ON ANGEL CONCERTS IN THE 15TH

CENTURY: A CRITICAL APPROACH

TO REALISM AND SYMBOLISM IN

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SACRED PAINTING 1
By EMANUEL WINTERNITZ

T HE historian of musical performance, especially that of early instru-

mental music, often has occasion to regret the sparseness of his
sources of information. He draws on contemporary reports, but they are
often vague and technically inaccurate. He draws on musical treatises,
but they are usually devoted to pedagogical ideals rather than to descrip-
tions of contemporary usage; understandably they take everyday routine
for granted and thus leave untold what would interest him most.
There exists, however, another important and not yet systematically
exploited reservoir of information in the form of representations of musi-
cal scenes in painting, sculpture, and the graphic arts. Such pictures are
often likely to be more complete and detailed, and therefore presumably
more reliable, than verbal descriptions. They too, however, present diffi-
culties of interpretation. The farther back we go in the history of art —
European or any other — the larger looms the role played by religious
imagery. Apart from the twenty-four elders of Revelation and the well-
known patrons of music, King David and St. Cecilia,3 it is chiefly the
angels who sing and play in sacred painting.
But in the heavens depicted in paintings, how much reliable informa-
1
The principal ideas set forth in this article are the results of my preoccupation
with the subject of angel concerts and of the lectures I have given on various aspects
of this topic for many years at numerous universities and museums. Originally my
present article included an account of the history of angel concerts, tracing their icon-
ology in doctrine, poetry, and the visual arts, as a prelude to the systematic examina-
tion of their value for the historian of musical performance. After completing my
script, however, I saw the excellent book recently published by Reinhold Hammer-
stein, Die Musik der Engel, Untersuchungen zur Musikanschauung des Mittelalters,
Munich, 1962, in which the author concurs independently with many of my own
findings. To avoid duplication, I have restricted this article to problems that were
approached differently or not at all in Hammerstein's book.
3
A "musical patron" only because of the misinterpretation of the phrase "organis
sonantibus," describing her wedding.

450
 On Angel Concerts in the 15th Century 451

tion can we expect to find about secular music? Did the painters simply
transfer earthly ensembles, profane or ecclesiastical, into the celestial
spheres? If so, were they not implying restrictions on the supernatural
abilities of angels, restrictions based on the poorer range of human in-
strument-building and performance? Or were the painters straining their
imaginations to compete with the mystic and poetic interpreters of the
Scriptures, filling the heavens with fantastic shapes and other objects

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never seen on earth?3 If the verbal interpretation of the Scriptures strug-
gles with the corporeality of pneumata, what should the painter do?
The complex situation may be envisaged as a double process of sym-
bolization, striving to make the invisible visible: first the text of the Scrip-
tures themselves, creating verbal images of spiritual (i.e., incorporeal)
creatures, such as the angels; second, the painter's translation of these
verbal symbols into visual shapes. Actually the situation appears further
complicated by the existence of exegesis which enriches the symbols found
in the Scriptures by trying to reconcile evident contradictions or by fill-
ing lacunae through the establishment, for instance, of a systematic angel-
ology.4
Paradoxically, the painter of sacred subjects for the Church is, at the
same time, less free and freer than the mystic poet or exegete facing the
same subjects. He is far less free inasmuch as he is usually not permitted
to apply his full imagination to his subject. The interpretation of the
Scriptures and other ecclesiastical texts is provided for him by the
Church. He is in fact depending on the guidance and often on the strict
instruction of the ecclesiastical authorities.5
3
Many examples of this are found in the paintings of Gaudenzio Ferrari, and espe-
cially in his fresco in the cupola of the santuario in Saronno. On imaginary and fan-
tastic musical instruments in sacred and profane art, see my article Bagpipes for the
Lord, in Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, June 1958, pp. 276-86.
* I may point here only to Dionysius, the pseudo-Areopagite, to whom a large part
of early angel doctrine is due. It is remarkable and quite surprising to find that the
lame Dionysius who in grandiose mystic and poetic vision described for the first time
the complete organization of the angelic hosts, uttered a warning against too beau-
tiful and too sensuous images and pleaded for imperfect images since their imperfec-
tion would remind the worshipper of the spiritual essence behind the physical appear-
ance. Thus the worshipper would never forget that the images are only symbols point-
ing at something beyond themselves.
8
One of the most original and perceptive examinations of the relation between
religious art and church doctrine is found in Rudolf Berliner, The Freedom of Me-
dieval Art, in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, XXVIII (1945), 264-88. He discusses the
question of how art could presume to represent certain themes in such a way that
verbal descriptions of them are historically or dogmatically or intellectually accept-
able, and comes to the conclusion that the freedom of art resulted from theological
concepts of its role in the realm of religion.
452 The Musical Quarterly

