During the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth, citterns were made in a number of different sizes. Tenor and bass instruments were larger than the most common size pictured above. In the Italian states near the end of the sixteenth century, the bass cittern was called a ceterone and typically had a larger number of courses. On these instruments some of the lowest bass strings might be strung to a second pegbox on an extension of the neck, a design much like that of the theorbo or chitarrone.
Although the citttern seems to have developed in the Italian peninsula during the fifteenth century, it was particularly favored by the English from Elizabethan times through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was a bit less popular in France and German-speaking areas; in the Italian states after the mid sixteenth century the corresponding role seems sometines to have been played by the mandolino. In the Iberian peninsula, the guitar would usually have been used instead.
Nevertheless, the cittern had a long life as an actively-played instument, and it was used over a wide geographical area, so there was some evolution of the design and variation in tuning in different contexts. In England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they were most commonly strung with four courses of unison pairs. French and Flemish instruments also usually had four courses, but the lower two courses were were often triple strung, with one lower-pitch string and two at the upper octave. Italian citterns of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries generally had six courses, with a mixture of single and double stringing.
Only about thirty citterns and one ceterone made in the sixteenth or seventeenth-century are known to have survived. The vibrating string length of the citterns varies from about 38 cm to 62 cm, with the larger instruments being considered tenor citterns. The ceterone has two pegboxes and string lengths of 68 and 123 cm. No fifteenth-century instruments are known to have survived.
There were dozens of collections of music for the cittern published during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, containing mostly secular music presented as vocal solos with accompaniment, as well as purely instrumental music. The level of complexity, sophistication and technical difficulty varies widely. Before the early seventeenth century the cittern was generally played by professional musicians. By the mid seventeenth century it had come to be thought of as an instrument for amateurs. The early playing technique is similar to that of a lute. During the sixteenth and very early seventeenth centuries, music published for the cittern was set in tablature and clearly indicates that the strings are to be plucked with the fingers. Later, playing simple chords with a plectrum became more common.