Week 3: Four Musical Instruments of the Renaissance

1. Stuff done this week

- I researched how musical instruments are classified into groups or families. In this blog I present my notes on how these groups are defined.
- I continued the timeline I presented in my blog of week 52.
- I picked four instruments from the Renaissance and wrote brief descriptions of them. Notes are presented in this blog.

2. Classification of Musical Instruments

Below, I present a formal classification of musical instruments. I based it on descriptions from the The Harvard Dictionary of Music (Randel, 2003):


  1. Strings: The stringed instruments (string section) of an orchestra.
  2. Woodwind: Wind instruments that have an enclosed, vibrating air column set into motion by a reed or by blowing across or through an aperture (example: flute). They are distinct from brass instruments, in which the air column is set into motion by the vibration of the player's lips. Keyboard instruments sounded by the same means as woodwinds, such as the organ, are excluded. Despite the name woodwind, this group of instruments is no longer composed only of wooden instruments. Flutes, piccolos, and saxophones are now usually made of metal. Conversely, some early instruments made of wood, such as the cornett and serpent, are not regarded as woodwinds, because they are lip vibrated.
  3. Brass: These can be described as a family of tubular wind instruments or aerophones most often made of brass and sounded by the buzzing of the player's lips.Each consists of a more or less expanding length of tube with a mouthpiece at one end and a rapidly enlarging or flared opening called a bell at the other end. Common members of this family are the trumpet, cornet, horn, trombone and tuba.
  4. Percussion: Musical instruments that produce sound by being struck or, less often, scraped, shaken, or plucked. In more  formal classifications of musical instruments, a subdivision is made between:
    •  mebranophonesinstruments in which sound is produced by the vibration of a membrane, for instance a drum
    • idiophones: any musical instrument that produces sound by the vibration of its own primary material, i.e. without the vibrations of a string, membrane, or column of air. Examples: are castanets, xylophones, maracas, washboard, jew's harp, musical saw and glass harmonica. These instruments are sounded by being struck, plucked, scraped or rubbed.
  5. Keyboard: These are instruments sounded by means of a keyboard, especially the piano, organ, harpsichord and clavichord.

3. Musical Instruments of the Renaissance

Renaissance musicians played an incredible variety of instruments. I picked four instruments that were used in Renaissance music and wrote a brief description of them. I'll provide descriptions on their appearance or construction and their sound. Furthermore, I'll discuss what I found out about their use.


3.1 The Serpent (Brass)

A wind instrument played from the 17th century to the 19th century. It is a wide, undulating, conically expanding wooden tube, covered in brown or black leather. It has six finger holes and a brass crook to take a cup-shaped mouthpiece (of brass, horn or ivory), with which the instrument is sounded like a brass instrument. It is generally made out of walnut wood, which is hollowed and shaped in two halves glued together and bound with canvas before applying the leather (Baines, 1992).


Serpent at Museu de la Música de Barcelona
(Wikipedia, 2017)
The range of the instrument includes the C below the bass stave to two-and-a-half octaves above. By applying a technique called "loose lipping", lower notes than the C could be sounded. The instrument requires great skill with ear and lips to produce notes that are in tune and in even quality. The sound compares to that of a soft tuba and a strong bassoon.

Reputedly, it was invented in France late in the 16th century by a canon of Auxerre (France) and in first used to strengthen the sound of choirs in plainchant in French churches to double men's voices (Baines, 1992).

According to Munrow (1986), when well played, it blends perfectly with a choir, losing its own individual timbre altogether, whilst giving an extra depth and fullness to the vocal sound.


The use of the instrument was not confined to France. In Italy it was played in Bologna Cathedral along with trombones up to 1700. By the mid 17th century the originally ecclastical serpent also became a popular instrument with secular instrumental ensembles (Baines, 1992). By 1756 it was employed in the orchestra of the Comédie Italienne and was spreading to Germany, the Low Countries(Wade-Matthews, 2010: page 179). In England, Handel added it to the bass part in the "Fireworks  Music" (1749) (Baines, 1992). By the 19th century the serpent had become firmly established in orchestras, with both Mendelsohn and Wagner scoring for it (Wade-Matthews, 2010).

Towards the end of the 18th century the serpent gained a foothold in English and German military bands, where it became known as the serpent militaire as opposed to the ecclastical serpent d'église.It was employed to strengthen the bass part played by bassoons (Baines, 1992; Munrow, 1986; Wade-Matthews, 2010). Although the serpent was still in use in bands in Spain (Wade-Matthews, 2010) and England (Baines, 1992) in the late 19th century, the serpent fell into disuse with the invention of the tuba in the 1830's.