Yet within these limits he enjoys the freedom inherent in his role as
a painter. Where the poet or theologian uses words, the painter is
privileged—and of course compelled—to specify and to detail, or to
create a concrete sensuous appearance. Or, in Goethe's words:' "Lan-
guage cannot express the individuality of the phenomenon [das Indivi-
duelle der Erscheinung], the specific. Our words for the species are
always general."

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Throughout nearly two thousand years of Christian art, methods of
representing the supernatural did not remain unchanged. The invisible
was made visible in many ways and forms, ranging in persistence from
firmly ingrained and long-standing traditions, and even cliches, to the
passing flight of fancy of an individual imagination. Familiarity with
these iconographical traditions is often helpful and sometimes indis-
pensable to the historian of music who turns to works of sacred art as
documents of early styles of vocal and instrumental performance. Some
problems implied in a critical interpretation of sacred painting may be
illustrated by the following investigation, which will concentrate on a
limited span of time in the late quattrocento. In that century, progress in
the study of anatomy and the technique of linear perspective based on
a strict mathematical method had brought about a new "scientific"
pictorial conquest of the visible universe centered around a new mun-
dane concept of man. Consequently, even the heavens were then depicted
in terms of the human world; angels were represented in the image of
humans;1 and—important to the historian of music—celestial musicians
and ensembles appeared in the shapes of those familiar on earth. Heavenly
liturgy was depicted not by dreams and visions, however standardized,
but by a portrayal of the everyday routine on earth.
Naturally, this artistic interpretation went through many phases and
did not conquer the North at the same time as it did Italy. Individual
artists, moreover, still adhered to visionary representations. The paint-
ings chosen here as examples are from this Janus-headed period of tran-
sition. They are approximately contemporary, yet remarkably different
• T o Ricmer, 1804.
7
The problem of depicting supernatural creatures and the gradual "humanization"
of angels in Renaissance painting is discussed by Jakob Burckhardt in his famous
article Das Altarbild, in Btitrage zur Kunstgeschichti von Italitn, 2nd ed., 1911, pp.
3-161. Some of his judgments have to be taken cum grano sails. His absorption in the
Renaissance canon of anatomical proportions made him critical of "unrealistic angels"
in earlier and later periods of art. To indicate his bias we shall cite only his disap-
proval of Rembrandt's angel leaving the threshold of Tobit as anatomically so deficient
that he is fortunate to be able to fly because he would not be able to walk—"He
departs in the most ridiculous manner, a real Flying Dutchman."
 On Angel Concerts in the 15th Century 453

in their visualization of celestial music. Hence the difficulties for the

historian searching for authentic records of "AufTuhrungspraxis."
The first of our examples is a small picture of the Virgin and Child
painted near the end of the 15th century by Geertgen tot Sint Jans,
which only recently came to light in America and is today in the van
Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam (Plate 1). Geertgen, not more than
a dozen of whose works are known, was probably born in Leiden and

