So swetely that all the chamber rang,
And Angelus et Virginem he sang.”
Of the Carpenter’s wife—
“But of her song it was so loude and yerne (brisk)
As eny swalwe chitering on a berne.”
And so on,—they could all sing and play. It was a disgrace for any not to play some kind of instrument.
A bas-relief on a capital in a Norman church of the eleventh century represents a concert in which the performers are playing on different instruments. There was the violin, the violoncello, the guitar, the harp, the syrinx or Pandora pipes, a zither, great bells and little bells, and an unintelligible instrument. The list does not include the flute, pipe, or whistle of various kinds, the bagpipe, the lute, the trumpet, the horn, the water organ, the wind organ, the cymbals, the drum, the psaltery, the three-stringed organistrum, the hurdy-gurdy, the pipe and tabor, the rebeck, and others. Of course many of them are but varieties. The instruments dear to the common people were the fiddle and the pipe and tabor, at the music of which the bear capered, the bull was baited, the prentices and maidens danced, and the tumblers performed; at the tap of the tabor, and the call of the pipe, everybody turned out to see what was going on. In every tavern there was music of a more pretentious kind; there sat the harper, there the mandoline was touched by those who sat in the place to drink; then to flute and viol the dancing girl gave her performance; then the story-teller sang his long tale to the sound of the lute in a low monotone, while the music rambled up and down, in the same way as a Welsh singer sings while the air itself rolls round and round about his words. In every church there was the organ, sometimes only a hand organ; sometimes a great and glorious organ, the thunders of which awed the trembling soul while its soft notes uplifted and cheered the worshipper. There was long opposition to the introduction of the organ; and it was not until the thirteenth century that the voice of opposition was hushed altogether; once the organ found admission the difficulty was to make it splendid enough. Winchester boasted as early as the year 951 an organ divided into parts, each with its own bellows, its own keyboard, and its own organist. At Milan Cathedral the organ pipes were made of silver; at Venice they were made of gold. The best organs of western Europe were made after the model of an organ presented by Constantine Copronymus to King Pepin.
A BANQUET
From Willemin, Monuments inédits, etc.