Four Obscure Instruments You've Never Heard Of (But Will Love to Listen To)

Anonymous, “Doppio ritratto con suonatore di cornetto,” between 1570 and 1580 (source)

I am an unabashed “early music” aficionado. Since the start of highschool I have loved Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music and have listened extensively to everything from the often melancholy lute songs of Elizabethan England to the triumphalistic and brazen brass of Venice to the soaring and energetic organ concertos of Handel. Part of my journey, though, has been research and delight in scholarship about the instruments, musicians, and contexts wherein such music originated.

Having particularly fallen in love with the lute through the recordings of Rolf Lislevand (which I’ve called “Renaissance Jazz”), I acquired a lute when I was 15 and embarked on learning it via Zoom lessons; I continue to play it enthusiastically today. This experience only furthered my interest in historical instruments.

The “early music movement” as a whole is about a hundred years old, although it took until the 1960s to really get off the ground. Essentially, it attempts to follow a simple principle: in order to play well and appreciate fully the music of earlier times, one has to play the same instruments in the same way, with the musical sense of the original composers and musicians when it was first performed. Without this, one is likely to get an incomplete or even incorrect impression of the music: even if old music on a new instrument is nice, you might never catch its intended subtleties.

Of course, completely accurate “reconstruction” is impossible: as the replications of instruments have gotten better and better, and early music musicians have tried to make their field more “cool” and “hip,” it has become apparent that the fundamental frontier which can never be completely crossed in making “historically accurate music” resides in the human person himself: neither the listener nor the musician will ever be able to approach the music with completely “early” ears. Without recordings, certain aspects of original performances can never be known—and ultimately, our modern ears will never be able to hear Handel or Bach except through the lens of modernity. With the passage of time, we can still play a Stradivarius violin: it is Stratavarius’s ears we cannot recover. Different musical, cultural, and spiritual relations have formed us and it cannot be otherwise. Yet this need not collapse into aesthetic relativism, because music has an objective basis in nature and functions like a language we can learn to speak and understand.

All that being said, the recovery of historical instrument-building and techniques, gleaned from careful examination of paintings, treatises, and extant artifacts, has given new life to ancient sounds. Many modern instruments are descendants of these early instruments, but as music appreciation moved from prince’s parlor to concert hall, they all underwent modifications with a view to being louder. In the process, their timbre, articulation, and technique have changed.

Today, I will introduce you to four of the least known of these ancient instruments. Their sound is as unique as their names and histories: prepare yourself for a sonic adventure!

The Short-shrifted Baryton

No, that’s not a misspelling of a mid-vocal range male singer known as baritone. It’s a Baroque instrument that looks (and sounds) very much like a viol, but has a secret: behind the neck are hiding metal strings for plucking! Bowed in the front, plucked in the back, the baryton is like a nobleman with tricks up his sleeve.

These metal strings on the back of the baryton’s neck have two purposes: when the front strings are bowed, they vibrate slightly, enhancing the resonant glow of the instrument. This is known as “sympathetic vibration.” But besides this passive role, they can be plucked, as I said, and this offers a bright metallic contrast to the darkly lyrical whine of the bowed strings in front. As with many early instruments, barytons tended to be much more highly decorated than our modern “utilitarian” instruments: note the carefully inlaid ebony fretboard on this baryton.

The baryton was developed in the 17th century but was never very widespread in usage. Only a small number of compositions were written specifically for it, and that this occurred at all was largely due to the happy coincidence of one Prince’s personal fascination with the instrument. Prince Nikolaus Esterházy patronized the famous composer Joseph Haydn, who wrote 175 pieces for his baryton-playing lord.

Over 120 of these were written for a trio: viol, cello, and baryton. An interesting example of baroque style lingering into the classical period, they have received considerable attention in recent years and have been recorded several times. You can hear one of these beautifully played on a beautiful baryton here and here (both below). These compositions have a lovely delicate sound; like gentle Mozart speaking with a Baroque accent.

Yet they were composed under a fair amount of pressure: Haydn was reprimanded by the prince, “urgently enjoined,” in fact, to “apply himself to compositions more diligently than heretofore, and especially to write such pieces as can be played on the gamba [i.e., baryton], of which pieces we have seen very few up to now; and to be able to judge his diligence, he shall at times send us the first copy, cleanly and carefully written, of each and every composition.” This Haydn did, and was accordingly paid twelve ducats, although the payment came with the order to “write six more pieces like those he has just sent me, together with two solos, to be delivered as soon as possible.”

