Instruments MEDIEVAL MUSIC

A musician plays the vielle in a fourteenth-century Medieval manuscript

Many instruments used to perform medieval music still exist in the 21st
century, but in different and typically more technologically developed forms.
[2] The flute was made of wood in the medieval era rather than silver or other
metal, and could be made as a side-blown or end-blown instrument. While
modern orchestral flutes are usually made of metal and have complex key
mechanisms and airtight pads, medieval flutes had holes that the performer
had to cover with the fingers (as with the recorder). The recorder was made
of wood during the Medieval era, and despite the fact that in the 21st
century, it may be made of synthetic materials, it has more or less retained its
past form. The gemshorn is similar to the recorder as it has finger holes on its
front, though it is actually a member of the ocarina family. One of the flute's
predecessors, the pan flute, was popular in medieval times, and is possibly
of Hellenic origin. This instrument's pipes were made of wood, and were
graduated in length to produce different pitches.[citation needed]

Medieval music used many plucked string instruments like the lute, a fretted
instrument with a pear-shaped hollow body which is the predecessor to the
modern guitar. Other plucked stringed instruments included the mandore,
gittern, citole and psaltery. The dulcimers, similar in structure to the psaltery
and zither, were originally plucked, but musicians began to strike the
dulcimer with hammers in the 14th century after the arrival of new metal
technology that made metal strings possible.[citation needed]
The bowed lyra of the Byzantine Empire was the first recorded European
bowed string instrument. Like the modern violin, a performer produced
sound by moving a bow with tensioned hair over tensioned strings. The
Persian geographer Ibn Khurradadhbih of the 9th century (d. 911) cited the
Byzantine lyra, in his lexicographical discussion of instruments as a bowed
instrument equivalent to the Arab rabāb and typical instrument of the
Byzantines along with the urghun (organ),[3][failed verification] shilyani
(probably a type of harp or lyre) and the salandj (probably a bagpipe).[4]</
ref> The hurdy-gurdy was (and still is) a mechanical violin using a rosined
wooden wheel attached to a crank to "bow" its strings. Instruments without
sound boxes like the jew's harp were also popular. Early versions of the pipe
organ, fiddle (or vielle), and a precursor to the modern trombone (called the
sackbut) were used.[citation needed]