Building the Medieval Citole
The body and neck of the medieval citole was carved from a solid block of wood. The soundboard was glued on separately. Owing to the unreliability of glues during the middle ages, this construction technique would have resulted in an instrument that didn't come apart very often. By the early Renaissance, citoles were made by making the sides and back separately and gluing them up. I built this citole in the later style on a solid mold. Here the sides have been bent, clamped to the mold and glued to the end blocks.
The back is glued to the sides. In spite of all the clamps, the pressure is kept very light to avoid a starved joint (squeezing out so much glue that the joint fails).
The citole pegbox is drilled out before being carved with a chisel.
This citole will have five single strings. An exhaustive study of medieval and early Renaissance iconography showed citoles with anywhere from four strings to twelve strings, sometimes in pairs. String numbers are calculated by counting pegs, not strings, since the medieval artist didn't usually paint in the strings very well.
The neck and pegbox are cut from a single piece of figured maple.
Brute force carving with a spokeshave. A quick way to remove a lot of wood by hand.
Steps in carving the rose, showing both front and back. The paper will be left on the inside of the soundboard to support the fragile rosette. It will be sanded off the top.
The soundboard is glued onto the sides. The neck has already been attached to the body, but the fingerboard has yet to be glued on.
I made a small miter-box exactly the width of the fingerboard to cut the slots for the brass frets.
Brass bar stock was glued into the slotted fingerboard and the wood is scalloped between the frets, which were set in flush with the top of the fingerboard. The scalloping eliminates buzzing. This is how some cittern fingerboards were constructed. The Renaissance cittern is one of the descendents of the citole.
I glued bracing on the cittern back in a simplified version of lute bracing. There are no surviving citoles so I just decided to think backwards for the bracing pattern and guess how a late medieval luthier would have done the bracing.
I used a reddish-brown varnish on the back and sides, and a lighter brown varnish on the soundboard (see photo at top of page).
I turned the pegs in a shape that echoes the body shape. The pegs are made from English boxwood.
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