Chapter I

It would carry us too far a-field to attempt to give a sketch of the early music of the principal nations of antiquity, such as might be deduced from the monuments of Egypt and Nineveh and Greece. We may, however, briefly glance at the most ancient minstrelsy of the Israelites; partly for the sake of the peculiar interest of the subject itself, partly because the early history of music is nearly the same in all nations, and this earliest history will illustrate and receive illustration from a comparison with the history of music in mediæval England.

Musical instruments, we are told by the highest of all authorities, were invented in the eighth generation of the world--that is in the third generation before the flood--by Tubal, "the Father of all such as handle the harp and organ, both stringed and wind instruments." The ancient Israelites used musical instruments on the same occasions as the mediæval Europeans--in battle; in their feasts and dances; in processions, whether of religious or civil ceremony; and in the solemnising of divine worship. The trumpet and the horn were then, as always, the instruments of warlike music--"If ye go to war then shall ye blow an alarm with the silver trumpets."[319] The trumpet regulated the march of the hosts of Israel through the wilderness. When Joshua compassed Jericho, the seven priests blew trumpets of rams' horns. Gideon and his three hundred discomfited the host of the Midianites with the sound of their trumpets.

The Tabret was the common accompaniment of the troops of female dancers, whether the occasion were religious or festive. Miriam the prophetess took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances, singing a solemn chorus to the triumphant song of Moses and of the Children of Israel over the destruction of Pharaoh in the Red Sea,--

"Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously;
The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea."[320]

Jephthah's daughter went to meet her victorious father with timbrels and dances:--

"The daughter of the warrior Gileadite,
From Mizpeh's tower'd gate with welcome light,
With timbrel and with song."

And so, when King Saul returned from the slaughter of the Philistines, after the shepherd David had killed their giant champion in the valley of Elah, the women came out of all the cities to meet the returning warriors "singing and dancing to meet King Saul, with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of music;" and the women answered one another in dramatic chorus--

"Saul hath slain his thousands,
And David his ten thousands."[321]

Laban says that he would have sent away Jacob and his wives and children, "with mirth and with songs, with tabret and with harp." And Jeremiah prophesying that times of ease and prosperity shall come again for Israel, says: "O Virgin of Israel, thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry."[322]

In their feasts these and many other instruments were used. Isaiah tells us[323] that they had "the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine in their feasts;" and Amos tells us of the luxurious people who lie upon beds of ivory, and "chant to the sound of the viol, and invent to themselves instruments of music like David," and drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with the costliest perfumes.

Instruments of music were used in the colleges of Prophets, which Samuel established in the land, to accompany and inspire the delivery of their prophetical utterances. As Saul, newly anointed, went up the hill of God towards the city, he met a company of prophets coming down, with a psaltery, and a tabret, and a pipe, and a harp before them, prophesying; and the spirit of the Lord came upon Saul when he heard, and he also prophesied.[324] When Elisha was requested by Jehoram to prophesy the fate of the battle with the Moabites, he said: "Bring me a minstrel; and when the minstrel played, the hand of the Lord came upon him, and he prophesied."

When David brought up the ark from Gibeah, he and all the house of Israel played before the Lord on all manner of instruments made of firwood, even on harps, psalteries, timbrels, cornets, and cymbals.[325] And in the song which he himself composed to be sung on that occasion,[326] he thus describes the musical part of the procession:--

"It is well seen how thou goest,
How thou, my God and King, goest to the sanctuary;
The singers go before, the minstrels follow after,
In the midst are the damsels playing with the timbrels."

The instruments appointed for the regular daily service of the Temple "by David, and Gad the king's seer, and Nathan the prophet, for so was the commandment of the Lord by his prophets," were cymbals, psalteries, and harps, which David made for the purpose, and which were played by four thousand Levites.

Besides the instruments already mentioned,--the harp, tabret, timbrel, psaltery, trumpet, cornet, cymbal, pipe, and viol,--they had also the lyre, bag-pipes, and bells; and probably they carried back with them from Babylon further additions, from the instruments of "all peoples, nations, and languages" with which they would become familiarised in that capital of the world. But from the time of Tubal down to the time when the royal minstrel of Israel sang those glorious songs which are still the daily solace of thousands of mankind, and further down to the time when the captive Israelites hanged their unstrung harps upon the willows of Babylon, and could not sing the songs of Zion in a strange land, the harp continued still the fitting accompaniment of the voice in all poetical utterance of a dignified and solemn character:--the recitation of the poetical portions of historical and prophetical Scripture, for instance, would be sustained by it, and the songs of the psalmists of Zion were accompanied by its strains. And thus this sketch of the history of the earliest music closes, with the minstrel harp still in the foreground; while in the distance we hear the sound of the fanfare of cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music, which were concerted on great occasions; such as that on which they resounded over the plain of Dura, to bow that bending crowd of heads, as the ripe corn bends before the wind, to the great Image of Gold:--an idolatry, alas! which the peoples, nations, and languages still perform almost as fervently as of old.

