Enzo Puzzovio: Tempro la Cetra

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Using 4-course renaissance citterns, both diatonic and chromatic, this album presents a selection of music giving a picture of both casual and serious repertoire for this wire-strung cousin of the lute. Drawing on numerous manuscripts and printed sources, the cittern was clearly part of widespread music-making in England, Italy, Germany, France and the Low Countries.

The playing of 4-course citterns is divided into two camps: the Italians and English favouring chromatic fretting and its standard b g d’ e’ tuning, whilst diatonic fretting used a g d’ e’ tuning, the latter being preferred in France, the Low Countries and Germany.

Whilst the earliest printed book of music for cittern available to us is Guillaume Morlaye's Quatriesme Livre of 1552, no printed book appeared in England until Anthony Holborne’s Cittharn Schoole in 1597. There are references to three English books between those years, but their whereabouts are unknown, if they were even published. The earliest English manuscript of music for cittern is the Mulliner ms. (c.1560), primarily a collection of keyboard music with a few cittern tunes at the end, interestingly for diatonic tuning on chromatic frets. During that 45 year gap, several volumes appeared from French, Flemish and German presses, each giving us a broad selection of dance tunes, madrigal settings and fantasias, suitable for both beginners and advanced players.

The album starts with a popular tune that crossed several countries in the mid 16th century, amassing also a number of names on its journey. Branles appear in numerous collections of dance tunes, whether for solo instruments or ensembles, and their varieties provide a compendium of regional styles (e.g. Branle de Poitou, de Bourgogne, de Champagne etc.). Both publishers, Adrian Le Roy and Pierre Phalèse, capitalised on this market. The Branle gay is characterised by its offbeat triple pulse, and here it is presented as a medley, coupled with the tune of a comic song Il a brûlé la hotte (He burned the basket.).

Psalm settings are rarely heard live or recorded, but I was taken by the austere beauty of these two short pieces and felt they needed including.

The Flemish composer Sebastian Vreedman compiled three books of music for diatonic cittern, published by Phalèse. His first, of 1563 is now lost. The other two (1568 & 1569) are filled with a selection of internationally known tunes and dances. Almost simultaneously, Sixtus Kargel published two books of music for cittern in 1569, and another two in 1575, again published by Phalèse, who brought out his own books for cittern in 1570, 1575 and 1582. There was clearly a buoyant market for diatonic cittern music. Each of those books contain many madrigal settings (Italian, French, Flemish and German) and large quantities of dance tunes. Many of them are duplicated, giving rise to speculation as to whose work was copied.

Pavane and galliard pairings frequently appear in lute arrangements, but are rare for cittern, thus I have included Vreedman’s Esperance set. I have taken madrigal settings from Kargel’s and Phalèse’s books and delivered them as if the words were there. E melevai has the air of an excited young man; Madonna mia pietà is more ponderous, while Quand mon mari, often sung by choirs as a jolly song, is actually about domestic violence so is treated more sensitively.

All the tracks are played using a goose quill, but I have used fingers on two to give a contrasting sound. The first is on Hoboken, a tune related to the small town south of Antwerp.

Gloria d’amore is a tune I learnt playing for dancers. Its short phrases meant that it was usually played at least sixteen times. Here I play it only five times and have added harmonies and divisions for variety.

Adriaen Valerius’ book Neder-Landtsche Gedenck-Clanck, published posthumously in 1626, contains over 70 cittern arrangements of popular tunes, from which I include four of my favourites. Staying in Flanders, in 2011 several bundles of hitherto uncatalogued music books were found in the library at the University of Ghent. Among them lay three volumes of music for diatonic cittern, totalling 127 pieces. Initial excitement, however, was dampened when it was seen that the tablature lacked rhythm signs. Resetting this large repertoire is an ongoing project.

Branles de villages, a well-known and popular lute arrangement, is a regular feature in concerts by The European Lute Orchestra. Their cittern players take the simple background whilst the lutes take the glory. This is my opportunity to do both, inspired by its musical director Gian Luca Lastraioli. I use the diatonic cittern for the ground and the chromatic one for the melodies.

The cittern in England was frequently mocked by writers of the Tudor and Stuart periods, derided as an instrument for tavern ballads and simple tunes. Derogatory references were made by Shakespeare, Dekker and others. Whilst it’s easy to play a selection of chords for songs and dance tunes, an examination of English cittern books shows solo repertoires often required virtuosic skills to master.

The two foremost publications were those of Anthony Holborne in 1597 and Thomas Robinson in 1609, both published as tutor books, but also clearly as vehicles to demonstrate how they bring out the best of the cittern’s capabilities. Holborne categorises the contents of his book as ‘light fansies of vulgar tunes’ and ‘thinges grave and more judicious’. I have selected the rarely heard A French toy from his ‘vulgar’ section. This tune, I suspect, mocks French dance music for its drone-based simplicity. Robinson’s Wheetlies wheat-sheafe is an arrangement of his lute tune plainly called Almaine, published in 1603.

The Mulliner ms. contains nine tunes for cittern, the first six being basic ensemble parts. I have chosen two of the remaining tunes. An important source of cittern music is the Otley ms., probably started c.1610, with later additions c.1650. The Almaine by Captain Winn appears to be one of the later works. Equally important is the Mathew Holmes’s Cittern Book, a ms. containing settings of works by John Dowland, John Johnson and other figures of the lute world. From this I chose John Dowland’s Galliarde with the intention of presenting it as the cittern solo. However, examining another ms., I spotted the ensemble part for the same tune, so it became a duet. This encouraged me to create a third line to end up as a cittern trio.

The album closes gently with my own setting of Dowland’s midnight, played first with quill then fingers, followed by the dreamy Orlando sleepeth.

Enzo Puzzovio
Lincoln 2025