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died at the age of twenty-eight. According to Carel von Mander's famous
biographical work on Northern painters, published in 1604, Geertgen
lived and worked in Haarlem. His whole known oeuvre dates from the
decade between 1485 and 1495.
Geerlgen's painting of the Virgin and Child is a visionary work of
great originality, unforgettable to anyone who has ever seen it, because
of its poetry and its miraculous luminosity. The bulky shape of the Vir-
gin seems to be suspended in the center of an oval of blinding light.8
A closer look discloses beneath the heavy folds of her garment the two
attributes of the apocalyptic Woman of the Sun, the crescent and the
dragon (Revelation 12). At one and the same time, she is the idyllic
young mother wirn the infant and the crowned queen of heaven in glory.
The Child shakes two large jingle bells and is in excited motion, almost
dancing, with His right leg up in the air and both large toes turned up.
The Virgin is surrounded by an enormous number of angels neatly
grouped into several distinct concentric ovals. The innermost of these,
which has the greatest luminosity, consists of fourteen adoring, many-
winged cherubim and seraphim. In the next, somewhat darker oval,
twelve angels carry the instruments of the Passion; and four angels
around the head of the Virgin hold pennants inscribed with the abbrevi-
ated form of the word "Sanctus."* The outermost oval and the corners
of the panel are filled with the largest group, consisting of twenty-three
angels playing musical instruments. The instruments are: from the top,
counter-clockwise — a lute, large shawm (without protective cylinder),
vielle, flat hand bell struck with beater, long pipe with snare drum,
8
Geertgen's Virgin and Child preserves the basic form of the mandorla, but the
hard linear shape is resolved in luminous concentric elipses. The broad outline of the
mandorla of Byzantine heritage had by this time been gradually softened by surround-
ing it and finally replacing it with rows of angels. Perhaps the moit important land-
mark in this evolution is Orcagna's famous relief of the Death and Ascension of the
Virgin, dating from before 1360, on the tabernacle in Or San Michele, Florence.
9
The range of colors from the almost blinding yellow glare around the Virgin
through the pink circle of cherubim to the darker red of the angels with the instru-
ments of the Passion and the purplish black of the musical angels is strongly remini-
scent of the moon-halo, very appropriate, of course, for the Virgin on the crescent.
454 The Musical Quarterly

hurdy-gurdy, jingle-bells, small clapper, coiled trumpet, pair of hand

bells, another coiled trumpet, large clappers, curved trumpet, bagpipe,
set of seven small jingles strung on a rope; left upper corner — positive
organ played by one angel and held by another; left lower comer —
clavichord played by one angel, while another holds music; below center
— cromorne; right lower corner — dulcimer, double shawm, pot; right
upper corner — clavicytherium (?) played by one angel and held by

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another. This is a very rich and nearly complete instrumentarium of the
time, including even the three contemporary keyboard instruments —
organ, clavicytherium, and clavichord. Only the tromba marina, so fre-
quent in Flemish paintings of the period, is absent. There is hardly any
need to state that Geertgen was not thinking of any actual ensemble. By
depicting nearly all the instruments he knew, he gave an allegory of
the loudest and richest possible sound.
The crowned Virgin, enshrined by dense crowds of angels, is the
visual embodiment of a very old theme — the lauding and adoring angel
choirs in heaven. Much has been written on the iconology of angel choirs.
Here, it suffices to recall Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite, St. Thomas
Aquinas, and Dante. To determine to what degree Geertgen partakes
in this pictorial tradition (not to say cliche), one has only to look at one
of the many contemporary paintings of the same subject, for instance
that by the Master of the Glorification of the Virgin (Plate 2; Worms,
Collection of Baron Heyl). There too, the crowned Virgin rests on the
crescent, surrounded by a multitude of angels. And there we even find
angels with lute and vielle close to her and to the Infant,- and in the lower
corners there are two elaborate groups of musicians and instruments—on
the left a portative organ and a psaltery, and on the right a little shawm
and singers. Yet, what a difference from Geertgen's picture! In the
Glorification of the Virgin, the angels crowd around her like a thick
cluster of swarming bees, organized only by the application of a device
as terrestrial as the gradual foreshortening from the nearer to the farther
angels. All seem as heavy as any earthly creatures, and their earthliness
in even more marked in the lower-corner groups, which are set firmly
into the landscape.
Geertgen's painting is more etherial; it seems to hark back to tradi-
tional notions which, during the Middle Ages, became curiously inter-
mingled with the Christian doctrine of the angelic host, specifically the
even more ancient idea of the celestial spheres developed in the writings
of the Babylonians and the Pythagoreans, in Plato's Timaeus and Politeia
and Cicero's Dream of Scipio, and still continued in the treatises of
 On Angel Concerts in the 15th Century 455

Kepler and Athanasius Kircher. Geertgen organized the angels into con-
centric rings or ovals, sharply distinct in their function, evidently alluding
to the revolving spheres. One need only focus on the lower part of the
ovals to see how the angels there, floating in nearly horizontal position,
partake of the rotation.
This observation might help us still further to detect a deeper mean-
ing, imparted to the picture by one striking and unique detail. As

