Week 35 - More research on Medieval Instruments: Pipe and Tabor, and the Lute

1. Stuff done this week:

- Read Munrow (1986), Lejeune (2009), Burkholder et al. (2014) and Mathews (2007) and found out more about the pipe and tabor and the lute.

- Mandolin lessons have started again (every friday evening). I'm learning a Canadian tune called "Galope De Malbaye"

- Wrote a Sixteen bar blues for mandolin called the Hang Man's Swing.

- Listened to a selection of Medieval instruments (Lejeune, 2009).

- Studied some more on The Harvard Referencing System
- Studied arpeggio's over G, C, D, F chord progressions.

2. Listening done this week:

- Hildegard von Bingen
- Listening on repeat to Hildegard Von Bingen - Ave Maria, O Auctrix Vite... Jeees, just easily the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.

Ave Maria, O Auctrix Vite

The poem - a moving tribute to Mary - is written in Latin and translates to this:

Behold, Mary,
you who increase life,
who rebuilds the path,
You who confused death
and wore down the serpent,
To you Eve raised herself up,
her neck rigid with inflated arrogance.

You strode upon this arrogance
while bearing God's Son of Heaven,
through whom the spirit of God breaths.

O gentle and loving Mother,
I behold you.
For Heaven released into the world
that which you brought forth.

This one,
through whom the spirit of God breaths.

Glory to the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And to this one,
through whom the spirit of God breaths.

The song conveys so much love and serenity, it overwhelming and really moved me.
I can only imagine how dear and inspiring Mary must have been to Von Bingen, who as a woman in a church dominated by men, would not let herself be limited to the servile role Medieval Society allocated to women.

3. What I learned:

3.1 Pipe and Tabor (continued from last blog week 34)

During the Middle Ages pipes were played a lot in various combinations: two pipes, pipe tambourin, pipe and triangle, even. But by far the most popular was the pipe and tabor.

It would make the musician into a one man band, ideal for performing dance music. The drum would provide the beat whilst on the pipe a melody would be played. This made an ideal combination for dance music of a rustic nature, or to supply background music for jongleurs or performing animals (Iowa State University Department of Music and Theatre, 2016).

This required three skills, having to be coordinated independently:

1. leading with the drum, using a single stick percussion technique
2. playing the pipe, using fingering for woodwind instruments
3. controlling breath pressure to create "overblows", which is common to brass instruments

(Munrow, 1986: page 13)

3.1.1 Tabor

The tabor was by far the most popular drum in the Middle Ages; many variations of its name stem from the same root: taberett and tabor (English) or taboret and tambour (French). The tabor was a snare drum that had no standard size, but it was essentially cylindrical in shape and had two drum heads with the snare on the top one. It would be slung in various ways on the left-hand side of the body. It was either secured to the waist or slung over the left arm which fingers the pipe with a strap or thong. In case of a small tabor it could even be suspended from the little finger. The tabor was sounded with a single-stick technique by the right hand (Munrow, 1986: page 32-33; Iowa State University Department of Music and Theatre, 2016).

3.1.2 Pipe

The left hand would hold the tabor pipe: a long, slender fipple flute with holes for two fingers and the thumb. A ridge at the bottom make it possible to support the pipe with one hand, while the other strikes the tabor. The pipe had a narrow bore, allowing for overblows to be generated by varying breath pressures. This way it was possible for the flutist to produce a complete diatonic scale, with just those three holes (Lejeune, 2009: page 83; Munrow, 1986: page 13). According to Lejeune (2009, page 83) it existed in two sizes: bass and dessus. The pipe was typically used for homophonic dance music.

Chart indicating harmonic ranges that can be achieved (Wikiversity, 2014)

The tabor pipe came into regular use during the time of the troubadours. A Polish tabor pipe from the second half of the eleventh century has survived, and pipe and tabor players have been regularly illustrated from then onward. To this day, performances with pipe and tabor can still be observed in certain regions of France and England (Munrow, 1986: page 14; Lejeune, 2009: page 83).

3.2 The lute

Subsequent to about 1400, the lute exerted a powerful appeal to Medieval musicians (Matthews, 2007: page 190).Lejeune (2009) hails the lute as "without any doubt the king of the Renaissance plucked string instruments, being at the same time a chamber instrument, an accompaniment for singers, and an accompaniment for the dance" (Lejeune, 2009: page 55).

The lute's long history traces back to the Middle Ages, first appearing in Europe during the second half of the thirteenth century. There is general agreement in literature on its Arabic origin (Munrow, 1989; Mathews, 2007; Lejeune, 2009). Its name in Arabic is al 'ud (Munrow, 1986; Lejeune, 2009; Pittaway, 2015) or eoud (Mathews, 2007), meaning the wood. According to Munrow (1989) the lute came to Europe from the East as a result of the Moorish occupation of Spain and the Crusades. Pittaway (2015) proposes that the first evidence of an oud being played in Europe is from the 9th century, with the arrival of Ziryāb from Baghdad, a musician in the service of the Caliph of Córdoba, But evidence for the oud being played more widely by Europeans stems from the 13th century. There are many beautiful representations found in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a 13th century collection of 420 poems written in Medieval Galician during the reign of Alfonso X El Sabio (1221 - 1284). Matthews (2007, page 190), in fact, calls the immensely popular lute "the instrument of the south", while the violin, matched its popularity as "the instrument of the north". Later they would come together geographically, and the Arab name "al ud" degenerated to "lute" in English,"luth"in French, "laute" in German and "lauto"in Italian (Munrow, 1986).

We know rather a lot about this instrument, for the ud is still being made in the Middle East to this day, particularly in Damascus. Lejeune (2009) states that its appearance has scarcely changed and that old playing traditions have also survived, giving us an idea of the monophonic style of the Middle Ages.

4. Sources

BURKHOLDER, J, GROUT, D. and PALISCA, C. (2014) A history of western music, 9th edition, New York: W.W. Norton.

IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC AND THEATRE (2016) A Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Instruments [Online]  Available from: https://www.music.iastate.edu/antiqua/instrumt.html [Accessed: 14th August 2016].

LEJEUNE, J. & VARIOUS ARTISTS (2009) A Guide to Period Instruments [CD + Book] Belgium: Ricercar (pages 5, 45-47, 55-57, 83)

MATHEWS, W.S.B. (2007) A Popular History of the Art of Music From the Earliest Times Until the Present. Available from: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20293/20293-h/20293-h.htm [Accessed 13th August 2016]

MUNROW, D. (1986) Instruments of the Middle Ages and Reneaissance, 10th edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

PITTAWAY, I. (2015) The lute: a thumbnail history. Early Music Muse [Online Image] Available from - http://earlymusicmuse.com/lutethumbnailhistory/ [Accessed 10th of September 2016].

WIKIVERSITY (2014) Pipe and tabor. Wikiversity [Online Image] Available from - https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Pipe_and_tabor.[Accessed: 31st August 2016].