18th century 7-course cistre or guitthare allemande of my own design. 48 cm mensur (2024)

While original an 18th century English guittar is not all that uncommon to come by via auction or private sale today, the 18th century cistre or guitthare allemande is less commonly available to the modern player. It is possible that fewer of them were built when compared with the guittar, though it is also possible that they just didn't survive, having fallen victim to the wrath of the working classes during the French Revolution. So I decided to build a re-creation of one for my own enjoyment and study, using knowledge I have gained from my study and restoration of numerous English guittars. 

Though the body outline of the cistre was often a pear form, many variations exist with regard to the curvature of the lower bout and how upright or sloped the upper section is. Even body types by the famous builder Gérard J. Deleplanque (c. 1754-1790) varied substantially over the course of his career. Given all of the variation, I decided to choose a body shape that I found visually appealing: anonymous cistre E.539 in the Musée de la Musique, Paris. Using this body shape and the basic measurements available from the museum, I was able to create a full-sized drawing for myself.

One thing I found lacking in many of the cistres was an elegant pegbox design. For this I turned instead to a pegbox by famous furniture maker and English guittar maker Frederick Hinz / Hintz (1711-1772).  The pegbox from one of his guittars (private collection) is almost a work of art unto itself. His sense of grace and proportion are evident in his work, and the simple elegance of his pegbox was something I wanted to replicate for my own build. 

Historical French cistres, much like English guittars, were made with a wide variety of ornamentation, from simple unfigured wooden instruments to those made of highly figured woods and embellished with ebony, ivory, tortoise shell, and/or mother of pearl. For this instrument, I wanted to copy the style of the many surviving guittars with tortoise shell fingerboards. These fingerboards were often made of a core of pine, maple, or oak then painted or stained so that the color would show through the thin and translucent shell. Since it is illegal to use actual tortoise shell today, I decided to challenge myself to create something that looked authentic even while utilizing modern materials. To that end, I used a core of maple stained red then burnished to a high gloss before being overlaid with a layer of artificial tortoise shell (the type of which is often used for modern guitar pick guards today). I then edged the fingerboard with strips of ebony, as per the usual construction of the time. For additional contrast, I added a strip of b/w/b purfling  between the faux shell and the ebony. I echoed this motif in the design of the pegbox finial, where the purfling creates a vivid contrast between the faux shell and the ebony border. 

For the bone (or historically, ivory) decoration near the nut and end of the fingerboard, I copied the design used by guittar builders of the time, as can be seen on this restored guittar by Michael Rauche from 1761.

Inasmuch as there was variation in the design of instruments, there was even more variation in the types of roses used at the time. Though some French instruments used cast brass roses like were used on some guittars, the surviving alternative generally appears to be the use of parchment as opposed to the wooden roses that were used on guittars. For this rose, I selected one used on an archcistre (Paris E.996.24.1) that was very similar to that used by on a 1762 baroque guitar by Joseph R. Bertet (d. after 1780). To create this rose, I enlisted the services of parchment rose maker Elena Dal Cortivo, who did an amazing job.

For the body and neck of the instrument, I chose a well aged air-dried piece of highly figured tiger stripe maple from my stock, from which I was able to resaw several additional back and side sets for future instruments. For the soundboard, I wanted something equally special, so I selected a very highly figured piece of bear claw European Spruce (Picea abies).  Other parts, such as the hitch pins and string saddle, were historically made from ivory. Instead, I substituted bone for the saddle and turned my own hitch pins from tagua nut (a.k.a. "vegetable ivory") in imitation of the ivory originals.

Though most cistres of the time used traditional pegs, many of the contemporary English guittars used a newly invented "watch key tuning box," which utilized advances in metal working to create the first geared tuners. Such geared tuners allowed for much finer tuning for wire strings. The historical cistre, however, used wire-covered gut or silk strings for the lowest strings, the stretchiness of which would not work well with the watch-key system. (For more on historical stringing of the cistre, see here.) Therefore, for ease of tuning but in keeping with the spirit of mechanical innovation of the time, I opted to use modern planetary-geared pegs. Since I encountered some difficulty in getting ones of the correct dimensions of all the same brand, I ended up using pegs from both Pegheds and Perfection Pegs, and modified the heads of each so that they would match in style. 

For the actual construction of the instrument, I leveraged my knowledge of the typical dimensions and building styles used on 18th century guittars. The neck is attached to the separate neck block via both glue and a screw, as was historically done. As for the barring, surviving cistres in museums show interior barring patterns that appear to be quite basic and very similar to those on many guittars of the 18th century, which is what I used here. The back and top are quite thin (~1.5-1.8 mm), and the bars (which are supported at the ends by vertical supports) were trimmed so as to provide just enough stiffness against the force of the strings while also allowing the back and soundboard to vibrate freely. Overall, this particular instrument ended up being both loud and sonorous, with great balance across the strings and an incredible sustain. I look forward to making more of them for sale in the future.