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pointed out above, the Child shakes a pair of jingle bells with great
animation. He looks down to the side and, in the line of His gaze, one
one of the musical angels in the outer ring is intently returning His
glance (Plate 3). It is the only angel whose eyes, notwithstanding the
minuteness of the whole representation, are so distinctly rendered as to
make their direction unmistakable. And it is this very angel who shakes
a smaller pair of jingle bells towards the Child. An amusing little genre
detail?10 Perhaps so, although the unique mystic character of our picture
and the thoughtfulness of the painter as manifested in other works may
suggest a deeper interpretation, which is submitted here with the caution
proper in the intricate field of pictorial symbolism: The concentus be-
tween the two pairs of bells reveals Christ as the leader or generator of
the heavenly orchestra.11
Since Geertgen seems to have been familiar with the Areopagitic and
Thomistic doctrine, one may assume also that the consonance of musical
instruments — that is, the rapport between the two pairs of bells — is
meant to represent God as prime mover of the universe, imparting the
first impluse to the harmony of the spheres whose rotation is so vividly
depicted here. This would be in line with Thomas Aquinas, Summa
Theologiae I, Questio 105, discussing the problem whether God, as spirit-
ual substance, can directly move a body, that is, corporeal matter; he
states in Reply Obj.l: "There are two kinds of contact: corporeal con-
tact (when two bodies touch each other) and virtual contact (as the
cause of sadness is said to touch the one made sad). According to the
10
Such genre details occur later in the Venetian Conversazioni sacre.
11
Pseudo-Dionysius, in his De Divinis Nominibus, IV, 5, calls God "the cauie of
consonance and clarity," a statement commented on by St. Thomas Aquinas in In
Dionyssi de Divinis Nominibus, IV, lect. 5, noj. 340, 346, and 349. I am delighted
to find in Reinhold Hammerstein's Die Musik tier Engel, p. 118, two pertinent quota-
tions: 1) According to Gregory of Nyssa, God generates the muiic of the universe;
2) Maximum Confessor defines the universe as music performed by God.—I may add
that this notion it still alive in Athanasius Kircher's Musurgia mirifica, in which an
engraving, Book VIII, p. 366, shows a big pipe organ, the instrument of the Creator,
with several compartments, of which each is related to one of the days of creation
according to Genesis.
456 The Musical Quarterly

first kind of contact, God, as being incorporeal, neither touches nor is

touched. But according to virtual contact, He touches creatures by mov-
ing them but He is not touched . . ." u
So much for the Geertgen picture, which, rich as it is in theological
and poetic symbolism, offers little to the historian of "Auffiihrungs-
praxis."
Turning now to our second main example, we find a basically different

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attitude towards the representation of music and musicians, which stems
from a different tradition and environment. This picture (Plate 4),
signed and dated 1474 and now in the Museum of Dijon, is a work of
the Tuscan painter Zanobi Machiavelli, one of the minor disciples of
Benozzo Gozzoli. Zanobi was a provincial painter, but his work is no
less interesting in composition and no less valuable for iconographical
study than that of any of the "great" masters.
The painting does not represent the Virgin with the Infant, but the
Coronation, and it shows not the multitude of musician angels depicted
by Geertgen, but rather a comparatively small number, in fact two en-
sembles of unequal size. This is by no means the rule within the Tuscan
tradition, for the Coronation pictures of this school normally include —
apart from earlier paintings of the Last Judgment — the largest aggrega-
tion of musical angels in all sacred painting.
Although we are in heaven, this heaven is not conceived in visionary
free imagination, but is shaped after earthly models. The throne of Christ
and Mary is solid, massive, strongly shaded, and firmly planted on a plat-
form whose steps again solidly rest on a floor decorated with tiles shown
in almost exaggerated linear perspective. The two central figures sit
heavily; the four saints, John the Baptist, Francis, Mary Magdalene, and
Peter, plant their feet firmly on the tiles, and the four angels in the fore-
ground kneel weightily. All this heaviness is very "realistic," a character-
13
The existence of two similar pairs of bells and of the gaze exchanged between
the infant Jesus and the angel has been pointed out by Daphne M. Hoffman in her
article A Little Known Masterpiect, in Liturgical Arts, XVIII (1950), 44. There, this
detail is explained by reference to the customary ringing of little hand bellj during
the Sanctus of the Mais. It is true that this custom originated before Geertgen's pic-
ture, in fact before 1400 according to J. A. Jungmann's Missarum tollemnia, Eine
genetische Erklarung der romischen Messe, 1948, II, 160. Miss Hoffman's interpre-
tation would seem convincing if only the angel were playing the bells. To have Chri»t
Himself participating in the act of glorifying, which is the duty and function of the
angels (according to Isaiah 6: 14; Ezekiel 3: 12, 13; later, Ambrose; and at the
time of Geertgen, Tinctoris's Complexus Effectuum Musices, c. 1480), seems awkward
and not consistent with the character of a painter as thoughtful and as familiar with
doctrine as Geertgen. In any case, Miss Hoffman's interpretation would not necessarily
exclude the presence of a deeper symbolism.
 On Angel Concerts in the 15th Century 457

