Chitarra Italiana (; 'Italian guitar') is a
lute-shaped plucked instrument with four or five single (sometimes double) strings, in a tuning similar to that of the
guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strin ...
. It was common in Italy during the
Renaissance era
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
.
According to Renato Meucci, the designation of 'Italiana' followed the introduction to Italy of the flat-backed development of the instrument – referred to as ''chitarra alla spagnola '' (literally 'Spanish guitar'); to distinguish between the two versions. It is believed to have descended from
pandura
The pandura ( grc, πανδοῦρα, ''pandoura'') or pandore, an ancient string instrument, belonged in the broad class of the lute and guitar instruments. Akkadians played similar instruments from the 3rd millennium BC. Ancient Greek artwork d ...
s, the Mediterranean lutes of Antiquity, and to be related to North African
quitra (or kwitra).
Its bass variety was known as
chitarrone
The theorbo is a plucked string instrument of the lute family, with an extended neck and a second pegbox. Like a lute, a theorbo has a curved-back sound box (a hollow box) with a wooden top, typically with a sound hole, and a neck extending out ...
. Musicologist Laurence Wright talked about the chitarrone in a letter to the ''Early Music'' journal (October 1976), saying it implied "large guitar", that it had a rounded back and was likely to be taken for a smaller lute, and that it was found from the 13th century to the 18th century, but was much rarer in the later centuries.
He also said that in latter years, when the
mandola
The mandola (US and Canada) or tenor mandola (Ireland and UK) is a fretted, stringed musical instrument. It is to the mandolin what the viola is to the violin: the four double courses of strings tuned in fifths to the same pitches as the viola ...
was popular, the chitarrone was "sometimes confused with the mandola".
[
]
See also
* Chitarra battente (Guitar
The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strin ...
used on southern Italian folk music, also known as ''Chitarra Italiana'')
* Mandore
* Gittern
The gittern was a relatively small gut-strung, round-backed instrument that first appears in literature and pictorial representation during the 13th century in Western Europe (Iberian Peninsula, Italy, France, England). It is usually depicted pl ...
considered ancestral to Spanish guitar and possibly closely related to mandore.
* Kwitra
The kwitra (also '' quwaytara'', ''kouitra'' and ''quitra''); Arabic الكوترة or عود أندلسي (literally Andalusian oud); is an Algerian stringed instrument, sometimes referred to as the Algerian lute. The instrument is tied to And ...
: Also spelled 'kouitra', 'kaitara', and 'quitra'. This is a North African 4 course lute, similar to the oud
, image=File:oud2.jpg
, image_capt=Syrian oud made by Abdo Nahat in 1921
, background=
, classification=
* String instruments
*Necked bowl lutes
, hornbostel_sachs=321.321-6
, hornbostel_sachs_desc=Composite chordophone sounded with a plectrum
, ...
, and possibly related to the chitarra Italiana. (See articles Andalusian classical music
Andalusi classical music ( ar, طرب أندلسي, ṭarab ʾandalusī; es, música andalusí), also called Andalusi music or Arab-Andalusian music, is a genre of music originally developed in al-Andalus by the Muslim population of the region a ...
- subsection 'Influence of Andalusian music' and Gittern
The gittern was a relatively small gut-strung, round-backed instrument that first appears in literature and pictorial representation during the 13th century in Western Europe (Iberian Peninsula, Italy, France, England). It is usually depicted pl ...
- subsection 'Etymology')
References
*
** ''The theorboed guitar - the Chitarrone Francese ?'',
"''Roberto Meucci recently wrote about small lutes, revealing that in Italy they were called ''chitarra'', so as not to confuse them with the '' chitarra alla spagnola''. Sources from the early 18th Century also declare that the ''chitarra italiana'' or ''chitarrino'' is in reality a small lute.''"
{{Renaissance music, state=collapsed
Composite chordophones
Necked bowl lutes
Early musical instruments