Welcome back!

Today, your fallacy-busting professor turns her attention to medieval instruments, and to a couple of persistent fallacies that circulate around them. Firstly, just because the VAST majority of surviving medieval notation is for vocal music should not be taken to imply that instrumental music did not exist, or even that it wasn’t a particularly viable practice. The textbook has several pictures of instrumentalists; here are a few others to take a look at:

1. A Queen with four female companions.
2. Two dudes playing the lute.
3. Two wind players.

Second, musical instruments have changed and developed over time, as tastes and technical advances have altered manufacturing processes. However, that does not mean that musical instruments were necessarily simpler in the medieval period than they are now. Some instruments, like the lute, are made in ways that are little changed from their medieval forebears (and, we should note, lutes require a high level of technical sophistication in their construction); other instruments became simpler and less complex over time.

For today, I want you to look at and think about three instruments that were widely diffused during the European middle ages, though are less common today.

1. The rebec, an early fiddle instrument that could be played vertically or horizontally. Here’s a link to a page at Rutgers including over 50 different images of rebec players in medieval and early renaissance sources. And here’s a very short video of the sound.
   
2. The vielle, another early fiddle, here played by Queens College’s very own and very talented Dr. Dongmyung Ahn, who teaches music history and Baroque fiddle.
   
3. The hurdy gurdy--a very complicated instrument that we could think of as the medieval keytar.