istic of our everyday world, and different from the weightlessness and
ecstatic floating in the Geertgen picture. No doubt our Tuscan painter
felt all this as an achievement, as progress in the pictorial conquest of
perceptible space through the increasingly refined technique of linear
perspective. The size of the figures, too, is well planned according to
the technique of foreshortening.

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If all this implies a secularization or humanization through the use of
new pictorial methods, we may consider whether this realistic attitude
extends to the kind of music represented here. There are .two ensembles
depicted, one in the remote background, the other in front of the throne
close to the spectator or rather the worshipper. The far group is large,
consisting of nine musicians with their instruments: one bagpipe, one
hand pipe with drum, two trumpets, a jingle drum, a pair of cymbals,
and three more trumpets. Four of these five trumpets are arranged in
pairs in strict symmetry on the left and right sides behind the pillars of
the throne."
This is indeed a noisy ensemble, consisting of winds and percussion
only, and it would be difficult to select a louder or more shrieking group
from the instruments available at that time. It could not have been
a random choice of instruments or a painter's whim. Pictorially it would
have been more rewarding to show fewer and less-crowded players. The
congestion in fact is such that the painter scarcely had space to hint at
the angel wings, and he had to omit the halos altogether. Yet this large
ensemble could hardly be an imaginary or allegorical group such as the
one in Geertgen. It seems in fact to be a very deliberate choice of tim-
bres, particularly since some instruments such as organetti, psaltery, and
dulcimer, regularly appearing in contemporary Italian angel orchestras
to accompany the Coronation scene,14 are absent. One is led therefore
to look for parallels in actual orchestral ensembles of the time and to
think of the typical outdoor wind bands that accompanied processions,
dances, and out-of-doors festival occasions.
At the time of Zanobi's picture Tinctoris in his De Inventione el Usu
13
In paintings showing ensembles of musical instruments, the requirements of
pictorial composition often led to a symmetrical duplication of instruments very much
at variance with actual practice. Trumpets and organetti, especially, are often dup-
licated in this way, particularly in Italian 14th- and 15th-century angel concerts
celebrating the Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin. Striking examples are
found in the Coronations by Beato Angelico. For more examples, see my article The
Visual Arts as a Source for the Historian of Music, in International Musicological
Society Congress Report, 1961, p. 117 ff.
14
See Paolo Veneziano's Coronation, in the Accademia, Venice; Fra Angelico's
coronation pictures in the Louvre and the Ufnzi.
458 The Musical Quarterly

Musicae, Liber III," describes an ensemble similar to the one in this

painting as typically producing "loud music"; it consists of trombones
and shawms, while in our picture the double-reed timbre is represented
not by shawms but by a bagpipe. ("Imos tamen contratenores semper:
ac sepe reliquos: tibicinibus adjuncti tubicines: ea tua quam superius
tromponem ab Italis: et sacqueboute a Gallicis appellari diximus: mel-

