sackbut

"It is a fatted calf from the pastures of Bashan," said the Pharisee, "the heathen have dealt wonderfully with us let us raise up our voices in a psalm --let us give thanks on the shawm and on the psaltery-on the harp and on the huggab-on the cythern and on the sackbut!"

Why the clashing of cymbals, and the sounding of sackbuts and drums?

For more than half this period the court instrumentalists were grouped into self-contained ensembles - the recorders, shawms (including sackbuts), viols, violins and others.

The recorders and sackbuts that are used in most of the pieces (not all together, of course) sometimes seem too rounded in tone for this repertory.

It's billed as a joyous journey round the music and instruments of medieval and Renaissance Europe with viols and racketts plus cornetts, sackbuts, shawms, violin, rebec, and others of every kind.

There's also dance music played on viols, recorders and sackbuts and elegant Baroque trio sonatas.

This 3/4 time setting of a kermesse, inspired by the early Dutch Renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch, portrays an enthusiastic peasant dance in the vocal melody, while suggesting the coarse bagpipes, sackbuts, and fiddles of that day in the accompaniment.

The ensemble had available three keyboard instruments (a regal and two virginals), a host of wind instruments, including three sackbuts, a dulcian and 23 types of cornetto, as well as 13 string instruments.

A festival service will launch the week of concerts on June 22 at 11.15am - two days before the official opening night which will feature The City Musick, a leading early music ensemble who will showcase a range of instruments, including cornetts, sackbuts and shawms.

Bagpipes, crumhorns, curtails, fiddles, flutes, gitterns, guitars, harp, hurdy gurdies, pipes, recorders, sackbuts, shawms and tabors - these will all be played at a concert being given by the York Waits in St Mary's Church, Warwick, on Tuesday.

Its sections of continually increasing texture and tension, the warmth of the sackbuts, the constantly varying choral effects and the superb intonation and clarity of the top lines of cornetts and sopranos produced an effect of irresistible splendour.