Instrument Museum

The ensembles Leones and Les haulz et les bas created the core of this Instrument Museum while recording the audio samples for the research project. The aim was for the users to get to know the instruments employed in the recordings as well as their sound characteristics and possibilities outside the context of an ensemble recording. The audio samples and the entries in the Instrument Museum are interlinked with each other, so that a particular instrument can be selected from an audio sample for individual viewing or, conversely, a single instrument can be followed and listened to in various ensemble combinations. Although the recordings of the two ensembles include a number of important instruments of the period, they are by no means exhaustive. This is why further examples from other recordings have been added to the museum. The instruments of the alta capella, omnipresent in the iconography of the time (e.g. » C. Musician Angels; » I. Instrumentalists at the Court of Maximilian I) – i.e. the ‘loud’ instrumental ensembles consisting, among other things, of shawm, bombard, slide trumpet and sackbut in various combinations – can be heard in the recordings of Les haulz et les bas: see, for example » Hörbsp. ♫ La la hö hö; » Hörbsp. ♫ Tandernaken; » Hörbsp. ♫ O rosa bella (four-part), as well as some of recordings by the Basel Domenico Project: e.g. » Hörbsp. ♫ Fortunosa (Seigneur Lyon); » Hörbsp. ♫ Reale & Saltarello. The ‘quiet’ instruments, which were used both as solo instruments and in various bassa capella combinations, can be heard in recordings by Ensemble Leones: e.g.  » Hörbsp. ♫ Freu dich, du weltlich creatúr; » Hörbsp. ♫ Soyt tart tempre) as well as in audio samples taken from other recordings, including La Mouvance (e.g. » Hörbsp. ♫ Maria, keusche muter zart, La Mouvance) and the Basel Domenico Project (» Hörbsp. ♫ Belreguardo). These include the vielle, lute, gittern, harp, dulcemelos (a special form of the late medieval hammered dulcimer) and transverse flute.

Certain special instruments that appear frequently in the iconography in various contexts have also been considered. These include pipe and tabor – a combination of the one-handed flute and drum – which was extremely important in the dance music of the period and was played by a single musician, as well as the bagpipes, which were often played in alta capella combinations. The frequently illustrated Jew’s harp or jaw harp has been included here as a representative of the instruments that Sebastian Virdung called ‘dorliche instrumenta’ (foolish instruments) in his 1511 publication and that “eyn ietlicher paur mag kennen” (‘any peasant will know’)[1], which included noisemakers and signalling instruments as well as those that could imitate animal sounds, such as bells, hunting horns, humming pots and bird whistles.

The Instrument Museum also contains two instruments of emerging humanism in Italy, whose musical practice was known in the Austrian regions, and  from the late 15th century particularly in centres such as Innsbruck: the lira da braccio (a Renaissance adaptation of the medieval vielle, which allowed chordal accompaniment and can be seen in the hands of Apollo in Albrecht Dürer’s Celtis Box, c. 1508) and the cetra (one of the few metal-strung instruments of the period and also an early ‘Orphean’ instrument).

Keyboard instruments play an important role in the iconography and especially in the preserved sources of instrumental music (» C. Organs and organ music; » C. Music for keyboard instruments). Most of the surviving tablatures from this period were written for keyboard instruments and set the standard for arrangements on other instruments. In the Instrument Museum, this is represented by the organ, the main public keyboard instrument, and the clavicytherium, an upright version of the clavicymbalum and, like the latter, an instrument for private use.

Iconography and contemporary accounts include a number of other important instruments not yet included in the Instrument Museum. The reason for this is that in most cases they were not part of the project recordings. For a few instrument families including the psaltery, there is also no significant modern tradition of reconstructing instruments and playing techniques.

Also missing here is the recorder (which appears in iconography from the 14th century onwards, both as a solo instrument and in ensembles, usually made up of several recorders)[2], and a few other keyboard instruments, including the clavicymbalum (invented by Hermann Poll (» G. Hermann Poll) in 1397) and the clavichord. The chekker (French: eschaquier, German: Schachtbrett) is occasionally mentioned in connection with keyboard instruments. It is thought to have been a form of table psaltery played with quills. Another lacuna in the museum’s collection is the area of percussion instruments (drums, timpani, frame drums, bells, etc.), which were mainly used for military, dance and processional music, i.e. repertoires for which few musical sources have survived from the late Middle Ages. The Instrument Museum is not intended to be an encyclopaedic compendium. However, future additions should include some of the instruments listed above.

