The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #82329 Message #2595924
Posted By: Jack Campin
24-Mar-09 - 05:08 AM
Thread Name: Ye Olde English Instruments
Subject: RE: Ye Olde English Instruments
None of the instruments in that photo are either specifically English or traditional. The harp is a modern type of folk harp invented in the late 19th cnetury. The psaltery (triangular thing) is a 20th century development of a past that might have been. The elongated thing seems to be some kind of string drum like the tambourin de Béarn from the Basque Country, but with two sets of strings to provide two pitches (or two chords), with a shoulder strap so you can beat it with your right hand while playing a tabor pipe with your left. These are not recorded from England at all. The picture is too dark for me to work out what the woodwind instruments are. I presume at least one of them is a tabor pipe to go with the drum.
Elder whistles can work very well. Look at the furulyas and kavals of Moldavian and Transylvanian music. I don't think there was ever a British tradition of making elder whistles as big as the Moldavian kaval, though - mine is in A, a tone higher than an alto flute, and they can be made bigger even than that.