OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC MUSIC LIBRARY Qr3 University of GaiiforniB , B«rk«toy /' LIBRARIAN'S FUft'O Printed in Great Britain TO THE MASTER WARDENS, COURT OF ASSISTANTS AND LIVERY OF THE WORSHIPFUL COMPANY OF MUSICIANS Floruit— Floret— Florebit 214917 PREFACE WHEN the General Editor asked me to contribute a volume on Musical Instruments to the series of The Antiquary's Books I found myself confronted by two great difficulties : there was, first of all, the vast extent of the subject, of which mere portions have already called forth large and important works ; and then there was the question whether it would be possible to put in a popular form material which should also satisfy the in- quiries of the student and archaeologist. The latter re- quirement will explain the admission of much which might otherwise be thought unnecessary ; for instance, to the ordinary reader it may seem a needless task to describe the compass, pitch and tunings of these old- world instruments, and yet there are no details about which I have been so frequently asked, especially by those who happen to possess musical relics and desire to hear once more the voices of the past. Having a pro- found sympathy with such desire, I hope they will find that, although the introduction of the Staff Notation into the text has been avoided, these interesting particulars can be easily ascertained by comparing the signs used with the key given in the Appendix. In order to deal at all adequately with so extensive a subject, it has been considered advisable to restrict it to a description of the instruments used in England and in other parts of the United Kingdom so far as they have viii OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC shared our old English life ; and it was thought that the end of the eighteenth century, or shortly after, would form a suitable point at which to close their history. The increasing popularity of the Pianoforte and the im- provements made in the Wind Instruments rendered the last century much more modern than its immediate pre- decessor. For the origin of the Musical Instruments used by our forefathers I have not hesitated to go to times most re- mote and to trace their wanderings westward through countries far removed from our island. But for literary and pictorial illustration I have confined myself almost entirely to English authors and English artists, and most of the mediaeval miniatures here reproduced are presented in this connection for the first time, as I have endeavoured to avoid the oft-repeated continental examples and to obtain photographs of musical subjects not already pub- lished. This determination added greatly to the work of pre- paration, but it achieved another interesting result ; for by the careful collation of a large number of illuminated manuscripts of undoubted English workmanship, to- gether with English ecclesiastical carvings of various periods, it has been possible to obtain some idea of the order in which the different forms of instruments ap- peared among us and of the approximate date at which they first came into use. Such details, indeed, are more than mere points in musical history : they assist the identification of the source of the manuscripts them- selves ; for example, I conclude that any work which, previous to the close of the fifteenth century, shows an illustration of the Transverse or Concert Flute cannot be considered as a genuine English production, because this PREFACE ix instrument, now so well known to us, was not introduced into this country till the reign of Henry VII or his suc- cessor, though in Germany, Italy, France, and subse- quently in Flanders, it had been in popular use from the thirteenth century. Another instrument which may assist in a similar way is the small Lute or Mandore, which did not appear in England till the close of the fourteenth century, although it had long been employed on the Continent. Illustrations which will enable such typical forms to be identified are here given. The study of Musical Instruments now no longer with us is therefore necessary, not only for the musician and composer, but for the man of letters, the artist and the chronicler of our national life ; for many allusions to customs of bygone times cannot otherwise be understood, and we should be spared such a trying ordeal as we were recently subjected to by one of our leading illustrated papers, which introduced into a thirteenth-century scene a twentieth-century Mandoline with up-to-date mechanism. To the ethnologist also such a study is invaluable, but to none does it yield so great a pleasure as to the col- lector. From the red-letter day when I secured my first " Serpent" and carried the evil beast home to awaken the echoes of Trinity Great Court, at one time the acquisi- tion and now, I am thankful to say, the more economical appreciation of all kinds of musical instruments, have given zest to holidays and recreation to leisure hours. To an Englishman, however, such a pursuit is at present a cause of much humiliation ; for as we stand among the carefully arranged collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Brussels Conservatoire of Music or of the Hochschule at Berlin, we are compelled to acknowledore that England has no such national collec- X OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC tion, no galleries where the lover of music can trace the evolution of his favourite instrument through the long ages of the past by a graded series of typical specimens clearly explained by labels, charts and handbooks. Have not the Board of Education one room to spare in their new and unrivalled building at South Kensington, where something more than a few selected instruments with costly decoration may greet the musician's eye and make him turn away with the thought that he evidently stands outside the Arts? The lines on which such a systematic collection might be simply and effectively arranged are set out in the Appendix. Before concluding this long-drawn prelude I must ac- knowledge the thanks which I owe to those who have assisted me in the present work. They are, indeed, so many, that if they are omitted by name, it is not because my appreciation of their kindly help is less sincere. I am, however, especially beholden to Mr. R. B. Arm- strong, of Edinburgh, for his valuable information on the Irish Harp, and his labour and ingenuity in making the first correct reconstruction of the oldest instrument of the kind known to us ; to the authorities of the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the London Society of Antiquaries, Lambeth Palace Library, the Bodleian Library, the Cambridge University Library, the Glasgow University Library, the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, the National Museum at Dublin, All Souls College at Oxford, Trinity College, S. John's College, Corpus Christi College, Peterhouse and the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, for the willing way in which they facilitated my work of inspecting and photographing the manuscripts and works of art in their keeping ; to Miss Weld, for permission to examine the famous Loutrell PREFACE xi Psalter, now at Lulworth Castle, Dorset ; to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster (through the Rev. Canon Duckworth) for leave to photograph the Litlington Missal ; to Sir Frederick Bridge, to whose interest in the old English instruments all owe a debt of thanks ; to Dr. T. L. Southgate, Master of the Worshipful Company of Musicians ; to Mr. A. H. Littleton, Herr C. Claudius, of Copenhagen, and the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, for illustrations of English instruments in their posses- sion ; to Miss V. Salvin, Dr. H. Watson, Dr. J. C. Cox, Mr. W. Barclay Squire, Mr. F. Bond, Mr. S. C. Cockerell, Mr. C. Goulding, to my son, Mr. C. J. Galpin, and others ; and not least, to my wife, one of the few lutenists left, for her practical interest in the production of these pages and the labour of preparing them for the press. I trust that the source from which each illustration has been taken will be found to be duly acknowledged ; if it is not mentioned, it is to be understood that the instru- ment is in my own collection. Some of my statements may be challenged by musical antiquaries, but I hope they will believe that they are given as the result of due investigation, and that the objectionable system of elaborate footnotes would have been required to trace the steps by which each conclusion was reached. If my deductions are wrong, I am willing to bear correction. That further research will reveal new facts is certain, and no one will more gladly welcome all contributions toward a better knowledge and appreciation of the old English instruments of music than the writer himself. FRANCIS W. GALPIN Hatfield Regis Vicarage Harlow BOOKS OF REFERENCE THE subjoined list is in no wise a bibliography of the subject, and is only intended to suggest works which will be found helpful for the study of Musical Instru- ments, and especiall}' of those formerly in use in our own country. Standard authorities of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as Virdung, Agricola, Prjetorius, Cerone, Mersenne and Kircher, are not included ; good reprints, however, of the first three can now be obtained. Articles in Grove's Dictionary of Music and in the Eyicyclopcedia Britannica will be found useful. - GENERAL HISTORY Prehistoric Art, by T. Wilson. Washington, 1898. T/ie World's Earliest Music, by Hermann Smith London, 1904. The Music of the Most Ancient Nations, by C. Engel. Lon- don, 1864. The History of Music, by W. Chappell. London, 1874, A General History of Ahisic, by Sir J. Hawkins. Novello's ! Ed. London, 1875. Popular Melodies of the Olden Time, by W. Chappell. Wool- dridge's Ed. London, 1893. Musical Instruments, Historic, Rare and Unique, by A. J. Hipkins and W. Gibb. London, 1888. Saimiel Pepys, Lover of Musiquc, by Sir F. Bridge. London, 1893. English Music. (The Musicians' Company's Lectures.) Lon- don, 1906. Musical Instruments, by C. Engel. (Revised Ed.) London, 1908. The Kifig's Mtisic (Lord Chamberlain's Records), by H. C. de Lafontaine. London, 1909. A mine of information. The Instruments of the Modern Orchestra, by K. Schlesinger. London, 1910. xiii xiv-OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC Musical Relics of the Welsh Bards, by E. Jones. London, 1794. Musical Memoirs of Scotlaml, by Sir J. H. Dalyell. Edin- burg-h, 1849. The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, by E. O'Curry. London, 1873, * A History of Irish Music, by W. H. Grattan Flood. Dublin, 1906. Histoire de f Instrumentation, by H. Lavoix, fils. Paris, 1878. Dissertation sur les Instrutnoits de Musique, by Bottee de Toulmon. Paris, 1848. Les Daiises des Morts, by G. Kastner. Paris, 1852. Catalogue descritif (Museum of the Conservatoire of Music, Brussels), by V. Mahillon. Gand, 1880. (In progress.) La Musique aux Pays-Bas, by E. Van der Straeten. Brussels, 1867 ff. Notes on Early Spanisli Music, by Juan F. Riano. London, 1887. Organografia musical antiqua espanola, by F. Pedrell. Bar- celona, 1900. Instruments of Music in Sculpture, by H. Leichteniritt (Mag", of hiternational Music Society). Leipzig-, igo6. STRINGED INSTRUMENTS Researches into the Early History of the Violin Family, by C. Eng-el. London, 1883. The Natural History of the Musical Bow, by H. Balfour. Oxford, 1899. Early Records of the Precursors of the Violin Family, by K. Schlesing-er. London, 1910. The History of the Violin, by W. Sandys and S. A. Forster. London, 1864. Violin- making, with historical notes, by E. Heron Allen. London, 1884. TheViolin,hy Abele (translated by Broadhouse). London, 1907. The Bow and its History, by H. Saint George. London, 1896. The Irish and the Highland Harps, by R. B. Armstrong'. Edinburgh, 1904. BOOKS OF REFERENCE xv E)ifflish (i7id Irish Instruments, by R. B. Armstrong-. Edin- burg-h, 1908. The Story of the Harp, by W. H. Grattan Flood. London, 1905. The Harp and Lyre in Old Northern Europe, by H. Panum. *1(Mag. of International Musical Society.) Leipzig-, 1905. Les Ancctres da Violon et du Violoticello, by L. Grillet. Paris, 1907. Les Instruynents a archet, by A. Vidal. Paris, 1876 ff. Essai sur les Instruments de Miisique au Moyen Age, by E. de CoLissem. Paris, 1856. Stradivari et VOrigine des Instruments a archet, by F. J. Fetis. Paris, 1856. Les Ins'ruments a Corde et « archet, by A. Tolbecque. Paris, 1898. Die Geschichte dor Bogen Insfrumente, by J. Ruhlmann. Brunswick, 1882. Die Guitarre, by E. Biernath. Berlin, 1907. WIND INSTRUMENTS The Literature of the Recorder (Mus. Soc. Trans.), by C. Welch. London, 1898. The Evolution of the Flute (Mus. Soc. Trans.), by T. L. Southgate, London, 1908. The History of the Boehm Flute, by C. Welch. London, 1883. A Treatise on the Construction and History of the Flute, by R. S. Rockstro. London, 1890. The Old British Pibcorn or Hornpipe, by H. Balfour. Lon- don, 1890. The Highland Bagpipe, by W. L. Manson. Paisley, 1901. The Bagpipe, by A. Duncan Eraser. Edinburgh, 1907. The French Horn (Mus. Soc. Trans.), by J. D. Blaikley. London, 1909. The Trumpet (Mus. Soc. Trans.), by W. Morrow. London, 1895. The Sackbut (Mus. Soc. Trans.), by F. W. Galpin. London, 1907. b xvi OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC A Short History of Military Music, by J. A. Kappey. London, ' 1894. Memoirs of the Royal Artillery Band, by H. C. Farmer, London, 1904. Descriptive Catalogue (Royal Military Exhibition), by C. R. Day. London, 189 1. Manuel general de Musiqiie Militaire, by G. Kastner. Paris, 1848. Le Trombone ; Le Cor; La Trompette (Handbooks), by V. Mahillon. Brussels and London, 1907. (In progress.) Die Musikalischcn Instrnmente in den Miniaturcn, by E. Buhle. Leipzig-, 1903. Die Blasinijistrumente , by F. Euting. Berlin, 1S99. Die Klarinette, by W. Altenburg-. Heilbronn, a. N., 1904. Die Tronipetc, by H. L. Eichborn. Leipzig, 18S1. Die alte Clarinblascn, by H. L. Eichborn. Leipzig, 1S94. VIBRATING MEMBRANES The Timpani (Mus, Soc. Trans.), by G. Gordon Cleather. London, 1909. Lcs Tiuibales, by G. Kastner. Paris, 1845. SONOROUS SUBSTANCES The Bells of England, by J. J. Raven. London, 1906. Die Geschichte der Glas Harmonica, by C. F. Bohl. Vienna, 1862. KEYBOARD INSTRUMENTS The Pianoforte, by E. F. Rimbault. London, i860. The Pianoforte and Older Keyboard Instruments, by A. J. Hipkins. London, 1896. The Organ, by E. J. Hopkins and E. F. Rimbault. London, 1870. The Story of the Organ, by C. F. Abdy Williams. London, 1903. The Art of Organ Building, by G. A. Audsley. New York, 1905. Musica mechanica Organoedi, by J. Adlung. Berlin, 1768. CONTENTS CHAPTER I FAGB Rote and Harp . . . . . . . i CHAPTER H Cittern and Citole . . . ... 