No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1968
As very few authentic mediaeval instruments remain, our knowledge of them comes mainly from pictures, references in literature and expense accounts, and from surviving folk instruments. The degree of caution required can be assessed by comparing the terminology of mediaeval word-lists. The Latin word ‘fidis’, for example, denotes a harp-string in the Catholicon Anglicum and a fiddler in an anonymous nominale, while ‘fidecen’ [fidicen] is a harper in the former manuscript and a fiddler in the Promptorium Parvulorum. The word ‘viella’, normally taken to mean a fiddle, appears also in the Promptorium as a lute. John Palsgrave's Lesclarcissement de la Langue Francoyse (1530) adds confusion to the point of ridicule.
1 Ed. S. Heritage (Publications of the Camden Society, New Series, xxx), London, 1882, p. 176.Google Scholar
2 British Museum, Roy. MS 17.C.xvii, f. 43v. Published in Thomas Wright, Anglo-Saxon and old English Vocabularies, ed. R. Wülcker, London, 1884, p. 693.Google Scholar
3 Ed. Albertus Way (Camden Society, xxv), London, 1843, vol. i, s.v. ‘Fydelare’.Google Scholar
4 In ‘The Table of Substantyves’.Google Scholar
5 In ‘The Table of Verbes’.Google Scholar
6 Musica Getutscht, Basle, 1511.Google Scholar
7 Musica Instrumentalis Deudsch, Wittemberg, 1528.Google Scholar
8 Mary Remnant, ‘The Use of Frets on Rebecs and Mediaeval Fiddles’, Galpin Society Journal, xxi (1968), 146–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9 Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, Lat. MS 1118, f. 104.Google Scholar
10 These paintings have been restored at least twice, the first known occasion being between 1740 and 1750, and the second shortly before 1835. Between the two restorations they were described, with pictures, in ‘Observations on Ancient Painting in England’, Archaeologia, ix (1789), 141–56. They were subsequently described by C. J. P. Cave and Tancred Borenius in ‘The Painted Ceiling in the Nave of Peterborough Cathedral’, Archaeologia, lxxxvii (1938), 297–309. (I am very grateful to Canon J. L. Cartwright of Peterborough Cathedral, for bringing these articles to my notice.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 British Museum, Roy. MS 17.C.xvii, f. 43v.Google Scholar
12 Werner Bachmann, The Origins of Bowing, tr. Norma Deane, London, 1969, p. 85. My thanks are due to Mr. A. Mulgan of Oxford University Press, for allowing me to see the proofs of the English edition before its date of publication.Google Scholar
13 E.g. British Museum, Tib.MS A.vii, f. 77.Google Scholar
14 Bachmann, op. cit., p. 72.Google Scholar
15 Emanuel Winternitz, Musical Instruments of the Western World, London, 1966, pp. 47–51.Google Scholar
16 Bachmann, op. cit., pp. 79–80.Google Scholar
17 The frontal string-holder seldom occurs in English sources.Google Scholar
18 Ed. Julius Zupitza, Sammlung englischer Denkmäler, Berlin, 1880, i. 303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 MS Tib.C.vi, f. 30v.Google Scholar
20 ‘Tractatus de Musica’, ed. E. de Coussemaker, Scriptorum de musica medii aevi nova series, Paris, 1864–76, i. 152.Google Scholar
21 E.g. a sixteenth-century roof boss in the North Chapel of St. Mary's Church, Beverley.Google Scholar
22 Jerome of Moravia, op. cit.Google Scholar
23 Michael Praetorius, Syntagma musicum, ii (Wolfenbuttel, 1619), 53. This tuning is of course later, but there is no reason to suppose that it was not used during the Middle Ages.Google Scholar
24 Bachmann, The Origins of Bowing, p. 83.Google Scholar
25 British Museum, Add. MS 42130, f. 149.Google Scholar
26 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 49, f. 195.Google Scholar
27 Lambeth Palace, MS 3, f. 309.Google Scholar
28 See Plate Ib.Google Scholar
29 New York Public Library, Spencer Collection, MS 26, f. 17.Google Scholar
30 Lat. MS I. 77, f. 115.Google Scholar
31 Chambers, E. K., The Mediaeval Stage, London, 1903, ii. 235.Google Scholar
32 British Museum, Harl. MS 2838, f. 45.Google Scholar
33 John Stevens, Music and Poetry in the Early Tudor Court, London, 1961, p. 238.Google Scholar
34 Quoted by J. Brand, Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, London, 1849, pp. 158–9.Google Scholar
35 MS Ff.i.23, f. 4v.Google Scholar
36 British Museum, Seal lxxxvii.44. See Plate IIa.Google Scholar
37 I.e. four strings above the fingerboard and two lateral drone strings which could be plucked by the thumb if required.Google Scholar
38 Reproduced in F. W. Galpin, Old English Instruments of Music, London, 1910, p. 75.Google Scholar
39 Reproduced in Galpin, Old English Instruments, 4th edn., rev. Thurston Dart, London, 1965, p. 57.Google Scholar
40 Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, pp. 236–8.Google Scholar
41 Galpin/Dart, op. cit., p. 59.Google Scholar
42 The Origins of Bowing, p. 75.Google Scholar
43 See Plate Ia.Google Scholar
44 ‘Tractatus’, ed. Coussemaker, Scriptores, i. 152–3.Google Scholar
45 Cf. Remnant, ‘The Use of Frets’, Galpin Society Journal, xxi (1968), 147–8.Google Scholar
46 Illustrated in the author's ‘Opus Anglicanum’, Galpin Society Journal, xvii (1964), plate XIIa.Google Scholar
47 Op. cit., p. 88.Google Scholar
48 Bachmann, op. cit., p. 126.Google Scholar
49 Chambers, op. cit., pp. 235–8. Those who are entered in the accounts in French are listed as ‘vilours’.Google Scholar
50 Safford, E. W., ‘An Account of the Expenses of Eleanor, Sister of Edward III, on the Occasion of her Marriage’, Archaeologia, lxxvii (1928), 111–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
51 This is treated at length by M. D. Anderson in Drama and Imagery in English Medieval Churches, Cambridge, 1963.Google Scholar
52 Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages, London, 1966, i. 70.Google Scholar
53 British Museum, Stowe MS 17, f. 188.Google Scholar
54 Wickham, op. cit., p. 188.Google Scholar