Musical Instruments and Their Symbolism in Western Art

This book first appeared in 1967. In the years since then it has spawned the new academic sub-discipline of musical iconology which belongs equally to the histories of art and of music. Emmanuel Winternitz who was for thirty-one years Curator of Musical Collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the world's leading authorities on the history of musical instruments.

In this collection of closely related articles he examines what these pictures tell of the design and construction of instruments of their performance practice and of the often subtle symbolic use to which artists put them. Kithara and cittern lute and lyre bagpipe and hurdy-gurdy and the ubiquitous lira da braccio all of these figured largely in the art of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance together with a clutch of shwms zinks and crumhorns and a variety of fantastic instruments that existed only in the imagination of the artists. In more than 200 photographs and many drawings Winternizt illustrates instruments that range from an Egytptian wall-painting of a harp to a musette in a Watteau Fête champêtre. He draws from the works of Titian Raphael Dürer and Bruegel and also from medieval manuscripts and sculpture. Winternitz discusses these diverse elements with a combination of formidable learning wit and keen insight that makes this book at once a seminal work for scholars and a delight for lovers of art and music

ISBN 9780300023244

Author Emanuel Winternitz

Publisher Yale, 1979

Format Hardcover

Pages 253