of_the_day.asp?id=1207.
No plans for a record release, but if you're intrigued then there has been an earlier project involving Pickett and Thompson but involving mostly electric instruments (Thompson played a Stratocaster on this one) though Pickett plays things like the shawm (ancestor of the clarinet) and his wife, Sharona Joshua, plays medieval keyboard instruments such as the virginals and the clavichord - all this underpinned by the Fairport Convention rhythm section. It's called
"The Bones Of All Men"
All right. I'll shut up now.