20 CHAPTER HI Mandore and Lute . . . • • • 37 CHAPTER IV Psaltery and Dulcimer . . . ... 56 '^ CHAPTER V Crowd, Rebec and Viol . . . • . • 73 CHAPTER VI Organistrum and Symphony . . ... 100 CHAPTER VII Clavichord and Virginal. . . . . . 113 CHAPTER VIII Recorder and Flute . . . ... 136 CHAPTER IX Shawm and Pipe . . ... . ..157 CHAPTER X Horn and Cornett . . . ... iSo CHAPTER XI Trumpet and Sackbut . . . ... 199 xvii xviii OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC CHAPTER XII Organs Portative and Positive Tabors and Nakers CHAPTER XIII PAGE 238 Cymbals and Chimes CHAPTER XI Y 255 The Consort CHAPTER XV 270 APPENDIX 1. Abbreviations of Staff Notation 2. The Ullard "Harp" .... 3. "Single and Double" Regals . 4. The Musical Instruments of Henry VIII 5. Illustrations in Manuscripts and Carvings, etc. 6. The Classification of Instruments General Index ..... 286 287 288 292 301 311 315 The verses which introduce each chapter are taken from a manuscript in the British Museum (18. D. 11), where they are described as "The Pro- verbis in the Garet at the New Lodge in the Parke of Lekingffelde " {temp. Henry VII), from a poem by Robert Manning of Lincohishire {circa 1303), from Chaucer's Nonne Prestes Tale (1390) and from Sir William Leighton's Teares and Lamentations of a Sorrowful Sotile, published in 1613. LIST OF PLATES 13- Lady Mary Sidney with her Archlute Penshurst Place, Kent. (Photo : Mr. Eagleton.) Keltic Crots or Cruits Castledermot and Ullard Crosses, Ireland. Rotte and Horns of the Sth cent. . Brit. Mus., Vesp. A. i. Mediseval English Harps . . . . Corpus Christ! Coll., Cam. (Parker 391) and All Souls Coll., O.xford (vii.). Clarsech or Irish Harps of the 13th cent. . . . Trin. Coll., Dublin. (Photo: Mr. R. B. Armstrong.) Clarsech or Irish Harp of the iSth cent. The " Bunworth " Harp. G.C. Welsh Harp . . . . . . G.C. Medieval Citterns . . . . . Brit. Mus., Ar. S3, and Warwick Castle. Cittern, large English Guitar, Pandore and Orpharion G.C. and Claudius Collection. (Photo : C.C.) Rotte, English Cuitar, Keyed Guitar, Harp-lute and Harp-lute guitar . . . . . Ethnographical Mus., Berlin, and G.C. Mandore, Pandarina, Lute, Theorboe, Archlute, and Guitar G.C. Psaltery, .(Eolian Harp and Dulcimer G.C. Mediaeval Psaltery . .... Brit. Mus., Tib. C. vi. Kantele, Spitzharfe and Diplo-kithara G.C. and Nat. Museum, Dublin. (Photo : Mr. J. F. Buckley.) b 2 xix Frontispiece FACING PAGE 4 14 16 22 30 34 44 56 60 68 XX OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC 14. Crwth and Humstrum .... G.C. and Dorset County Museum. 15. Mediaeval Rebec and Rybybe Canterbury Cathedral and Barfreston Church, Kent. 16. Lyra, Rebec, Hiisla, Treble Viol and Kits G.C. 17. Eng-lish Bass Viol (Viola da Gamba) G.C. 18. Viola d'Amore, Sultana and Hurdy-gurdy , G.C. 19. Trumpet Marine . . . • G.C. 20. Musical Instruments of the late 12th cent. . Glasgow University Library, U. 3. 2. 21. Mediaeval Symphony : Rotes, Rebecs and Psalteries Brit. Mus., Sloane 3544, and Oxford, Bodleian 352. (Photo : Clar 22. Clavichords ..... G.C. and Dr. T. L. Southgate. (Photo : T.L.S.) 23. Pentagonal and Upright Spinets . G.C. 24. Flemish Virginal .... G.C. 25. English Virginal .... The Yorkshire Philosophical .Society. (Photo : Y.P.S.) 26. English Double Harpsichord G.C. 27. English Spinet and Pianoforte G.C. 28. Vertical Flute : Pipe and Tabor with Double Recorder Brit. Mus., 2 B. vii and 10 E. iv. 29. Recorders ..... G.C. 30. Panpipes, Nay, Pipe and Tabor, English Flutes and Flageolets G.C. 31. Transverse Flutes . .... G.C. FACING PAGE 76 LIST OF PLATES xxi FACING PAGE 32. Shawms, Krumhorn and Curtails . . . . 164 G.C. 22. Mediaeval Shawm and Nakers . . ... 166 Loutrell Psalter, Lulworth, Dorset. 34. Zamr, Whithorn, Hautboys, Cor Ang-lais, Bassoons, Pipes and Clarionet . . . . . . 168 G.C. 35. Pibcorn or Hornpipe and Double Recordet . . .171 London Society of Antiquaries and All Souls College, Oxford. 36. Horns and Trumpets of the early 14th cent. . . . 182 Brit. Mus., 2 B. vii; All Souls Coll., O.vford, vii ; Trin. Coll., Cam., B. 10. 2, and Brit. Mus., 10 E. iv. 37. Forester's and Watchman's Horns, Oliphant, Hunting- and Hand Horns . . . . ." . . 188 G.C. 38. Musical Instruments of the early nth cent. . . . 192 Cambridge, Univ. Library, Ff. L 23. 39. Cornetts, Serpent, Basshorn, Ophicleide and Keyed Bugle . . 196 G.C. 40. Mediaeval Trumpet and Clarions . . ... 202 Lambeth Palace Library, 6, and Brit. Mus., Harley Roll 7353. 41. Buzine, Clarion and Eng-lish Field Trumpet . . . 204 G.C. and Mr. A. H. Littleton. (Photo: A.H.L.) 42. Sackbuts, Slide Trumpet, Cornopean and Cornet . . . 210 G.C. 43. Musical Instruments of the 12th cent. , ... 218 S. John's Coll., Cam., B. 18. 44. Mediaeval Orgfan and Sj-mphony . . ... 226 Reading Psalter, Belvoir Castle. By permission of the New Palaeo- graphical Society. 45. Org-ans Portative and Positive . . ... 228 G.C. 46. Bible Reg-al . . . . ... 230 G.C. 47. Larg-e English Regal . . . ... 232 The Castle, Blair AihoU, N.B. xxii OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC FACING PAGE 48. A Page of the Loutrcll Psalter . . ... 238 Loutrell Psalter, Lulworth, Dorset. 49. The Tournament with Clarion and Nakers . ... 248 Worcester Cathedral. 50. Oriental Drums and Cymbals, English Handbell, Turkish Crescent and Harmonicas . . ... 258 G.C. 51. Chime-bells . . . . ... 264 Lambeth Palace Library, 233. 52. Musical Instruments of the 13th cent. . ... 272 Brit. Mus., Add. 35166. 53. Musical Instruments of the early 15th cent. . . . 276 Brit. Mus., I E. ix. 54. A Consort for the Masque at Sir Henry Unton's Marriage . . 280 National Portrait Gallery. (Photo : Messrs. Methuen.) To show the scale of the objects illustrated from the Author's own collec- tion (marked G.C.) an English foot measure has been included in the Plates. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT PAGE Harp and Rote — 12th or 13th cent. . . ... 8 From Gerbert's De Cantn et Musicn Sacra. Harp — 10th cent. . . . . ... 11 From Caedmon's Paraphrase, Oxford, Bodl. Lib., Junius XI. Citole — 14th cent. . . . ... 28 Minstrels' Gallery, Exeter Cathedral. Citole — 15th cent. . . . ... 28 Beverley Minster, Yorks. (Photo : Mr. C. Goulding.) Mandore — late 14th cent. . . . ... 39 Abbot Litlington's Missal, Westminster Abbey. Lute — late 15th cent. . . . ... 42 Brit. Mus., Harl. 2S3S. Lute Music (with translation) — 17th cent. . . . . 52 From Mace's Musick's MoHHinent, 1676. Bell Harp . . . . ... 63 From Dalyell's iMtesical Aleiiioirs. Psaltery — 15th cent. . . . ... 65 Manchester Cathedral. From Crovvther's History, by permission of Messrs. Cornish. Dulcimer — 15th cent. . . . ... 65 Manchester Cathedral. From Crowther's History, by permission of Messrs. Cornish. Crowd — early nth cent. . . . • • • 75 Cambridge University Library. Ff. I. 23. Crowd — early 15th cent. . . . ... 75 S. Mary's Church, Shrewsbury. Lyra — 12th or 13th cent. . . . ... So From Gerbert's De Cantii et Mnsica Sacra. Rybybe — early 14th cent. . . . ... 82 All Souls College, Oxford, vli. Cittern — early 14th cent. . . . ... 82 All Souls College, Oxford, vii. xxiv OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC Viol — early 12th cent. Trinity College, Cambridge, O. 4. 7. Org-anistrum — early 13th cent. Abbot Lindesey's Psalter, London Soc. of Antiquaries. Symphony — 14th cent. Loutrell Psalter, Lulworth, Dorset. Organistrum and Symphony Actions From Gerbert's De Cantii, etc., and an old specimen. Clavichord — early 15th cent. S. Mary's Church, Shrewsbury. Clavicymbal — 15th cent. Manchester Cathedral. Virginal Music — early 17th cent. From a Virginal Book, Fitzwilliam Museum Library, Cambrid Virginal and Clavicytherium Actions From existing specimens. Clavichord and Pianoforte Actions From existing specimens. Recorder — late 12th cent. Glasgow Univ. Library, U. 3. 2. Recorder — 13th cent. Oxford, Bodl. Lib. Douce 366. (Photo: Clarendon Press.) Flageolet Music (with translation), 17th cent. . From Thomas Greeting's Pleasant Companion, 1675. Double Recorder — early i6th cent. S. John's Church, Cirencester. From Carter's Specii>iens of Sculpture Shawm — 12th cent. Canterbury Cathedral. Shawm — 14th cent. Lambeth Palace Library, 233. Bumbarde — 15th cent. Beverley Minster, Yorks. (Photo : Mr. C. Goulding.) Double Shawm — early 14th cent. Loutrell Psalter, Lulworth, Dorset. Bagpipe — Roman From MunUnenta Antigua. Bagpipe — early 14th cent. Brit. Mus., 2 B. vii. Bagpipe — early 14th cent. Gorleston Psalter (Mr. C. W. Dyson Perrins). By permission of Mr. S 176 C. Cockerell. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT xxv Circular Horn— late 14th cent. Worcester Cathedral. Cornett — 12th cent. Canterbury Cathedral. Portative Orgfan — early i4tli cent. Peterborough Psalter, Mus. Royal, Bru^sels. Portative Origan — 14th cent. Trinity College, Cambridge, 15. 10. 2. Positive Orgfan — early 14th cent. Peterborough Psalter, Mus. Royal, Brussels. Earl}' Org-an Actions From drawings and existing specimens. Portative Orgfan — 15th cent. Manchester Cathedral. From Crowther's History, Timbrel — early 14th cent. IJrit. Mus., Harl. 6563. Drinn and Fife — c. 1540 Brit. Mus., Aug. A. iii. Drum Music — 17th cent. From T'ansur's Elements of Mustek. Cymbals and Trumpet — 14th cent. Brit. Mus., 2 B. vii. A Consort — i6th cent. From Spenser's Shephcard's Calendar, 1579. by permission of Messrs. C PAGE 190 224 229 Ornish. 241 245 246 257 279 Where no acknowledgfment is made the photogfraphs and drawing's in these lists have been prepared and supplied by the Author. '' Of THE \ UNIVERSITY j OF / OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC CHAPTER I ROTE AND HARP The Harp is an instrumente of swete melodye, Rude intelligfens of the sounde conceyvethe no armonye ; But who so in that instrumente hathe no speculacion, What restithe vvithyn the sovvnde horde hathe but smale probacion. Lekingfelde Proverb {temp. Henry VII). AMID the confused mass of legendary lore and heroic romance which so unfortunately obscures our accurate knowledge of the early history of the British Isles and the conditions — social and artistic — under which their inhabitants lived, one fact stands forth as well ascertained, and it is this — that the first stringed instrument recognized by them which we can consider at all worthy of "Dame Musicke and her art" took the form of a lyre, similar to but not necessarily identical with the classic forms of Greece and Rome. The Sicilian traveller Diodorus, who lived and wrote just before the Christian era, tells us in the fifth book of his Historical Library that among the Kelts were to be found certain musical composers who were called Bards, and that they accompanied their songs of praise or of invective upon instruments "like lyres" {opyaviav ral^ \vpais o/jiolcov) ', whilst the historian Ammianus, who I 2 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC flourished about the year 375 a.d., carries the com- parison still further, and in his fifteenth chapter de- scribes the Bards as chanting the deeds of their illus- trious men in heroic verse to the sweet strains of the lyre {diilcibus lyrce tnodiilis). To this instrument the early inhabitants of our islands gave the name of Crot or Cruit ; for in an old Gaedhelic legend, which describes a battle fought in Ireland be- tween the inhabitants and a horde of piratical intruders called Fomorians, the Druid chieftain invokes his magic lyre (Crot) by the name " Coircethairchuir," which the great Irish scholar O'Curry has translated **Thou quad- rangular harmonious one" — an epithet which could be applied only to some form of lyre. According to the Irish annals the battle occurred in the year 1800 B.C., but the date is not necessarily so remote. The effect of the Druid's performance was truly wonderful : the story tells how, in order to discover the fate of a favourite musician, he and two comrades had penetrated into the camp of the enemy, where they found the lyre hanging in the ban- queting hall. At the voice of the Druid