Period Instrumental Music

Here's an experiment worth trying: watch any movie with Exciting! Action! Scenes! (the horror genre works best), but hit the MUTE button and experience it by reading the subtitles and seeing the action. You'll probably notice that it's a lot less exciting and the cat-out-of-the-box scares are rather less scary. That's because you're depriving yourself of one of the key cues: the music. It's a rare director who can make a good silent horror scene or movie; most movies rely on tense music to build up the moment, so when the cat does leap out of the box, you're already on an adrenaline rush. The bottom line: music makes the scene.

I've talked about vocal music elsewhere. This is a page about instrumental music. I'm guessing that in the real middle ages, you were less likely to hear music than you are today (especially since we hear a lot of spillover music: e.g., the guy trying to go deaf by his 21st birthday, the girl in the upstairs apartment who broke up with her boyfriend and puts "Can't Live Without You" on repeat, not to mention television and radio commercials). However, our perceptions of the middle ages have been colored by the music in movies and shows, so we expect to hear music. But walk into a random event, and chances are good you won't hear any instrumental music, except as a special performance. If you want to hear music at a medieval event, you have to go to a Renfair.

Why is that? I believe that it's a simple matter of economics. You can try just about anything in the SCA and until you decide you want to spend serious money, you can generally get along with very minimal monetary investment in equipment. Garb? You can get by on loaner garb for your first few events (chances are good your first event was a friend throwing clothes at you and saying "Here, put this on, we're going somewhere...") Brewing? You'll need a waterlock ($2), yeast ($1), and a bottle (potentially free, if you recycle) to start. Fighting? Except for the athletic cup (which, for some reason, no one wants to share...), you can go to fight practice for quite a while and get by on loaner armor.

Instrumental music, on the other hand, suffers from a lack of loaner equipment. Part of the reason is that for any musician, the instrument they play is part of them, and they're uncomfortable letting others touch it. Part of the reason is that you don't actually want to loan out most instruments: no one wants to loan or borrow a flute. So unless you already have the equipment, you've got to go out and get your own...and musical instruments aren't cheap and (unlike armor) can't easily be made by the novice.

There are several solutions. One is to bring whatever instrument you do play into the SCA, and play period music on it. A lot of folks do that, and as long as you're not bringing something obviously modern (like an electronic keyboard), most people take it for what it is: an attempt at period recreation. However, not all of us have that luxury: it's one thing to bring a flute, another thing entirely to bring a piano. Thus, this page is for those interested in playing period music, but who don't already play a period or perioid instrument: in other words, you're interested in music, but know you'll have to learn a new instrument and aren't sure what to try. What I've done below is listed some relatively inexpensive modern instruments which are reasonably similar to period instruments. My suggestion is that if you're interested, try the modern versions first and see if you enjoy playing them; if you don't, you haven't wasted a lot of money.

A qualifying statement: This is based on my own research, and unless noted, I haven't yet confirmed all the statements below. The only instrument I've had anything resembling formal training on is the piano, so I can't speak to the differences between modern and period performance techniques; obviously, this will have a big difference on how the instrument sounds. I've arranged these instruments by the price of an entry-level instrument (which is to say, the price I paid for them when I bought mine through a certain internet bidding company).

For those who want to have some fun, here's the start of the woodcuts from Praetorius's Syntagma Musicum (1619, though this version is from an 1884 printing), and Agricola's Musica Instrumetalis (1528/1545, from an 1896 printing). Praetorius gives detailed descriptions of a lot of musical instruments, and the woodcuts show you what he's talking about, and more detail about a broad range of Medieval and Renaissance musical instruments from Musica Antiqua's website. Edinburgh University has a nicely organized collection of musical instruments from different periods,and the Grinnell College Music Instrument Collection website shows the evolution of various instruments. The following list is somewhat biased: I can play strings and keyboards, but have difficulty with woodwinds and brass. By far the best collection I've found is that at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; I also consider their website to be by far the best museum website.

