Ceterone

Ceterone

Classification	String instruments
Related instruments
Cittern

The Ceterone was an enlarged and bass-extended cittern, the counterpart of the chitarrone as a development of the lute, which may have dated from the 1520s, but no firm evidence exists for it before the end of that century.

Monteverdi scored the 1615 edition of his 'Orfeo' for two 'ceteroni' as well as two 'chitarroni' which is clear evidence for a distinction between the qualities of sound of the two instruments at that time. Michael Praetorius also mentions the instrument in his Syntagma Musicum, describing its 'strong and magnificent sound like a harpsichord.' In the Syntagma Musicum (Wolfenbüttel, 1619), he lists one illustrated example of ceterone as a "Zwölfe Chorige Dominici Cister," with re-entrant bass string tunings of eb, Bb, f, c, g, d, a, e, and treble strings tuned to b, g, d' and e'. Either twelve, or fourteen courses of strings seem to have been used.

Like the cittern, the ceterone was built with a flat-backed body in teardrop shape, with a single large 'rose', and had fixed, metal frets (unlike the tied, gut frets of the lute family) and used metal strings. The unfretted bass strings were attached to a neck extension, the instrument totalling perhaps as much as 1.5 metres in length. A single original example exists in Museo Bardini in Florence, dating from around 1600 and built by the cittern luthier Gironimo Canpi.

Source

David Munrow, Instruments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, OUP 1976, supplied with the EMI boxed LP set of that name.

External links

• [1] Fine Ceterone constructed by Ron Banks of Texas, on which he uses a scalloped fretboard.