Early Music America Fall 2005 27

The Atlakvida (The Lay of Attila), an8th- or early 9th-century story from

the Old Icelandic Edda, contains adescription of music performed underthe most difficult circumstances: “Theliving prince they placed in the pit – acrowd of men did it – which was crawl-ing inside with snakes; and Gunnar,alone, furiously struck his harp with hishand. The strings resounded....” In oneversion of the story, Gunnar, beingbound, plays the harp with his toes.

This brief passage contains a worldof information about Medieval heroes,but it doesn’t tell us much about howGunnar played the harp – with his fin-gers or his toes. And if you want toknow how many strings the harp had orhow they were fixed, the Atlakvida willnot answer those questions for you.

Yet Ben Bagby plays (with his hands)a harp he believes is much like Gunnar’s.And across America, other performersare playing bone flutes, lyres, gitterns,vielles, cruits, hurdy-gurdys, ttun-ttuns,rotas, and citoles – instruments built bymakers who have combined art history,archaeology, materials science, acoustics,etymology, history, anthropology, sociol-ogy, physics, and musicology to re-createMedieval instruments that no one hasheld in their hands for centuries.

“The central issue in early music isthe interdependence between scholar-ship and art,” says Wendy Gillespie,associate professor and chair of theearly music department at Indiana Uni-versity. Recreating nonextant instru-ments may be the most classic example.

Visual representationsScenes of Gunnar playing the harp in

the snake pit have been depicted inMedieval Norse art, but how much canharp makers learn from them? “Dimen-

sions are usually based on depictionsshowing instruments near or held byactual people,” says Bagby, a Medievalscholar and performer who is co-founder of Sequentia and now lives inParis. “But often we are in the dark withthings like string numbers, sinceMedieval artists were not particularlyfussy about these kinds of details – plusthe fact that it’s extremely hard to rendermultiple harp strings accurately in a tinyminiature!

“For these early harps we also have acertain number of Christian manuscriptilluminations depicting harps beingplayed – principally by King David, ofcourse, or by musical legends such asBoethius or Pythagoras. These illumina-tions are very useful for learning howthe instrument might have been held, itssize relative to human bodies and hands,and the way the player’s hands interactwith the strings.”

Still, “there is distortion. You musttake into consideration the humanbody,” says Milton Scheuermann,founder and co-director of Musica deCamera in New Orleans. Scheuermannhas made harps, lyres, a Medieval fiddle,and a hurdy-gurdy. “In the illuminationsI use, the fiddles and harps seem to bein proportion to the body.”

Makers must always ask if what theyare looking at makes sense. SondraBromka, co-founder of the Bells &Motley Consort in Marcellus, New York,takes an active approach to answeringthis question. “Build what you see,” shesays, “and if it works, that’s the way totest the iconography. Is it holdable? Isthe weight balanced? Can it be played?”

The problem is that it’s not alwayseasy to know for sure what makes sense.“You see illustrations of positive organsreversed, with the bass notes on the left,

Evidence and Intuition:Making Medieval Instruments

By Beth Adelman

Top, a 12th-century carving showing Gunnarin the snake pit, playing with his toes. Below, Sequentia’s Ben Bagby, holding aGerman harp constructed by Rainer Thurau and plucking it by hand.

When it comes to creating replicas of instruments that only exist in poetry and iconography, makers are guided by guesswork and good sense

28 Fall 2005 Early Music America

and scholars wonder if this is artisterror, or whimsy, or if there really wereinstruments like this,” says Scheuer-mann. In other words, if it looks like amistake, is it really?

Then there’s the opposite problem:“You can look at the players and seewhich hand was on top, which tells yousomething about the instrument,” saysSally Mitchell, who plays recorder in theMedieval music ensemble Contrafacta inSeattle. “But you can’t take it seriously. Iknow examples of modern photographyin which the instruments are playedbackwards – and this is not just a 21st-century phenomenon.”

So instrument makers look at hun-dreds of images and then combine themost salient features. “I take a Jungianarchetypal approach: what remains thesame is more important than the differ-ences,” says Timothy Johnson in Waco,Texas, who makes modern and historical

instruments in the string family as wellas all of the Medieval instruments forAltramar. “Certain details emerge overand over again. You combine this withthe fact that are only a certain numberof solutions that work.”