* * * * *

The northern Bard, or Scald, was the father of the minstrels of mediæval Europe. Our own early traditions afford some picturesque anecdotes, proving the high estimation in which the character was held by the Saxons and their kindred Danes; and showing that they were accustomed to wander about to court, and camp, and hall; and were hospitably received, even though the Bard were of a race against which his hosts were at that very time encamped in hostile array. We will only remind the reader of the Royal Alfred's assumption of the character of a minstrel, and his visit in that disguise to the Danish camp (A.D. 878); and of the similar visit, ten years after, of Anlaff the Danish king to the camp of Saxon Athelstane. But the earliest anecdote of the kind we shall have hereafter to refer to, and may therefore here detail at length. It is told us by Geoffrey of Monmouth, that Colgrin, the son of Ella, who succeeded Hengist in the leadership of the invading Saxons, was shut up in York, and closely besieged by King Arthur and his Britons. Baldulf, the brother of Colgrin, wanted to gain access to him, to apprise him of a reinforcement which was coming from Germany. In order to accomplish this design, he assumed the character of a minstrel. He shaved his head and beard; and dressing himself in the habit of that profession, took his harp in his hand. In this disguise he walked up and down the trenches without suspicion, playing all the while upon his instrument as a harper. By little and little he approached the walls of the city; and, making himself known to the sentinels, was in the night drawn up by a rope.

The harper continued throughout the Middle Ages to be the most dignified of the minstrel craft, the reciter, and often the composer, of heroic legend and historical tale, of wild romance and amorous song. Frequently, and perhaps especially in the case of the higher class of harpers, he travelled alone, as in the cases which we have already seen of Baldulf, and Alfred, and Anlaff. But he also often associated himself with a band of minstrels, who filled up the intervals of his recitations and songs with their music, much as vocal and instrumental pieces are alternated in our modern concerts. With a band of minstrels there was also very usually associated a mime, who amused the audience with his feats of agility and leger-de-main. The association appears at first sight somewhat undignified--the heroic harper and the tumbler--but the incongruity was not peculiar to the Middle Ages; the author of the "Iliad" wrote the "Battle of the Frogs,"--the Greeks were not satisfied without a satiric drama after their grand heroic tragedy; and in these days we have a farce or a pantomime after Shakspeare. We are not all Heraclituses, to see only the tragic side of life, or Democrituses, to laugh at everything; the majority of men have faculties to appreciate both classes of emotion; and it would seem, from universal experience, that, as the Russian finds a physical delight in leaping from a vapour-bath into the frozen Neva, so there is some mental delight in the sudden alternate excitation of the opposite emotions of tragedy and farce. If we had time to philosophise, we might find the source of the delight deeply seated in our nature:--alternate tears and laughter--it is an epitome of human life!

In the accompanying woodcut from a Late Saxon MS. in the British Museum (Cott. Tiberius C. vi.) we have a curious evidence of the way in which custom blinded men to any incongruity there may be in the association of the harper and the juggler, for here we have David singing his Psalms and accompanying himself on the harp, the dove reminding us that he sang and harped under the influence of inspiration. He is accompanied by performers who must be Levites; and yet the Saxon illuminator was so used to see a mime form one of a minstrel band, that he has introduced one playing the common feat of tossing three knives and three balls.

The Saxons were a musical people. We learn from Bede's anecdote of the poet Cædmon, that it was usual at their feasts to pass the harp round from hand to hand, and every man was supposed to be able to sing in his turn, and accompany himself on the instrument. They had a considerable number of musical instruments. In a MS. in the British Museum, Tiberius C. vi., folios 16 v., 17 v., 18, are a few leaves of a formal treatise on the subject, which give us very carefully drawn pictures of different instruments, with their names and descriptions. There are also illustrations of them in the Add. 11,695, folios 86, 86 v., 164, 170 v., 229, and in Cleopatra E. viii. Among them are the Psaltery of various shapes, the Sambuca or sackbut, the single and double Chorus, &c. Other instruments we find in Saxon MSS. are the lyre, viol, flute, cymbals, organ, &c. A set of hand-bells (carillons) which the player struck with two hammers, was a favourite instrument. We often find different instruments played together. At folio 93 v. of the MS. Claudius B iv. there is a group of twelve female harpists playing together; one has a small instrument, probably a kind of lyre, the rest have great harps of the same pattern. They probably represent Miriam and the women of Israel joining in the triumphal song of Moses over the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea.

