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This particular page was created 15/03/2004 and last updated 17/05/2005
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| | During the 17th century the renaissance cittern gradually evolved with more elaborate body shapes and more strings. It become very much a "dilletante" instrument, something everybody were supposed to be able to pick up and play. English barbershops of that time used to have a cittern for their waiting customers, so the original barbershop choirs used to be accompagnied by a cittern.
The 17th century cittern is mostly associated with England, but the Swedish late 18th century singer/songwriter Carl Michael Bellman's main instrument was an old cittern he had inherited from his grandfather.
In late 17th Century Paris Italian musicians playing (bowlbacked) mandolins was very fashionable for a while. To compete, local musicians started using the mandolin name for their own citterns, and that was the beginning of today's flat- and archbacked mandolins.
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