Renaissance Music Online Lesson

Some of the instruments of Medieval times, such as recorders and shawns, still remained popular during the Renaissance. Others, like the lute, were altered and improved. And, of course, several new types of instruments were invented. This lesson will introduce you to the types of instruments being used in the sixteenth century.

Many instruments, such as recorders, viols, shawms and crumhorns, were made in families - the same instrument in different sizes, so that there was a variety of pitch-ranges but a blending of timbre within each family.

In England, a family of viols was known as a chest since that was how these instruments were stored when not in use. Elizabethans called a group of instruments playing together a consort. If instruments making up the consort were from one family only, it was called a whole consort. A broken consort was made up of a mixture of various instruments form different families - so that the sound was broken.

	Shawm	A double reed instrument that the oboe developed from. Has a powerful tone.
	Viol 834kb wav	A stringed instrument with six strings with a fretted fingerboard. Viols were held upright in front of the player rather than tucked under the chin.
	Crumhorn 100kb wav	Shaped like a walking stick. This instrument has a wooden cap enclosed in a double reed, giving a soft but very reedy tone.
	Rackett	A low pitched double reed instrument with a buzzing tone quality. It has nine parallel tubes coiled inside a cylinder that is only a third of a meter high.
	Cornett 55kb real audio	A curved instrument made of wood or ivory and often bound with leather. It has a trumpet like mouthpiece, but finger holes like a recorder. The tone could be varied from soft and mellow to extremely brilliant.
	Sackbut 123kb wav	A name, popular in England, for the early kind of trombone. The bell was less flared, giving a rounder, more mellow tone.
	Trumpet	The tube was folded to make it more manageable. Until the valve system was invented in the 19th century, the limited notes available could be obtained only by varying lip-pressure.
	Percussion Drum 211kb wav	Percussion instruments included tambourine, tabor, kettle drums, side drum, triangle, and cymbals.

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