Many of the instruments popular in medieval and Renaissance Europe came from Asia, having been transmitted through Byzantium, Spain, or eastern Europe. Perhaps the most notable development in western Europe was the practice, originating apparently in the 15th century, of building instruments in families, from the smallest to the largest size. A typical family was that of the shawms, which were powerful double-reed instruments. A distinction was made between haut (loud) and bas (soft) instruments, the former being suitable for performance out-of-doors and the latter for more intimate occasions. Hence, the shawm came to be known as the hautbois (loud wood), and this name was transferred to its more delicately toned descendant, the 17th-century oboe. By the beginning of the 17th century the German musical writer and composer Michael Praetorius, in his Syntagma musicum (“Musical Treatise”), was able to give a detailed account of families of instruments of all kinds—recorders, flutes, shawms, trombones, viols, and violins.
One of the major instruments of the Renaissance was the lute, a plucked or bowed chordophone—one of a class of musical instruments (also including harps, lyres, bows, and zithers) whose initial sound is produced by a stretched, vibrating string. A lute has strings parallel to its belly, or soundboard, that run along a distinct neck or pole. In this sense, instruments such as the Indian sitar are classified as lutes. The violin and the Indonesian rebab are bowed lutes, and the Japanese samisen and the Western guitar are plucked lutes.
Instruments in the shawm family, like the one pictured on the left (next to a smaller transverse Spanish clarinet, known as a pito), were made in a variety of sizes. Odile Noel/Redferns/Getty Images
In Europe, the term lute refers specifically to a plucked stringed musical instrument popular in the 16th and 17th centuries. The lute that was prominent in European popular art and music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods originated as the Arab ‘ūd (oud). This instrument was taken to Europe in the 13th century by way of Spain and by returning crusaders and is still played in Arab countries. Like the ‘ūd, the European lute has a deep, pear-shaped body, a neck with a bent-back pegbox, and strings hitched to a tension, or guitar-type, bridge glued to the instrument’s belly. European lutes have a large, circular sound hole cut into the belly and ornamented with a perforated rose carved from the belly’s wood.
The earliest European lutes followed the Arab instruments in having four strings plucked with a quill plectrum. By the mid-14th century the strings had become pairs, or courses. During the 15th century the plectrum was abandoned in favour of playing with the fingers, movable gut frets were added to the fingerboard, and the instrument acquired a fifth course. By the 16th century the classic form of the lute was established, with its six courses of strings (the top course a single string) tuned to G–c–f–a–d′–g′, beginning with the second G below middle C. Playing technique was systematized, and the music was written in tablature (a system of notation in which a staff of horizontal lines represented the courses of the lute), and letters or figures placed on the lines denoted the fret to be stopped and the strings to be plucked by the right hand.
By 1600 the great Bolognese and Venetian schools of lute makers had arisen, including Laux and Sigismond Maler, Hans Frei, Nikolaus Schonfeld, and the Tieffenbruckers. By the fine workmanship and tonal proportions of their instruments, they contributed much to the popularity of the lute and paved the way for its extensive and noble literature of solo music (fantasias, dance movements, song arrangements), song accompaniments, and ensemble music by such composers as Luis Milán and John Dowland.
After about 1600, French lutenists began to introduce modified tunings. At the same time, the lute itself was altered by the addition of bass strings, or diapasons, which required the enlargement of the neck and head of the instrument. These modified instruments were known as archlutes and included the chitarrone and the theorbo.
The theorbo, a large bass lute (or archlute), was used from the 16th to the 18th century for song accompaniments and for basso continuo parts (an improvised accompaniment on a bass line). It had six to eight single strings running along the fingerboard and, alongside them, eight off-the-fingerboard bass strings (diapasons). Both sets of strings had separate pegboxes connected by an S curve in the instrument’s neck. On 18th-century theorbos all but the two top courses of strings were double.