The organ, already introduced into divine service, became, under the hands of St. Dunstan, a large and important instrument. William of Malmesbury says that Dunstan gave many to churches which had pipes of brass and were inflated with bellows. In a MS. psalter in Trinity College, Cambridge, is a picture of one of considerable size, which has no less than four bellows played by four men. It is represented in the accompanying wood-cut.

The Northmen who invaded and gave their name to Normandy, took their minstrels with them; and the learned assert that it was from them that the troubadours of Provence learned their art, which ripened in their sunny clime into _la joyeuse science_, and thence was carried into Italy, France, and Spain. It is quite certain that minstrelsy was in high repute among the Normans at the period of the Conquest. Every one will remember how Taillefer, the minstrel-knight, commenced the great battle of Hastings. Advancing in front of the Norman host, he animated himself and them to a chivalric daring by chanting the heroic tale of Charlemagne and his Paladins, at the same time showing feats of skill in tossing his sword into the air; and then rushed into the Saxon ranks, like a divinely-mad hero of old, giving in his own self-sacrifice an augury of victory to his people.

From the period of the Conquest, authorities on the subject of which we are treating, though still not so numerous as could be desired, become too numerous to be all included within the limits to which our space restricts us. The reader may refer to Wharton's "History of English Poetry," to Bishop Percy's introductory essay to the "Reliques of Early English Poetry," and to the introductory essay to Ellis's "Early English Metrical Romances," for the principal published authorities. For a series of learned essays on mediæval musical instruments he may consult M. Didron's "Annales Archæologiques," vol. iii. pp. 76, 142, 260; vol. iv. pp. 25, 94; vol. vi. p. 315; vol. vii. pp. 92, 157, 244, 325; vol. viii. p. 242; vol. ix. pp. 289, 329.[327] We propose only from these and other published and unpublished materials to give a popular sketch of the subject.

Throughout this period minstrelsy was in high estimation with all classes of society. The king himself, like his Saxon[328] predecessors, had a king's minstrel, or king of the minstrels, who probably from the first was at the head of a band of royal minstrels.[329]

This fashion of the royal court, doubtless, like all its other fashions, obtained also in the courts of the great nobility (several instances will be observed in the sequel), and in their measure in the households of the lesser nobility. Every gentleman of estate had probably his one, two, or more minstrels as a regular part of his household. It is not difficult to discover their duties. In the representations of dinners, which occur plentifully in the mediæval MSS., we constantly find musicians introduced; sometimes we see them preceding the servants, who are bearing the dishes to table--a custom of classic usage, and which still lingers to this day at Queen's College, Oxford, in the song with which the choristers usher in the boar's head on Christmas-day, and at our modern public dinners, when the band strikes up "Oh the Roast Beef of Old England," as that national dish is brought to table.

We give here an illustration of such a scene from a very fine MS. of the early part of the fourteenth century, in the British Museum (marked Royal 2 B vii., f. 184 v. and 185). A very fine representation of a similar scene occurs at the foot of the large Flemish Brass of Robert Braunche and his two wives in St. Margaret's Church, Lynn; the scene is intended as a delineation of a feast given by the corporation of Lynn to King Edward III. Servants from both sides of the picture are bringing in that famous dish of chivalry, the peacock with his tail displayed; and two bands of minstrels are ushering in the banquet with their strains: the date of the brass is about 1364 A.D. In the fourteenth-century romance of "Richard Coeur de Lion," we read of some knights who have arrived in presence of the romance king whom they are in quest of; dinner is immediately prepared for them; "trestles," says Ellis in his abstract of it, "were immediately set; a table covered with a silken cloth was laid; a rich repast, ushered in by the sound of trumpets and shalms, was served up."[330]

Having introduced the feast, the minstrels continued to play during its progress. We find numerous representations of dinners in the illuminations, in which one or two minstrels are standing beside the table, playing their instruments during the progress of the meal. In a MS. volume of romances of the early part of the fourteenth century in the British Museum (Royal 14 E iii.), the title-page of the romance of the "Quête du St. Graal" (at folio 89 of the MS.) is adorned with an illumination of a royal banquet; a squire on his knee (as in the illustration given on opposite page) is carving, and a minstrel stands beside the table playing the violin; he is dressed in a parti-coloured tunic of red and blue, and wears his hat. In the Royal MS. 2 B vii., at folio 168, is a similar representation of a dinner, in which a minstrel stands playing the violin; he is habited in a red tunic, and is bareheaded. At folio 203 of the same MS. (Royal 2 B vii.), is another representation of a dinner, in which two minstrels are introduced; one (wearing his hood) is playing a cittern, the other (bareheaded) is playing a violin: and these references might be multiplied.