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odiosissime clangunt. Quorum ominum omnia instrumenta simul aggre-
gata: communiter dicuntur alta.") In all probability the painter por-
trayed the band that had accompanied the Virgin in procession style
on her rise towards the center of heaven, to lend pomp to the act of
coronation, as it would have been appropriate to do in representing any
earthly ceremony.
To this wind and percussion band, the small group of four angels in
the foreground presents the greatest possible contrast. The angel in the
rear is clearly singing. The other three play a lute, a flauto dolce of treble
size, and the six-stringed bowed instrument that the contemporaries of
Zanobi called a viola and that, in retrospect, can be classified as an early
form of the lira da braccio — its characteristic leaf-shaped peg box show-
ing the rear ends of six pegs. The softness of the lute is proverbial, and
that of the flauto dolce is revealed by its very name. Likewise, the lira
da braccio produces a very soft tone; the very lax tension of the hairs of
its bow is required by its polyphonic technique.18 This little ensemble is
of the softest possible silvery timbre, even if we assume that the players
of the lute and the bra da braccio also join their voices with the instru-
ments. This group, then, distinguished by halos and its central position,
must be of nobler quality, devoted to the performance of pieces in three-
or four-part polyphony. Here we find an anticipation of the small poly-
phonic instrumental ensemble in the foreground of many of the Sacre
conversazioni or the Madonnas of Gian Bellini, Carpaccio, Cima da
Conegliano, Signorelli, and many others.
The simultaneous playing of both groups would make little sense, but
each could well be thought of as an actual ensemble of the time; the big
one for large court dances, banquets, or processions; the small one for
more subtle music of polyphonic character, performed at intimate occa-
sions permitting and requiring concentration on the intricacies of text
and texture.
15
Quoted by Anthony Baines in the Galpin Society Journal, March 1950, p. 20 ff.
16
On the technique of the lira da braccio and the use of this instrument in Italian
angel concerts, especially in Coronations of the Virgin in the Sacre conversazioni,
see my article Lira da Braccio in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, VIII,
1960, especially cols. 940-43.
 On Angel Concerts in the 15th Century 459

According to church doctrine, liturgical music is but an imitation of

celestial liturgy. But in fact the painter, depicting the music of the
heavens, has recourse to his own everyday environment. Thus his rep-
resentation is often of great interest to the historian of musical practice.
And his picture shows clearly the confrontation of two typical, stand-
ardized groups of the time — loud and shrill music versus soft and low
(haut vs. bos or douce)."

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Our third example is again a Marian subject. It is the Ascension and
Coronation of the Virgin by the Master of the St. Lucy Legend, now in
the National Gallery, Washington, D. C. (Plate 5). The painter was
Flemish,18 and his dated works are from between 1480 and 1489. This
picture was formerly in a convent near Burgos, Spain.18
The painting is of unique and highly complex composition in strict
bilateral symmetry and of almost miraculously fine and accurate detail
— even to the minute representation of the smallest feathers in the
angels' wings, the brocade of the garments, the jewelry, and the decora-
tion of the musical instruments, the playing hands, and the books and
music sheets in the hands of the angels.
The tall and slender body of the Virgin, rising to heaven, forms the
vertical axis of the picture. Beneath her in the human realm, a land-
scape rendered in finest detail with castles, trees, water, and bridges,
showing even the small conch shell at the water's edge. The Virgin's
feet rest on the crescent, just as they do in the paintings of Geertgen
and the Master of the Glorification. Eight angels, four large and four
small, seem to carry her upward, although a slight touch of the graceful
hands appears to suffice for the purpose. Two pairs of angels immediately
above her head are singing, the two nearest her each holding a sheet
of music and the other two peering over their shoulders to read also.
The sheets in alto and tenor clef contain the beginning of an Ave Regina
(Plate 6). All along the left and right margins of the picture there are
17
Edmund A. Bowles, in his Haut and Bos: The Grouping of Musical Instruments
in the Middle Ages, in Musica Disciplina, VIII (1954), 115 ff., has accumulated many
quotationi from medieval poems and chronicles, mostly French, that attest to the
standardization of ensembles of different sizes and their social functions. It might be
wished that he would expand his collection to include the Renaissance and the Italian
and Flemish orbit.
18
The work has also been called Portuguese-Flemish, or said to be by a Flemish
artist working in Portugal. The influence of Enguerrands Clarenton's famous Corona-
tion of the Virgin at Villeneuve-les-Avignon has also been suggested.
19
I had the pleasure of seeing the painting before and during restoration in 1949,
while it was still in the Samuel H. Kress Collection, when I was called upon to give
some advice concerning the musical instruments represented in it.
460 The Musical Quarterly

eight angels, four on each side: left, from bottom to top — organetto
with two ranks of eighteen pipes each; a trumpet, of which only the
mouthcup and the upper end of the coil are visible; a large (tenor?)
shawm; a harp of typical Gothic shape. On the right side from top to
bottom there are a medium-sized (alto?) shawm; a five-stringed vielle;
a small (treble?) shawm; and a small nine-stringed lute.
We have an instrumental ensemble composed of loud instruments (one

