York Minster: 900 years of music iconography. Part 2 of 2: The instruments of the magnificent pulpitum or Kings Screen, 1473–1500.

Photograph © Ian Pittaway.

In the first article about York Minster, we spanned nearly 900 years of music iconography from circa 1030 to 1915, with an actual 11th century oliphant in the crypt, and carvings of a pipe and tabor, harps, trumpets, gitterns, lutes, nakers, violin, timbrel, and portative organ.

Photograph © Ian Pittaway.

This second article is dedicated to one outstanding feature of York Minster, the pulpitum or Kings Screen, with 56 carvings of instruments from 1473–1500: shawms, bagpipes, trumpets, transverse flute, recorder, double recorder, lutes, bray harps, gitterns, rotas, fiddles, symphonie, tromba marina, portative organs, positive organ, clavicimbalum, cymbals, fool’s percussion, triangle, nakers, and singers.

Photograph © Ian Pittaway.

This article therefore acts as a survey of instruments played in England in the last quarter of the 15th century, including some of the instruments lesser-known in the modern early music revival: the rota, the tromba marina, and the clavicimbalum.

Each carving of an instrument is photographed and described, accompanied by a video of each instrument playing music from the time.

Photographs © Ian Pittaway.

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The medieval portative organ: an interview with Cristina Alís Raurich

Cristina Alís Raurich is a historical musician and researcher who specialises in keyboards of the middle ages and early renaissance: portative organ, positive organ, clavicimbalum, and clavicytherium. Not only is Cristina a musician of consummate skill, her love for her instruments and specialism is obvious and infectious: rarely have I seen anyone play and talk about music with such transparent joy. This I discovered when we met at Bolton Castle, Wensleydale, England, in 2017, where she gave a presentation on the history of the portative organ; performed in the duo, Sonus Hyspaniae, on portative organ and percussion, with Raúl Lacilla on musa (medieval bagpipe) and frestel (medieval Pan pipe); and kindly agreed to the following interview for Early Music Muse.

Cristina performs internationally solo and with medieval music groups Magister Petrus, La Douce Semblance, Le Souvenir, Carmina Harmonica, Sonus Hyspaniae and Hamelin Consort; and gives courses and master classes on medieval music and medieval keyboards around Europe. She is assistant director and faculty member of Medieval Music Besalú, the international course on medieval music performance in Besalú, Catalonia, a teacher at the Centre International de Musiques Médiévales de Montpellier, France, and currently a doctoral student at the University of Würzburg, Germany.

In this interview, Cristina discusses how she discovered medieval keyboards; her research into the portative organ and her commissioning of the only 13th century reconstruction; its playing techniques within the framework of medieval musical styles; its performance context in the middle ages; and performance presentation to a modern audience.

This article includes three videos of Cristina playing: table organ, clavicytherium, and portative organ.

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The Psilvery Psound of the Psaltery: a brief history

Psaltery player in the arcade
of Beverley Minster, 1330–90.
Photograph © Ian Pittaway.

There is something quite enchanting about the silvery sound of the psaltery. Its name probably originates in religious use, as an accompaniment to singing songs from the psalms, known as psalmody and sung from a psalter, thus the psaltery. The word is from the Old English psealm or salm and Old French psaume or saume, derived from Church Latin psalmus, which itself comes ultimately from the Greek psalmos, a song sung to a harp, and psallein, to pluck on a stringed instrument.

From the 11th century, the psaltery’s wire strings rang out in Europe in religious and secular contexts until around 1500, with little pockets of survival in the 16th century. Its regular appearance in manuscript art, church iconography and in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales are evidence of its wide use and appeal.

The influence of the psaltery on later musical developments is surprisingly widespread, giving rise to the hammer dulcimer, the harpsichord family, and ultimately the piano.

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