We reproduce here, in further illustration of the subject, engravings of a royal dinner of about the time of our Edward IV., "taken from an illumination of the romance of the Compte d'Artois, in the possession of M. Barrois, a distinguished and well-known collector in Paris."[331] The other is an exceedingly interesting representation of a grand imperial banquet, from one of the plates of Hans Burgmair, in the volume dedicated to the exploits of the Emperor Maximilian, contemporary with our Henry VIII. It represents the entrance of a masque, one of those strange entertainments, of which our ancestors, in the time of Henry and Elizabeth, were so fond, and of which Mr. C. Kean some years ago gave the play-going world of London so accurate a representation in his _mise en scene_ of Henry VIII. at the Princess's Theatre. The band of minstrels who have been performing during the banquet, are seen in the left corner of the picture.

So in "The Squier's Tale" of Chaucer, where Cambuscan is "holding his feste so solempne and so riche."

"It so befel, that after the thridde cours,
While that this king sat thus in his nobley,[332]
Harking his ministralles her[333] thinges play,
Beforne him at his bord deliciously," &c.

The custom of having instrumental music as an accompaniment of dinner is still retained by her Majesty and by some of the greater nobility, by military messes, and at great public dinners. But the musical accompaniment of a mediæval dinner was not confined to instrumental performances. We frequently find a harper introduced, who is doubtless reciting some romance or history, or singing chansons of a lighter character. He is often represented as sitting upon the floor, as in the accompanying illustration, from the Royal MS., 2 B vii., folio 71 b. Another similar representation occurs at folio 203 b of the same MS. In the following very charming picture, from a MS. volume of romances of early fourteenth century date in the British Museum (Additional MS., 10,292, folio 200), the harper is sitting upon the table.

Gower, in his "Confessio Amantis," gives us a description of a scene of the kind. Appolinus is dining in the hall of King Pentapolin, with the king and queen and their fair daughter, and all his "lordes in estate." Appolinus was reminded by the scene of the royal estate from which he is fallen, and sorrowed and took no meat; therefore the king bade his daughter take her harp and do all that she can to enliven that "sorry man."

"And she to dou her fader's hest,
Her harpe fette, and in the feste
Upon a chaire which thei fette,
Her selve next to this man she sette."

Appolinus in turn takes the harp, and proves himself a wonderful proficient, and

"When he hath harped all his fille,
The kingis hest to fulfille,
A waie goth dishe, a waie goth cup,
Doun goth the borde, the cloth was up,
Thei risen and gone out of the halle."

In the sequel, the interesting stranger was made tutor to the princess, and among other teachings,

"He taught hir till she was certeyne
Of harpe, citole, and of riote,
With many a tewne and many a note,
Upon musike, upon measure,
And of her harpe the temprure,
He taught her eke, as he well couth."

Another occasion on which their services would be required would be for the dance. Thus we read in the sequel of "The Squire's Tale," how the king and his "nobley," when dinner was ended, rose from table, and, preceded by the minstrels, went to the great chamber for the dance:--

"Wan that this Tartar king, this Cambuscán,
Rose from his bord ther as he sat ful hie;
Beforne him goth the loudé minstralcie,
Til he come to his chambre of parements,[334]
Theras they sounden divers instruments,
That it is like an Heaven for to here.
Now dauncen lusty Venus children dere," &c.

In the tale of Dido and Æneas, in the legend of "Good Women," he calls it especially the dancing chamber:--

"To dauncing chambers full of paraments,
Of riché bedés[335] and of pavements,
This Eneas is ledde after the meat."

But the dance was not always in the great chamber. Very commonly it took place in the hall. The tables were only movable boards laid upon trestles, and at the signal from the master of the house, "A hall! a hall!" they were quickly put aside; while the minstrels tuned their instruments anew, and the merry folly at once commenced. In the illustration, of early fourteenth-century date, which we give on the preceding page, from folio 174 of the Royal MS., 2 B vii., the scene of the dance is not indicated; the minstrels themselves appear to be joining in the saltitation which they inspire.

In the next illustration, reproduced from Mr. Wright's "Domestic Manners of the English," we have a curious picture of a dance, possibly in the gallery, which occupied the whole length of the roof of most fifteenth-century houses; it is from M. Barrois's MS. of the "Compte D'Artois," of fifteenth-century date. In all these instances the minstrels are on the floor with the dancers, but in the latter part of the Middle Ages they were probably--especially on festal occasions--placed in the music gallery over the screens, or entrance-passage, of the hall.

Marriage processions were, beyond doubt, attended by minstrels. An illustration of a band consisting of tabor, bagpipes, regal, and violin, heading a marriage procession, may be seen in the Roman d'Alexandre (Bodleian Library) at folio 173; and at folios 173 and 174 the wedding feast is enlivened by a more numerous band of harp, gittern, violin, regal, tabor, bagpipes, hand-bells, cymbals, and kettle-drums--which are carried on a boy's back.[336]