it leaped from the wall and came to him at once, killing nine persons on its way. On it he played the three great musical strains of his nation : at the sound of the first tears filled all eyes ; with the second he overcame them with uncontrol- lable laughter ; and finally, with the third, he sent the entire host to sleep, during which the three champions made good their escape with the magic Crot. The same name in a Latinized form is presented to us in the well-known poem of Venantius Fortunatus, who was Bishop of Poictiers about the year 600 a.d. In it he exhorts the Roman to sing to the Lyre, the Greek to the Cythara, the Briton to the Chrotta (the Latinized form of the word Crot), and the Barbarian, of whom more pre- sently, to the Harp ; and it is immaterial to our purpose ROTE AND HARP 3 whether the writer wished to confine his exhortation to his neighbours the Bretons or included also the inhabit- ants of our own islands ; for not only was communi- cation across the Channel frequent and close, but the peoples were practically identical in race, language and customs. Now if it be asked from what source the ancient Britons obtained this lyre-shaped instrument, the most probable answer is, from their earlier home on the Summerian Plain of Western Asia. For there, in that cradle of the Aryan race, the existence of the lyre is proved by its appearing in a bas-relief recently discovered in Chaldea, which must certainly have been wrought three thousand years before Christ. From this source the Greeks, and consequently the Romans, obtained it, and the Homeric Kitharis and the Keltic Crot have a common parentage. Some, it is true, would account for its presence in Ireland through the influx of the Milesians, who came from Northern Spain accompanied by a Cruitire or Crot- player ; but if Irish annals are to be trusted, the instru- ment is mentioned in legends (such as that already described) which are connected with events certainly anterior to the arrival of these latest immigrants. Among the northern nations of Europe the same in- strument appears ; in Germany it was so popular that in a manuscript of the twelfth or thirteenth century a.d., found by Abbot Gerbert in the monastery of S. Blasius, it is called the Cythara teutonica^ and is depicted as a lyre with rounded angles, slightly incurved sides and seven strings (Fig. i). An almost identical instrument, but with five strings only and a pendent tuning-key, is also depicted by the same writer in his De Canta et Musica Sacra from another manuscript found in the monastery. Unfortunately both of the originals perished in a fire which destroyed the monastic library in 1768. Similar 4 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC instruments are shown in Notker's Psalter of the tenth century. Illustrations from sculptured Irish crosses of the eighth and ninth centuries are given in Plate I ; they represent the two forms of Cruit — the smaller and earlier form, re- sembling the lyre, and also the larger Cruit, which came into use during the seventh century, but disappeared before the more popular Clarsech or Irish Harp of the eleventh century, as described later on in this chapter. By that time, however, the instrument was generally known on the Continent as the Hrotta, Rotta or Rotte, the second form of the name being, in fact, substituted for the word Chrotta in one of the versions of Venantius' poem just quoted ; and whilst it still maintained its popu- larity in Ireland, where it was still called Cruit, it had in England to a great extent disappeared from practical use under the change of nationality and the advent of the more attractive Harp. For in the eighth century Gut- berct, an English abbot, in a letter to his friend Lullus Archbishop of Mainz, says that he would be greatly obliged if he would send him over a musician " who can play upon the instrument \cithant'\ that we call a Rotte, because I have an instrument but I have no performer." The word Rotte, in fact, does not appear in the Anglo- Saxon language, but the word cytere^ which is found, may have represented the instrument. A Rotte which was in actual use at or even before this period is now preserved in the Ethnographical Museum at Berlin. It was found in the Black Forest, in the grave of a warrior, together with his sword and bow. His be- loved Rotte was lying on his breast clasped by his arms ; but owing to its great age, strings, pegs and bridge had all perished. It is made of oak, blackened by the lapse of centuries, and consists of a lower board about three- quarters of an inch in thickness, hollowed out through- PLATE 1 _ J -jiKe-'i. ■.'.-. •■*«,.•- '»,!<* ' .-VA*- .'^^." •-- ,' ||^t**^*»*'»'ir/f*--' ■.. ■* - - < w7'':''M'-: 4 %|,i^iJfe^^ .»rS5 ^^Mp *,' ' '^K _^^^'^' 4 - '*«• * > , , T"?"*^ . -. -^■?'^>- -• '0^ ^^•R' _ _ ^^^ u □ X - b H Of Ty UNIVERSITY 1 ROTE AND HARP 5 out almost its entire length with a thin upper board or front covering the whole. Its total length is thirty inches, the width at the base barely six and three-quarter inches, and across the top bar eight inches. There were originally six strings, but no sound-holes, and two small slits on the arms held a suspending cord. An illustration of an exact facsimile of this interesting and valuable relic, with strings, pegs, and bridge added, is given on Plate IX. Another, but later, example has been disinterred in Norway, and is illustrated by Engel in his Early History of the Violin Family. It had seven strings, and three of the original pegs are still existing. The learned author considers that the back of the instrument is missing, but from his drawing it is evident that it is the thin front board that is lost. This Rotte, called by Scandi- navian antiquaries Straengleg, is two feet in length, eleven inches wide, and four inches deep. The back is convex like the shell of a tortoise. Of the tuning of the Rotte we have at present no details ; but from ancient records we learn that, when the instrument was not in use, it was generally kept in a leathern bag, which was slung across the back of the itinerant performer. The tuning-key is also mentioned, and, as has been already stated, is depicted in contem- porary manuscripts. As a rule no plectrum was used, but the strings of sinew or metal were touched by the fingers of the left hand. There is a fine illustration of a six-stringed Rotte in an English manuscript of the eighth century (Brit. Mus., Vesp. A. i), and another with five strings, of the same date, but showing the reverse side of the instrument, in a Psalter belonging to Durham Cathedral. A third example of its use is found in the frontispiece of an Anglo-Saxon Psalter of the eleventh century at the University Library, Cambridge, where it is seen in the hands of Heman, while Asaph is playing 6 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC on the bowed Rotte (the Crwth or Crowde), of which we shall speak in a subsequent chapter. Of these examples the first and third are reproduced in Plates II and XXXVIII. Rottes with other instruments are also shown on Plate XXI from an eleventh-century apocalypse of English workmanship in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. In English literature of the thirteenth century onwards the name is spelt Rote, but it is the same instrument. For Chaucer, after he has told us of the accomplishments of the Friar in his Canterbury pilgrimage, that Wei couthe he synge and pleyen on a Rote, adds : — And in his harping when that he hadde sunge His eyen twynkled in his hed arig-ht As don the starres in the frosty night. Owing, however, to the altered spelling of the word, an unfortunate confusion has arisen between this instrument and the Rota, which is used by some of the later Latin writers to denote the Organistrum, described in a sub- sequent chapter, a Viol played by the revolution of a wheel {rota). Gower, in the Confess io Amantis (1393), spells the name Riote, and Edmund Spenser, in the Faerie Quecne, still remembering or discerning its similarity to the instrument of classic days, describes Apollo's Lyre as *' Phoebus' Rote." In a poem by John Lydgate, entitled '* Reson and Sensualite," written about the year 1420, the following lines occur in the description of a garden concert : — For there were Rotys of Almayne, And eke of Aragon and Spain. This allusion enables us to explain a difficulty. The ordinary Rote had from five to eight strings, but we also read of Rotes furnished with seventeen strings. The author who mentions this more elaborate instrument is ROTTE AND HORNS EAKLV EIGHTH CENTURY. (bRIT. MUS.) ROTE AND HARP 7 Guirant de Calanson, a Proven9al poet at the commence- ment of the thirteenth century. Now Notker the elder, who preceded him by three hundred years, informs us that already players had altered the ten-stringed triangular Psaltery to suit their greater convenience, and had added to the number of the strings, giving it the barbarous name Rotte. Moreover, the Arab writer Ashshakandi tells us that in his day (1231) the Rotteh was a musical instrument which, with others, was made in Seville. From this we conclude that there were two forms of the Rote in use in the later centuries of the Middle Ages, the lyre-shaped northern form, **the Rote of Almayne," of which we have already given illustrations from English as well as from German sources, and a southern form, somewhat triangular in shape, with many more strings, backed by a sound-board similar to that of the Psaltery, but distinct from it, which was known as the *' Rote of Aragon and Spain." Examples of this instrument occur in the miniatures which adorn one of the thirteenth- century manuscripts of the Cantigas de Santa Maria in the library of the Escorial. It is impossible to say at what period the ordinary Rote went out of general use in this country; perhaps, in Spenser's day even, the word lingered only as a poetical fancy. It is, however, interesting to observe that one form of the Harp-Lute invented, or rather re- suscitated, by Edward Light of London, at the close of the eighteenth century, was practically a revival of the ancient lyre-shaped Rote with twelve strings, seven of which passed over a short finger-board. It is illustrated on Plate IX. This instrument, which is still occasion- ally met with in curiosity shops and auction-rooms, was tuned as follows: — Open string^s — g c^ d^ e^ f^. On the finger-board — gi a^ b^ c- e^ g- c^. 8 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC The pitch was a sixth lower. It was strung with gut strings, with the exception of the lowest string, which was of covered silk. The instrument was yet further improved by Wheatstone under the name of the Imperial Harp-Lute. Unfortunately it gives no clue to the tuning and scale of the ancient Crot or Rote. ,V s *^y^ .... ^, (Ta TCUTOmCdL. Fig. I. Harp and Rote — 12th or 13th cent. (S. Blasius) We pass to the Harp, and here we are treading on dangerous ground, for to the Sister Isle this instrument has for centuries stood as the emblem of her nationality. In the twelfth or thirteenth century manuscript, however, found by Gerbert at S. Blasius, side by side with the " Cythara teutonica" or Rote just described, we see the figure of a twelve-stringed Harp, and over it is written " Cythara anglica " (Fig. i). ROTE AND HARP 9 Grattan Flood, in his History of Irish MnsiCy which is as full of patriotism as it is of valuable information, simply claims this illustration as that of an Irish instrument, and, whilst he acknowledges with the savant O'Curry that the Cruit was originally a form of Lyj-e, he nevertheless calls it a small Irish Harp. There is no evidence, either from manuscript or sculpture, at present forthcoming, to show that the Harp, in the triangular form in which we know it, was used at all in Ireland or by the Keltic people before the end of the tenth century. That they possessed large Cruits as well as smaller forms is, as we have already said, well known, both from the allusions of Irish writers and the examples carved on the ancient crosses erected during the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries in Ireland and the west of Scotland ; but these instruments were quadrangular in shape, as shown in the rubbing of the Cross of Ullard, in County Kilkenny, represented in Plate I and of which a further account is given in the Appendix (p. 287). In these large Cruits the sound- board was still placed behind the strings as in the smaller form from which they were evolved. An English illustra- tion of an instrument very similar to the quadrangular Cruit will be found in the twelfth-century Psalter pre- served in the Library of St. John's College, Cambridge (Plate XLIII). Whence, then, came this true Harp, which gradually, but effectually, supplanted the earlier lyre-shaped and quadrangular instruments? We fear it came from Eng- land; not that the English necessarily invented it ; more probably they possessed it in common with the great Scandinavian tribes of Northern Europe. For, acknowledging, as we must, the advanced Christian civilization of Ireland and of the Keltic people in the sixth century, we cannot allow ourselves to suppose that the Bishop of Poictiers would willingly or consistently lo OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC apply to them the words of his poem — " Let the Barbarian sing to the Harp." To the good Bishop Barbarians meant the