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trumpet, three shawms) arid soft ones (lute, vielle, harp, organetto) —
that is, eight instruments against the small vocal body of four voices. The
area occupied by Mary, the four singing, eight playing, and eight car-
rying angels, covers by far the greater portion of the painting. We may
call it the middle region, or that of the outer heaven, in contrast to the
landscape of the human realm below it.
But there is still another region. At the top of the painting the clouds
have opened and, through the sharply defined circular rim that they
form, the inner heaven becomes visible — the throne of the Trinity sur-
rounded by another multitude of angels (Plate 6). God the Father,
crowned and sceptcred, and God the Son hold between them a crown
ready to place upon the head of the Blessed Virgin; above it hovers the
Dove. Three blue-robed angels, following an old pictorical tradition, are
holding the hanging behind the throne. Flanking it are two groups of
angels. On the left are the singers, eleven in number, again divided into
two groups, one of six angels and the other of five, each group singing
from a book with music. It is curious that the singers of the foreground
group are not winged; they appear to be older, and possibly they are
entrusted with the lower voices. At the right of the throne are the in-
strumentalists, six in number, playing three recorders, a small lute, a
dulcimer, and a harp — all "soft" instruments. Like the eight instru-
mentalists in the outer heaven — and, of course, like 15th-century in-
strumentalists on earth — they have no need of written music.
So much for the visible facts. To what extent is the depiction of these
ensembles, vocal as well as instrumental, "realistic"; i.e., how does it
correspond to Flemish practices at the painter's time? The music in the
outer heaven presents questions regarding two subjects: the nature of
the orchestra, and the possible relationship between it and the four
singers. The first can only be answered with extreme caution. The five
loud winds, including a trumpet, three shawms, and an organetto
equipped with a double rank of metal pipes (not the considerably softer
wooden pipes), would certainly overpower the three string instruments,
a harp, a tiny vielle, and a small lute. This orchestra then, as in the
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Virgin and Child by Geertgen tot Sint Jans.

Rotterdam, Van Beuningen Museum.
Plate 1
 http://mq.oxfordjournals.org/ at The University of British Colombia Library on July 14, 2015

Plate 2 Plate 3
Glorification oE the Virgin. Worms.. Detail from Plate 1
Collection of Baron Heyl
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Coronation of the Virgin by Zanobi Machiavelli.

Dijon, Museum.
Plate 4
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Plate 5
Ascension and Coronation of the Virgin by the Master of the
St. Lucy Legend. Washington, National Gallery.
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Details from Plate 5.

Plate 6
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 On Angel Concerts in the 15th Century 461

Geertgen painting, may merely symbolize a great volume of sound. On

the other hand, so many contemporary reports and pictures10 tell us of
medium-sized and even larger instrumental ensembles combining trum-
pets, trombones, and shawms with soft string instruments, that the effect
of the orchestra shown here in the outer heaven would certainly have
been less bewildering to 15th-century ears than it is to us today.
The second question, that concerning the relation between orchestra

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and singers, is again not easy to answer. The four singers would be
drowned out by the eight instruments unless one may impute super-
natural power to angel voices. However, in pictures of the Coronation
of the Virgin, a combination of singers and instruments reflecting con-
temporary practice rarely occurs.31
In the inner heaven, the "reality" of the instrumental group in terms
of earthly practice is beyond any doubt. Numerous parallels are to be
found in 15th-century paintings. And likewise, the composition of the
vocal group corresponds to the usage of that period. Of the two books
used by the singers in the Coronation by the Master of the St. Lucy
Legend, the one in which the notation is visible cannot, unfortunately,
be deciphered. But whatever the angels are singing, we have no secular
evidence that would speak against the simultaneous performance of the
vocal and instrumental groups. Significant, of course, is the superiority
in numbers of the singers.
A simultaneous performance of the same music by the angels of the
outer and inner heavens seems to be utterly beyond the intention of
the painter. He could not have made the separation of the two realms
more clear, and it may have been more than a mere whim on his part
to show the singers of the outer heaven holding single sheets, perhaps
needed only once for the singular event of the Ascension. The larger
vocal groups in the inner heaven are using thick music books, possibly
implying a rich and lasting repertory near the Lord.
K
For a small ensemble, see for instance the charming illustration of the authors
of the psalms, in the Psalter of King Ren6 II of Lorraine (Paris, Arsenal Library)
showing these instruments: dulcimer, harp, vielle, recorder, trumpet, organetto, and
tabor (frame drum). Also along this line, if such a late example is permissible, is the
title woodcut for the Orlando di Lasso Patrocinium Musices (Munich, 1573), de-
picting a tenor viol, fiddle, lute, spinet, two transverse flutes, two cornetts, and two
trombones. For a larger ensemble of this type, combining loud and soft, a miniature
from the Mielich Codex showing Orlando di Lasso and his ensemble at the Munich
court include! spinet, three viols, tenor fiddle, bass viol, lute, three boy singers,
transverse flute, bassoon, bass trombone, straight cornett, ranket, and curved comett.
11
Among my collection of several hundred photographs of angel concerts in paint-
ing and sculpture, I have found only two altarpieces with a clear opposition of singers
to a large orchestral group, and in each case the singers were also playing organetti.
462 The Musical Quarterly