3.2 The Jaws/Jew's Harp (Idiophone)

The jew's harp (or French guimbarde) is a small metal mouth instrument. Its frame is forged from an iron rod of diamond cross-section and sometimes thickest in the middle. Hammered into the center of this, to lie closely between the arms of the frame, is a narrow flexible blade or tongue forged in steel and bent into a prong at its free end . The oval part of the frame is held in the left hand, with its two arms against the parted teeth and the lips resting lightly on them (Baines, 1992).


A Jaw harp from the Civil War era, Wikipedia 

The blade is then twanged rhythmically by the other hand. Its vibration sounds a note, which is usually deep in the bass register, depending on the instrument. Meanwhile the player moves tongue and cheeks to keep changing the volume of the mouth cavity (as in "oo-ah-ee") which functions as a resonator (Baines, 1992: page 177).

The instrument can only produce one basic note, but a skillful player can vary the harmonic structure of the note so as to give a convincing impression of different notes (Munrow, 1986: page 36). Here is a more contemporary example of how this works. It is the folk standard "Shortnin' Bread" by the inimitable country blues harmonica player Sonny Terry.


In literature, the classification of this instrument is sometimes debated. The action involves a plucking or strumming motion with the hand whilst the variations in tone are produced by altering the position of the tongue and shape of the mouth cavity. The jew's harp has therefore been classified as aerophone (Munrow, 1984: page 36) or idiophone (sub-category percussion) (Baines, 1992: page 178).

There is controversy over the origin of the name. One explanation is that the jew's harp was a lowly instrument and took its name from a - at the time certainly - despised people. Another is that jew's harp is a corruption of jaw's harp, borne out of the German name Maultrommel (meaning "mouth drum"). A third explanation is that the jew's harp is a corruption of the French jeu d'harpe (Munrow, 1984: page 36).

In Austria, a main seat of jew's harp manufacture from the 17th century has been Molln; the instrument was played especially for serenading (Baines, 1992: page: 178). Though it is my impression from the available literature, that the jew's harp was a rather popular instrument for folk/dance music, also "serious" music has been composed. During the period from approximately 1765, Austrian composer and organist and one of Beethoven's music teachers, Johann George Alberchtsberger, wrote a number of concerti for the jew's harp (Gohring et al., 2012; Baines, 1992). 


3.3 The Crumhorn (Woodwind)

The crumhorn - shaped like the letter "J" - was the earliest and by far the most common of the so called "reed-cap instruments" of the Renaissance. The name means literally "curved horn" and is associated with the old English word crump and the German krumm meaning crooked. Hence KrumbhornKrummhorn (German), and French Cromorne. Other names used for the instrument also refer to its shape: Tournebout (French), Corno torto or simply Storto (Italian) and Orlo (Spanish).


Two modern crumhorns (Wikipedia, 2017)

The crumhorn is made by turning and boring a length of boxwood and then steaming round the lower end  to produce the characteristic curve. This does not affect the sound and is purely decorative (Munrow, 1986)

Reed- or windcap instruments - such as the crumhorn - developed from the late 15th century onward. In this class of instruments, the reed was kept out of direct contact with the lips bij means of a cap with a slot in the top which is placed over the reed. The player simply blows through the slot in the top of the cap, using a fairly strong breath pressure. This vibrates the reed and generates sound. Through all the Renaissance reed-cap instruments employed double, not single reeds (Munrow, 1986).

Baines (1992) comments that the wind-cap may have been the significant innovation, through alowing articulation, essential for refined music in parts. Munrow (1982) states that reed-instruments are rather difficult to play. Through cross-fingering, chromatic notes can be achieved, but this tends to weaken the tone. On an instrument pitched in C, for example, the fingering for Ab, F# and Eb in te basic scale can be rather unsatisfactory. A professional player could pull it off, but if musicians were expected to double on a variety of instruments, it was useful to have instruments which did not require the mastery of a special embouchure. Reed-cap instruments, like the crumhorn, do not require an embouchure.


The reed-cap of a crumhorn (Wikipedia, 2017)

Even so, reed-cap instruments remain difficult to play in tune. Pitch is governed by breath pressure: any fluctuation in pressure produces an equivalent change in pitch. So they need to be played at a fixed dynamic level.

Because of the lack of direct control of the reed, the crumhorn cannot overblow, giving it a very restricted compass (Munrow, 1982; Baines, 1992). Only the fundamental scale is possible, limiting the compass to an octave and a note. This has to be taken into account when choosing or arranging music for this instrument. It does, however, come in various sizes: treble, tenor, bass, extended bass.

A consort of crumhorns - usually consisting of alto, two tenors and a bass - is said to produce a fresh, invigorating sound quite unlike any other (Baines, 1992). The sound resembles that of an organ. But when each musical line in a consort is played by a different crumhorn, there is a much greater separation. Baines(1992) comments: "The human breath imparts a living quality which the organ's bellows cannot quite match." Munrow (1986) describes the sound as a "nasal buzz" (Munrow, 1986: p. 49).

