system. There are some indications, too, that independent instrumental music was attempted, though this was slight.
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Fig. 52—Nun's fiddle, with one string, on which melodies could be played by selecting tones from the series of natural harmonics.
No exhaustive catalogue of mediæval instruments can be
given. The list is too long and complicated. Various
shapes and names are known to us, but they cannot always
be brought together with certainty, and evidently both were
liable to curious and capricious variations. In the stringed
group we find elementary forms of all the well-known types—harps,
lyres, dulcimers, lutes, viols, etc., in countless modifications,
with peculiar special types, like the 'trumscheit'
or 'nun's-fiddle'—a derivative of the monochord, and
the 'organistrum,' 'bauernleier,' or 'hurdy-gurdy,'—essentially
a viol sounded by a revolving wheel and fitted with
a rude keyboard (see Fig. 51). In the wind group, also,
there are many representatives of the flute, oboe and trumpet
families, with bagpipes and Pan's-pipes, besides the organ
and its petite varieties. In the percussive group there are
drums, bells, castanets and clappers of all sorts. The keyboard
as a means of controlling a complex instrument like
the organ was already well known (see sec. 101), and its
application to stringed instruments of the lyre or viol kind
was understood, though it had not been combined with
the dulcimer as in the pianoforte. All these instruments,
except the organ, were mainly the products of popular ingenuity,
though at the end of the 15th century they began
to engage the serious attention of thoughtful musicians.
The more favorite instruments were often made in
several sizes, so that of each there might be a graded
series from treble to bass, making an instrumental
choir. It seems that before learned musicians had
fixed upon the notion of true harmony as the basis of
composition popular music had recognized it and had
begun to apply it in solid chord-effects from instruments
of differing pitch. Similar experiments were
of course made with voices. Such efforts were essentially
diverse from those of true counterpoint, since
the several voice-parts were not developed independently
or equally, but as constituents in the massive
or total effect. It would appear, therefore, that the
mediæval eagerness for concerted instrumental effects
is memorable, not simply because it hastened the maturity of
leading solo instruments, like the violin, but because it involved
some recognition of true harmony as distinct from counterpoint.