guitar

How reliable is medieval music iconography? Part 2/3: 10 principles for interpreting iconography

Ian Pittaway cithara, citole, cittern, cobza, Elbląg 'gittern', Elbląg coboz, Elbląg koboz, Elbląg kobza, fiddle, fiddle tunings, gittern, guitar, harp, iconography, instrument straps, Jerome of Moravia, kithara, koboz, kobza, lute, medieval fiddle, medieval fiddle tunings, musical instrument straps, organ, organetto, organino, organistrum, Pierre de Limoges, portative organ, rota, rote, rothe, rotta, simfonie, simfony, sinfonie, straps, symfony, symphonia, symphonie, therobo, Tractatus de Musica, viella, vielle, vielle tunings 0 Comment

Our chief source of information for medieval musical instruments is iconography, meaning the art of manuscripts, paintings, and sculptures. That this art must be viewed critically is a commonplace understanding. Due to its highly stylised nature, some argue that all medieval iconography is suspect and of no value for gleaning real-world information. This series of articles argues that this conclusion is a mistake: if we come to iconography with an historically-informed approach, medieval art has much to teach us about historical musical instruments.

How do we judge medieval symbolism, artistic conventions and the limitations of the medium (manuscript, stone, paint) so as to gather information valuable to a luthier, a music historian and a modern player of medieval instruments? That is what this article sets out to describe, outlining 10 principles when viewing iconography for practical musical purposes.  

The first article introduced the topic by outlining the characteristics of medieval art. The third and final part puts the 10 principles of the present article into practice with the recreation of a gittern painted by Simone Martini in 1312-18.    

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The evidence for straps used with medieval, renaissance and baroque musical instruments

Ian Pittaway archlute, baroque guitar, citole, cittern, cobza, gittern, guitar, harp, iconography, instrument straps, koboz, kobza, lute, medieval harp, musical instrument straps, nakers, organ, organetto, organino, organistrum, pipe and tabor, portative organ, psaltery, simfonie, simfony, sinfonie, straps, symfony, symphonia, symphonie, theorbo

To play a musical instrument comfortably, sometimes the player needs a strap to stabilise it. What is the historical evidence for the types of straps used for medieval, renaissance and baroque instruments?

As this article will show, in trying to discover the historical evidence for straps, we immediately encounter the conventions of artistic representation. Medieval artists until the 15th century typically did not show straps, even when an instrument was impossible to play without one; and renaissance and baroque artists showed straps inconsistently and often only partially.

This article takes a roughly chronological look, sifting the artistic conventions from the practical realities to discover if and how straps were used on a range of historical instruments: citole; gittern; harp; psaltery; portative organ; simfony; pipe and tabor; cittern; guitar; nakers; and lutes from the medieval, renaissance and baroque periods.

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The citole: from confusion to clarity. Part 1/2: What is a citole?

Ian Pittaway Cantigas de Santa María, cetra, cetula, cithara, citole, cittern, fiddle, gittern, guitar, iconography, kithara, medieval fiddle, seconde Estampie Royal, Tinctoris Johannes, vielle 14 Comments
© Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

The citole, a plucked fingerboard instrument of the 13th and 14th centuries, is today the most misunderstood of all medieval instruments. It is regularly wrongly identified as a plucked fiddle or a guitar, often confused with the cetra, and mistaken assumptions are made about its string material and its distinctive wedge neck with a thumb-hole.

Using the surviving British Museum citole, medieval iconography and medieval testimony, these two articles set out the evidence, drawing on the ground-breaking research of Laurence Wright, Crawford Young and Alice Margerum, with some additional observations.

This first article describes the citole’s physical form, string material and tuning. The second article describes the playing style and repertoire of the instrument.

We begin this article with video of a copy of the British Museum citole playing music from c. 1300: La seconde Estampie Royal – The second Royal Estampie. Read more

The guitar: a brief history from the renaissance to the modern day

Ian Pittaway baroque, baroque guitar, Broonzy Bill, Carthy Martin, citole, cittern, early instruments, early music, folk music, gittern, guitar, kithara, Latin guitar, Moorish guitar, orpharion, Paul Les, renaissance, renaissance guitar 4 Comments

A French 4 course renaissance guitar from c. 1570. The origins of the guitar are much-discussed and much-disputed, and some pretty wild and unsubstantiated claims are made for its heritage, based on vaguely guitar-like instruments in medieval and even pre-medieval iconography, about which we often know little or nothing beyond an indistinguishable drawing, painting or carving; or based on instruments which have names that sound like ‘guitar’. This article is an attempt to slice through the fog with a brief history of the instrument, charting its development from the renaissance, through the baroque period to the modern day, based only on what can be claimed with evidence. The article is illustrated with pictures, videos and sound recordings, beginning with a short video of guitar history.

This is an expanded version of an article originally published in 2015, with a new video.

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The scandalous la volta: “such a lewd and unchaste dance”

Ian Pittaway Anatomie of Abuses, Arbeau Thoinot, crumhorn, dance, Dowland John, Elizabeth I, guitar, lavolta, Orchésographie, Orchesography, Praetorius Michael, Puritans, Queen Elizabeth I, renaissance dance, Stubbes Philip, Tabourot Jehan, volt, volta, volte 0 Comment

La volta (or volte or volt or, in England, lavolta) was reputedly the favourite dance of Queen Elizabeth I, performed by couples with much leaping, lifting and turning. The dance, a variation of the galliard, was considered scandalous by the moralists of the day. Just as today we hear talk of ‘gateway drugs’ leading to harder and more destructive substances, la volta was considered a ‘gateway dance’, leading to more destructive vices. This article describes the key point of the choreography, discusses the moral opprobium it attracted, and weighs up the evidence for the Queen dancing this “lewd and unchaste dance”.

We begin with a performance of two voltas by The Night Watch.

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