hordes of heathen invaders who had by this time obtained a footing in Brittany, as they had for more than a century in Britain. It was the Angle, the Saxon and the Northman who used the Harp, " the sole accompani- ment of their barbarian songs," as Venantius also tells us, the bonds of kinship and community of interest binding them close together, until in the ninth century they met as rivals. The Harp is mentioned in the greatest English epic extant, Beotmilf, which appeared in the sixth century, and this remarkable work not only has for its subject the heroes of Scandinavia, but closely resembles in its poetic form the oldest Norse Sagas, in this respect being far superior to the earliest productions of Gothic Germany. In it we find the popularity of the Harp already es- tablished, whereas both in France and also in Germany it slowly crept into favour in later times. Whether the old Norsemen, who could put such excellent clinker-built boats on the sea, gave to the earlier Eastern Harp the front stay or pillar which is the characteristic mark of the Western type, it is impossible to say. It would be no very new thing had they done so ; for some of the later Greek Trigons — the triangular Harps of Asia Minor — were very similar in structure, though perhaps not in size, to the earliest Northern instruments. It may be that in their long voyages of discovery and pillage these Sons of the Sea had obtained such forms ; or perhaps the placing of a stick between the two ends of the curved Eastern Harp to resist the string pressure occurred to them spon- taneously. All we know is that to this instrument, how- ever produced, they gave the name Harpa^ or in Anglo- Saxon Hearpe^ from the word harpan^ to pluck, which embodies the old Aryan root rap, to seize or clutch. I'LATF. .i PI'^'St^P^^'^n^r^'prs'^'F^MEs^^iir^ l^ixSKi€S^i«^ ROTE AND HARP II Even to this day the position of the harpist's hands suggests the claw-like action of his forefathers who played with their long nails. An interesting passage, bearing upon the introduc- tion of the Harp by the English, is contained in the seventh book of The His- tory of the Kings of Britain, by Geoffrey of Monmouth (1100-54). He is, it is true, writing of a time six cen- turies anterior to his own, but he claims to have had access to a most ancient book in the British tongue, and doubtless also incor- porated in his own work many floating traditions. He informs us that when Colgrin, whose father had succeeded Hengist in the leadership of the English invaders, was besieged in York by the Britons, his brother, Boldulph, reached him with the news of re- inforcements by shaving his head, and dressing like a strolling player on the Harp {Cythara). But on this occasion the Harp would have be- trayed his nationality, so we are told he walked up and down in the British trenches showing his skill as a minstrel by playing strains of his own composition on a Lyre {Lyra), the Chrotta. As this was the popular instrument of the Britons, it effectually aided the disguise. Then, grad- ually approaching the walls of York, he was recognized by Fig-. 2. Harp — loth cent. (Oxford) 12 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC his compatriots, and drawn up by a rope into the city. An illustration of the English Harp of the tenth century taken from a manuscript of the Metrical Paraphrase of Genesis by Caidmon in the Bodleian Library (Junius xi), is given in Fig. 2, and with it may be compared those of the Harp as depicted in an eleventh-century manuscript preserved in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (Plate III), in another of the same century at the Cambridge University Library (Plate XXXVIII), and in an early fourteenth-century manuscript in the Library of All Souls College, Oxford (Plate III), where the royal musician is endeavouring to tune his instrument. All these illustrations are of English workmanship. Early examples by English artists are also shown in a British Museum manuscript (Harl. 603) of the tenth or eleventh century, and in eleventh-century manuscripts in the British Museum (Tib. C. vi, Ar. 60 and Claud. B. iv), and the Bodleian Library (Bodl. 352). We may perhaps warn the unwary that the Harp found in the eighth-century manuscript at the British Museum (Vesp. i A. i) is on an inserted page of the thirteenth century. Early in the eleventh century the Irish Bards adopted the instrument of their music-loving neighbours, but they did not take its name Hearpe, so strange to their ears : they made use of their own old word Cruit, which, as we shall presently see, came to be applied to any stringed instrument, whether Lyre, Harp, or Fiddle. Moreover, the English Harp, thus transplanted into Ireland, received under the genius and scholarly training of the Bardic schools a remarkable development. Its strings, of untanned hide or twisted horsehair, were replaced by those of metal, gold, silver or a white bronze called Findruine, materials which had probably been already used for the strings of the quadrangular Cruits. Perhaps the earliest illustration of the Irish instru- FLATK 4 IMChU i 3 V 5 6 ' 9 -1 II CLARSECH OR IRISH HARP EARI.V THIKTEENTH CENTUUV. (IKINIIS COLLEGE, DLlSLLv) '^>. Of ROTE AND HARP 13 ment is afforded in the carvings on the west front of Ardmore Cathedral, of about the twelfth century, repro- duced in the Journal of the Society of Antiquaries of Ire/and (Vol. XXXIII). This more elaborate Harp was called Ctarsec/i, and the illustrations on Plates IV, V, show two existing specimens. The smaller is the O'Brien Harp of the early thirteenth century, preserved in Trinity College, Dublin, and popularly, but erroneously, known as the Harp of King Brian Borumna. As cleverly re- stored to its original form by Mr. R. B. Armstrong, it shows the characteristic shape of all the earlier wire- strung Clarsechs both in Ireland and Scotland. The larger, known as the Bunworth Harp, was made by John Kelly in 1734, and is typical of the instrument at the close of its existence. Both Harps are well described and illustrated with others in Mr. Armstrong's work on T/ie Irish and High/and Harps. As will be seen, the front pillar was intentionally formed into a graceful curve. Through constant practice the musical skill of these Harpers elicited the admiration of all, and by them the wire-strung Harp was soon introduced into Western Scotland, where it was known as the Clarscha. On the eastern side of that country, however, the English or Scandinavian instrument was already in use, as shown by the carvings on ancient crosses of the ninth and tenth centuries. Brompton, who wrote in the middle of the twelfth century, expresses his astonishment at the animated execution, the sweet and pleasing harmony, the quivering I notes and intricate modulations of the Clarsaghours ; whilst Giraldus Cambrensis, Archdeacon of S. David's, j who visited Ireland in 1183, remarks that, "Unlike that of the Britons, their playing is not slow and harsh, but lively and rapid." By Britons no doubt Giraldus meant his countrymen in Wales ; for there a hair-strung Harp, 14 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC adopted evidently from their English neighbours, was in' use. It was called Telyn, a word which is generally sup- posed to imply something that is stretched ; but O'Curry considers that it was a sort of nickname given by the Irish Bards to the more feeble Welsh instruments, which they rudely called " buzzers." From the following satirical ditty, attributed by a writer of the early sixteenth century to a Welsh minstrel, it is evident that they were somewhat ridiculed for their Harp-playing : — If I have my Harp, I care for no more ; It is my treasure ; I keep it in store. For my Harp is made of a gfood mare's skin, Tlie string's are of horse-hair : it maketli good din. My song- and my voice and my Harp doth agree, Mucli hke the buzzing' of an humble-bee : Yet in my country I do make pastyme In telHng of prophecy which be not in rhyme. It may be necessary to explain that the mare's skin was employed to cover the hollow, trough-like sound-board of the instrument. In the fourteenth century the introduction into Wales of a combined form of Irish and English Harp met with a strong resistance from the Bard Davydd ab Gwylim. His tirade is too long for quotation here in full, but it receives due notice in Jones' Relics of the Welsh Bards (Vol. I). From it we gather that the Harp of his fore- fathers, to which he clung so affectionately, was strung with strings of twisted hair, whereas the new Harp was strung with gut. His Harp had a straight pillar, that of the intruder was ''bending"; the sound-board in the Welsh instrument was flat, this was "swelling." "Its noise," he continues, "is like that of a lame goose amongst the corn ; a squealing, foolish Irish witch ; its trunk and hoarse sound were but formed for an age-worn Saxon." How thankful the patriotic or, as some would CLARSECH OR IRISH HARP BV JOHN KEl.LV, I7J4 OF Tie Ur'IVERSITY OF ROTE AND HARP 15 say, prejudiced old Bard would be to know that, although the Welsh Harp resigned its hair-strings, it kept its straight pillar and flat sound-board, and, with the im- provement of additional strings made in the fifteenth century, became the first chromatic Harp in Europe — a standing monument of the skill and ingenuity of the gallant Principality. A seventeenth-century manuscript in the British Museum called Musica neu Beroriaeth, containing, as its title-page records, music in two parts (i.e. bass and treble) for the Harp, shows us the old notation and music used for the instrument. The two outer rows of strings were tuned in unison, whilst the intermediate one gave the sharps and flats. The instrument was generally *'set" in the key of G. The compass, of course, varied with the I number of strings, but a triple-strung Harp, made in the middle of the eighteenth century by John Richards, of Llanrwst, who constructed the instrument of the famous blind Parry, has a compass of five octaves from G to er^. It is shown in the illustration on Plate VI. In the outer rows there are thirty-six and twenty-seven strings respectively, the lowest nine notes being single ; the intermediate row has thirty-two strings, making ninety-five in all. A simpler form of this elaborate instrument seems to have been the Double Harp, de- scribed by Galileo in his Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music (1582), which had a compass of four octaves and a note; but Mersenne, in his great work Harmonicorum Instriimentorum Libri 7^(1636), depicts a Welsh Harp iwith triple stringing and a compass of four octaves only. I It has now given place to the Pedal Harp, invented in I Bavaria about 1720 by Hockbrucker, improved by the French maker, Cousineau, and, with its double action, popularized by Erard in this country in the early years of the last century. i6 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC We have dwelt thus at length on the Irish and Welsh instruments, because we find them so frequently employed in this country side by side with the primitive form of earlier times. For the illuminated manuscripts of medieval days show that the Harp, which first came into common use in England, was a simple diatonic instrument with from eight to eighteen strings, though the usual number was eleven or thirteen. The frame was small, and gener- ally rested on the knee of the performer, though in an early fourteenth-century Psalter belonging to All Souls College, Oxford, as shown in Plate III, it is placed on a low stool — the blue Harp-bag lying in folds around its base — a not unusual feature in the illustrations ; the front pillar too was almost straight, and the cross-tree or har- monic curve but slightly bent. In many instances the performer is shown using a large tuning-key for turning the metal pins. In the later centuries of the Middle Ages gut strings seem to have been always used, though, as we have seen, the Welsh clung to the earlier hair ; and, while the tuning of the instrument was purely diatonic, such semitones as were required could be formed by pressing the string against the cross-tree with the fingers of the left hand, for in the earlier examples only the right hand was used in playing, the Harp being inclined to- wards the right shoulder, as shown in the illustration from the Cambridge Anglo-Saxon Psalter. In an English manuscript of the late thirteenth century (Brit. Mus., Harl. 743) the player holds a large plectrum in his right hand, but this is unusual ; we generally see the musician portrayed as described in The Geste of King Horn : — Ant toggen o' the harpe With is nayles sharpe. The early history of England abounds with allusions t this popular instrument. The story of Cadmon's in ability to play the Harp when handed round after the WELSH HARP BV JOHN KICHARDS, C. 175O Of TIE UNIVERSITY ROTE AND HARP 17 feast, as recorded by Bede in the eighth century, shows what was expected of every educated man ; and the com- parative ease with which both Saxon and Dane passed from camp to camp disguised as minstrels convinces us that everywhere harpers were welcomed. According to the laws of Wales, which date principally from the twelfth century, the three things indispensable to a gentleman were **his harp, his cloak, and his chessboard." His Harp was valued at sixty pence, and its tuning-key at twelve pence, the Harps of the