Closeup of a theorbo’s neck, strings, pegbox, and tuning pegs. Two sets of six to eight strings were the norm for this instrument, which was essentially a bass lute. Science & Society Picture Library/Getty Images
A similar, smaller instrument, the theorbo-lute, or French lute, was a modification of the regular double-strung lute, to which were added one to three off-the-fingerboard courses of bass strings. There were two pegboxes, one angled backward. Smaller and more agile than the theorbo, the theorbo-lute was the favourite of the 17th-century school of French lutenists; through them, it influenced the style of French harpsichord music.
The rebec was a bowed, stringed musical instrument of European medieval and early Renaissance music. It was originally called a rubebe, developed about the 11th century from the similar Arab rabāb, and was carried to Spain with Muslim culture. Like the rabāb, the rebec had a shallow, pear-shaped body, but on the rebec the rabāb’s skin belly was replaced by wood and a fingerboard was added. The rebec was held against the chest or chin or, occasionally, with the bottom of the instrument resting on the seated player’s left thigh. The three strings were tuned in fifths (e.g., g–d′–a′).
The medieval rebec was apparently a treble instrument, but by the late 15th century rebecs were made in sizes from treble to bass. The family of rebecs was superseded by the viols during the 16th century. The treble rebec survived into the 18th century as the kit, the dancing master’s fiddle. The lira and its Balkan folk variants, the gusla and gadulka, are closely related to the rebec.
Also called the viola da gamba, the viol is a bowed, stringed musical instrument used principally in chamber music of the 16th to the 18th century. The viol shares with the Renaissance lute the tuning of its six strings (two fourths, a major third, two fourths) and the gut frets on its neck. It was made in three sizes: treble, tenor, and bass, with the bottom string tuned, respectively, to d, G (or A), and D. To these sizes was later added the violone, a double bass viol often tuned an octave below the bass.
Viols are characterized by sloping shoulders; deep ribs; thin, flat backs; and, above all, a vertical playing position, with the bottom of the instrument resting on the knee or held between the legs—hence viola da gamba (Italian: “leg viol”). The breadth of the bridge, which was arched to give the bow separate access to each string, made forceful playing impossible, and the supine position of the bow hand, palm uppermost, encouraged a smooth playing style. The frets gave to each note the clarity of an open string—a clear, ringing, penetrating tone that was much prized.
By the second half of the 16th century the viol acquired a significant repertory of music for ensemble, for solo bass, and for the lyra viol, a small bass viol (also called viola bastarda). But as the style of instrumental composition changed during the 17th century, an expressive, vocal sound in the soprano register was emphasized, and the tenor and treble viols declined in favour of the violin, with which they were unable to compete because their deep bodies created a hollow, nasal timbre.
The bass viol, however, had by the mid-16th century developed a repertory of complex solo divisions, or ornate variations on a melody, often played on a small bass called a division viol. When that fashion died out in the late 1600s, the normal-sized solo bass viol, or viola da gamba (the name became synonymous with the bass viol as the other viols fell into disuse), was used in the instrumental forms of the Baroque period. Solo bass-viol playing continued in Germany and France into the 18th century. Elsewhere the bass viol survived chiefly because its sustained tone lent a pleasing support to the harpsichord. This combination, using the basso continuo, or thorough bass, technique, provided harmonic support for the Baroque instrumental ensemble. When composers in the newer Classical style began to write complete harmonies in the upper instrumental parts, the viol, deprived of its last useful function, dropped out of use altogether. In the 20th century viols were successfully revived for the performance of Renaissance and Baroque music.
In general, percussion instruments belong to either of two groups, idiophones or membranophones. Idiophones are instruments whose own substance vibrates to produce sound (as opposed to the strings of a guitar or the air column of a flute); examples include bells, clappers, and rattles. Membranophones emit sound by the vibration of a stretched membrane. Prime examples of membranophones are drums. The term percussion instrument refers to the fact that most idiophones and membranophones are sounded by being struck, although other playing methods include rubbing, shaking, plucking, and scraping.
