Now the archæologist who seeks for truth among the relics of ancient musical instruments is greeted with serious difficulties. He finds on one side of him a “mountain of names,” and on the other side of him a “mountain of musical instruments.” In his hand he grasps bewildering allusions to these in poetry and prose, while sculptural representations, pictures, and drawings flit before his eyes. He holds a bit here, in his endeavour to unite the mountains, snatches a fragment there, and thus it is that we find so many contradictory assertions among authorities on the subject.
Fig. 8
BAS-RELIEF FROM COLOGNE
MUSEUM (12th century)
Monsieur Laurent Grillét asserts that this Boscerville instrument is not a rubebe, as Monsieur Fetis says, but a rote, while the latter’s theory that the rote was a direct descendant of the lyre, and was played by plucking the strings, has been borne out by Mr Heron Allen. An authority of the period, Jerome of Moravia, who wrote his “De cæntiâ Artes Musiciea” in 1274, and dedicated it to Gregory X., speaks of the rubebe as a two-stringed instrument played with a bow and tuned thus:
Unfortunately he does not illustrate his text, but the depth of pitch given by him would indicate an instrument of larger proportions than the one held by the Boscerville figure. In any case, whether this be the instrument indicated by Jerome or not, he has distinctly described the existence of a bass species of viol at that date, and our next picture might certainly be taken as an illustration of his description, giving licence of course, to the third string. This bas-relief in marble (Fig. 8) is preserved in the museum at Cologne, and, looked at with a twentieth-century eye, is wonderfully replete with omens. Observe the bridge and its position: the sound holes in their approved place: the manner in which the sounding-board joins the neck: the excellent fingerboard and tailpiece. All these items, combined with its size, might easily allow it to be the rubebe of Jerome de Moravia and if one supposes this to be so, it is not amiss to suggest that the Boscerville instrument is also a rubebe, which experience enlarged in the following century to the size before us.
It is hardly necessary to add further examples, as these three give a fairly broad idea of the progressive attempts at a definite form, from about the eleventh to the end of the fourteenth century. During this period there were doubtless no hard and fast rules for tuning. The minstrel adapted the pitch of his instrument according to whim, or the compass of his voice. He danced and sang to his own improvised accompaniments. Thus we hear in 1391 of: “Un nommeé Isembart jouait d’une rubèbe, et, en jouant, un nommé Le Bastard se print à danser,” and again in 1395, “Roussel et Gaygnat preurent à jouer, l’un d’une fluste l’autre d’une rubèbe, et ainsi que les aulcuns dansoient.”[11] The minstrel’s person and attainments were undoubtedly of a genial character, yet with all due deference to his merry ways, and the good service he rendered to poetry and music, one cannot help observing that his dancing and warbling were the means of retarding the development of musical instruments to a certain extent. If you roam the country with your musical equipment upon your back you naturally require something of a portable size. “A fiddle under my cloak?” says the indignant Sir Roger l’Estrange in defending himself against Mr Bagshawe’s insinuations that he frequently solicited private conferences from Oliver Cromwell with a fiddle under his cloak; “Truly my fiddle is a bass-viol, and that’s somewhat a troublesome instrument under a cloak.” The minstrel of the Middle Ages was certainly of the same opinion, and was careful that his fiddle should not assume alarming proportions. He was content so long as he could carry it about with ease like “Gervais de Nevers” who:
—“donned a garment old
And round his neck a viol hung
For cunningly he played and sung.”