king and a doctor of music being twice as costly ; while the three proper things for a man to have in his house were these — "a virtuous wife, his cushion in his chair, and his harp in tune." S. Dunstan, as we know, was a ready performer on the Harp, as well as on other musical instruments, but S. Ealdhelm, Bishop of Sherborne (705-9), appears to have found a very practical use for his talent, for it is related of him that on one occasion he entered a church to deliver a sermon and discovered that no one was present. Nothing disconcerted, he left the church, took his Harp, and, standing on a bridge hard by, soon attracted a con- siderable crowd by his playing. Then he delivered his sermon. In the household payments of our Sovereigns we find frequent mention of gratuities and wages given, not only to their own harpers — whose fidelity at times proved their preservation — but to the musicians whom they met on their progresses. Among those of Edward I and his queen are the following: "To Melioro, the harper of Sir John Matravers, for playing on the harp when the King was bled, xx^" "To Walter Luvel, the harper of Chichester, whom the King found playing the harp before the tomb of S. Richard vi' viii*^ " Extracts such as these could be multiplied indefinitely, but the above must suffice. i8 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC It is interesting to remember that at least two kings of England were performers on the Harp, following in this respect the steps of Alfred the Great of famous memory ; for in the Issue Rolls of the reign of Henry V and Catharine of Valois is the entry: ''By the hands of William Menston was paid ^8 13s. 4d. for two new harps purchased for King Henry and Queen Catharine." We learn from another entry that these instruments were con- structed by one John Bore, of London. Henry VIII was also a harpist, and in a Psalter especially written and illuminated for him (Brit. Mus., 2 A. xvi) he is portrayed playing upon his Harp, whilst his fool. Will Somers, turns away with a grimace. This illustration is designedly placed against the opening words of Psalm liii : "The fool hath said," etc. In the seventeenth century the wire-strung Irish Harp with its thirty to thirty-three strings became fashionable in England, probably owing to the accession of King James, for in Scotland the Clarscha, as it was then called, was in as general use as in Ireland. In 1630 Martin Peerson published a volume oi Mootetts or grave Chamber Mustque, all Jit for Voyces and Viols tvith an Organ part ; ivhich for roant of Organs may be performed on Virginals^ Base-Lute^ Batidora^ or Irish Harpe. Evelyn tells us that his friend, Mr. Clarke, a gentleman of Northumber- land, was "the most incomparable player on the Irish Harp. Pity 'tis that it is not more in use ; but indeede to play well takes up the whole man." In 1668 he heard Sir Edward Sutton play, and remarks, "He performs genteelly, but not approaching my worthy friend." The large Irish Harp with full compass from C to d^ or f^ continued to be made till almost the middle of the eighteenth century, when the French Pedal Harp, with its ingenious mechanism for altering the pitch of the strings, proved its master, and relegated it, with all the ROTE AND HARP 19 simple diatonic instruments, to obscurity. About the year 1800, John Egan, of Dublin, tried to introduce a small improved Harp which is sometimes described as an Irish Harp. It had, however, but a brief popularity, and in its shape and strings of gut more closely resembled the Cythara anglica of bygone days than the historic emblem of the Emerald Isle. CHAPTER II GITTERN AND CITOLE With Drumes and Fife and shrillest Shalmes, With Gittron and Bandore, With the Thcorba sing you psalmes, And Cornets everinore. Sir William Lkighton (1613). OUR researches into the history of the Rote and Harp carried us to the primitive records of the races and tribes who made their earhest settlements in Northern Europe. We have now, however, a group of instruments, broadly described as the Gittern or Guitar and the Citole or Cittern, whose early history is wholly connected with Southern Europe and the Asiatic nations bordering on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, while under the same category also must fall the Mandore and Lute, which form the subject of the next chapter. As distinguished from the Rote and Harp, they are characterized by a flat or convex body, to which is attached a neck or finger-board, and from one another they are known by the following details: in the Gittern the back of the resonating body is flat, and its vertical sides are incurved, as in the Guitar of the present day ; in the Mandore and Lute the back is convex, and the outline of the body is pear-shaped in the former instrument and almost oval in the latter ; whilst in the Citole we have a hybrid type, possessing a flat back like the Gittern, but a pear-shaped or oval outline, without incurvations, similar to that of the Mandore and Lute. CITTERN AND CITOLE 21 It has been usually supposed that the incurvation of the sides was adopted as a necessity when instruments of the Cittern class were sounded by means of a bow in place of the fingers or a plectrum. Undoubtedly, as we shall see in the case of the Rebec and Viol, the in- curved form added greatly to the usefulness of the bow and the facility with which it could be brought to bear on the strings ; but the narrowing of the sides into what is technically known as a waist is seen in a tenth-century illustration of the Cythara teiitonica or Rote, and, long before there is any trace of a bowed instrument, we find the like incurvations, as, for instance, in the bas-relief dating from before the year 1000 B.C. discovered in the old Hittite palace of Ujuk, near Sinope, in Asia Minor, and figured by MM. Periot and Chipiez in the fourth volume of their Histoire de V Art de V Antiquite. A photograph of this very interesting relic forms the frontispiece to Miss K. Schlesinger's Precursors of the Violin Family. The in- strument there represented is very similar to a modern Cuitar ; it is held across the chest, the left hand stops the strings on the narrow neck, whilst in the right hand there is a plectrum. On Assyrian and Egyptian monu- ments, however, the oval or pear-shaped outline for the body of such instruments is the form commonly depicted. Now it is well known that the Greeks and Romans adopted many of the instruments which they found in popular use throughout Asia Minor, although they did not admit them to the unique position of the classic lyre. To these various forms the generic name Cithara was given, and under that title this instrument with vertical incurved sides and flat back was brought into Southern Europe, the first name given to the Cuitar in medieval times being Guitare Latine or Chitarra Latina, in order to distinguish it from the Guitare Moresque or Chitarra Sarracenica with its long neck, oval-shaped body and 22 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC round back, which was afterwards known in Southern Italy as the Colascione, and is frequently depicted in the Cantigas de Santa Maria already mentioned. In this way, and popularized by the troubadours and minstrels, the Guitar reached our country in the thirteenth century, the earliest illustration in a manuscript of Eng- lish workmanship, which has at present come under our notice, being in the Ormesby Psalter of the late thirteenth century, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The name in English literature appears in the fourteenth century as Gittern, Geterne, Gyttren or Gythorn. Philologists tell us that the *'n" is redundant, the proper form being Gitter, as we find it written in the list of the minstrels who played at the Westminster festivities of 1306; but the early French form is Guiterne, and the Italian is Chiterna or Quinterna, so in all probability the word is a contraction of Chitarrone, a large Cither ; and indeed it is sometimes written Guitteron. The Gittern when it appeared in England had four strings, usually of gut, affixed to a tail-piece, which was attached by a cord to a knob or button placed at the end of the instrument and often made most ornamental. According to Michael Praetorius (1618), the strings were tuned thus : d\ a, f, c, or g\ d^, b, f, the actual pitch varying with the size of the instrument. There was a bridge, as in the Violin, but the strings were plucked with a plectrum ; in some cases the sound-hole was in the centre, as in the Guitar of the present day ; in others, as in the Gittern held by one of the angelic musicians carved in the spandrels of the late thirteenth-century choir-arches at Lincoln Cathedral, there were small curved slits on either side of the bridge. The most curious detail, however, was that the neck — in the earlier in- struments at any rate — instead of being free from the body at the back, was attached to it, or rather was one with i'i,.\['i'; (UTTERN EARLY KOURTEENIH CEXTlln-. (uRlT. .MUS.) (IITTERN C. IJI30. (WARWICK CASTI.k) CITTERN AND CITOLE 23 it, the thickness of the body being extended to the peg- box and an oval-shaped hole pierced in it just behind the finger-board, through which the player's thumb passed and stopped, when necessary, the fourth string. This is clearly shown in thirteenth-century sculpture at Worcester Cathedral, and in a cast now in the Archi- tectural Museum at Westminster, which is said to have been taken from an original of the same century formerly to be seen in Westminster Abbey. It is also well depicted in the illustration on Plate VII from an early four- teenth-century manuscript of English work (British Mus., Arundel 83). The illustration in Fig. 16 of the same date from a manuscript at All Souls College, Oxford, shows one of the earliest English examples of the "free" neck gradually introduced from the Continent during the fourteenth century. We are not left in any doubt as to this peculiarity, for there is still an English Cittern of the early fourteenth century in existence. It is preserved at Warwick Castle, and has been persistently described as a Violin. Tradi- tion says that it was given by Queen Elizabeth to her favourite the Earl of Leicester, and by the kind permis- sion of the Earl and Countess of Warwick we are able to reproduce a photograph of this interesting and valuable relic (Plate VII). A full description will be found in Carl Engel's Catalogue of the Musical Instruments in the South Kensington Museum — now the Victoria and Albert Museum, where a facsimile is to be seen. It has four strings and is two feet in length ; apparently in the year 1578 it underwent some restoration, as that date and the initials " I. P." are engraved on a nut at the back, which fixes the silver stud to which the tail-piece is attached. Experts in handicraft, however, are of the opinion that the exquisite and intricate carving with which the whole instrument is adorned is fourteenth-century work ''about 24 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC the year 1330," and it is with the Gittern of that very- period that its shape and construction accord. The silver plate, covering the tuning-pegs and bearing the royal arms and those of the Earl of Leicester, as well as the silver stud and fittings mentioned above, are, of course, sixteenth-century additions. The front table or sound-^ board, the tail-piece and the finger-board are later still and incorrect. When played with a bow (and there is no original bow belonging to it) it is very awkward to hold, and necessarily produces "a close sluggish tone," as stated by Sir John Hawkins in his History of Music (1776); but, placed as a Gittern across the chest and played with a plectrum, it will be found both convenient to hold and pleasant to hear. We trust that this unique survival of the old English Gittern will no longer be con- demned to occupy, as a Violin, a false and ludicrous position. Students of Chaucer will remember that this was the instrument with which the parish clerk serenaded the carpenter's wife with dire results to himself, when, as says the poet, Tlie moone at nitfht ful clear and brlghte schoon And Absolon his Giterne hath i-take. For before the introduction of the Lute the Gittern was the popular accompaniment for singing. Langland, in the Vision of Piers Ploiv?nan, says of himself that he was no minstrel, for Ich can not tabre, ne trompe, ne telle faire gfestes, Ne fithelyn at festes, ne harpen, Japen ne jagelyn, ne gentillische pipe, Nother sailen, ne sautrien, ne singe with the giterne. Jumping, juggling and dancing (sailen) were part of a minstrel's repertoire. In the sixteenth century the so-called Spanish Guitar was introduced into England. Henry VIII died pos- CITTERN AND CITOLE 25 sessed of four Gitterons called Spanish Vialles, the Spanish Vihitela of that date differing from the ordinary- Cittern, according to Don Luys-Milan of Valencia (1536), in having six strings instead of four. In The Verney Alemoirs we read that about the year 1635 Lady Verney's son, whilst his father was an exile in France, was being taught to sing and play "on the Cuittarr"; and her daughter Pegge was "to learn the Lute." In fact, the Cuitar, which at that time was strung with five pairs of double strings, was so popular in France that in Portugal it is known to the present day as the Viola franceza. With the influx of French fashions into