Orfeo

8. Conclusion [166-194]

Functional analysis enables reassessment of previous explanations of the different
instruments' origins and evolution, taking the opportunity to extend music's
boundaries back from the current frontiers of 'early music'* into its late prehistory.
Since the 19th century many suggestions have been put forward concerning the
origins of the principal European instruments; but none has been argued
point-by-point in the modern manner of Bachmann's study. Too many take images at
face value. Many have taken a much too romantic, even fanciful view of the cultures
involved. Most have merely hazarded guesses, without considering how they might
be tested. The most critical and thorough approach is found to be that of Joan Rimmer
(1969).

* In the 1970s the label 'early music' generally indicated anything from the 16th
century back to the 13th.

It is argued that the surviving evidence must be viewed as small windows, affording
glimpses, not panoramas, of ancient musics. Gaps in current knowledge cannot
therefore be assumed to represent real absences, or their boundaries real
music-cultural boundaries. Moreover it is inappropriate to think of their evolution in
simple linear terms, in which, for example, early medieval West European lyres might
have evolved directly from those of ancient Greece - or anywhere else. Each
glimpse is to a greater or lesser degree likely to represent, with variations, a much
broader stock, and a matrix of relationships.

Niche theory (Chapter 3) is applied. It is established from both finds and images that
lyres remain the dominant form of stringed instrument in Western Europe until about
AD 800, that between 800 and 1100 they increasingly yield niches to harps, and
thereafter yield others to bowed instruments. With these transitions the meaning of
Old English hearpe and its cognates in several other germanic languages also shifts.
Latin terms like cithara and lyra also vary. It is shown, incidentally, that 'Roman' and
'early medieval' Jew's harps (Crane 1972) are incorrectly attributed medieval finds.
The triangular harp itself figures strongly in Ireland and Wales in the later Middle Ages
but its origins in these islands are unlikely to be indigenous, or 'Celtic' or 'Viking'
(Galpin 1910). It is felt (with Rimmer) that it most likely emerged from contacts with
the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic world. A Carolingian account provides a useful
model for such musical and indeed instrumental contact circa AD 800. The harp's
acquisition during this process of a forepillar is not an 'improvement' (Galpin 1910) but
merely an adaptation. The idea that it could have evolved independently from a
'hunting bow with inserted twig' or could have been imported directly into ancient
Britain from Egypt is dismissed as fanciful.

Previously important elements of the iconographical record are called into question,
from the 'quadrangular harps' identified in an earlier study by Bruce-Mitford (1949,
1970) to the elaborate lyres of Roman art and the strange box-like instruments of the
Paris Psalter tradition, recently questioned also by Rimmer (1969). It is argued that,
representing the evolution of motifs rather than survival of material realities, the
currency of all these forms may best be seen as an expression of antiquarian taste
during periods of the real instruments' decline into eclipse. Whereas images of harps,
lutes and fiddles become increasingly accurate as the Middle Ages progress, already
in the early Middle Ages pictures of lyres begin to exhibit drift, perhaps because of
declining familiarity, acquiring increasing breadth and extravagant superstructures
not so far confirmed in any of the remains.

Some remaining organological problems are rehearsed. What may be the origins
of asymmetry in Slavic lyres and zithers? Why are there no finds from Eastern
Europe to explain Ibn Fadlan's reference to instruments among the Rus? What
were the Irish tiompán and all the other documented but so-far unattested
instruments? And what of the Iron Age and beyond? A two-point strategy is
proposed. We must embrace fully the need to survey our growing
archaeological resources, using archaeological methods, and we must supply
field- and museum-archaeologists with the information they need to recognise
this class of material - and its special needs - as soon as it emerges from the
ground. Pre-Christian cemeteries are identified, across Europe, as profitable
targets for survey, up to the advent of Christianity. Thereafter urban deposits
offer the best opportunity. Through systematic search and archaeological liaison
even finds from dry sites, individually modest, may accumulate a useful record.
Waterlogged and underwater sites such as wells, crannogs (lake dwellings)
and shipwrecks offer scope for enhanced preservation of soft materials like
wood.

If we persevere with these aims the quantum leap which Sutton Hoo has
brought to Anglo-Saxon studies can surely be repeated for many other cultures.

Appendix A: The archaeological remains

The catalogue draws together previously identified finds, including some of
those lately catalogued by Crane (1972) and newly surveyed material,
previously unidentified. It contains 66 index points, organised by period (Period I:
4th century AD and earlier [index points 1-6]; Period II: 5th-10th century [7-21];
Period III: 11th century onwards [22-43]). Included within Period III is a catalogue
of bone tuning pegs, mostly unidentified [44-66]. Some index points contain more
than one item, sometimes several. Besides the many new tuning pegs,
previously unseen finds include important pieces of bone, wood and/or metal
from Worlebury [5], Wroxeter [6], Bergh Apton [8], Hedeby (Germany) [15],
Morning Thorpe [16], Mühlhausen (Germany) [17]; Hedeby (a second) [27],
Hereford [28] and Winchester [43].

Appendix B: Experimental archaeology

Read as a paper to the Prehistoric Society, London, on 30th March 1980 this
discussion offers some thoughts about approaches to experiment in
music-related studies. It is argued that only through replication can the sounds
and technical properties of ancient instruments be properly understood; but if
such replication is to succeed it requires proper experimental design.

Appendix C: Stereophotography

The benefits of stereoscopic imaging are identified and contrasted with single
images, and a simple, easy, practical method of obtaining such images is
described.

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