Accueil / Albums / Mots-clés Middle Ages
+ Music + musicians + musical instrument 8
Cymbals and Trumpets
Cymbals and Trumpets
Nun and Friar with Musical Instruments
The picture is a curious illumination from the Royal MS. 2 B vii., representing a friar and a nun themselves making minstrelsy.
Regals and Double Pipe
Regals and Double Pipe (Royal 2 B vii).
Regals or Organ
Regals or Organ (Royal, 14 E iii).
Rustic Merry-making
It is curious to find that even at so late a period as the time of Queen Mary, the shepherds still officiated at weddings and other merrymakings in their villages, so as to excite the jealousy of the professors of the joyous science. The accompanying wood-cut, from a MS. in the French National library, may represent such a rustic merry-making.
Shepherd with Bagpipes
Besides the pipe and horn, the bagpipe was also a rustic instrument. The picture is a shepherd playing upon one.
Anglo-saxon harp
The Anglo-saxons frequently accompanied their vocal effusions with a harp, more or less triangular in shape,—an instrument which may be considered rather as constituting the transition of the lyre into the harp. The representation of king David playing the harp is from an Anglo-saxon manuscript of the beginning of the eleventh century, in the British museum. The harp was especially popular in central and northern Europe, and was the favourite instrument of the German and Celtic bards and of the Scandinavian skalds.
Rotta
A representation of David playing on the rotta, from a psalter of the seventh century in the British museum (Cott. Vesp. A. I). According to tradition, this psalter is one of the manuscripts which were sent by pope Gregory to St. Augustine. In the rotta the ancient Asiatic lyre is easily to be recognized.