England during the seventeenth century the im- proved instrument, played generally with the fingers instead of a plectrum, completely eclipsed the older Cittern and in time relegated the Lute also to oblivion. Amongst the musicians for a masque performed before King Charles II in 1674, there were four " Cittar " players who were dressed in "white rich Taffety gownes and caps of gilt leather adorned with feathers." From the bills for this gay clothing, which still exist among the Lord Chamberlain's Records, it is evident that the royal tradesmen found the name of the instrument a difficulty, for it is sometimes spelt " Kittar " and at other times "Cytarrh." The five pairs of double strings gave place to the present six single strings towards the close of the eighteenth century. The earlier form is shown on Plate X and the first three pairs of strings were tuned to e^ b and g, and the other two pairs to d^ d and a A : the added sixth string is tuned to E. In the CiTOLE, which is our next subject, we have an instrument which has been much misunderstood. The I name is spelt in various ways, appearing in English i literature as SythoUe or Sitole, Cythol or Cytol. Dr. 26 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC Rimbault, in his History of the Pia7ioforte^ describes it as a small rectangular Psaltery played with the fingers, de- riving the word from Cistel/a, a little box ; and although he gives an illustration in connection therewith, there is no reason to believe that it represents the Citole. On the contrary, we are told by Cerone, a Spanish writer who lived in Italy at the close of the sixteenth century, that the Citola was identical with the Cetera, the Cither or Cittern. The word in its original form was probably Citharola^ "little Cither," whence, by a common form of contraction, we have the Proven9al Cithola. It was one of the instruments which an accomplished minstrel was expected to play ; for in the Conseils mix Jongler, written by Guirant de Calanson in 1210, it is stated that a Jongleur must play the Pipe and Tabor, the Citole, the Symphony, the Mandore, the Manichord, the seventeen-stringed Rote, the Harp, the Gigue, and the Psaltery with ten strings. A description of these instru- ments will be found in this book under their respective chapters. The earliest illustration at present observed of the medieval Citole occurs in the title-page of a copy of the Gospels in Latin, executed for the Emperor Charle- magne in the eighth century. In the hands of adoring angels or elders before the heavenly throne are shown small instruments, stringless but with three tuning-pegs ; as there are no bows we may presume that they were played with the fingers or a plectrum, although it is only right to say that in these and similar illustrations where instruments of music are being presented before the Divine Presence, the bow, even of known bowed instru- ments, is often omitted. A reproduction of this interesting page is given in the third volume of Count Bastard's Peintures et Ornements des Maniiscrits, and with it may be compared the illus- CITTERN AND CITOLE 27 trations in an Apocalypse of English workmanship of the early eleventh century now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS. 352). Here the instruments seem to have a pair of double strings and are probably meant for Rebecs (Plate XXI). The Citole appears far less frequently in English manu- scripts than the Cittern : it may be that in this country it was not so popular. It is, however, mentioned by the author of the legendary History of Fulke FitzWarhWy written in the early part of the thirteenth century, and in the English romances of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, such as Launfal, Lyheaus Desconus and The Squyr of Lmve Degre, it is frequently named in conjunc- tion with the Sautry or Psaltery. In the metrical Life of Alexander, by Adam Davie, composed in the fourteenth century, we are told of a great entertainment that — At the feste was trumping, Piping' and eke taboryng', Sytolyng and eke harpyng. The instrument also received royal patronage, for among the payments to the minstrels who attended the Westminster Festivities in 1306, when the son of Edward I received knighthood, we find that Janyn le Citoler was given one mark ; moreover, the Court Band of Edward III contained a Cyteler, and it is interesting to notice that in the front of the Minstrels' Callery in Exeter Cathedral, erected in the reign of this same king, we have one of the best examples of the instrument. It appears in the hands of the first musician on the left ; he is plucking with a plectrum the four strings, which the old writers tell us were of wire ; the string-holder is attached to the front table and acts also as a bridge ; the neck is free, that is, it is not obstructed as in the Cittern, which is shown in the hands of the ninth musician ; it is terminated by a little figure-head, of which more anon. 28 OLD ENGLISH LNSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC Another excellent representation of the early fifteenth century occurs in the nave of Beverley Minster. Both are reproduced in Figs. 3 and 4. In the sixteenth century it was known as the Cithren or Cittern, a change of namci for which there seems but little reason. The final * ' n " may have arisen from a supposed analogy with Cittern, or Fig-. 3. ClTOLE— 14th cent. (Exeter) Fig. 4. CiTOLE— i5lh cent. (Beverley) from a confusion with Cithern— the plural form of the German word, in which country it was much practised. This instrument, however, must be carefully distinguished from the modern German Zither, which is a species of Psaltery. Though for some reason or other it had been especially associated with ecclesiastical ornament, it was destined to lose its high estate, ousted by the superior attractions of CITTERN AND CITOLE 29 the Lute, which began to be popular in this country early in the fifteenth century. Henry VIII's collection, it is true, contained Citterns, and good Master Laneham, the favourite of the Earl of Leicester, tells us that "some- times I foot it with dancing, now with my Cittern and else with my Cittern"; in 1556 "a faire Cyterne " was among the New Year presents made to Queen Mary, and the Elizabethan composers, such as Morley and Rossiter, used it in their Consort Lessons; but it was most frequently to be found in taverns and barbers' shops, where it provided entertainment for customers when daily papers were unknown. The little carved head — often exceedingly grotesque — which surmounted the neck and peg-box is frequently alluded to in English literature. Forde, in his Lovers^ ]\[elancholy (act ii. sc. i), writes of his lady's fair face, " Barbers shall wear thee on their Citterns," and Shakespeare, in "The Pageant of the Nine Worthies" {Lovers Labour s Lost, act v. sc. 2), bandies the follow- ing words between the Schoolmaster Holofernes, who personates Judas, and the Lords-in-Waiting on the King :— HoL. I will not be put out of countenance. 1ST Lord. Because thou hast no face. HoL. What is this ? {pointing to his face). 2ND Lord. A cittern head {isoooden and ugly). From Anthony Holbourne's Cittharne Scliool^ published in 1597, we gather that the tuning of the instrument was as follows, e^ d^ g b — a curious arrangement, which, however, facilitated the production of certain common chords. An example of the instrument is shown in Plate VIIL In addition to the Cittern with four open notes, there were larger instruments with an increased number of 30 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC strings. They do not seem to have been so popular in England as on the Continent, especially in Germany, but on the title-page of New Citharen Lessons (1609), by Thomas Robinson, who describes himself as a "Student in all the liberall Sciences," there is an engraving of a Cittern with additional strings like those of the English Guitar shown in Plate VIII. It has seven pairs of strings on the finger-board and seven single strings by its side. This was called a " fourteen-course Cittern " because it possessed that number of open notes, and the instrument was tuned thus — e^ d^ g b (flat) f d G for the strings on the finger-board, and F E D C Bj (flat) A^ G^ j for the strings at the side, which were conveyed to the ' peg-box over a nut placed in the mouth of a grotesque head at the top of the instrument. Robinson attributes its invention to an Italian, with alterations and improve- ments by himself. In England it was called the Syron. Of the music for the Cittern, which was written or printed in the form known as tablature, an explanation will be given in the next chapter. As Sir Frederick Bridge says in his Samtiel Pepys, Lover of Miistqiie, the eminent diarist possibly played this instrument as well as others ; for, after the landing of Charles II at Dover in 1660, by the request of the Admiral, Lord Sandwich, and with the help of the lieu- tenant's Cittern and two candlesticks with money in them for cymbals, "we made barbers music, with which my Lord was well pleased." In 1666 Playford, by pub- lishing his Mttsick's Delight on the Cittern^ tried to refine its use, preferring the use of the fingers to that of the plectrum ; but, like the other wire-strung instruments which we now proceed to describe, it had had its day and yielded to the popularity of the English Guitar of the eighteenth century. For besides the Cittern there were several instruments I ri.A'IK 8 I. CITTERN, BY PETER wissER, c. 170C. 2. LARGE ENGLISH GUITAR, i-v k. liessem, 1757 3. PANDORE OR BANDORE, seve>:teenth century 4. ORPHARION BY FRANCIS PALMER, 1617. (CLAUDIUS COLLECTION) 'p^^^^ OF T UNflVE ,s/Ty >liiifOHNifi-, CITTERN AND CITOLE 31 of the same class in use in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Pandore (Pandora or ' Bandore), which with Treble and Bass Viols, Lute, Cittern, and Recorder, took part in the Consort Lessons of Morley and Rossiter, was very popular in Queen ! Elizabeth's reign, and is said to have been invented by one John Rose, a citizen of London, in the year 1560. At any rate, in Gascoigne's tragedy Jocastay I produced in 1566, "Bandores" are named among the various instruments employed to accompany the j dumb-shows which preceded each act. A beautifully I decorated specimen is in the possession of Lady Tolle- mache, and is well illustrated in Hipkins and Gibb's Musical Instruments^ Historic, Rare, and Unique. The outline is waved or festooned ; the string-holder, which is attached like that of the Cittern to the front table, is straight : it has pegs for ten strings, arranged in five pairs ; on the ribs or sides are carved the words Cym- I balum DecacJiorditm, and within is the label — Johannes Rosa London! fecit. In Bridewell the 27th of July 1580. I It is said to have been given to Sir Lionel Tollemache j by Queen Elizabeth, as a memento of a visit to Helming- } ham Hall. In a book printed for William Barley, entitled 1 The Guide of the Pathivay to Music (1596), a similarly I shaped instrument with six pairs of strings is figured and I described under the usual name Bandore, a corruption of i Pandore, which in its turn takes its title, though not its i structure, from an Asiatic instrument called Pandoura or Tanboura. i Another wire-strung instrument of a kindred nature was the Orpharion, so named after the mythical Orpheus, which had seven pairs of strings, but the string-holder ! was placed on the front table slantwise, thus shortening 32 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC the length of the upper strings. The frets, pieces of gut or metal placed across the finger-board to mark the division of the scale and to increase the vibration of the strings when stopped by the fingers, were arranged, of course, to meet this curious position of the string-holder or bridge. In the Claudius Collection of Musical Instru- ments at Copenhagen there is a fine English specimen of this instrument bearing the maker's label — Francis Palmer. Anno 1617. By the courtesy of the owner we give a photographic illustration of it on Plate VIII. The Orphion, invented by Thomas Pilkington, who was born in 1625, must have differed in some way from the earlier Orpharion. Another very similar form was called the Penorcon, and is mentioned and figured by Praetorius in his Syntagma Musiciun (1618). It had nine pairs of strings, and there- fore, in the illustrations given by the learned author of the Orpharion and Penorcon, the names should be transposed. Yet another instrument of the Cittern class was the Poliphant or Polyphon, on which, we are told, the Virgin Queen was most proficient. Its outline was still more fantastic, somewhat resembling the later Harp-lute, and an illustration is given in The Academy of Armory, written by Randle Holmes in the seventeenth century (Brit. Mus., Harl. 2034), who allots it from twenty-five to forty strings. It was invented by Daniel Farrant, son of the organist of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and after- wards one of the Court Musicians, together with another wire-strung instrument called the Stump, of which no further particulars are now known. There is little doubt but that the small differences of detail between some of these kindred forms were frequently lost sight of and the names constantly interchanged. Additional improvements CITTERN AND CITOLE 33 were also made from time to