3 m. N.E. of its station on the railway between Chiusi and Orvieto. Pop. (1901) 8381. Etruscan tombs have been found in the neighbourhood, but it is not certain that the present town stands on an ancient site. It was the birthplace of the painter Pietro Vannucci (Perugino), and possesses several of his works, but none of the first rank.
CITTÀ DI CASTELLO, a town and episcopal see of Umbria, Italy, in the province of Perugia, 38 m. E. of Arezzo by rail
(18 m. direct), situated on the left bank of the Tiber, 945 ft.
above sea-level. Pop. (1901) of town, 6096; of commune,
26,885. It occupies, as inscriptions show, the site of the ancient
Tifernum Tiberinum, near which Pliny had a villa (Epist. v. 6;
cf. H. Winnefeld in Jahrbuch des deutschen archäologischen Instituts, vi. Berlin, 1891, 203), but no remains exist above
ground. The town was devastated by Totila, but seems to have
recovered. We find it under the name of Castrum Felicitatis
at the end of the 8th century. The bishopric dates from the
7th century. The town went through various political vicissitudes
in the middle ages, being subject now to the emperor,
now to the Church, until in 1468 it came under the Vitelli:
but when they died out it returned to the allegiance of the
Church. It is built in the form of a rectangle and surrounded
by walls of 1518. It contains fine buildings of the Renaissance,
especially the palaces of the Vitelli, and the cathedral, originally
Romanesque. The 12th-century altar front of the latter in
silver is fine. The Palazzo Comunale is of the 14th century.
Some of Raphael’s earliest works were painted for churches in
this town, but none of them remains there. There is, however,
a small collection of pictures.
See Magherini Graziani, L’Arte a Città di Castello (1897).
CITTÀ VECCHIA, or Città Notabile, a fortified city of
Malta, 7 m. W. of Valletta, with which it is connected by railway.
Pop. (1901) 7515. It lies on high, sharply rising ground which
affords a view of a large part of the island. It is the seat of a
bishop, and contains an ornate cathedral, overthrown by an
earthquake in 1693, but rebuilt, which is said by an acceptable
tradition to occupy the site of the house of the governor Publius,
who welcomed the apostle Paul. It contains some rich stalls
of the 15th century and other objects of interest. In the rock
beneath the city there are some remarkable catacombs in part
of pre-Christian origin, but containing evidence of early Christian
burial; and a grotto, reputed to have given shelter to the apostle,
is pointed out below the church of San Paolo. Remains of
Roman buildings have been excavated in the town. About
2 m. E. of the town is the residence of the English governor,
known as the palace of S. Antonio; and at a like distance to
the south is the ancient palace of the grand masters of the order
of St John, with an extensive public garden called Il Boschetto.
Città Vecchia was called Civitas Melita by the Romans and
oldest writers, Medina (i.e. the city) by the Saracens, Notabile
(locale notabile, et insigne coronae regiae, as it is called
in a charter by Alphonso, 1428) under the Sicilian rule,
and Città Vecchia (old city) by the knights. It was the
capital of the island till its supersession by Valletta in 1570.
(See also Malta.)
CITTERN (also Cithern, Cithron, Cythren, Citharen, &c.;
Fr. citre, cistre, cithre, guitare allemande or anglaise; Ger. Cither,
Zither (mit Hals, with neck); Ital. cetera, cetra), a medieval
stringed instrument with a neck terminating in a grotesque and
twanged by fingers or plectrum. The popularity of the cittern
was at its height in England and Germany during the 16th and
17th centuries. The cittern
consisted of a pear-shaped body
similar to that of the lute but
with a flat back and sound-board
joined by ribs. The neck was provided with a fretted fingerboard;
the head was curved and surmounted by a grotesque
head of a woman or of an animal.[1] The strings were of wire in
pairs of unisons, known as courses, usually four in number in
England. A peculiarity of the cittern lay in the tuning of the
courses, the third course known as bass being lower than the
fourth styled tenor.
 | ||||
| 1 treble |
2 mean |
3 bass |
4 tenor | |
According to Vincentio Galilei (the father of the great astronomer)
England was the birthplace of the cittern.[2] Several
lesson books for this popular instrument were published during
the 17th century in England. A very rare book (of which the
British Museum does not possess a copy), The Cittharn Schoole,
written by Anthony Holborne in 1597, is mentioned in Sir
P. Leycester’s manuscript commonplace book[3] dated 1656,
“For the little Instrument called a Psittyrne Anthony Holborne
and Tho. Robinson were most famous of any before them and
have both of them set out a booke of Lessons for this Instrument.
Holborne has composed a Basse-parte for the Viole to play unto
the Psittyrne with those Lessons set out in his booke. These
lived about Anno Domini 1600.” Thomas Robinson’s New Citharen Lessons with perfect tunings for the same from Foure course of strings to Fourteene course, &c. (printed London, 1609, by
William Barley), contains illustrations of both kinds of instruments.
The fourteen-course cittern was also known in England
as Bijuga; the seven courses in pairs were stretched over the
finger-board, and the seven single strings,
fastened to the grotesque
head, were stretched as in the lyre à vide alongside the
neck; all the strings rested on the one flat bridge near the tail-piece.
Robinson gives instructions for learning to play the
cittern and for reading the tablature. John Playford’s Musick’s Delight on the Cithren (London, 1666) also contains illustrations
of the instrument as well as of the viol da Gamba and Pochette;
he claims to have revived the instrument and restored it to what
it was in the reign of Queen Mary.
|
| From Thomas Robinson’s New Citharen Lessons, 1609. |
Four-course Cittern. |
The cittern probably owed its popularity at this time to the
ease with which it might be mastered and used to accompany
the voice; it was one of four instruments generally found in
barbers' shops, the others being the gittern, the lute and the
virginals. The customers while waiting took down the instrument
from its peg and played a merry tune to pass the time.[4]
We read that when Konstantijn Huygens came over to England
and was received by James I. at Bagshot, he played to the
king on the cittern (cithara), and that his performance was
duly appreciated and applauded. He tells us that, although he
learnt to play the barbiton in a few weeks with skill, he had
lessons from a master for two years on the cittern.[5] On the
occasion of a third visit he witnessed the performance of some
fine musicians and was astonished to hear a lady, mother of
twelve, singing in divine fashion, accompanying herself on the
cittern; one of these artists he calls Lanivius, the British
Orpheus, whose performance was really enchanting.
Michael Praetorius[6] gives various tunings for the cittern as
- ↑ See Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, act v. sc. 2, where Boyet compares the countenance of Holofernes to a cittern head; John Forde, Lovers' Melancholy (1629), act ii. sc. I, “Barbers shall wear thee on their citterns.”
- ↑ Dialogo della musica (Florence, 1581), p. 147.
- ↑ The musical extracts from the commonplace book were prepared by Dr Rimbault for the Early English Text Society. Holborne’s work is mentioned in his Bibliotheca Madrigaliana. The descriptive list of the musical instruments in use in England during Leycester’s lifetime (about 1656) has been extracted and published by Dr F. J. Furnivall, in Captain Cox, his Ballads and Books, or Robert Laneham’s Letter (1575), (London, 1871), pp. 65-68.
- ↑ See Knight’s London, i. 142.
- ↑ See De Vita propria sermonum inter liberos libri duo (Haarlem, 1817) and E. van der Straeten, La Musique aux Pays-Bas, ii. 348-350.
- ↑ Syntagma Musicum (1618). See also M. Mersenne, Harmonie universelle (Paris, 1636), livre ii. prop. xv., who gives different accordances.
