11 - War and Renaissance Culture: Music and the Visual Arts

Summary

If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?

(I Corinthians, 14,8)

Les bruits de la guerre

As the vainglorious and strutting Franc archer de Baignollet is made to declare as he unconsciously betrays his own poltroonery: ‘When the trumpet sounds, / the courage grows of every man.’ Rabelais, in the Quart Livre of 1552, described the Andouilles (Chitterling) folk marching against Pantagruel to the sound of bagpipes and merry fifes, drums, trumpets and clarions. From time immemorial, war was accompanied by noise – ‘sound of war’ so vividly evoked by Froissart that it seemed as though all the armourers of Paris and Brussels were at work together. We can get a good idea of the discordant din suggested by Guillaume Guiart's evocation of the armies of Philip IV, in which he hears ‘horns blowing / pipes piping and trumpets braying.’ There is evidence enough that by the 14th and 15th centuries a degree of competition in music played a major part in morale boosting and intimidating the enemy in battle (as at Agincourt) and in sieges (as at Melun in 1420 or Neuss in 1474–5). Music was also increasingly used in France in the later Middle Ages as a medium of command and discipline. Froissart evoked a moment which is strikingly close to later modes of command, when ‘The trumpets of the marshals sounded after midnight … at the second call, the men armed and prepared for battle. At the third they mounted up and rode off.’ There was nothing new even in this. Music had long played a part in battle, from the ‘menestrels’ of the early Middle Ages. Around 1100 the Chanson de Roland had portrayed its hero's last call on the famous ‘olifant’ (an ivory horn) and the emir Baligant summoning his men with his ‘clear buisine’ to rally his men.

Trumpets, horns and cornets all had their distinctive role in military activities and in the muster rolls of many 15th century companies of men-at-arms provision was made for trumpeteers. Zarlino, in his Instituzione armoniche of 1562, remarked that one army could not attack another without the sound of trumpets and drums. Italians, Germans, Swiss and French all used them and they learned from each other.