A large Italian bass guitar popular in the Renaissance and Baroque periods, with extended strings and a deep, resonant sound.
From Italian chitarrone, an augmentative form of chitarra with the suffix -one meaning 'large.' Developed during the 16th-17th centuries for accompaniment in opera and chamber music.
The chitarrone was the bass guitar of the Baroque era, and composers like Monteverdi wrote specifically for it in operas—it's the ancestor of modern orchestral bass instruments and the electric bass guitar!
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