Some Basics of Music Theory

I've written this so you don't need a lot of musical training to get started. However, those who have some musical training may appreciate the following. One of the main issues of music in the western tradition is what constitutes a consonance. Classical music theory (dating back to Pythagoras) holds the consonances are connected to the existence of small whole number ratios. The acceptable ratios were 3: 2 (which corresponds to the interval of a fifth, for example C-G) and the ratio 4: 3 (which corresponds to the interval of a fourth, for example, C-F). The interval between the two higher notes (F-G) is a tone, and corresponds to a 9:8 ratio. Both mathematically and perceptually, the tone is dissonant.

Against this theoretical position was a purely practical one: the intervals are very large, and there are other intervals that sound consonant. In particular, the third (C-E) sounded pleasant. From a Pythagorean point of view, the third corresponded to an 81: 64 ratio, which is dissonant. However, this is very close to 80: 64 = 5: 4, which satisfies the requirement of the ratio being between small whole numbers. Starting in the Roman period, there was increasing acceptance of the third as a musically consonant ratio.

Notation

One of the great inventions of western civilization is musical notation. Originally, musical notation consisted of neumes, which indicated the relative pitch of notes in a musical piece. These are essentially reminders, to the performer, of whether the pitch rises or falls. Guido of Arezzo (fl. 11th cent.) is credited with the idea of identifying specific pitches. From lowest to highest, these were ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la. The names were taken from the initial syllables of words in a hymn to Saint John (where the corresponding words were to be sung at the corresponding pitch). Somewhat later, "Ut" was changed to "do", and "si" (from Sancte Iohannes) was added; in the 19th century "si" was changed to "ti", which gives us the modern do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti. Guido also introduced the four (later five) line staff to represent the notes.

The staff allowed the pitch of the notes to be recorded. The duration was recorded through several techniques, though two are particularly important. The first (common during the 14th and 15th centuries) is often referred to as "black mensural notation," which indicate the length of a note by varying shapes of a blackened quadrilateral. In the 15th and 16th centuries, white notation appeared; the major difference between modern musical notation and white notation is that the notes are squares with a diagonal oriented vertically and the stem originating at the apex, rather than elliptical with the stems running through the end of the major axis (I am a mathematician...).

In all of this, one important feature must be noted: A lot of music was never written down. The status of the performing musician was low enough (and that of the instrumentalist even lower) that until the Renaissance, very few treatises dealt with their work. Most historians believe that, as in modern jazz, a lot of instrumental performance was improvised.

The Players

As noted above, instrumental players tended to rank fairly low on the social scale (the one exception being trumpeteers, owing to their association with the court). The troubadours, perhaps the best-known of the medieval musicians, were not actually instrumentalists; in fact, the etymology of the word indicates that they were composers first, performers second. In terms of social acceptance, the rough ranking was: music critic, composer, vocalist, instrumentalist. Pure instrumentalists were viewed with particular suspicion: if you think about it, there is something very disturbing about the fact that someone can affect your emotional status without saying a word (see the note above on watching scary movies).

At the same time, it was acceptable for persons of a high social rank to be musicians and composers. Castiglione notes that the ideal courtier must not only be able to appreciate music, but should be able to play as well. William IX of Aquitaine was one of the early troubadours. Probably the best-known example of King Henry VIII of England, who was a skilled lutenist, and composer. He wrote a number of pieces, which did not include "Greensleeves.' To my ear, most of Henry's pieces are fairly pedestrian: they're reasonable pieces, but it was a good thing he had another job...his daughter Elizabeth was also a competent player on an instrument called the virginal (a form of the harpsichord).

Classification

Modern instruments are often classified into four basic types: percussion, wind, brass, and string. This classification system works well...if all you're talking about are drums, flutes, trombones, and violins. Most instruments fall into two categories, or between categories. For example, a piano's sound comes from striking a string: does this make it a string instrument or a percussion instrument?

Medieval and Renaissance classification was much more pragmatic: they distinguished between haut ("high", but taken to mean "loud") and basse ("low", but taken to mean "soft).

The Others

There's a bunch of other instruments I won't include here, because while they are period, they represent a significant monetary investment, or are simply too difficult to transport. They include the harp, hammered dulcimer, most flutes, and various keyboard instruments (the virginal, the harpsichord, and clavichord, the last of which evolved into the piano).

• 1. "Extensive research" = I googled it.

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