time — for instance, the strings of Rose's instrument had but five open tones, while those of the Pandore, for which Morley wrote in 1599, had six open notes and were tuned to a e c G D C ; but the Pandore described and figured by Robert Fludd in his Historia iitriusqiie cosmi (161 7) had seven open notes tuned to a e c G D C G^, with two frets on the neck and four on the front table ; and he says that it sounded the Bass, the Tenor or the Counter-tenor, whereas the smaller Cittern was used for the Tenor, Counter-tenor and Alto. An example of the Pandore or Bandore with seven pairs of strings is given in Plate VIII. In 1599 was published a new book of Tablature contain- ing Sundrie easie and familiar Instructions, showing how to attaine the knoivledge to guide and dispose the hand to play on sundrie Instruments ^ as the Ljite, Orpharion and Pan- dora . . . collected out of the best Authors professing the Practice of these Instruments^ and they are mentioned in several other musical publications of the first half of the seventeenth century ; but we have failed to find any publication for the Poliphant or Penorcon under their proper names. All these instruments were played not with a plectrum but with the fingers, and Barley's book tells us that they must be " easily drawn over the strings, not suddenly griped or sharpelie stroken as the Lute is ; for if yee should doo so, then the wire strings would clash or jarre together, the one against the other, which would be a cause that the sound would be harsh and un- pleasant ; therefore it is meet that you observe the differ- ence of the stroke." Drayton, in his/'c>/j'o/^/(9;z( 161 3), alludes to the Cittern and Pandore as of " the sterner wiry chord," and in an earlier work (1590) bids the praises of the Virgin Queen be Set to the Cornet and the Flute, The Orpharion and the Lute. 34 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC Heywood, in his Fair Maid of the Excha?tge, compares a lady's hair to " Bandora wyres," which were of yellow brass : and Mace, in his Musick's Monument {16"] 6), classed Bandores, Auferions, and Citterns as instruments strung with '' wyar strings" : while Lord Bacon tells us that the deeper-toned strings were "wreathed," that is, covered with finer wire. In the Inventory of the Goods and Chattels of Sir Thomas Kytson of Hengrave Hall, Suffolk, who died in 1602, amongst the many musical instruments he possessed there is the following item, "one Bandore and a Sitherne with a dooble case," which shows that the two instruments were commonly used together, the former for accompani- ment, the latter for melody. The Bandore is mentioned by Mr. Pepys, who notes in his Diary under the date October 15, 1662, that when he was staying at the Bear Inn at Cambridge, " I could hardly sleep but waked very early, and when it was time did call Will, and we rose : and Musique, with a Bandore for the Base, did give me a levett." The singers who made this "waking music" or levett were supported by the chords of the Bandore. As has already been said, the advent of the English Guitar in the eighteenth century caused the disappearance of Bandores, Poliphants, and similar wire-strung instru- ments, or rather, it supplanted them ; for, owing to the use of the fingers instead of the plectrum, the English Guitar, though smaller, could be used for accompanying the voice as well as for solo performance. Its six open notes, produced by four double strings for the higher and two single strings for the lower, were tuned some- what like the old Bandore, namely to g^ e^ c^ g e c. The instrument, which had a decorative appearance, is frequently depicted in the portraiture of the eighteenth century, as, for instance, in the picture of the Hon. Mrs. Charles Yorke, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and in one of OF THE UNIVE' 6s. 8d., but the usual price in the seventeenth century — as shown by the instruments purchased for the King's music — was 'from £\o to ^15 for a Lute and from £\\ to £10 for 48 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC a Theorboe. James Masters, a Fellow Commoner of Trinity College, Cambridge, in the year 1640 commenced his studies on the instrument, and his account for six months was as follows : — 1646, Dec. 7. For borrowing a lute one month, iii'' i6|?, Feb. 19. For a lute with a case to it, ii'' x' For two dozen of small strings, iii" 1647, May 7. For learning one month on the lute, x' June 29. For fretting my lute, i* The office of Lutenist to the Chapel Royal, established early in the eighteenth century and valued at £^1 los. per annum, continued to be held until 1846, but for the last eighty years at least as a sinecure, the instrument itself having disappeared ; for the English Guitar and, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the Harp-Lute and the Harp-Lute-Guitar had taken its place in popular estimation. The Harp-Lute has already been described in the first chapter and is figured in Plate IX. The English Guitar, of which details were given at the end of the second chapter, is also there depicted ; and the Harp-Lute-Guitar, which was tuned thus g- e- c- b^ a} g^ f^ e^ d^ c^ g, sounding a sixth or seventh lower, is shown just below it. The British Lute-Harp, afterwards called the Dital Harp, though it somewhat resembled the Harp-Lute in shape, was played upon with both hands, the semitones being obtained by keyed mechanism pressed by the finger, whence its name. It was produced by Light in 1816, and a most interesting account of its development is given by Mr. R. B. Armstrong in his English and Irish Instruments, Specimens of the true Lute are now very rare and valuable, and though they are generally relegated to MANDORE AND LUTE 49 museums and artists' studios, the instrument has lately been revived, and an awakened interest will probably enable us to hear it more frequently as an accompani- ment to the voice or in "consort" with its old-world confreres. In the domain of literature it is only natural that the Lute should fill an important part. Shakespeare, as already noted, frequently gives it a place in his plays, the actual instrument being introduced upon the stage in Julius Cccsar (a terminological inexactitude), and with more propriety in the play of Henry VIII, when Queen Catherine's maid sings the charming song commencing "Orpheus with his Lute," to dispel her Royal Mistress's sadness. In the Taming of the Shreiv (act ii. sc. i) there is the amusing description of an encounter between Katharine the Shrew and her pretended music-master Hortensio, who complains to her father of the violent treatment he has received in these words : — I did but tell her she mistook her frets, And bowed her hand to teach her fing-ering-, When, with a most impatient, devilish spirit, " Frets, call you tliese? " quoth she, " I'll fume with them,'' And with that word she struck me on the head, And through the instrument my pate made way ; And there I stood amazed for a while, As on a pillory, looking' through the Lute, While she did call me " rascal fiddler " And " twangling- Jack," with twenty such vile terms, As had she studied to misuse me so. The technical term " fret," already explained, here affords the dramatist the opportunity of another play on the word. In a poem written to commemorate the entry of Queen Anne of Denmark into the Scotch capital in 1590 we are Sum on Lutys did play and sing' Of instruments the onely King. 50 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC And the following extract from an old play about 1670 entitled Tlie Humorists shows the use of the Theorboe as an accompaniment, though already beginning to give way to the Guitar : — Drybole. My melodious pipes are a little obstructed ; but to serve you, I will chant forth incontinently. But, Madam, I want a Theorbo to pitch my voice. Lady Loveyouth. Will not a Gittar serve ? Mr. Pepys, of course, played both the Lute and Theorboe, while his fellow-diarist and contemporary Evelyn, on hearing Dr. Walgrave, physician to the Duke and Duchess of York, accompany a song with his Theorbo-Lute, writes: *'He performed beyond imagina- tion, and is doubtless one of the greatest masters in Europe on that charming instrument." In saying this he was but maintaining the prestige which our English lutenists for more than a century had already enjoyed, owing to the skill of such able musicians as John Dowland, Robert Johnson and Dr. John Wilson. As an example of the music so much admired by our forefathers we append an extract from Thomas Mace's book, from which quotations have already been freely made. It is entitled My Mistress, and had a peculiar fascination for the author and composer from the fact that it was written by him when engaged to his future wife and absent from her. The rest of the story shall be told in his own quaint style. "After I was Married, and had brought my Wife Home to Cambridge, it so fell out that one Rainy Morning I stayed within and in My Chamber, my Wife and I were all alone; She Intent upon Her Needleworks and I Playing upon my Lute at the Table by Her. She sat very Still and Quiet, Listening to All I Played without a Word a Long Time, till at last I hapned to Play This MANDORE AND LUTE 51 Lesson ; which, so soon as I had once Play'd She Earnestly desired Me to Play It again; 'For,' said She, 'That shall be Called My Lesson.' To this the Lutenist answered, ' It May very properly be call'd Your Lesson for when I Composed It You were wholly in My Fancy and the Chief Object and Ruler of My Thoughts.'" After this pretty domestic incident the air was always known by his pupils as " Mrs. Mace." It is very simple, as will be seen in the reproduction of the original (Fig. 7) and its translation into Staff Nota- tion given overleaf; nor does it in any way represent the elaborate and florid compositions which were the delight of skilled lutenists such as Mace himself; but it affords a clear and well-defined example of the way in which music for the Lute and other instruments was written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries according to a system called Tablature, of which, as an appropriate conclusion to this chapter, we give a short explanation. In the case of the stringed instruments, such as the Lute, Viol, Cittern, etc., the signs used denoted the particular " fret " on which, or rather just behind which, the finger of the player was to be placed ; in the wind instruments they denoted the holes to be covered, as seen in the Flageolet music reproduced in Figure 27. In the example of Lute Tablature the lines do not represent a stave as might at first be thought, but they signify the strings of the instrument. In the Tablature for the Cittern, with but four pairs of open strings only, four lines are used ; in the Lute music, because the sixteenth-century instruments usually had six pairs of strings — or five pairs and a single string — six lines are employed in the Tab- lature. When additional strings were attached to extend the compass in the Bass they were marked by the signs 52 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC _^ ^ N • ^ . § ti CO •^ • \ ■Si - — -3 to ^ **!••*" ^^--f a - - — 15 U Si t5 - i • • ■0 •-1 \ « \\\ \ «+) : ^ ■ja : (O I fl I 3; IV. ) o o 00 bfl -t^ MANDORE AND LUTE 53 i I ■ I i T% PLIl tvi-i ^-^^- "ii [\s TT» TTtifi 44 "TTl* I Ml -■»! I' IS p n *-: o n I) "tti n^ I rr I ■y "^t^ *lu 1^;, N-. till rm I L. % Tti i) Mill I %JIi f^ vj: 1^1-U li ItK u ■ ril %L •1-- TFKp T^ m 1* 54 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC a', a", a'", 4, 5, 6, etc., placed below the bottom line. The ** frets" are shown by letters, **a " being the open string resting on the nut, "b" the first fret, *'c" the second, and so on up to " k," the ninth and last fret. The time is denoted by a signature placed at the commencement of the piece and the length or the time value of each note by musical characters placed above the fret letters, it being understood that the duration of all succeeding notes is to be the same until contradicted by another sign. The various graces and relishes are expressed by marks placed to the left of the fret letter, and the dots immediately below the letters show which finger of the right hand is to be used for plucking the string. In the ordinary Lute music these latter signs were usually omitted. Here the uppermost line represents the highest string, but in Italian Lute Tablature this order was reversed and it represented the lowest string. In Viol Tablature the "bowing" was marked by straight lines equivalent to slurs. The Spanish Guitar and even the Violin had their music at one time written in this method, and Tablatures for the Organ and Clavichord are to be found in the compositions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The system was probably copied from the signs used for the vocal music in the Middle Ages, and has now, for instrumental purposes, completely dis- appeared, though for singers it is still continued after an improved method in the Tonic Sol-fa. The music for many of the Chinese instruments is also written in similar curious and (to the uninitiated) mystic signs. Notation by numbers has also been advocated, and was used in Spain for the Lute ; but as Mr. Abdy Williams, in his Story of Notation^ so truly says, "What was required was a universal notation suitable for all instruments, which should show the intervals^ not the frets and strings; and this was found in the rapidly developing vocal staff MANDORE AND LUTE 55 notation." It is the general use of this system which has placed instrumental music, as well as vocal, within the reach of all, and makes it so desirable that in the elemen- tary schools of our country the staff notation — combined perhaps at first with the Tonic Sol-fa — should be, without exception, thoroughly taught. CHAPTER IV PSALTERY AND DULCIMER Yn Harpe and Taborn and Symjjhan g;le Worschippe God yn Trumpes and Sautre ; Yn Cordes, yn Org-ones and Bellis ring-yng-, Yn al these worschippe the hevenes kinge. Robert Manning (r. 1303). IN the Psaltery and Dulcimer we have yet a third type of mediaeval stringed instruments sounded without the use of a bow. The characteristic feature is that of a rectangular or triangular case, forming the sound- box, across which are stretched strings of metal, but sometimes of gut, as in the Turkish Kanoon, which appeared in Western Europe as the Canon. There is no finger-board or neck as with the Lute, nor is there any means of altering the pitch of the strings except by turning the tuning-pins, which are placed in a row on one side of the instrument, and to which the strings are attached. The two forms differ in one important point : in the Psaltery the strings are set in vibration by being plucked with the fingers or with a plectrum, whilst in the Dulci- mer they are struck with two light hammers or rods of wood ; and for this reason the Psaltery is the parent of the keyboard instruments known as the Virginal, Spinet and Harpsichord, whilst the Dulcimer has given us the Pianoforte. In dealing with the history of these instruments the following curious fact presents itself: that whereas illus-, 56 I'J.AJ K 11 W!»W«HWi-1Sk"Miil»TOi»pw«PIUl!!I.HW PSAI.TERV, DATED 17S9. 