(from Arabic naqqāra; Fr. nacaires; It. nacchera; Sp. nácar, nacara).
Small kettledrums of the medieval period, of Arabian or Saracen origin (in the system of Hornbostel and Sachs they are classified as membranophones). At the end of the 20th century the instrument was represented in North Africa, Turkey, Egypt and Syria by small drums with bowl-shaped bodies of wood, metal or clay, and covered on their open tops with animal skin (see fig.1). The Western form was often crafted from thick leather, shaped while still wet over a mould. While nakers were introduced into Spain by the Moors in the early 8th century, there is no hard evidence for their use in Western music prior to the era of the Crusades (1096–1291). Nakers represent one manifestation of the cultural exchange between the Muslim states and the West, a phenomenon that began before the Crusades with Frankish mercenaries serving in Byzantium and under Muslim potentates, and Saracen troops serving the Normans in Sicily (see also Janissary music).
From the numerous representations of the instruments of this period it is clear that nakers were more or less hemispherical or parabolic in shape, from 15 to 25 cm in diameter, and with a common feature in the single skin head. The heads were attached in various ways: nailed, braced with cords or neck-laced; they could therefore not be tuned with the same precision as the larger kettledrums (see Timpani). However, the fact that nakers were usually played in pairs suggests that one instrument had a ‘higher’ sound, the other a contrasting ‘lower’ one, a feature of some African as well as Eastern drum traditions. Nakers were either suspended in front of the player by means of a strap around the waist or the shoulder, carried on the back of an apprentice who marched in front, set on a low wall or balcony, or placed on the ground. In most cases they were played with two drumsticks, usually straight with a bulbous end or, occasionally, curved in the shape of a crook. Both timpani and nakers were used in many contexts: warfare, processions, tournaments, banquets and dances. More elaborate rhythms may have been used on the nakers than on the small tabor played with the pipe, partly because two sticks were used, partly because a pair of drums offered greater possibilities for contrasting sounds. For further contrast, snares were sometimes attached.
Literary sources confirm the use of small kettledrums in Europe from the beginning of the 12th century onwards. They first appeared with the long straight trumpet (buisine). ‘Buisines, nakaires et tabours’ are mentioned in the semi-fictional Chanson de geste celebrating the exploits of Godfrey of Bouillon (c1100), and Saracen military music, with its buisines (or cors sarrazinois) and nacaires, appears frequently in the contemporaneous Chanson de Roland. In German literature no distinction was made between large and small kettledrums; 12th- and 13th-century epics refer to both types as puke, later Paucke and the diminutive Paüklein. In Italy, Marco Polo’s ‘il grand nacar’ in Il Milione (1298) was a large kettledrum.
By the mid-13th century Eastern-style trumpets and nakers were widely popular. At the siege of Damietta (Dumyât) (1249) Louis IX heard the ‘noisy nacaires and cors Sarrazinois of the Sultans of Babylon’ playing from the shore, while nakers, field drums and trumpets played on the deck of the Count of Jaffa’s flagship. According to Froissart (Chroniques), when Edward II marched into Calais in 1346 he was greeted by ‘trompes, tabours, nacaires et chalemies’. Machaut in La prise d’Alexandrie (c1369) described a fanciful performance after a feast by an ensemble including nakers, and Chaucer in the Knight’s Tale described a tourney with ‘Pypes, trompes, nakers, clariones / that in the battaille blowen sounes’. The 15th-century Echecs amoreux mentions ‘trompes, tabours, tymbrez, naquaires’ among the loud [haulz] instruments performing for a dance. While the European nakers were smaller than the Muslim instruments, the many references to their ‘awesome’ or ‘terrible’ sounds suggests that they were sometimes used in multiple pairs, especially in battle, where massed ensembles of trumpets and drums were described. From the 14th century onwards European courts were employing naker players: in 1304, Edward I included ‘Janino le nakerer’ among his musicians and the retinue of Louis IX (1314–16) included a ‘Michelet des nacquaires’ among the Musicque de la chambre du roy.
Excellent examples of nakers are found in the Luttrell Psalter (c1330–40, now GB-Lbl Add.42130). One illustration (see fig.2) shows a player with a pair of small drums at his waist and a stick in each hand. The most copious pictorial source for early nakers is a Romance of Alexander (1338, GB-Ob MS Bod.264). Among its many illustrations is a nakerer playing from atop a castle wall; the lacings of the instrument are clearly visible. An example reflecting the pervasive Eastern influence appears in the manuscript De Septem vitiis (c1390, GB-Lbl Add.27695); there a blackamoor carries the nakers on his back as the master-drummer plays them with a pair of mallets. While most of the nakerers depicted are men, in religious art nakers are played by women and angels, in the company of soft instruments such as the viol or the portative organ (e.g. Matteo di Giovanni, The Assumption of the Virgin, 1470–80, National Gallery, London). Nakers were still depicted in an encyclopedia produced for Henry III of France (1574–89). From Praetorius (Theatrum instrumentorum, 1620) onwards only the larger Heerpaucken were hemispherical in shape, with their heads lapped over a hoop, and provided with tuning hardware: they were tuned to definite pitches.
BladesPI
F.W. Galpin: Old English Instruments of Music (London, 1910/R, rev. 4/1965 by T. Dart)
F. Dick: Bezeichnungen für Saiten- und Schlaginstrumente in der altfranzösischen Literatur (Giessen, 1932)
H.G. Farmer: ‘Crusading Martial Music’, ML, xxx (1949), 243–9
H.H. Carter: A Dictionary of Middle English Musical Terms (Bloomington, IN, 1961)
G. Avgerinos: Lexikon der Pauke (Frankfurt, 1964)
E.A. Bowles: ‘Eastern Influences on the Use of Trumpets and Drums during the Middle Ages’, AnM, xxvii (1972), 3–28
J. Montagu: Making Early Percussion Instruments (London, 1976)
J. Montagu: The World of Medieval and Renaissance Musical Instruments (Newton Abbot, 1976)
JAMES BLADES/EDMUND A. BOWLES