Princes will be princes, I suppose. Especially if they play the baryton.

A Norse Nyckelharpa

It’s from Scandinavia. It sounds like a violin until you realize it has a much wider range… and some clicking? Its the nyckelharpa, a bowed instrument with “keys” and worn on a strap.

Sweden is the home country of the nyckelharpa, where the first recorded depiction of it dates from the 14th century. It was popularized as a concert instrument by the 19th century. While it is a folk instrument and lends itself to a fiddle style of playing, many nyckelharpa players have delighted in making renditions of Bach suites on the instrument, making it an interesting crossover instrument: listen to the movement from one of the cello suites (below) or this lilting folk tune. Consequently, the nyckelharpa has earned a place both in the early music scene and in trendy folk bands.

The nyckelharpa has a larger range than the violin, and sound more like a viol than a modern string instrument. Rolf Lislevand (who will appear again in this article) has made excellent use of the nyckelharpa in his Renaissance jamming, most recently with Didier Francois (see below). It appears throughout Lislevand’s album Nuove Musiche, where it can be heard shining as the only bowed instrument in tracks like the Passacaglia Celtica.

The Capering Cornett

Not to be confused with the modern brass instrument called the cornet, the renaissance instrument wielding a double-t at the end of its name is an entirely different instrument. A cross between woodwind and brass, the cornett (or cornetto in Italian) uses a fingering like that of a recorder and features a mouthpiece like a horn but is made out of wood and leather. Yes, that’s right, leather is used to cover and keep together the wooden pipe that forms the body. Since the curved horn is usually made from two halves, the leather covering worked better at preserving the seal than the animal glues available at the time.

The Cornett served as the high-register instrument in Renaissance brass ensembles. Nearly inseparable from the precursor to the trombone (called a sackbut), it was a staple instrument of composers like Gabrielli and Monteverdi. Especially popular in Italy, its light but piercing sound has no equivalent among modern instruments. Jeremy West of the British ensemble “His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts” explains and shows all this in his excellent introduction to the cornett.

Ultra-agile in ornamentation, virtuoso cornett musicians often played ornate variations. Listen to the two cornetts taking their place in a Gabrielli canzona here (first below): and a cornetto embellishment of the Renaissance chart-topper “Anchore che col partire.” Another great example of this instrument in an ensemble context, heavily supported by a delicious background of giant theorbos, can be found in Scherzi Musicali’s rendition of Massocchi's “Lagrime Amare” (second below).

Introducing the Grateful Dead’s Colascione

The other name for this instrument is a “Giraffe-Lute” (from the Italian liuto della giraffa). Perhaps you’ve already guessed why: it’s a lute with a long, thin neck. Unlike an archlute or theorbo, however, colasciones usually have only five or so strings, and the entire neck is the fingerboard. One of the many variants in the prolific lute family that multiplied in the Renaissance and Baroque eras, the colascione is a neglected cousin that has garnered little interest in the early music revival.

Perhaps this is because it is not all that versatile: with a sound profile and capability rather like a double bass, it is hardly usable as a solo instrument. When it is used as a bass backup, however, it adds a delightfully jazzy punch to any continuo line. It pairs well with the light-sounding Baroque guitar, which hardly has a bass register. A great example of this can be heard in the way it reinforces the bass on a Sanz Zarabanda or Canarios (both below). You can even listen to Brendon Acker’s version of a cover of the Grateful Dead on period instruments, featuring a colascione as the bass instrument.

But my all-time favorite use of the colascione occurs in a version of the renaissance tune “La Perra Mora” by Scandinavian lutenist Rolf Lislevand (you can listen here to the same piece using a cornett). The unmistakably Norseman Bjørn Kjellemyr bangs out a virtuosic bass on the giraffe-lute, reinforcing the bass on the chorus and solo improvisations using a rapid thumbing technique.

Conclusion

So there you have it: four more instruments to delight in, amidst the enormous plethora of bowed, plucked, struck, and blown devices that human ingenuity has devised for the art of the Muses. Let me know in the comments if you’ve ever heard of any of these before, and what you think of the pieces I’ve linked. Next time, I’ll be telling the story of my love affair with the lute — so stay tuned (unlike my lute!).