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Originally deposited as a CD-ROM. Contains BBC Radio Humberside documentary in which John Peel, musician, plays a number of instruments depicted in stone carvings inside the Minster. Also includes interviews with Professor Barbara English, formerly of University of Hull, and Dr Diana Wyatt of the REED Project, University of Durham.Music played at Beverley Minster from the 12th to the 16th centuries Public access copy available in Audio-Visual Room. Duration: 26 mins Timing: Action on film (00:05) An introduction to a programme about three musicians playing in Beverley in 1438 and the music they played in Beverley Minster (00:28) A recording of the preparations for the Beverley Festival of Christmas in 2011. Today Beverley holds many festivals, but this is nothing new as festivals have taken place here for centuries. John Peel is a resident of East Yorkshire and was for many years a history teacher at Pocklington School. He is an enthusiast for early music and for playing early instruments. At some stage in its history Beverley became home to the Musician’s Guild, for musician’s between the Trent and the Tweed. Although unsure of the actual date it is certain that in the 14th century Beverley was the tenth town in the Kingdom in terms of trade (02:22) The Alderman of the Guild of Musicians was always appointed on Ascension Day, followed by a ten day festival. This included stalls, entertainment and trading people from all over as Beverley was not only a trading centre but also a place of pilgrimage. About ten days after the festival there would be the Corpus Christi plays (03:02) Unaccompanied songs (04:14) Beverley is no longer a music making centre, but if you know where to look you can find evidence of Beverley’s music making past (04:31) Sitting in the choir stalls of Beverley Minster you can see the Misericordia; there are 68. They are ‘mercy seats’ as they can be used as an ordinary seat, but when the seat is lifted there is a little ledge to rest on when standing. Underneath these seats which date back to 1520, there are carvings of domestic scenes and music making. One example is a monkey playing a bag pipe to a dancing bear. The monkey has a bagpipe with a drone over its shoulder and a double chanter. The carvings contain interesting details that give an idea of how the instruments were made (06:15) On the walls on the nave of Beverley Minster there are stone carvings of medieval minstrels and musical instruments. In some cases these are Victorian copies as the original carvings were destroyed during the Reformation or the Civil War. Higher up are original carvings that were out of reach. This programme aims to bring the carvings and the music they depict to life. It also intends to search for the musicians that played them. John Peel is going to be a guide (07:10) In the nave, you can see a harp that would have been played in the 1330’s. All the instruments in the nave are about this old. It’s a harp you can hold: the basic shape is familiar from that time. In the Middle Ages the harp was extremely popular with the upper classes. Most of the harps depicted in Beverley have their carrying bag carved at the bottom, another attention to detail by the stone carver. The harp is much smaller than a modern one it can be carried around (08:33) A recording of harp music (10:15) Further down the nave is a carving of a psaltery. It has a framework that you can rest on your lap with strings running crossways, that can be plucked like a zither. It was very sweet sounding and Chaucer mentions it in the Canterbury Tales (11:44) Recording of a piece of psaltery music (12:22) The carvers had a sense of humour as there’s a carving of a wind instrument, the shawm, being played with a second carving above it of a man holding his hand over his ears (12:54) John Peel explains that the same melodies would be used in different ways, high court music, village green music, street music with the instruments crossing the social divide in different social settings (13:48) The two carvings show the division between loud and soft. Instruments tended to play softly like the psaltery or loudly like the shawm, the ancestor of the oboe. It was much louder and could be played more wildly (14:38) A carving of a lute that looks like half a pear with the carved side towards the players body. It has a fretted finger board played with a plectrum in the 1300’s and depicted in the carving. In the 1400’s it was played with the fingers. A smaller equivalent of the lute is the guitar. Lutes were popular but were expensive so were probably found higher up the social scale. By the 1500’s when the Misericordia were carved, lutes were extremely elaborate. (15:52) John Peel talks about the lute piece he is about to play. It is an annunciation carol ‘Tidings True’ found in a manuscript now in the Bodleian in Oxford. Probably an original service book from Beverley and the tune is thought to be local to either Beverley or East Yorkshire (16:23) ‘Tidings True’ played on the lute (18:50) The shawm came across from the Middle East during the Crusade. It is a short instrument with a reed played very loudly. When they were brought back they were made bigger and louder and could be played at different pitches. The carving is of two shawms of different lengths with a bagpipe, like a three man band (19:00) A piece of shawm music called Green Ginger from the album Cherwell Thy Wyne, played by the York Waits (20:22) The shawm was the instrument of town bands in the 1300 -1400s (21:00) A carving showing a portative organ. Big organs in churches are called positive organs because they have been positioned, whereas the portative organ was a small keyboard that could be carried. One hand worked bellows at the back and the other played keys at the front (21:30) The next instrument is a pipe and tabor, England’s oldest folk instrument. One musician does two jobs, beat a stick in one hand and with the other play a tune on a whistle with three holes. There are two types of tabor depicted in Beverley, the older one is a shallower instrument and John Peel will use this to play a Spanish piece. In the choir stalls a jester is depicted playing a deeper pipe and tabor which would be more resonant. John will play a piece from Henry VIII’s court using this instrument (22:45) Spanish pipe and tabor piece (23:22) Taken from a piece called ‘Who so that will for grace sue’ a gentle love song by Henry VIII (24:54) St Mary’s Church on North Bar Within in Beverley also contains stone carvings of musicians (25:16) The presenter introduces Barbara English, a retired professor of History from the University of Hull. Beverley was the tenth largest town in England with a population of 3000. The wealth of the town. Public access copy available on Preservica: https://eastriding.access.preservica.com/ (Search 'DDX2098/2')