Musical instruments in early Middle Ages
  • Ted
    Posts: 204
    A lot has been written about Gregorian chant during its formative years. But very little seems to be written about the musical instruments that were available during those centuries. We know at least that there was a great organ which came from Byzantium. It would be interesting to know the type of instruments used during Carolingian times both among the regular people and the royal courts. What was their style of music? Did they have any influence on the Gregorian melodies? etc. Would anyone have any information or suggestions?
  • Protasius
    Posts: 468
    According to my organ method the organ was originally used as a profane instrument and is still in the Orient. Although the organ came to the Occident as early as the 8th century, it is no earlier than the 13th c. that organ playing is documented for a few churches. In these times theoreticians tell that the organ is used in sequences, tropes and hymns. The alternatim performance originated in these days.
  • Jeffrey Quick
    Posts: 2,088
    IIRC, bowed string instruments and the European-style shawm are thought to come from the Arab world and are post-Carolingian.And we know almost nothing about style, because we have no music. There have been attempts to revive ancient Roman and Greek music (for which we have a little evidence), but they are highly conjectural. I'll poke around work tomorrow and see if I can get something a little more concrete.
  • Maureen
    Posts: 678
    On the Irish/Scottish side of things... well, we know a fair amount about what instruments they had, but using them for church accompaniment is rather iffy. Bells, of course, they had -- the cowbell shaped big things, early on. Lots of those survive as saint relics.

    A lot of people think harp in church, but AFAIK, there's no evidence for that. There's a certain amount of written evidence that early Irish monks carried very small harps while walking/traveling, and sang psalms and hymns accompanied by them -- possibly their office -- but nothing in church per se except pictures of angels playing various instruments. But harp in church makes for a cool album, of course.

    The silver branch (small bells on a stick); various bladder/bagpipes; harps of various sizes both metal- and gut-strung (picked with the fingernails by harper pros, possibly played differently by amateurs); some sort of string or lyre-type instrument called the tiompan; some simple horns and recorders and flutes; flat goatskin drums of various sizes; and of course the secular whistlers and other body-instrument "players" (really a humor thing). Then later, you see all the usual European instruments come over.
  • Maureen
    Posts: 678
    Non-Irish reference to lyres/citharas being used with chant in Europe:

    "Most are shown as relatively large instruments with apparently six strings, consistent with material evidence from 6th- and 7th-century England, Scandinavia, Germany and Viking settlements in Russia (see Rotte (ii)), as well as with continental literary accounts of the use of a six-stringed lyre (cithara) to accompany chant singers in rehearsal (Huglo, 1986, p.141). However, a three-stringed lyre in the hands of a cleric on the 12th-century metal Shrine of the Stowe Missal (Buckley, 1990, fig.XIV) is at least suggestive of the existence of a smaller sibling."

    Good old tiompan... nobody knows what you are, so lots of interesting references come up.
  • lynnm
    Posts: 50
    One common instrument used during the 12th and 13th centuries in monastic houses was the "organistrum" or symphonia, the predecessor of what is known today as a hurdy gurdy. As secular musicians began using the hurdy gurdy for dance music it fell out of favour as a liturgical instrument. In parts of rural France today, the hurdy gurdy as well as bagpipes (not the Scottish kind) are sometimes used for Mass when the village celebrates their patronal feast.

    The organistrum appears first in Spain in about 1150 in stone carvings on French and Spanish churches, but notably on the portals of the cathedrals of Soria and Santiago de Compostela. It was a large, bass-sounding instrument, made for two players, one of whom turned the handle while the other used both hands to operate the keys. It also appeared in England and France, but disappeared in the 13th century and was replaced by smaller instruments which were played by one musician.

    The organistrum and eventually the hurdy gurdy could be seen as an attempt to mechanise the stopping of strings and to simplify the process of bowing. A bit like a wheeled violin.

    There are some very good (as well as some very awful!) hurdy gurdy clips on youtube. For the French clips try searching for vielle or la vielle a roue In Italy it's known as a ghironda; in Germany it's a drehleier.

    It's a great instrument!
  • perg1224perg1224
    Posts: 9
    Probably worth noting that an hydraulos (water organ) may have been one of the last things St. Peter heard before he died (there was one in Nero's Circus for entertaining the crowds).
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