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Minstrelsy, Church and Clergy in Medieval England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1970

Richard Rastall
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Extract

A problem that continually makes its presence felt in the medieval field is that of the use of instruments in church. The sources of sacred music offer little internal evidence, and for a variety of reasons the evidence of the literary and visual arts must be treated with reserve. Many of us would now probably subscribe to F. Ll. Harrison's view that ‘… there is no evidence that any instruments but the organ were normally played in church. …’ It is with the exceptions implied by the word ‘normally’ that this paper is concerned. Documentary evidence shows that other instruments were indeed played in church—that has never been disputed. Granted that these occasions were in some way exceptional, we must set out to answer certain questions: in what circumstances were other instruments used ?—what instruments were involved?—and what traditions, if any, are represented by these apparently isolated occasions? It is the attempts to answer the last of these, especially, that have caused disagreement in the past.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 97 , 1970 , pp. 83 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © 1971 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

1 See F. Ll. Harrison, ‘Tradition and Innovation in Instrumental Usage 1100–1450’, Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music, ed. Jan LaRue, London, 1967, pp. 319–35, esp. pp. 328 ff.Google Scholar

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42 See Donington's reply to Bowles, ibid., xi (1958), 85–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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44 Andre Pirro, La Musique à Paris sous le règne de Charles VI, Paris, 1930, p. 14. On the Continent, silver trumpets had a special significance in processions and other religious ceremony: see E. van der Straeten, Les Ménéstrels aux Pays-Bas, Brussels, 1878, pp. 34 f.Google Scholar

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46 In 1346: Register of Edward, the Black Prince (Public Record Office calendar), London, 1930–33, i. 30. The Prince paid the considerable sum of 19 marks (£12. 6s. 8d.) for these trumpets: evidently they were not for everyday minstrelsy.Google Scholar

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55 Hardin Craig, Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays, 2nd edn. (Early English Text Society, extra series lxxxvii), London, 1957, p. 45.Google Scholar

56 Ibid., p. 52.Google Scholar

57 The Towneley Plays, ed. G. England and A. W. Pollard (Early English Text Society, extra series lxxi), London, 1897, p. 184.Google Scholar

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60 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 366 (the Ormesby Psalter, c.1325), f. 109.Google Scholar

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62 Glasgow, Hunterian Library, MS 229 (psalter, c. 1270), f. 1v: reproduced in The New Oxford History of Music, iii, Plate VII.Google Scholar

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67 ‘Una pulsantur omnia signa.’ See above, note 53.Google Scholar

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