Elizabethan Musical Instruments

Elizabethan Musical Instruments

Most Popular - Pipe and Tabor, Recorder and The Harp

• Pipe & Tabor

The pipe is a simple instrument with a fipple like a willow whistle or recorder but usually having only three melody holes (index finger, middle finger, and thumb). The bore is narrow to facilitate overblowing. There is a ridge around the bottom of the instrument to aid in supporting the pipe. This allows the player to handle a the instrument with one hand, leaving the other hand free to strike the tabor. The drum is held with a strap or thong around the arm which fingers the pipe. Thus one performer accompanies himself, making an ideal combination for dance music of a rustic nature, or to supply background music for jugglers or performing animals. The pipe and tabor (also whittle and dubb, or un flagol' un tabourin) player also entertained the audience during scene changes of Shakespeare plays. It takes a player with special talents to handle the unusual fingerings of this instrument.See the percussion page for more information about the drum member of this duet.

• Recorder

The principle of the recorder or whistle mouthpiece seems as old as mankind. The instrument's essential features are the lip (cut near the top of the body), the fipple (a block of wood inserted in the end to be blown), and the windway (a narrow channel along the fipple through which air is blown against the edge of the lip to produce sound).

It is difficult to document the recorder's early history due to the inability to positively identify what is and what is not a recorder in medieval art. Perhaps the earliest portrayal is an eleventh-century carving on a stone pillar in the church at Boubon-l'Achambault, St George, France. For more information on the early recorders, see Nicholas Lander's medieval recorder page.

• The Harp

The harp is one of the most ancient types of stringed instruments. It was important in pre-Christian cultures and still survives today in many forms all over the world. Harps use open strings exclusively, thus the range of each is determined by the number of strings. In the Middle Ages strings were made from twisted animal gut (usually from sheep), although horse hair and even silk were used as well.