2. .tOl.IAN OR WIND HARP ^. DULCIMER WITH HA^TMKRS PSALTERY AND DULCIMER 57 trations, allusions and descriptions of the Psaltery are unusually frequent and circumstantial, the early history of the Dulcimer, though it shows itself distinctly towards the close of the Middle Ages, is shrouded in obscurity. In fact, the earliest reliable illustration of the latter instrument, which we have yet noticed, occurs on a carved ivory book-cover of Byzantine workmanship in the British Museum (Egerton 1139), said to have been made for Queen Melissenda, wife of Foulques, Count of Anjou and King of Jerusalem, about the middle of the twelfth century. With it are depicted a Rebec, a Harp, a quadrangular Psaltery or Cruit and a Viol with in- curved sides. So alike, however, are the two instruments in every respect except in the manner of playing, and so easily could the long plectra employed by the performer on the horizontal form of Psaltery (as shown, for instance, in the illustration on Plate XX, taken from a late twelfth- century manuscript) be used for striking the strings as well as for plucking them, that in all probability the earlier Dulcimers are included under the general name of Psaltery. As it is, Mersenne, in his Harmonico7um . Instrumentorum Libri IV, calls the Dulcimer the I Psalterium, and speaks of the small rod used for striking I the strings as a plectrum ; similar instances will be found in later writers also. In France during the eighteenth century the Psalterion was certainly a Dulcimer. That the transition between the two instruments is easy is shown by the action of an itinerant musician whom we met a few years ago : he had transformed his Dulcimer into a Psaltery by the simple process of changing the ; strings to a somewhat smaller gauge and plucking them with the finger-nails of both hands, as the instrument rested on a low stand before him. The effect was de- cidedly good, and, as the soft part of the hands was easily 58 OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC used for damping the strings and shortening their ex- cessive vibration, the chords, as they were played, were distinct and harmonious. When treating, then, of the Psaltery, it is quite possible that we are considering at the same time the earliest forms of the Dulcimer. The origin of the Psaltery is undoubtedly Asiatic ; as the Santir it is known at the present day in Persia and. | India, and as the Kin and Koto in China and Japan. The European name, however, was given to it by the Greeks from the ''twitching" or "plucking" of the strings. Under this term they doubtless included forms, which might be more correctly classed with the Lyre and Cithara, the strings being plucked on both sides ; in fact, old as the Psaltery is, we fail to find on the sculp- ■ tured slabs and frescoed walls of the more ancient nations any representation of the characteristic details of the instrument. The so-called Assyrian Psalteries are in reality small Trigons or triangular Harps with "free" strings, i.e. played on both sides, and of the Assyrian Dulcimer we will speak later. Yet the simple expedient of stretching chords across a hollow box or cavity must have suggested itself at a very early period in the history of man ; for the fable of the tortoise-shell found by Apollo, who, as he touched the dried sinews lying across the empty carapace, drew forth the pleasing sound of music, shows us the beginnings, not of the Lyre type of instrument, as has generally been supposed, but of the Psaltery. Indeed, in Eastern Asia, where examples of the true Harp are practically unknown, the Psaltery type is quite a common as well as an ancient form. The instrument, known perhaps to the Jews as the Nebel, which, as Josephus tells us, had twelve sounds and was plucked with the fingers, passed into Greece and Italy with other Oriental importations. From its association with Biblical tradition it appealed strongly to the early PSALTERY AND DULCIMER 59 Christians, and throughout the first half of the Middle Ages the Psaltery was especially favoured by eccle- siastics ; but it must be remembered that the Psalms did not derive their title from the Psaltery, for the old Greek word Psa/mos, which originally meant the sound of the Lyre or a song accompanied by the Lyre, was even in ; classical times used for any strain of music vocal or I instrumental. I The mediaeval Psaltery was constructed in two prin- < cipal shapes. The earlier, as far as Europe is concerned, I appears to have been triangular. The player generally I placed it across his breast for performance, the point of I the triangle turned downwards, so that the broad base j was easily supported between the arms and the hands left } free to strike the strings. A modilication of this shape I appears in the eleventh century, when the sharp corners I were flattened, and gradually the instrument, assuming a trapeze form with a more fantastic outline, was known \ in Italy as the "strumento di porco," from its supposed [ likeness to the face of a pig. This form is shown in the i illustration on Plate LI I, taken from a late thirteenth- 1 I century manuscript (Brit. Mus., Add. 35166) of English [ workmanship. The instrument is held in an inverted 1 position as being offered before the heavenly throne. i Sometimes it was rested on the lap during performance, as depicted in the early fifteenth-century manuscript i illustrated in Plate LIII and in the carvings at Manchester I Cathedral (Fig. 9); so sings the poet in the old Romance i of Eger and Grime : — The ladye fayre of hew and hyde Shee sett hir by the beddes syde ; Shee laid a sauter on hir knee, I Ther on shee plaid full lovesomelye. ( 'On the other hand it was often made in the shape of a 1 right-angled triangle, and was held in an upright position. 6o OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this was known in Germany as the Spitzharfe, the Pointed Harp or David's Harp (Plate XIII), and usually had strings on both sides of the sound-board. About the year 1800 Edward Light brought before the British public a very similar instrument under the name Diplo-Kithara. It had twenty-three strings of wire on either side, those on the right for the melody, those on the left for accom- paniment. A fine specimen is in the Dublin National Museum (Plate XIII). The other form of the instrument was rectangular and resembled a shield ; but the shape appears to have been unnecessarily awkward, and it disappeared from general use in England in the fourteenth century, though it existed longer on the Continent, and is still seen in one form of Dulcimer. Held in an upright position, it is named and figured in an eleventh-century manuscript of English work (Brit. Mus., Tib. C. vi), reproduced in Plate XII. Of the tuning of the Psaltery we have no ancient account, but in the sixteenth century the writer Martin Agricola, in his Alusica Instriimentalis (1528), describes and figures a triangular Psaltery of twenty-five single strings with a diatonic compass of three octaves and three notes from F to flat b^ ; the illustrations, however, of earlier instruments show only from eight to twenty strings. Mersenne's Psalterium, already mentioned as identical with the Dulcimer, has but thirteen double strings and a compass of an octave and four notes from c to g^, with one pair of bass strings tuned to g. As the instrument was especially favoured by the clergy, as well as in later days by roving troubadours and wandering minstrels, allusions to it in literature are unusually frequent. The Psaltery was as popular an accompaniment to the voice as the Harp and the ri.ATK 12 sps^K^atiai^t^ >. m 11^^ PSAI/IKRV ELEVENTH CENTlIiV. (n] Y M t"MUl\ Y 109 known as Masica getutscht and issued in 151 1 at Stras- burg ; but later on in the same century other Bourdons were added, as will be seen in the fine specimen of the instrument formerly belonging to Catherine de Medici and now preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum. As regards the compass of the Symphony it seems to have been usually confined to a scale of ten diatonic notes ; and, when in the sixteenth century the complete number of chromatic intervals was added, the additional rods and tangents required were placed as a second and lower row in front of the first. In the eighteenth century the Vielle was as popular as the Musette in the Fetes champetres of the French Court, and its compass in- cluded two complete octaves from g^ to g^. In the instruction books issued during that period we find ex- plicit directions for the tuning of the four open strings or drones, which were respectively called the Tmmpet (a copper string), the Mouche (gut) and the two Bourdons (wire covered). If the two melody strings were tuned to g^, the Trumpet was tuned to c^ or d^, the Mouche to g and the Bourdons to G and c or G and d. An instrument of the eighteenth century, thus tuned, is shown on Plate XVIII. Sympathetic strings were also added sometimes to increase vibration ; in fact, the number of open strings seems to have been left to the discretion and whim of the performer. Whilst the Viol shape was perhaps one of the most popular forms of the Symphony, the rectangular shape, recalling the outline of the old Monochord, is not un- frequently met with in mediaeval illumination and sculp- ture and is certainly earlier. It will be seen in many of the illustrations to which reference has been already made. In France the Lute shape was at one time greatly in vogue, as it was considered that its resonance was greater than that of the more usual Viol form. B no OLD ENGLISH INSTRUMENTS OF MUSIC It is important to remember that the old English Rote, described in the first chapter, was not a Symphony or Hurdy-Gurdy, but a form of Lyre. Many lexicographers, such as Webster, Johnson, Nares, Halliwell and others, have given the Latin rota^ a wheel, as the origin of the word Rote : and, as the wheel is a very evident part of the Hurdy-Gurdy, the identification of the two instru- ments seemed complete. Unfortunately the " Symphony and the Rote" are mentioned side by side in English literature, and were quite distinct. Nor can we suppose that this instrument was the old Irish Timpan, as has been suggested in the fifth volume of TJie Ossianic Society's Papers. For much as the Hurdy-Gurdy may interest us through its lineal descent from a highly esteemed ancestor, its strains are hardly conducive to sleep as were those of the Timpan, nor could we conscientiously describe its sounds as "sweeter than all music under heaven." Yet the illustration re- produced on Plate XXI, which is taken from an old Bestiarium^ or Book of Beasts, written in England in the early part of the fourteenth century, and now in the British Museum (Sloane 3544), shows us that the music of the Symphony was attractive to some creatures — fishes, for instance, qui ad symplioniani gregatim convenitmt, as the writer says. In Sandys and Forster's History of the Violin many details with respect to the effect of music on animals are noted, and we have all met with the dog who hurriedly departs when the Violin is taken out of its case. In the early part of the eighteenth century a French scientist, Marville, gave the result of some ex- periments made with a Trumpet Marine — the Monochord described at the end of the last chapter. Upon hearing the sound a dog sat on his hind legs and fixed his eyes steadily on the player ; an ass, meanwhile, went on eating thistles with absolute indifference. Cows stopped and SYMPHONY EARLY FOURTEENTH CENTURY (liRIT. MUS.) Uftwrr -^^itt-ui ^fift^hifm <*l ? c ^' X