The Painted Musicians in Longthorpe Tower

Abstract

This article examines the instrumentalists painted on the vault of the first-floor room of the surviving tower of Longthorpe Manor, near Peterborough, built by Robert of Thorpe in about 1330. Longthorpe Tower is currently being reinterpreted by English Heritage, and, as a result, new photos of the wall paintings have been taken, which allow greater clarity of content.

This article will focus on the seven instrumentalists, once eight, which now survive in each quadrant of the vault. It will show that, although the paintings are in a poor state of preservation, there is much to be gleaned from the extant instrumentalists. Previous scholarship has focused on the nativity scene, apostles, and royal symbols, painted on the walls below the vault. Here the role of the musicians and instruments in this iconographical scheme is examined for the first time. In addition, the importance of these instruments to musicians and musicologists is assessed. Detailed diagrams of the instruments are given, along with a commentary on the extent to which these painted representations can be read as legitimate instruments capable of a realistic performance practice. The role of music within the iconographical scheme of Robert of Thorpe’s tower will also be provided, showing how it adds to the portrayal of Thorpe as a religious and learned man of high station.

Musicians and the role of music are often neglected in the interpretations of historic schemes. This article calls for a consideration of music alongside wider iconographic schemes and clearly shows the extent to which music can help unravel complex messages.

Notes

1 Edward Impey, Longthorpe Tower (guidebook), London, 2014, 21.

2 Impey, op. cit., 19.

3 Norman John Greville Pounds, The Medieval Castle in England and Wales: A Social and Political History, Cambridge, 1994, 284.

4 Impey, op. cit., 1.

5 Impey, op. cit., 19.

6 Sandra Raban and Claire de Trafford, ‘The White Book of Peterborough: the registers of Abbot William of Woodford, 1295–99, and Abbot Godfrey of Crowland, 1299–1321’, Northamptonshire Record Society, XLI, Anthony Mellows Memorial Trust 3, 2001, no. 296, p. 291. In this indenture, dating 8 October 1309, Robert promised ‘to execture the abbey’s business as custodian of the libery’.

7 Impey, op. cit., 19; Sandra Raban (ed., trans.), ‘The accounts of Godfrey of Crowland, Abbot of Peterborough, 1299–1321’, Northamptonshire Record Society, XLV, Anthony Mellows Memorial Trust 5 (2011), xxii, fn. 46. For more on Robert of Thorpe, see RC Kinsey, ‘Legal Service, Careerism and Social Advancement in Late Medieval England: The Thorpes of Northamptonshire, c.1220–1391’ (unpublished PhD thesis, York, 2009), 33–35, 54–77.

8 Impey, op. cit., 19.

9 This is documented in EC Rouse and A Baker, ‘The wall paintings of Longthorpe Tower’, Archaeologia, XCVI, 1955, 1–57.

10 Impey, op. cit., 2. These have informed much of Edward Impey’s work in his new guidebook. These watercolours are now housed in London, The Society of Antiquaries, B 164 h–j (‘Measured Watercolour Drawings by Dr E. Clive Rouse’).

11 E Clive Rouse, ‘Longthorpe Tower’ (guidebook), London, 1984, 4.

12 EC Rouse, Medieval Wall Paintings, 4th edn, Oxford, 2004, 26–27.

13 Impey, op. cit., 2.

14 Impey, op. cit., 21.

15 Impey, op. cit., 21: ‘to relax, to work, and contemplate’.

16 Impey, op. cit., 21.

17 Raban, ‘The accounts of Godfrey of Crowland, Abbot of Peterborough, 1299–1321’; Raban and de Trafford, ‘The White Book of Peterborough: the registers of Abbot William of Woodford, 1295–99’. The register of Abbot Adam of Boothby will be published by the Anthony Mellow Memorial Trust in the future. These accounts only provide details of the administration of the abbot of Peterborough’s estates. For Longthorpe manor, we find detail regarding arrears, fixed rent, revenue of the manor, and external receipts (including livestock, grains, dairy and works to the land). The original accounts are housed in Northamptonshire Record Office.

18 One such illustration can be found in the 13th-century Aberdeen Bestiary (Aberdeen University Library, MS 24, fo. 12r), or the 15th-century English bestiary (Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, GKS 1633 4°, fo. 10r).

19 The Peterborough Bestiary is found in the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 53. The image of the Bonaccon is on fo. 212.

20 Rouse’s watercolour image of the bonnacon is found in London, The Society of Antiquaries, B 164 h–j, image 49; for the Peterborough Bestiary, see Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 53, fo. 212.