Luckily, some artwork has proven tobe meticulous and reliable. “PieterBruegel’s paintings are so accurate thatyou can literally take a caliper to them,”says Joel C. Robinson, a wind instru-ment maker in New York City whomakes Medieval bagpipes for Piffaro.Hieronymous Bosch is another artistwhose work is absolutely accurate. “Theharp [in the Hell portion of The Gardenof Earthly Delights] has been reproducedby many of us in many sizes,” saysLynne Lewandowski, who makesMedieval harps and psalteries in BellowsFalls, Vermont. “Bosch is an amazingdraftsman of mechanical things.”Albrecht Dürer also drew musical

Medieval vs. 21st-Century Ears“A lot of us have closets full of instruments that we do not exhibit, but we’ll bring them out when the time and player are right,” saysharp maker Lynne Lewandowski. “Modern harp tradition has set back the discovery of early harp music by a decade or two. When some-one has studied their professional instrument for several decades, and you put something in their hands that makes them sound bad,they’re going to be hostile.”

David Ohannesian sees the same situation with Medieval recorders. “What characteristics are modern recorder players likely to put upwith? It’s supposed to be that you make the instrument, and the musicians use it to figure out how it affected the music. But I don’t seea willingness to do this. The cylindrical bore in Medieval recorders works best in the upper range, but the low notes are weak. It’s not apleasant instrument to play if you’re used to something else. The modernrecorder is played in a certain way, and players tend to be inflexible aboutplaying in a different style.”

Audience likes and dislikes are another consideration. “Many Medievalinstruments have a lot of overtones, but modern audiences don’t neces-sarily like that,” says Ohannesian. Lewandowski adds, “Early harps hadbrays. When I started making them, they sounded like Moog synthesizersand nobody liked them. Now people want them.

“There is an undeniable commercial element in all this,” she concedes.“We have to please the audience in order to beguile more people into thefield of early music. It is honorable to create a line of less threateninginstruments, as long as you’re not fooling yourself. After all, early music isa 20th-century phenomenon. These instruments are not for history; theyare for us now.”

Lewandowski continues, “Part of this job involves having the patienceto see if your ideas are borne out by later discoveries. If you have an ideaof what might have been, you need to stay with it, ride out the fads andfashions, and be willing to be wrong. Put that wrong thing away for 10years, and it might turn out to be right on the money.”

“The thing everybody always says is that they wish they had recordingtechnology in those times,” says Wendy Gillespie. “But we have no ideawhat things would sound like. And I think it’s just as well, becauseanother question is, would we like it? Probably not.”

A zoomorphMedieval harp

made by LynneLewandowski

(inset).

Double-drone bagpipemade by Joel Robinson.This instrument is based

on the Pieter Bruegel the Elder painting,

The Peasant Dance.

Early Music America Fall 2005 29

instruments in exacting and extremelyuseful detail.

Another source of visual information– one Gillespie calls “as good as it gets”– is the western portico of the 12th-century cathedral of Santiago de Com-postela in Spain. Around what is knownas the Gate of Glory are figures of the24 Elders of the Apocalypse, all holdingstringed instruments as if they are aboutto play. Most are vielles, but there arealso harps, and the two figures in themiddle are holding a two-person hurdy-gurdy (or organistrum). The instrumentsare depicted almost in three dimensions,with the backs carved in some detail.Instrument makers have access to thisremarkable visual record because a fewyears ago scaffolding was erected and allthe figures were meticulously pho-tographed and videotaped.

Working with three dimensions Visual representations go only so far,

however, because they do not revealwhat is inside the instrument – theshape of the bore, the way the stringsare attached, the thickness of the sound-ing board. For these, makers mustexplore how the instrument was usedand consider the tool technology of thetime. At the heart of this question is thefact that the instrument has to beplayable – for Medieval musicians aswell as for musicians who happen to livein 2005. “You ask, would it hold togeth-er under the conditions of play andtravel at the time?” says John Bromka,co-founder of Bells & Motley Consort.