Despite the odd appearance and sound it produces when played badly, the crumhorn was not a joke. Its role in Renaissance music was limited but a serious one, according to Munrow (1986). It was ideally suited to solemn slow-moving music. But many different types of compositions have been written for crumhorn, ranging from dances to Italian madrigals and church music.

It was in Gremany, Italy, and the Low Countries that the crumhorn seems to have been most popular. No English music is known that employed the crumhorn. Apparently Henry VIII possessed a collection of crumhorns (Baines, 1992; Munrow, 1986) and a rare literary reference occurs in Sir William Leighton's Teares of Lamentations of a Sorrowful Soule (London 1613) (Munrow, 1986).

4. The Cittern (Strings)

The cittern is a metal-strung plucked instrument. It has a pear-shaped body with almost flat back (Baines, 1992). A characteristic of the cittern,which was very popular in the 16th and 17th centuries, was its unusual neck,which was half cut away from behind the fingerboard on the bass side. The resulting overlap formed a "channel", which facilitated very rapid shifts to and from the high positions that were so often required in the instrument's solo repertory (Wade-Matthews, 2010).
Woodcut of Adrian Le Roy's Breve et facile instruction of 1565 (Hartig, 2012)

It has a bright sound due to its metal strings (struck with the fingers or more usually a plectrum), so it does not have the type of sweet melancholic sound of other instruments like the lute (Hartig, 2012). It is described as "sprightly and cheerful" (Wade-Matthews, 2010) or "cheerful, glistening" (Baines, 1992).

Descended perhaps from the medieval citole, the cittern was developed in 15th-century Italy. The whole instrument except the belly was carved in one piece untilconstruction in separate pieces, as in violin-making, was adopted by Italian makers from the mid-16th century.

During the early years the cittern underwent many modifications, including increasing the number of courses of strings from five to 12. In 16th century France and northern Europe the cittern eventually became standardized as a four-course instrument, with the top two courses of a string doubled and the other two trebled.

The Renaissance cittern was played both by the "common man" and by the nobility and upper classes (Hartig, 2012). One person who reputedly enjoyed playing it was J.S. Bach's grandfather, who played it while working in his mill (Wade-Matthews, 2010). Given the simple tuning and its ability to produce simple chords, it was well adapted as a popular music-making instrument, especially for dances. Cittern music ranges from intabulated dance tunes to elaborate polyphony. Much was published for solo cittern and cittern with solo voice. The instrument was especially valued for its role in the English mixed consort (Randel, 2003).

Later in the Renaissance it was popularized through a number of publications and, for a while, it was considered to be a part of "court fashion" to play the cittern. By the late 17th century the cittern was experiencing a massive decline in popularity, despite the attempts of people such as John Playford, who published "Musicke's Delight on the Cithren" of 1666 (Hartig, 2012).

By the mid 17th century in England and France, the cittern had degenerated into a barbershop instrument and was fast losing out to the increasingly popular guitar. By the beginning of the 20th century, the cittern had died out (Wade-Matthews, 2010).


Sources

BAINES, A. (ed.) (1992) The Oxford Companion to Musical Instruments. New York: Oxford University Press.


GOHRING, B., GOHRING, J. & CRANE, F.(2012) History of the Jew's Harp. [Online] Available from: http://jewsharpguild.org/history.html [Accessed: 28/01/2017].

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

HARTIG, A. M. (2012). The Renaissance Cittern Site: Frequently Asked Questions about the Renaissance Cittern. [Online] Available from: http://www.cittern.theaterofmusic.com/ [Accessed: 30/01/2017].


RANDEL, D.M. (2003). The Harvard Dictionary of Music. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

TERRY, S. (1952) Shortnin' Bread[Online] Available from: https://play.spotify.com/album/0Nb0WUGJC1i0hutlMSyLwO [Accessed: 28/01/2017].

WADE-MATTHEWS, M. (2010) Music An Illustrated History. London: Hermes House.


WIKIPEDIA (2017) Serpent (instrument). [Online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_(instrument) [Accessed: 28/01/2017].

WIKIPEDIA (2017) Jew's harp. [Online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jew's_harp [Accessed: 28/01/2017].

WIKIPEDIA (2017) Crumhorn. [Online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumhorn [Accessed: 06/02/2017].

Comments

  1. What an amazing blog. I was not aware of the many different types and designs of instruments used during this time period. You also have an extensive knowledge of musical instruments and their sounds. The shapes of some of them, like the The Serpent, which was made out of brass, have caught my interest in music of this time period!

    Brandi Bradley @ Rotax Metals

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Brandi for the compliment! I am actually quite amazed that somebody discovered my little project here on the web! And really glad you enjoyed reading it.
      I am just a novice at music, but I hope I can share my learning with others. Music is a beautiful thing.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 4: Writing out The Huckleberry Hornpipe by Byron Berline

Week 7: Madrigals and secular songs in the 16th century

Week 6: Sacred Music during the 16th century (Reformation)