21 This full sketch of the wall by EC Rouse is found in London, The Society of Antiquaries, B 164 h–j (folio unnumbered).

22 Paul calls himself an apostle, and while he is not usually included in lists of the twelve apostles he may be seen as one. See, for example: Samuel Vollenweider, ‘Paul, Saint’, in: Religion Past and Present, Brill Online, 2014, http://referenceworks.brillonline.com/ entries/religion-past-and-present/paul-saint-COM_024311. For further information on the apostles and the twelve, see Dietrich-Alex Koch, ‘Twelve, The (Disciples)’, Religion Past and Present, Brill Online, 2014. Reference. Oxford University libraries.

23 Marguerite Shuster, ‘Christian Theology: Sin and the Fall’, in Stephen Westerhoff, The Blackwell Companion to Paul, Oxford, 2011, 546.

24 Otto Betz, ‘Apostle’, in Bruce M Metzger and Michael D Coogan, The Oxford Companion to the Bible, Oxford, 1993, accessed online.

25 Impey, op. cit., 10.

26 Betz, ‘Apostle’, cit..

27 Impey, op. cit., 7; Rouse, Longthorpe Tower, 11.

28 Impey, op. cit., 7.

29 Impey, op. cit., 7.

30 For more on local birds in the Peterborough Bestiary, see Christopher De Hamel, Das Bestiarium aus Peterborough, Stuttgart, 2003.

31 JC Webster, The Labors of the Months in Antique and Mediaeval Art to the End of the Twelfth Century, Princeton, 1938, 1. This is also explored in Bridget Ann Henisch, The Medieval Calendar Year, Philadelphia, 1999.

32 Webster, The Labors of the Months, 1.

33 Webster, op. cit., 93.

34 Webster, op. cit., 94.

35 Webster, op. cit., 102.

36 CM Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England, New Haven and London, 2006, 25.

37 Woolgar, op. cit., 25–26. These attributes are formalized in the mid-13th-century Liber de Naturis Rerum (Book of the Nature of Things) by the Flemish Dominican friar Thomas de Cantimpré.

38 Woolgar, op. cit., 26.

39 Impey, op. cit., 12–13.

40 Bee Yun, ‘A visual mirror of princes: the wheel on the mural of Longthorpe Tower’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, LXX, 2007, 29. Bee Yun sees the wheel as serving an advisory role, one that ‘visualises the ethical behaviour required of the king to bring prosperity and harmony to his state through the representation of the virtuous soul of the ideal king in his natural body’.

41 Woolgar, op. cit., 26.

42 There were several versions of this, and the oldest manuscripts date to the 13th century. The best-known version of the poem (in French) was that by Baudouin de Condé. By 1300 the poem seems to have been accompanied by a pictorial aspect. For more on this, see Paul Binski, Medieval Death: Ritual and Representation, New York, 1996, 135.

43 Binski, op. cit., 135.

44 Binski, op. cit., 134.

45 Binski, op. cit., 135.

46 Binski, op. cit., 134.

47 Luke Timothy Johnson, ‘New Testament’, in James Buckley, Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt and Trent Pomplun (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Catholicism, Oxford, 2010, 29.

48 Johnson, op. cit., 32.

49 Johnson, op. cit., 32.

50 Johnson, op. cit., 32.

51 Clare Matthews McGinnis, ‘The Old Testament’, in James Buckley, Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt and Trent Pomplun (eds), The Blackwell Companion to Catholicism, Oxford, 2007, 16.

52 Matthews McGinnis, op. cit., 17.

53 I am grateful to Alma Brodersen for her discussion of the instruments in Psalm 150 and for sharing chapters of her unpublished doctoral thesis (University of Oxford).

54 The different names of the musical instruments detailed in Psalm 150 change depending on the Hebrew, Greek, Latin or vernacular Bibles. This is discussed in Edo Škulj, ‘Musical Instruments in Psalm 150’, in Joze Krasovec (ed.), ‘The Interpretation of the Bible’, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 289, 1117–30. Jeremy Montagu also provides an index of the changing terms of the instruments of Psalm 150 in: Jeremy Montagu, Musical Instruments of the Bible (New York, 2002).

55 R Gryson, B Fischer, HI Frede and HFD Sparkes, Biblia Sacra Vulgata (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1983).

56 Stephen Prickett and Robert Carroll, The Bible. Authorized King James Version, Oxford, 2008.

57 For more on the timbres or drum, see Jeremy Montagu, ‘tambourine’, Grove Music Online, accessed online.

58 Jeremy Montagu, ‘The restored Chapter House wall paintings in Westminster Abbey’, Early Music, XVI/2, 1988, 244.

59 I am grateful to Jeremy Montagu for his comments on these images and confirming the scheme as representative of Psalm 150.