“Compromises need to be made onthe interior to survive today’s playingconditions,” adds Sondra Bromka. “Theharp needs to stay in tune. Wood haschanged a lot over time and across con-ditions. European and American cherryare completely different, and Small IceAge wood is different from wood grow-ing now. This affects the bracing and theinterior.”

“We know they couldn’t bend thinwood, and they did not have good glue,so that tells us a lot about how thingswere made,” says Lyn Elder, in Bristol,Vermont, who makes a wide variety ofMedieval and Renaissance stringed

The Swan Bone FluteOn the first track of Sequentia’s CD TheRheingold Curse, Norbert Rodenkirchen playsan instrument that possesses what Ben Bagbyhas called “an almost shamanistic quality”—a swan bone flute based on the remains ofa 10th-century instrument. The flute wasmade by Friedrich von Huene in Boston(2005 winner of the Howard Mayer Brownaward for lifetime achievement in the field of early music).

“I went to a museum in Speyer, Germany,where they have all kind of artifacts from anold castle that was destroyed 1,000 years ago. They found a flute made from the ulnaof a swan—the ones made out of bone survived, unlike the wood ones—with four fin-ger holes and an embouchure hole. It is in good shape, except there is no plug on top,and you can’t play it. But they do let you touch it and take photos and make drawings,”von Huene explains.

Seeing the model was useful, but many decisions about the flute were dictated bythe material. “The bore is decided by the bone,” he says. “And putting a plug in like arecorder is not always possible because the swan bone is very thin.”

This made the job a lot easier, as did following the basic design of Medieval flutes.“A flute is essentially a tube with holes in it,” says von Huene. “I’ve made a flute with apocket knife and a reed on a beach in Mykonos. If you are inventive, you can do it. Totest the design, you try to play it. Or else you can say, ‘I haven’t learned to play it yet.’”

The real problem was finding the swan bone. “I finally got a few from a nature con-servancy in Florida,” he says. “I also wrote to a swannery in England, and I am alwaystalking to people I know who have ponds, asking them to look for dead swans.”

Continued on page 53

Norbert Rodenkirchen playsFriedrich von Huene’s swan bone flute.

The members of Altramar,posing with instrumentsmade by Timothy Johnson.

Early Music America Fall 2005 53

instruments. “Quite often they resortedto carving the instrument out of a solidblock. You boil the wood in water ormilk to make it soft and malleable, andthen you only need a few carving tools.”

“You start cutting, roughing, andmake course corrections as you goalong,” says Johnson. “Things revealthemselves as you start working in threedimensions. There’s a mystical compo-nent. You start feeling as if there areother people in the room: I’m not thefirst one working on this. You start feel-ing connected.”

Historical fingerprintsMany instruments are re-created

based on the archeological record (seesidebar on page 29), which can reveal alot about internal structure. “Sometimeswhat’s missing can tell you more thanwhat’s there,” says Wolodymyr Smish-kewych, a doctoral student at IndianaUniversity, a player and singer withSequentia, and a maker of harps and

lyres. “The missing materials may havebeen made of things that disintegrated,like skin, so then you know somethingabout the materials. The missing partsmay also reveal things in the instrumentyou otherwise couldn’t see. For example,all that’s left of a lyre in Novgorod is abowl, two prongs, and a bird carving.The sound board is gone. Because I cansee the mortises, I can tell how thick thesound board was, the materials thatwould have been used, and how it wouldhave been assembled.” Smishkewych,who won the 2004 Barbara ThorntonMemorial Scholarship, is on his way toSpain to study Medieval hurdy-gurdies,courtesy of a 2005 FulbrightScholarship.

Sometimes the “artifact” is an instru-ment still in use. “I look at modernanalogs in ethnic instruments,” saysJohnson. “They look so much likeMedieval pictures. They have a certainset of structural solutions that you can’tignore.” David Ohannesian, a recorder

maker in the Seattle area, finds sharedcharacteristics between modern ethnicfipple flutes and Medieval recorders.And Robinson says, “In the Balkans,bagpipes are totally chromatic, and thatdidn’t suddenly happen in the 19th cen-tury.” Smishkewych adds, “A lot ofinstruments made their way along theSilk Road.”

