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Ancient Instrument Gallery
The images seen below are thumbnails.
They are linked to the larger and
more resource-intensive JPEG files.
Michael Roy plays the Renaissance bass recorder. The bulbous fixture
near the bottom serves a rather esoteric function:
it merely hides the low F key. The sight of an
exposed key was considered unseemly to Renaissance musicians,
therefore the "fontanelle" shielded the eyes from such an affrontry.
The curtal is the English word for this early predecessor of the
modern bassoon. The German word is dulcian. Many musicologists regard it as
the most efficient and effective woodwind instrument before the 17th century.
The guitar lute is a baroque instrument that can be
called the missing link between the Renaissance lute
and the modern classical guitar. It is also familiarly called the lutar.
The krummhorn dates from at least the mid 15th century,
and was a popular instrument through the European Renaissance,
especially in England. The reed is hidden and vibrates freely
inside of the
cap of the instrument, therefore krummhorns are
"windcap double reeds." Modern double reeds,
the oboe, English horn,
and bassoon, are not windcaps; the reed is visible and
directly contacts the
mouth of the player.
The instrument above is a member of the arch lute family, and has a
total of nineteen strings. This kind of long-necked lute has two names:
chitarrone and theorbo. Experts make small distinctions
between the two today (the chitarrone evidently was bigger), but the 16th
century musicologist Michael Praetorius calls both instruments a theorbo, and
17th c. writers composed for both instruments interchangeably.
Michael Roy plays the Galician pipes, from Northern Spain.
His costume is Italian Renaissance court attire. The Spanish pipes,
("gaita") are smaller and tuned a tone higher than the Scottish Highland
pipes. Other differences: the Highland pipes have three drones: a bass
and, at an octave higher, two unison tenor drones. The Spanish pipes
have the one bass drone. As for the difference in sound and volume, it
has been said: "The Great War Pipes of Scotland can raise the dead; The
Galician pipes only wakes them up and make them irritable."
Playing the bonny pipes is not a merely a vocation or avocation, but a way
of life. This becomes clearer when one discovers that for every 20 minutes
one successfully plays the pipes, one will have spent 40 minutes grappling
and striving with them.
Michael Roy plays one of his most ancient instruments: the gemshorn, this being the bass of the family.
Gemhorns are very primitive and are dated to before the ninth century. Ancient gemshorns were probably made from sheep's horns by shepherds. They had only a few finger holes and a very limited scale of two to four notes. The above instrument was made from African ox horn and has enough holes to give the instrument a nine-note range. Musicologists say that the haunting flute-like sound of the gemshorn is unrepresented by any modern woodwind, remaining uniquely exclusive to the primitive instrument.
Gemshorns made in modern days come in
an entire consort: soprano, alto, tenor, bass.
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