A Latin term (translated from the Hebrew machol), used during the Middle Ages for several different types of musical instrument. Two meanings were given in the letter De diversis generibus musicorum from ‘Jerome’ to ‘Dardanus’, which was apparently written in the 9th century. One referred to a simple form of bagpipe, consisting of a mouthpipe and chanter both of brass, inserted into a bag of skin which served as an air reservoir. The other referred to a string instrument which would presumably have been plucked, as the bow is not known to have reached Europe by the 9th century; the 11th-century Tiberius Psalter (GB-Lbl Tib c.vi, f.18) says that its frame was of wood. Sebastian Virdung in his Musica getutscht of 1511 says that ‘it has a mouthpiece, into which one blows, and two tubes in the middle. After that, at the lower end, it has one aperture from which the sound or air exits’. His picture shows no bag. These descriptions, however, were attempts to represent instruments of the Psalms, and although they were reproduced many times from the Carolingian period onwards, they do not represent genuine medieval instruments.
More realistic references also show a variety of types. Giraldus Cambrensis (c1146–c1223) says that the chorus was played by the Scots and the Welsh, but neither he nor his imitator Ranulph Higden (d 1363) specified its type. A 15th-century translator of Higden (GB-Lbl Harl. 2261, f.57) rendered the word ‘chorus’ as ‘crowde’, as did the Promptorium parvulorum of the Dominican Frater Galfridus (c1440), while the commentary on Psalm cl in the Psalter of Richard Rolle (c1340) says ‘Louys him … in croude, that is, in pesful felagheship and concord of voicys’ – a reference to the sounding together of more than one string on the crowd or crwth. Aimeric de Peyrac (d 1406) in his Lamentacio cantorum said that the chorus had double strings, but did not indicate how they were played. The anonymous Summa musice (5v) of 1274–1312 includes the chorus among instruments strung with metal, gut or silk, while Jean de Brie in Le bon berger (1379) says that it is played by the fingers and best strung with gut. Jean Charlier de Gerson (1363–1429), however, describes it in his Tres tractatus de canticis (before 1426) as a string drum of the tambourin de Béarn type. No strings are referred to in John of Trevisa's translation of Higden (completed in 1347), where ‘chorus’ is rendered as ‘tabour’.
VirdungMG
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MARY REMNANT