Some of the percussion instruments of the modern Western orchestra (clockwise, from top): xylophone, gong, bass drum, snare drum, and timpani. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Although many idiophones and some membranophones are tunable and hence may be melody instruments, both groups serve typically to delineate or emphasize rhythm. The term percussion instrument dates to 1619, when the German music theorist and composer Michael Praetorius wrote of percussa, klopfende Instrument (German klopfen, “to beat”), as any struck instrument, including struck chordophones (stringed instruments). The same combination, including prebow chordophones, constituted the divisio rhythmica in the 7th-century Etymologiae of Isidore, archbishop of Sevilla (Seville).
Before the Renaissance such instruments as clappers (flat pieces of bone or wood clapped together) were used to keep the rhythm of a dance. Castanets were played in Spain, and cymbals were used in the celebration of many festivities. Bells, too, were a part of daily life and were thought to possess the power to avert evil, thus the practice of attaching bells to clothing and jewelry.
The Renaissance saw the introduction of a number of idiophones, including the xylophone and tuned musical glasses, from the latter of which American statesman Benjamin Franklin would later produce the glass harmonica. By the Renaissance, Europe had a variety of drums performing specialized functions: frame drums and small tabors accompanied dance and song; larger tabors served as time beaters in small mixed ensembles; great cylinder drums with fifes were placed at the disposal of foot troops; large kettledrums and trumpets were restricted to cavalry and ceremonial music of the aristocracy.
Another of the main instruments of the Renaissance was the organ, a keyboard instrument operated by the player’s hands and feet in which pressurized air produces notes through a series of pipes organized in scalelike rows. The term organ is usually understood to refer to pipe organs. Although it is one of the most complex of all musical instruments, the organ has the longest and most involved history and the largest and oldest extant repertoire of any instrument in Western music.
The earliest history of the organ is so buried in antiquity as to be mere speculation. The earliest surviving record is of the Greek engineer Ctesibius, who lived in Alexandria in the 3rd century BCE. He is credited with the invention of an organ that made use of an ingenious principle, though it was applicable only to a very small instrument. A piston pump operated by a lever supplied air to a reservoir. At its upper end, this reservoir communicated directly with the wind-chest. The reservoir, cylindrical in shape and with no bottom, was placed in a large drum-shaped container that was partly filled with water. As the reservoir became filled with air, the air would escape around its lower edge. In this way a more or less equal pressure of air was maintained inside the reservoir. This type of organ, with the wind regulated by water pressure, is called a hydraulus. It may have served chiefly as a noisemaker or an engineering marvel. Little is known of any music that might have been played on it. A clay model of a hydraulus was discovered in 1885 in the ruins of Carthage (near modern Tunis, Tunisia), and the remains of an actual instrument were found in 1931 at Aquincum, near Budapest.
The first recorded appearance of an exclusively bellow-fed organ, however, was not until almost 400 years later. By the 8th century organs were being built in Europe, and from the 10th century their association with the church had been established. The 15th and 16th centuries witnessed significant tonal and mechanical advances and the emergence of national schools of organ building. By the early 17th century all the essential elements of the instrument had been developed, and subsequent developments involved either tonal changes or technological refinements.
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, three diminutive forms of the organ were widely used. These were, first, the positive (in which category are included most chamber organs of the period), a small organ capable of being moved, usually by two men, either on carrying poles or on a cart. The second type, the portative, was smaller still, with only one set of pipes and a manual of very short compass. It was carried by the player, who worked the bellows with one hand and played the keys with the other. Such instruments were used in processions and possibly in concerted instrumental ensembles. Between the last two in size was the third type, the regal, or reed organ, a small, easily portable pipe organ usually having only a single set, or rank, of reed pipes. The beating reeds are surmounted by small resonators, producing a nasal, buzzing tone. Wind under pressure to sound the pipes is supplied by one or two bellows attached to the instrument and operated by the player or an assistant.
Though they share one feature—a keyboard—with the organ, stringed keyboard instruments were not themselves developed until the 14th century. Among the many varieties of this type of instrument, the clavichord, harpsichord, spinet, and virginal were most characteristic of the Renaissance.
