York Minster: 900 years of music iconography. Part 1 of 2: Carvings of musical instruments, c. 1030–1915.

Photograph © Ian Pittaway.

The current building of York Minster was founded in c. 1225 and added to for many centuries, as is typical for a medieval church. During that period, depictions of medieval and renaissance musicians were carved in stone and crafted in stained glass. There is also an actual musical instrument on display, an oliphant from c. 1030 (pictured above).

This article, the first of two about York Minster’s rich musical iconography, is a chronological guide from c. 1030 to 1915, a span of nearly 900 years. The dates, locations and instruments are:

• c. 1030, the crypt – oliphant
• c. 1290–1350, the south wall – pipe and tabor
• c. 1310, the south window – harp
• 1405–08, the Great East Window – trumpets
• c. 1470s–80s, the central tower – gittern, lutes, fiddle, nakers 
• c. 1803–35, the quire – gittern
• c. 1820, the south quire aisle – violin
• 1903–1915, east walls of the north and south transepts – harp, timbrel, portative organ

Each representation of an instrument is photographed, with a description and a video of the instrument being played.

There is one location missing from the list above, so densely populated with instruments that it is described in a second dedicated article: the magnificent pulpitum or Kings Screen, 1473–1500, with 56 carvings of 20 different instruments, including 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. The second article is available here on 17th September 2025.

Photographs © Ian Pittaway.

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“the verray develes officeres”: minstrels and the medieval church

In the middle ages, minstrels were regularly accused by church commentators of vanity, idleness, inflaming carnal desire, lechery, and leading others into vice. In the 12th century, Bishop of Chartres John of Salisbury expressed the view that all minstrels should be exterminated. Because of this reputation, the church wanted to ensure that its most sacred music was different in kind to minstrel music, and restated several times that only the voice and organ were allowed in the liturgy, not instruments of minstrelsy. Still some writers complained bitterly of secular styles of music corrupting singers’ voices in sacred chant.

How can we account for the contradiction between clergy’s invectives against minstrels and the innumerable quantity of medieval and renaissance paintings in which gitterns, shawms, harps, fiddles, lutes – the instruments of minstrels – are shown in worship of the Virgin Mary and in praise of the infant Jesus? How can we reconcile the critiques of clerics against minstrels with their regular appearance in religious manuscripts, their likenesses carved in churches, and their employment by the church? This article seeks answers through the evidence of medieval Christian moralists; church councils; music treatises; religious paintings; records of church ceremonies; and the relationship of the church with organised minstrelsy.

Images from The Luttrell Psalter, 1325-1340 (BL Add MS 42130).
Top row, left to right: church singers (f. 171v); bishop (f. 31r); pilgrim (f. 32r); nun (f. 51v).
This row, left to right, players of: harp (f. 174v); pipe and tabor (f. 164v);
organistrum, also called the symphonie (f. 176r); portative organ (f. 176r).

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