iconography – Early Music Muse

The Elbląg ‘gittern’: a case of mistaken identity. Part 2/2: Identifying the koboz.

Ian Pittaway Berkeley manuscript, cobza, Elbląg 'gittern', Elbląg coboz, Elbląg koboz, Elbląg kobza, gittern, iconography, koboz 31st May 202331st May 2023 0 Comment

In the first article, I explained why the koboz (kobza, cobza) found in 1986 in a latrine in Elbląg, Poland (above left), dated to 1350–1450, cannot be a gittern, though it is always identified as such in modern literature.

In this second article we discover the difficulties of nomenclature in early eastern, medieval, and renaissance literature, with several quite different instruments named koboz or its variants; and that the same situation persists today. How then to establish the lineage and history of the Elbląg instrument from historical sources? First we define the characteristics of the Elbląg koboz and, having established the parameters of an instrument of the same type, we see such kobzas in iconography from the 14^th to the 17^th century in Turkey, Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic), Hungary, France, Italy and Flanders, with possible further sightings in France, Romania, Catalonia, and England.

I conclude that, this being the case, a new instrument can be added to the lexicon of medieval and renaissance instruments: the koboz, of which the Elbląg find of 1350-1450 is a surviving historical example.

We begin with a video of the popular 16^th and 17^th century tune, Sellenger’s Round, played on a copy of the Polish Elbląg koboz.

Medieval plectrums: the written, iconographical and material evidence. Part 2/2: Medieval and early renaissance plectrum technique.

Ian Pittaway Cantigas de Santa María, cetra, cithara, citole, Francesco da Milano, gittern, historically informed performance, iconography, kithara, lute, lute manuscripts and books, Milano Francesco da, plectra, plectrum, plectrums, polyphony, psaltery 25th January 202319th April 2023 4 Comments

Part 1 brought together the written, iconographical and material evidence for the characteristics of plectrums used to play the gittern, lute, psaltery, citole and cetra, made from quills, gut strings, metal, bone, and ivory.

In part 2 we examine the practical evidence for medieval plectrum technique. Iconography is presented to demonstrate medieval ways of holding a plectrum; suggestions are made for easy accompaniment of monophonic melodies; the myth that plectrum instruments could not play polyphony is disproven; and evidence is presented for an intermediate stage in the 15^th century between playing with a plectrum and playing with fingertips, using both simultaneously. Finally, we answer the question: were plectrums always used to play medieval plucked chordophones?

This article includes 6 videos to illustrate medieval and early renaissance plectrum technique, beginning with citole and gittern playing an untitled polyphonic instrumental – probably a ductia – from British Library Harley 978, folio 8v-9r, c. 1261–65.

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, Tinctoris Johannes, vielle 2nd November 202225th May 2023 2 Comments

The citole, a plucked fingerboard instrument of the 13^th and 14^th 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 Lawrence 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

Performable music in medieval and renaissance art

Ian Pittaway bestiaries, Bosch Hieronymous, Bosch Jheronimus, Concert in the Egg, Cornelisz Jacob, fools, Gentile da Fabriano, iconography, lute, Master of the Female Half Lengths, Merrymakers in a Mussel Shell, motet, music in art, Panhedel Gielis, Se j'ayme mon amy, Ship of Fools (Bosch painting), Si j'ayme mon amy, Singers in the Egg (Bosch drawing), Virgin Mary 19th May 202114th January 2023 0 Comment

In the medieval and renaissance periods there were plentiful images of musical instruments and singers in manuscripts, paintings and sculpture, and many manuscripts of music notation survive from those eras. There are rare instances which bring these two elements together: an artist’s image of singers and musicians in which an actual piece of music is shown, readable and performable by the viewer.

That is the subject of this article, sifting out the faux music from the real, addressing questions of message, symbolism and meaning, asking why artists chose to include performable music, and how this painted sound adds to the communication of the artist and the significance of the art.

This article ranges from face-pulling singing monks to Marian antiphons, from a lute-playing Mary Magdalene to a unique survival of Gloria notation, from Jheronimus Bosch’s egg to lustful monks, with paintings, soundfiles and video examples of music notation in art. It can be read stand-alone, or as a precursor to three essays about music in the art of Jheronimus Bosch, the first of which focusses on the alleged ‘butt music’ in Bosch’s painting of 1495–1505, The Garden of Earthly Delights, available to read here.