The earliest known reference to a stringed keyboard instrument dates from 1360, when an instrument called the eschiquier was mentioned in account books of John II the Good, king of France. The eschiquier was described in 1388 as “resembling an organ that sounds by means of strings.” There exists no more complete description of the eschiquier, however, and it is not known whether the instrument was a variety of clavichord, in which the strings are struck by blades of metal that must remain in contact with them as long as they are to sound; a harpsichord, in which the strings are plucked; or a type of keyboard-equipped dulcimer, in which—as in the piano—the strings are struck by small hammers that immediately rebound from them. All three types of instruments were described and illustrated about 1440 by Henri Arnaut of Zwolle, personal physician of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy.
Despite the uncertainty regarding the eschiquier, it seems probable that the clavichord was the earliest stringed instrument having keys that could be pushed down by the fingers. The term clavichord first appears in a German document from 1404, and the instrument is recognizable in a German altar carving from 1425. Its principle of operation resembles that of the medieval organistrum, and it is apparently closely related to the monochord, an instrument consisting of a shallow closed box over which one or two strings were stretched and supported by movable bridges. The monochord was in continuous use by theorists from ancient Greece onward as a device for explaining and measuring musical intervals. The kinship of the clavichord to the monochord was so close that, as late as the 16th century, clavichords were often called monocordia.
Artist’s rendering of a clavichord, a forerunner of the modern piano. Clavichords typically sported lavish painted and/or inlaid artwork on their lids and cases. Buyenlarge/Archive Photos/Getty Images
The clavichord is usually rectangular in shape, and its case and lid were usually highly decorated, painted, and inlaid. The right, or treble, end contains the soundboard, the bridge, and the wrest, or tuning, pins. The strings run horizontally from the tuning pins over the bridge to the hitch pins in the left, or bass, end, where felt strips woven through the strings act as dampers. A small brass blade, the tangent, stands on each key just below its string. When the key is depressed, the tangent strikes the string, dividing it into two parts. It thus both determines the vibrating length of the string and causes it to sound. The string segment between the tangent and bridge vibrates, producing a note; the left part is damped by the felt. When the key is released, the tangent falls away from the string, which is then silenced by the felt.
Alone among the forerunners of the piano, the clavichord can achieve dynamic variation—piano, forte, crescendo, diminuendo—by the player’s touch alone. It can produce vibrato, or Bebung, if finger pressure on the key is varied. Its tone is silvery and soft, and it proved to be best suited for intimate music such as Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s keyboard sonatas and fantasias.
Because it arises directly from the way in which the sound of the instrument is produced, the softness of the instrument cannot readily be overcome. It is impossible to impart very much energy to a string by striking it at one end (it is for this reason that a guitarist makes less sound when he strikes the strings against the fingerboard with his left hand than when he plucks them with his right, even though the pitches produced are the same). In compensation, the clavichordist alone of all keyboard-instrument players has control over a note once it has been struck. As long as a note is sounding, the player has contact with the string through the tangent and key, and by changing pressure on the key one can vary the pitch of the note, produce a controlled vibrato, or even create the illusion of prolonging or swelling the tone. Although the maximum loudness of which a clavichord is capable is not great, its softest pianissimo is very soft indeed, and the clavichordist controls an infinite number of gradations in loudness between these two extremes.
The quiet tone of the clavichord made it impractical to use the instrument in ensemble music, except for providing a discreet accompaniment for a flutist or a singer. Although much of the solo keyboard music of the 16th—18th centuries can be played on the clavichord, it cannot be stated that much of it before the latter part of the 18th century was especially composed with the clavichord in mind.
The strings of the harpsichord are set in vibration by plucking. It was one of the most important keyboard instruments in European music from the 16th through the first half of the 18th century.