A good understanding of the socialhistory of the time also informs the way

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Evidence and IntuitionContinued from page 29

Luthier Lyn Elder created this citole, played by its present owner and co-builder Deborah White.

54 Fall 2005 Early Music America

Early Music America Board of Directors

PresidentCharlotte S. Newman

Arts AdministratorVice PresidentsPaul R. Jacobson

Lyra Baroque OrchestraThomas Forrest Kelly

Harvard UniversitySue Ruben KoehlerArts Administrator (ret.)

Angela MarianiHarmonia, Altramar, Texas Tech University

SecretaryLiane Ellison Norman

Chatham BaroqueTreasurer

Robert A. JohnsonBuchanan Ingersoll P.C.Assistant Treasurer

Jeffrey BarnettGranite Point Capital

Past PresidentValerie Horst

Amherst Early Music

Tricia BaldwinTafelmusik Baroque Orchestra

Rebecca BaltzerUniversity of TexasRobert Birman

Philharmonia Baroque OrchestraMarie Bertillion Collins

Judge (ret.)Ronald Cook

Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLPRobert L. Ganley

Dollar BankMary Ann Hagan

Arts ConsultantSusan Hellauer

Anonymous 4Gerald Hoekstra

St. Olaf CollegeJoan Kimball

PiffaroBill McJohn

Software EngineerSandra Miller

FlutistGene Murrow

Early Music FoundationLyle Nordstrom

University of North TexasFlorence Peacock

SingerKen Perlow

Lucent Technologies (ret.)Lee Talner

Radiologist, University of WashingtonMichele U

Critical Care Nurse (ret.)Susan Weiss

Peabody ConservatoryRobina Young

Harmonia Mundi USANancy Zylstra

Singer

StaffExecutive Director

Maria ColdwellMembership Director

Sally MitchellDirector of Marketing

Mark Powell

images and fragments are interpreted,both for the maker and the player. “Ihave done some research into earlygeometry, and the same geometricalprinciples that work on Renaissanceinstruments also work on Medievalinstruments – rule of proportions, inter-sections of circles, and so forth,” saysJohnson. “These geometric archetypeswere also used in reli-gious art and had mys-tical significance. Thisancient reverentialgeometry gave life toMedieval instruments.”

“I played apardessus, which is aninstrument that wasmainly played bywomen,” says TinaChancey, co-director ofHesperus in Arlington,Virginia. “You need to be holding ithigher than the lap or on a lower chairbecause the crinolines in the skirt at thetime forced you to hold it up higher.”

Knowing where an instrument wasplayed (monastery, church, court, orstreet fair), in what context, and whetherit was part of an ensemble or mainlyplayed solo also greatly informs its con-struction and the style of play.“Medieval musicians would stand andplay for six hours. They wouldn’t makeinstruments that crippled them,” says

Johnson. Rather, according to Elder,“you want the instrument as light as itcan be without losing strength andstability.”

In the end, though, when it comes toboth making and playing a reconstruct-ed instrument, guesswork and intuitionare always factors. “Nonextant instru-ments are always idiosyncratic,”

Lewandowski says.Joan Kimball, co-director of Piffaro inPhiladelphia, adds,“We all wish we couldtravel back in time andbe a fly on the wall.We can only guesshow these instrumentssounded based onextant folk models.”Which means thatdespite all the scholar-

ship, there is always a leap of faith.“You have to take your best guess andgo ahead and do it, then perfect theinstrument on the design you have cho-sen,” says Elder. “Nobody can really say,‘This is the way it was.’”

If your best guess is very good,Lewandowski says, “we occasionally getthese glorious glimpses of somethingthat is like us, but different.”

Beth Adelman is a reviewer for Early MusicAmerica and a freelance editor.

Evidence and Intuition

Piffaro playing Medieval bagpipes at the Spoleto Festival in Italy.

“There’s a mysticalcomponent. You start

feeling as if there are otherpeople in the room: I’m not the first one

working on this. You start feeling

connected.” – Timothy Johnson