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Medieval manuscript sheet music4/25/2024 ![]() ![]() Some modern commentators say that the two never mixed, and there would have been good practical reasons for this. ![]() Instruments came broadly in two categories, loud for outside and soft for inside. Where musicians did play in groups, they were small in number, usually 2, 3 or 4. The iconographical and written evidence shows that secular musical performance was very often by one player. Ensemble size and instrument combinations MS 42130, England, first half of the 14 th century), and recorder (found in a latrine in 2005 in Tartu, Estonia, by Andres Tvauri, dated to the second half of the 14 th century). As with all pictures, click to see larger in a new window.Ībove, left to right: vielle ( CSM 100, Cantigas de Santa Maria E codex, Iberia, 1280-83), harp ( Luttrell Psalter, BL Add. The second article in this series of three explores the musical possibilities of accompaniment suggested by the evidence. Neither monophonic nor polyphonic medieval vocal music indicates any method of instrumental accompaniment. The music that was noted down as a single line melody must have been played not only on monophonic instruments such as recorder, pipe and tabor and shawm, but also on instruments capable of a second line of musical accompaniment, such as harps, gitterns, portative organs and so on, and many illustrations show musicians doing just this by, for example, showing a harpist playing with both hands. Surviving medieval sources almost never indicate the instrument to be played, which suggests that they performed with any instrument, appropriate to the type of music and the skills of the musician. Whereas modern music is usually written with a particular instrument in mind, in the medieval period this seems not, on the whole, to have been the case. The second article gives practical methods for making arrangements of medieval monophonic music according to historical principles, with an example to illustrate each method and the third article discusses questions of style, including the performance of the non-mensural (non-rhythmic) music of the troubadours, ornamentation, and the medieval voice. T he illustrations in t wo manuscripts are used as typical representative examples: the 13 th century Iberian Cantigas de Santa Maria and the 14 th century English Queen Mary Psalter. This first article discusses the use of instruments and instrument combinations in medieval music. We have also digitised about 320 of our 16th-century printed music sources, in a partnership with Royal Holloway, University of London, and these can be viewed at In the coming year, we will be working to digitise Handel's autograph manuscripts – a large undertaking – and will continue to make as much material as possible freely available.The most fundamental question of all in playing early music today is: how can the music be played to reflect historical practice? This is the first of three articles looking at historically-informed ways of performing medieval music, aiming to be a practical guide, with plenty of musical examples and illustrations, and a bibliography for those who wish to delve further. The Library is now moving on to digitise entire music manuscripts, and you can find most of those that have been completed at (just search for 'music'). While this gallery provides examples of a wide range of composers' and scribes' handwriting, these are single photographs, not complete manuscripts. Along with the images are links to descriptions of each manuscript in the British Library catalogue and RISM database. These images are just a small selection of those made for the RISM Music Manuscripts Project ( - which aims to document all music manuscripts from 1600 to 1800 preserved in UK libraries and archives - and which are now made available on Wikimedia Commons. ![]()
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