Generally, the harpsichord has two or more sets of strings, each of which produces different tone qualities. One set may sound an octave higher than the others and is called a 4-foot register, whereas a set of strings at normal pitch is called an 8-foot register. In some 20th-century harpsichords, a 16-foot register, sounding an octave lower, is added, but this addition was extremely rare in old harpsichords. Two sets of 8-foot strings may produce distinct tone quality because they are plucked at different points or with plectra (picks) made of different material.
The earliest surviving harpsichords were built in Italy in the early 16th century. Little is known of the early history of the harpsichord, but, during the 16th—18th century, it underwent considerable evolution and became one of the most important European instruments. Most of the great Baroque composers played or wrote for the harpsichord.
A small form of the harpsichord, the spinet is generally wing-shaped, with a single set of strings placed at an oblique angle to the keyboard. The wing-shaped spinet may have originated in Italy during the 16th century. It later became known in France and England.
A precursor of the harpsichord, the psaltery has plucked strings of gut, horsehair, or metal stretched across a flat soundboard, often trapezoidal but also rectangular, triangular, or wing-shaped. The strings are open, none being stopped to produce different notes. The instrument, probably of Middle Eastern origin in late Classical times, reached Europe in the 12th century as a variety of the trapezoidal Arabic psaltery, or qānūn. It was popular in Europe until about the 15th century and developed there into several shapes, including the characteristic “boar’s head”—i.e., with two incurving sides. It was plucked with the fingers or quill plectra. Even after its decline, it continued to be played on occasion in fashionable society. It also gave rise to the harpsichord, which is a large psaltery with a keyboard mechanism for plucking the strings.
Angel playing a psaltery, detail from Angel Musicians, panel by Hans Memling; in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp, Belgium. Courtesy of the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp
The medieval qānūn also diffused eastward across India to Indonesia and China. Still prominent in the music of Arabic-speaking countries, it is played with finger plectra and is normally triple strung.
Spinets were popular substitutes for the larger, more expensive harpsichords and were made in large numbers during the late 17th and 18th centuries, especially in England. Their cases were often highly ornamented and decorated. The name spinet may derive from the Latin spinae (“thorns”), perhaps reflecting the shape of the tiny quills or leather wedges that pluck the strings. In modern usage, spinet commonly refers to a short form of upright piano.
Another musical instrument of the harpsichord family, the virginal (also called virginals) may be the oldest member. It may take its name from Latin virga (“rod”), referring to the jacks, or wooden shafts that rest on the ends of the keys and hold the plucking mechanism. Unlike the harpsichord and spinet, the virginal’s single set of strings runs nearly parallel to the keyboard. By building the instrument with its keyboard at one side or the other of the front of the rectangular case, different tone colours can be obtained because of the change in plucking point of the string.
English virginal (with jack rail removed) made by Robert Hatley, London, 1664. The Benton-Fletcher Collection at the National Trust Property, Fenton House, Hampstead, London
Italian virginals, often polygonal in shape, differed from the rectangular Flemish and English virginals in having the keyboard centrally placed, thus producing a characteristic mellow tone. Sometimes two virginals were built together, a small one fitting like a drawer into the case of the larger. The smaller played at a higher pitch and could sometimes be mounted over the keys of the larger virginal so that one player could control both. Virginals were particularly popular in 16th- and 17th-century England, where the name was also used generically to mean any harpsichord.
The growing separation of instrumental from vocal music and the development of polyphony in the Renaissance demanded the building of instruments in different sizes for the various parts in order to secure a smooth blend throughout the texture. The ensembles using such a blend of instruments were called consorts. Wind instruments flourished. At no time in the history of music was the choice of available timbres greater, and within the 16th century as many instruments as possible were built in families. The common sizes, built a fifth apart, were called the treble, tenor, and bass, usually with corresponding pitches in winds of A, D, and G. Flutes and recorders were an octave higher. A descant and a great bass were introduced for music that exceeded the combined range of the standard instruments. Woodwinds, in general, were made in one piece in a plain design, and Venice appears to have been an early centre of wind-instrument manufacture.
