Musical Instruments in Vermeer's Paintings:
The Cittern

The Cittern in Vermeer's Paintings

The cittern was one of the most popular musical instruments of the mid-17th century and it was also the one most frequently depicted by Vermeer. Although its form may recall the more familiar lute, it has a very different history and above all, it produces a very different sound making it adapted for different music. The cittern's string are made of metal while while the lute's are of natural animal gut. In particular, the brass strings of the cittern sound much louder, also because they are played with a plectrum. Its sprightly and cheerful sound is comparable to the modern banjo although a good cittern sounds a bit like the virginals. Instead, the lute is plucked by the bare fingers and produces a softer, nostalgic tone.

Vermeer may have chosen to depict this particular instrument for different reasons according to the iconographic program of each painting. Perhaps it held a particular iconographical meaning which was more evident to his viewers, although it can certainly not be ruled out that its peculiar sound and no doubt, its curious almond-like form would have equally appealed to his aesthetic sensibilities.

We find five citterns in Vermeer's 36 extant paintings even though the whole instrument is visible only in the Love Letter. The painting's crystalline edges and brilliant color scheme which sparkles with life seem suggestive of the cittern's own tonal properties.

In three paintings, The Concert, The Girl Interrupted in her Music and The Glass of Wine, the cittern lies partially hidden on a table or a chair even though the more informed viewer has no problem in identifying its typical flat body, different from the pear-shaped body of the lute. In the early Procuress instead, its typical ornately carved peghead leaves no doubt that it is indeed a cittern and not another instrument. In the Girl Wearing a Pearl Necklace a neutron autoradiograph demonstrates that a cittern was also included a sixth time (it was set upon the foreground chair), but it was later painted out by the master himself for unknown reasons.

Girl Interrupted in
her Music (detail)
Johannes Vermeer

The Glass of Wine (detail)
Johannes Vermeer

Classification

The cittern, belonging to the lute family, is likewise a "composite cordophone" (Hornbostel-Sachs, see Lute). The string bearer (neck) and the resonator (soundboard) form an organic unity; the sound is produced by plucking the strings, in this case usually with a plectrum.

History

Apollo Citharoedus with kithara

In Italian Renaissance humanist culture the cittern was regarded as a classical revival of the ancient Greek kithara (from which its name derives; see Winternitz), but it seems to have its direct development from the medieval citole and have likewise some similarities with the fiddle, as its plucked form. There are no surviving instruments from the early period, but various iconographic sources including intarsie, miniatures in manuscripts or sculptures. The composer and theorist Johannes Tinctoris seems to describe an early kind of the cittern in his De Inventione (c. 1487): "Yet another derivative of the lyra is the instrument called cetula by the Italians, who invented it. It has four brass or steel strings ... and it is played with a quill. Since the cetula is flat, it is fitted with certain wooden elevations on the neck, arranged proportionately, and known as frets. The strings are pressed against these by the fingers to make a higher or lower note."

The structure and tuning of the cittern varied almost from country to country. While in England, France and northern Europe the small four-course-instrument was mainly used, Italian musicians preferred the larger six-course instrument.

The cittern achieved its greatest importance in the 16th and 17th centuries. Above all in Italy and in England it was held in high esteem both as an accompanying instrument for the singing voice or for dance music, later with many compositions written expressively for it, often intricate and difficult to play. The first printed books, principally with pieces by Guillaume Morlaye, Pierre Phalèse, Robert Ballard and Adrian Le Roy (with instructions for tuning and stringing) were published in France and Flandern (1552-1582).

The first Italian publication of cittern music was Paolo Virchi's Il primo libro di tabolatura di citthara (1574) for a fully chromatic six-course instrument, which demanded considerable technical virtuosity. One of the famed Italian instrument makers for string instruments was Girolamo Virchi (father of Paolo V.) of Brescia, a centre for musical instrument making in that time. Some of his instruments have survived, among them the lavishly decorated cittern made for Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol (see right)

In England the first cittern music appeared in the mid-16th century in the Mulliner Book with eight pieces for four-course cittern and one for five-course cittern. The most famous English composers were Anthony Holborne with his well-known Cittharn Schoole (1597) and c (A Booke of New Lessons for the Cithern & Gittern, 1652).

Published music for the cittern in Germany is mainly represented by Sixt Kargel. The first two editions of his Renovata Cythara (1569 and 1575) are lost, but a reprint of 1580 survived. In the 17th century Michael Praetorius suggested using citterns in his vocal publications Polyhymnia (1619). A later 17th-century German development is a small, bell-shaped instrument, known as "Cithrinchen" (little cittern) which had its own repertory, but retains most of the classical characteristics of the cittern. In South Germany and the German-speaking areas of Switzerland the cittern remained in use until the early 20th century, but with some of the constructional features of earlier citterns. The various names like "Bergzither" (mountain) or "Thüringer Waldzither" (forrest) indicate its use mainly in traditional folk music.

Technique

Italian citterns were predominantly six-course instruments, either double or a combination of double and single course, many with a mixed fretting (complete and partial frets). French and Flemish citterns had mostly four courses: double first and second course, and triple (two upper octave strings and one fundamental) third and fourth. In England four courses were common, often tuned in unison.

Many tuning systems were used and employed usually the "re-entrant"-tuning (the first and second course were tuned down an octave, so that the third course was then the highest and became the melody course). The basic tuning of the cittern on the continent was a g d' e', and that of the English cittern b g d' e'. The tuning and the narrow range of the courses allowed the common player a number of simple chord shapes useful for simple song accompaniment and dances. This might be a further reason for the instrument's popularity.

The playing technique is similar to that of the lute, but the cittern is usually played with a plectrum. The solo repertoire, however, required a substantial technical virtuosity.

Iconographic Meaning

The early citterns – as revivals of the ancient kithara - were often depicted in a classical or mythical context and were associated with learning, philosophy and science, shown in various Italian intarsie of the late 15th and early 16th centuries (e.g. in the choir stalls of Monte Oliveto Maggiore, near Siena, or in the "studiolo" of Duke Federigo da Montefeltro, once in the ducal palace in Gubbio).¹

The meaning in the Dutch 17th -century painting is rather similar to that of the lute: as a stringed instrument (with pairs of strings – the courses) the cittern symbolizes the harmony in love and family. The comparatively large number of depictions demonstrate the great popularity of this instrument.