In addition to its function as a kind of extended glossary for the audio samples, the Instrument Museum also serves other purposes. It offers an ‘acoustic gallery’ of music in the late Middle Ages, from the private music-making of the urban and aristocratic classes (» I. Music and ceremony in Maximilian’s Innsbruck; » I. Instrumentalists at the Court of Maximilian I) to the representative musical demonstrations in public spaces (» D. Royal Entry; » E. Musiker in der Stadt). Certain types of instruments were often combined to form specific ensembles. In addition to the well-known distinction between the alta (loud) and the bassa (soft) instruments, there were also preferred groupings within the latter, such as duos of vielles or lutes. The instruments in this museum can be found throughout Central and Western Europe in the late Middle Ages (such as the wind instruments of the alta capella and the vielle), but there are also instruments of more regional significance (such as the dulcemelos, which was more common in Austria than in other regions) or those associated with specific repertoires and milieus.

A significant part of the sound of a piece of music depends on the instruments used. It is therefore of considerable significance that no clear instrumentation directions are known for virtually any of the recorded audio samples. The choices of instrumentation made by the different ensembles have a substantial influence on the listener’s perception of a composition. It is an established fact that the alta capella did not only play signal and dance music, but also vocal polyphony on their instruments. As for the question of which instrument took on which function in these polyphonic settings, the most plausible solution proved to be the use of two instruments from the same family for the compositional core of cantus and tenor, namely shawm and tenor shawm (or pommer), in order to achieve an optimal sound blend. Additional voice parts could have been taken over by other instruments of the same family, or by the slide trumpet or (later) the trombone.

Throughout the Middle Ages, the vielle was considered the most suitable instrument for the accompaniment of monophony. However, its use implies a whole sound-world that we can only deduce from circumstantial evidence and approach through practical experimentation.[3] The often flat bridges in the illustrations suggest that several strings were frequently or even customarily bowed together – a technique that Hieronymus de Moravia already hinted at and which seems plausible in view of the later development of the instrument into the (chordal) lira da braccio. Using instruments to accompany monophony opens up a world of sound that can’t be deduced from the notation of the songs alone, and the possibilities of the accompanying instruments determine the sound of the song. In the 15th century, besides the ubiquitous vielle, these included mainly the harp and the lute. The Instrument Museum should therefore also enable users to better understand the choices that musicians made about instrumentation, and to follow these choices on individual instruments.

Last but not least, the Instrument Museum is intended to draw attention to the sound characteristics of individual instruments that may be surprising for today’s hearing expectations, or to raise awareness of an instrument that, although superficially familiar, belongs to a foreign sound world. This may be due to different construction techniques, different uses or different ways of playing the instruments.

Among the instruments in question is the harp, which at that time and in that region was always played with ‘bray pins’. These are small, hook-shaped pins that were placed at the bottom of the strings so that when plucked they produced a buzzing sound – a tone that is quite different from our modern idea of what a harp should sound like. It does, however, provide excellent tonal blend with string instruments, contributing to a homogeneous ensemble sound. At the same time the bray-pins increased the resonance of the instrument, allowing the relatively small body to produce a penetrating tone, which is why the harp was sometimes counted among the ‘loud’ instruments.

Another example is the generally monoxyle construction of bowed and some plucked instruments, in which the body was hollowed out of a single piece of hardwood, rather than – as was the later case – assembled from individual, often bent parts. This construction method has a direct impact on the sound of the instruments. They tend to be louder as a result, but they also sound sharper and have a more direct projection than later instruments with construction features that are geared towards a round and rich tone quality.

For other instruments, the main difference from today’s listening expectations is the playing technique. The lute is one such example. It wasn’t until the late 14th century that it began to be fretted, and until the late 15th century it continued to be played almost exclusively with a plectrum. This playing technique influences the timbre and volume of the instrument, which is well suited to ensemble playing, for example with bowed instruments where it can easily hold its own. It also imposes certain restrictions on the playing possibilities, which are different from those of the later finger playing. In short, the idiomatics of a lute played with a plectrum differs significantly from one plucked with fingers. The use of a plectrum does not prevent the performance of solo polyphony, but it does restrict it and steers it in certain directions.

The singing voice, probably the most important ‘instrument’ of the late Middle Ages and therefore also used by most of the musicians featured in the audio samples, is not represented in the museum’s collection, as the possibilities and timbres depend very much on the individual singers. In the audio samples, the voices are used both soloistically and chorally, whether in combination with instruments or a cappella.