ZU DEN AUF WANDMALEREIEN IM SÜDSIEBENBÜRGISCHEN RAUM DARGESTELLTEN MUSIKINSTRUMENTEN
Musical instruments in mural and panel paintings of medieval churches in southern Transylvania

Summary/Abstract: The present paper is concerned with identifying and analyzing the musical instruments depicted in mural and panel paintings of medieval churches in Southern Transylvania. Although musical instruments are just a small sequence of everyday life, their study can reveal lesser known and studied aspects of the medieval life in Central Europe. Furthermore, due to the materials out of which they were made, these instruments are accessible to us today almost entirely through images and documents. As in Transylvania a high percentage of these images are mural and panel paintings in churches, their analysis can constitute a starting point for the study of musical instruments and the interest in music of the medieval men. The study considered 21 churches with mural or/and panel paintings, nine of them having on their walls or panels images of musical instruments. Amongst the identified musical instruments we have the violin or viola, the flute, the psaltery (psalterion), kobza/mandora and lute, the horn and the bugle, the portable organ, the harp and the trumpet.

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