Old English instruments of music, their history and character by Galpin Francis W. (Francis William) 1858-1945

Author:Galpin, Francis W. (Francis William), 1858-1945
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Musical instruments -- England
Publisher: London, McClurg
Published: 1911-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

SHAWM AND PIPE

163

of the instrument is made of stouter bark twisted into a conical shape and fixed together with hawthorn prickles. The writer tells us that this crude Shawm was annually-made for the Whit-lMonday Hunt which took place in the forest. In the late fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries the Shawms were made, like the Recorders, in various sizes, the larger being called Bumbardes. Hence in the Coii-fcssio Aiuanlis (1393) Gower speaks of "the sounde of bum-barde and of clarionne with cornemuse and shalmele": and in the Sqiiyr of Loive Dcgre we are told "ther was myrth and melody . . . with pypes, organ and bumbarde." A bumbarde depicted in the early fifteenth-century carvings of the nave at Beverley Minster is shown in Fig. 31. Virdung, in the early sixteenth century, and Pr^torius a hundred years after give us illustrations of these various forms which, at the later date, numbered seven different sizes from the Great Bass Shawm or Gross Doppel Quint-pommer which descended to Fi, to the Treble Shawm or Klein Discant Schalmey which ascended to b^.

This will explain the allusions which we find in English literature to the " shrillest shawm," as Drayton calls it in his Polyolbion; and also to the Shawm that "tunethe the Bass" mentioned in the Leckingfield inscriptions quoted at the head of this chapter. The actual compass of each

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