60 Jeremy Montagu, ‘The crozier of William of Wykeham’, Early Music, XXX, 2002, 540–62; Jeremy Montagu and Gwen Montagu, ‘Beverley Minster reconsidered’, Early Music, VI/3, 1978, 401–15; Adrian Rose, ‘Angel musicians in the medieval stained glass of Norfolk churches’, Early Music, XXIX, 2001, 186–217.

61 Paul Binski, ‘The Angel Choir at Lincoln and the poetics of the Gothic smile’, Art History, XX/3, 1997, 361.

62 Lincoln was preceded by the north transept of Westminster Abbey (Binski, ‘Angel Choir’, cit., 361, 373; Paul Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets, Kingship and the Representation of Power 1200–1400, New Haven and London, 1995, 71–72).

63 Paul Binski, ‘Angel Choir’, cit., 361.

64 There are several instruments at Lincoln, which are also found at Longthorpe, such as the pipe and tabor; harp and stringed instrument. For more on this, see Binski, ‘Angel Choir’, cit., 350–74.

65 Gwen Montagu and Jeremy Montagu, ‘Beverley Minster Reconsidered’, Early Music 6/3, 1978, 401–14.

66 These instruments are found in the nave, south and north Aisles at Beverley Minster. Some Victorian restoration work was undertaken on the bagpipe and the pipe and tabor. All of the other instruments are original.

67 Helene La Rue, ‘The problem of the cymbala’, The Galpin Society Journal, XXXV, 1982, 86–87; John Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy From the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century, Oxford, 1991, 70.

68 Harper, op. cit., 67.

69 La Rue, ‘The problem of the cymbala’, cit., 86-87; Harper, op. cit., 70.

70 Matthews McGinnis, op. cit., 20.

71 Matthew McGinnis, op. cit., 20.

72 Matthew McGinnis, op. cit., 20.

73 Matthews McGinnis, op. cit., 21. Susan Gillingham, ‘Entering and leaving the psalter: Psalms 1 and 150 and the two polarities of faith’, in I Provan and MJ Boda (eds), Let us Go up to Zion. Essays in Honour of HGM Williamson on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, SVT 153, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2012, 383–93.

74 La Rue, ‘The Problem of the Cymbala’, cit., 98.

75 Rouse, ‘Longthorpe Tower’, cit., 12.

76 Rouse, Medieval Wall Paintings, cit., 26.

77 I worked closely with Edward Impey on the instruments and the depiction of Psalm 150 in his recent guidebook.

78 These images are numbers 47 (psaltery); 46 (portative organ) and 44 (harp/King David) in the collection of Rouse’s watercolours at The Society of Antiquaries.

79 For example, in Beverley Minster there are two identical and original carvings of psalteries (with 17 strings), which are smaller than this instrument (Jeremy Montagu and Gwen Montagu, ‘Beverley Minster reconsidered’, cit., 407).

80 Jeremy Montagu, The World of Medieval and Renaissance Musical Instruments, New York, 1976, 69.

81 The Society of Antiquaries, B 164 h–j, image 47.

82 The Society of Antiquaries, B 164 h–j.

83 The Society of Antiquaries, B 164 h–j, image 46.

84 La Rue, ‘The Problem of the Cymbala’, The Galpin Society Journal 35 (March 1982), 86, 98.

85 Jeremy Montagu, ‘The crozier of William of Wykeham’, cit., 546.

86 J Smits van Waesberghe, Cymbala: Bells in the Middle Ages, American Institute of Musicology, Rome, 1951, 17.

87 Waesberghe, Cymbala, cit., 17.

88 Waesberghe, Cymbala, cit., 11.

89 Rouse, ‘Longthorpe Tower’, cit., 12.

90 Impey, op. cit., 17.

91 The Society of Antiquaries, B 164 h–j (folio unnumbered).

92 Montagu, ‘Tambourine’, Grove Music Online.

93 Jeremy Montagu, ‘Was the tabor pipe always as we know it?’, Galpin Society Journal, L, 1997, 16.

94 Idem.

95 The earliest representations of the pipe and tabor appear in European iconography from the mid-third quarter of the 13th century (Montagu, ‘Was the tabor pipe always as we know it?’, cit., 22).

96 Raban, ‘The Accounts of Godfrey of Crowland’, cit., xxxv.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexandra Buckle

Dr Alexandra Buckle is Lecturer in Music at St Hilda’s College and St Anne’s College, Oxford.