The essays on the 'Symbolic geometry in the Renaissance Lute Rose' (Chapter 5) and the
Orpharion (Chapter 6) extend the iconographical observations of Friedemann Hellwig (1974) concerning the symbolic meaning of the lute rose and Emmanuel Winternitz (1967) on the symbolic features of the cittern from which the
orpharion is thought to have arisen.
That between the features of instruments such as the cittern and
orpharion and the symbolism of the scallop shell is convincingly and lavishly illustrated with musical instruments, literary references, and paintings.
A clear understanding of the instrument is hampered not only by this ambiguous iconography but also by the lack of any surviving examples, and modern builders have had to rely on adapting the design of the smaller but simpler
orpharion to measurements that would fit the known range and size of the bandora.
but you must understand that those songs which are made for the high key be made for more life, the other in the low key with more gravitie and staidnesse, so that if you sing them in contrarie keyes, they wil loose their grace and wil be wrested as it were out of their nature: for take an instrument, as a Lute
Orpharion, Pandora, or such like, being in the natural pitch, and set it a note or two lower it wil go much heavier and duller, and far from that spirit which it had before, much more being foure notes lower than the naturall pitch.