The new concept of blending tone quality was applied to the flutes and recorders. Both were made with a relatively large cylindrical bore. As a result, the upper range was limited, but the effective octave and a half that remained was sufficient for Renaissance music. Since the transverse flute (held sideways and to the right of the player) adapted less well to various sizes, it was more often used with other instruments.
The serpent is a bass wind instrument sounded by the vibration of the lips against a cup mouthpiece. It was probably invented in 1590 by Edme Guillaume, a French canon of Auxerre, as an improvement on bass versions of the closely related cornett. It is made of wood in a serpentine curve 7 to 8 feet (2 to 2.5 metres) long, and it has a conical bore and six finger holes. Originally it accompanied plainchant (Gregorian chant) in churches. The serpent possessed a rich tone and wide dynamic range. It was the instrument of several early 19th-century virtuosos and was sometimes used in orchestras. In about 1800, keys were added, extending the player’s reach and allowing higher notes to be produced. Metal serpents also appeared, as did bassoon-shaped versions. Serpents were played in some Spanish bands as late as 1884 and in a few rural French churches on into the early 20th century.
Double reeds were particularly numerous during the Renaissance, and in many species the reeds were capped. The best known of these was the crumhorn, an instrument of narrow cylindrical bore whose unusual J shape complemented its pungent, buzzy tone. The cap made it impossible for a player to exert lip pressure on the large reed within, so the instrument could not be overblown. Its seven finger holes, one thumbhole, and one upper key gave a range of only nine notes. Nevertheless, the crumhorn consort made an excellent ensemble, and some fine early sets of instruments still survive as testimony.
Shawms were a particularly important family of loud double reeds, with related instruments spread across all Asia. Their wide conical bore, large double reed, and seven front finger holes provided them with a loud, reedy tone. The player could rest his lips on a wooden pirouette into which the reed was inserted and activate the reed without contact in the wind chamber formed in his mouth. Nevertheless, the reed could be controlled if desired, and the instrument was overblown partly through the second octave. Shawms were made in progressive sizes, the bass attaining a length of about 2.5 metres (8 to 9 feet). The power of the shawms enabled them to consort with trombones and to carry well in the outdoor tower music of central European cities.
The more gentle curtal was a noncapped double reed with its conical bore doubled back within the same block and ending in a small bell. It was activated by a long, carefully trimmed double reed connected with the instrument proper by a short tube called the bocal. Six front finger holes, two thumbholes, and two keys gave it a range of two octaves and a second. It was first mentioned in 1540, and its bass (sometimes called the double curtal) soon became the most important size. The double reeds with doubled back cylindrical bores were an interesting development. The sordone (French courtaut) was such an instrument, its narrow bore terminating in a side vent near the bocal. Most extraordinary was the rackett, whose narrow bore went through a cylinder of ivory or wood as many as nine times to make a double-bass instrument from a cylinder length of a few inches. The instrument plays an octave below notation and forms the lowest of the Renaissance winds. The Renaissance reeds that were not adaptable to outdoor music vanished early in the 17th century, except for the curtal. The shawm survived somewhat longer in the West and remained important in the East.
Another important woodwind was the cornetto (an Italian name Anglicized as cornett; also known under its German name, Zink), the descendant of the medieval cow’s horn with finger holes. The treble cornett in g was made from two pieces of wood, hollowed out and glued together to create a mildly conical tube, usually octagonal and most often curved in the shape of its prototype. A covering of leather, protecting the surface and sealing any leaks, was frequently decorated at the upper end. The cornett was made in larger sizes, but they were not widely used.
The sackbut (from Old French saqueboute, meaning “pull-push”) was an early form of trombone invented in the 15th century, probably in Burgundy. It has thicker walls than the modern trombone, imparting a softer tone, and its bell is narrower. It was found to blend nicely in consort with cornetts as the treble instrument or in the loud consort in the company of shawms.
The sackbut answered the need for a lower-pitched trumpet that composers of the time sought. Its telescoping slide mechanism is retained in the modern trombone.
