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Renaissance instruments
Renaissance Instruments and Ensembles
While much emphasis of the music of this period was built around choral music for church performance, instrumental music developed considerably, as old instruments such as recorders, shawms and cornetts were improved and new ones developed.
The instruments
Some medieval instruments continued to be used and developed:
Various recorders
Recorder: This needs very little introduction as most school students have come across or played the present-day versions of this instrument in the music classroom. There was a whole family of recorders from very large to very small to cover the whole spectrum of sound and all with simple finger holes to change the pitch of notes. Listen to this excerpt of a broken consort of viols and recorder
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Shawm
A double reed instrument, ancestor of the oboe, which had a very brash, reedy sound and finger holes like a recorder.
Cornett
A curved instrument with finger holes like a recorder, made of wood or ivory, with a mouthpiece similar to those used on present-day brass instruments and with a brash trumpet-like sound. In this period cornetts regularly performed with new instruments, sackbuts, which are described below. Listen to this excerpt of these two instruments with a drum accompaniment and notice the clear melody played by the cornett and the binary form of the example.
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New instruments developed during the period were:
Crumhorn
A double reed instrument which had a cap over the reed. The player would then blow into this cap to produce a very reedy but quite soft tone. With finger holes like a recorder and shaped rather like the crook of a walking stick, the crumhorn came in a family of different sizes much like the recorder family.
Rackett
An aptly named instrument, this was a low pitched, double reed instrument with a long length of tube coiled inside a cylinder of about 30 centimetres in length.
Sackbut
An early kind of trombone which had a much smaller bell than the present-day instrument and as a result it had quite a round and mellow tone. Listen to this excerpt from a fantasia by William Byrd and notice the polyphonic style of playing with entries first by sackbuts, followed by the higher sounding cornetts.You don't have the latest version of Adobe Flash Player.
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Trumpet
Early instruments had been a straight tube like the fanfare trumpets used by the military today, but without valves. This tube was now folded up, similar to the shape and looks of a present-day trumpet but without the valves. These did not appear until the 19th century. Different notes could only be produced by changing the lip pressure on a mouthpiece similar to those used on the brass instruments of today.
Viol
The most important string instrument of the period. Here again there was a family of instruments, a set of these being known as a ‘chest’, a name derived from the method by which they were stored. The instruments had six strings over a fretted fingerboard and a flat back with sloping shoulders, and were played with a bow which was more curved than the present-day bow. The instruments sat upright in front of the player, the smaller ones sitting on the player’s knees and the larger ones between, much like a present-day cello player.
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Lute
Usually with 12 strings tuned in pairs stretched over a fretted fingerboard like a present-day guitar. The body had a pear-shaped sound box with the neck bent back almost at right angles to the fret board. It was used as a solo instrument and to accompany singers. Listen to an example of a lute playing a galliard, a quicker dance than the pavane with which it is often paired.
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Harpsichord
One of a number of keyboard instruments of the period. The harpsichord looks a little like a modern-day grand piano, has strings which are layered vertically and are stroked by a metal quill. The number of strings played at one time is regulated by stops, similar to those on an organ. This excerpt was originally written for a virginal, see below, but is played here on its big brother, the harpsichord, playing a series of variations over a ground bass.
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Other instruments
Other instruments of a similar style were popular, particularly the virginal, a keyboard instrument popular in the Elizabethan drawing rooms of the time. A virginal was played in a similar way to a harpsichord, but the strings ran parallel to the keyboard. This allowed the instrument to be smaller and to fit into the rooms of the period. Listen to this simple melody, ‘Tower Hill’, which is very short and in a very simple form, A, A with variation, B, B with variation.
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Organs
Small portable organs were often used but they had a rather limited sound. Listen to this example of a reed organ with a sound very similar to that produced by crumhorns.
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