Cittern

Renaissance Cittern


This instrument is a bit of a one-off, in that it was made by our friend Tony Millyard who normally makes flutes and baroque oboes. It’s made from an Early Music Shop kit and is a copy of an original in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The cittern has wire strings rather than gut and is played with a plectrum which makes it louder than a lute. Historically there are various different tunings for it – I tune mine cc-GgG-dd-gg.

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