minstrel: Acappella barony

[Vanessa Layne]

Mathurin writes:

> Bodhran is good, as is any percussion...bells, bones, spoons, drums, sticks.

What makes a bodhran a bodhran (as opposed to just any old frame drum)
is the style of beater and of playing.  Do we have any evidence that
was period?  Someone recently asked me, and I couldn't find much
information on a cursory check.

Similarly, have we evidence of spoons?  I'd love to know.

[good advice snipped]

> Guitars/mandolins are more effort and modern playing styles also aren't
> Period if you have purist concerns, but there are sources for Period
> tunings/etc. for them.

*Just* ran across a reference to _Briefve et facile instruction pour
appendre la guiterne_ by Adrien Le Roy, 1551.  The guitar was somewhat
different then, but definitely period.  As for playing style, I just
found this gem in the _Guide des instruments de la Renaissance_:

  "The guitar certainly possesses a characteristic style of playing, one
  which can be traced back to its tuning.  It can be played with
  'strokes made of double strokes, of which the first rises and the
  second falls ... If you wish to double of triple these strokes you
  must then strike all the strings with four or eight strokes with one,
  two, three or four fingers...' (Mersenne).  This style of playing is
  known in Spain as the rasgueado and it consists of playing chords on
  all the strings of the instruments, in contrast with the punteado
  style, in which all the notes are plucked separately."
  
The above quoted Mersenne is Marin Mersenne, in his _Harmonie
Universelle_, 1636.

> Hammered dulcimers are very easy, very nice sounding, and totally Period.

I know that apparently something that is recognizably a dulcimer and
played with hammers goes way back in some cultures at the west end of
the Mediterranean, and I have heard repeatedly "Dulcimers probably
entered central Europe from Persia about the 15th century"
(Encyclopedia Brittanica) -- but I have not run across any actual
evidence of hammered dulcimers in 16th century western Europe.  Does
anyone have any??  I would love to know of any evidence they were used
on the kind of music we sing and play!

> Psalterys, bowed or plucked, are perfectly Period, and very easy to learn
> *and* to build.

Plucked psalteries go back at least to the time of Chaucer, who
mentioned them.  As I understand it, a psaltery of this kind is
basically a hammered dulcimer with only a single string to each
course, and played without hammers (plucked with either the fingers or
a quill).

Don't know of any evidence of the little triangular bowed instruments
we call bowed psalteries; would love to hear it.  They did have
triangular-ish instruments with strings that were bowed, but they had
only one or a few strings (to keys, not pegs) and you had to finger
them like a violin and they were much longer (see plate XXI of
Praetorius' _Syntagma Musicum_)

Eogan writes:

> Mountain Dulcimers, per se are not
> period, but they have period anscestors that are very similar to the
> modern mountaind dulcimer.  I say the equivalent is comparing a recorder
> with baroque fingering to a recorder with medieval fingering--close enough
> to get by with in our Society at least.

More information please!  I have not run across a period instrument
which is played in the manner of a mountain dulcimer (set across the
lap, fretted from above and strummed).  Sounds very interesting!

-- Tibicen
   dagoura at mit.edu




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