A brief summary of the organological conclusions may be warranted

here. Concerning the question of celestial musical practice, we are in the
same plight as was the aged Gluck, who once told an Italian composer,
seeking information as to whether the Redeemer would be singing tenor
or baritone, that he did not yet have authentic information. None of the
great connoisseurs of celestial ceremonial — pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita
and Thomas Aquinas, Jacques de Liege, Dante, and Jacobus de Vora-

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gine — informs us of the size and composition of the heavenly orchestra.
A comparison with the human condition seems therefore inevitable. In
each of the three pictures I have analyzed the instruments are depicted
faithfully; there is not a single fantastic or imaginary instrument, such
as those which Gaudenzio Ferrari invented a little later for some of his
angels.
More complex is the question of the grouping of the angels in the
ensembles shown in our paintings, and whedier or not these correspond
to contemporary usage. Here Geertgen provides no information; sym-
bolizing a maximum of sound, he accumulates virtually all the instru-
ments available. Zanobi represents two actually existing ensembles of
different sizes, instruments, and purposes. The Master of the St. Lucy
Legend, like Zanobi, depicts the playing of loud, festive music with one
group, the processional band in the outer heaven, although the inclusion
of singers and softer instruments in this band may or may not reflect
actual practice; and also, parallel to the small group in Zanobi's painting,
his singers and players in the inner heaven correspond closely to the
practice in intimate house music of the time.
There remains the delicate problem of the comparative distinction
imputed to the ensembles. Zanobi, in accordance with similar represen-
tations of the time, clearly emphasizes the small and soft group as the
superior one by placing it in front of the dirone. But the larger and louder
ensemble in the Zanobi painting is still so close to the throne that one
might expect it to compete and alternate with the chamber group. In
the painting by the Master of the St. Lucy Legend, however, the larger
group seems to be only the transitory accompaniment to the Ascension
of the Virgin, while the small and soft ensemble is the one worthy to
perform perpetually in the presence of the Lord.
Two conclusions suggest themselves: the superior rank assigned to
vocal music, evidently in keeping with the liturgical tradition followed
by painters of the period, and the preference for soft instruments in
 On Angel Concerts in the 15th Century 463

the presence of the Lord." Here we are reminded, and possibly the
painters or their ecclesiastical advisers were too, of Elijah's experience
as recorded in I Kings 19:11, 12, and 13: "And a great and strong
wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord;
but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake;
but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a
fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice:

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And it was so when Elijah heard it . . ."

33
. In Hans Memling's triptych (1480) decorating the organ of the church of the
Benedictines in Najera, the arrangement of the instruments seems to imply a gradua-
tion from loud to soft, with the loudest being nearest to the lingers surrounding
the Lord, as follows: left panel—shawm, trumpet, lute, tromba marina, psaltery;
right panel—two trumpets, organetto, harp, vielle. Hammerstein (p. 242) sees in the
relative distance from the central figure a difference in rank among the groups in this
order: singers, instruments hauls, instruments has. If Memling really had it in mind
to represent a sort of celestial musical precedence, the symbolism implied would be
the reverse of that expressed in the inner heaven of the painting by the Master of the
St. Lucy Legend except, of course, for the singers, who in both cases have the
privileged place near the Lord.