Realising All the Musical Instruments of
The Famous Luttrell Psalter
Picture the scene in Sotherby’s auction room in London. It is 1929 and a glorious illuminated Medieval manuscript that had been on public display in the British Museum for a few years is now being offered for sale. Death duties have finally caught up with the generations after Sir Geoffrey Luttrell commissioned his famous psalter in the 1330s.
The psalter was bought at the auction by an American – J P Morgan – who gave it to the British Museum for 12 months on condition that they had that time to raise the money to repay him – all £31,500. The government of the day donated £7,500 for that specific purpose, and the money was raised to keep this important book in the UK. The previous highest price paid a decade earlier for a similar book had been £11,800. Not for nothing is the Luttrell Psalter described as ‘England’s most significant illuminate Medieval manuscript’. It’s on display in the British Library, and in 2006 the Folio Society had 1,460 copies published.
The psalter was created in the 14th century, and depicts details of everyday life around the Luttrell family, including many images of musicians, instruments and dancers. It is a glorious and highly informative relic.
Sir Geoffrey Luttrell (1276-1345) lived with his family in Irnham, between Grantham and Spalding, but owned estates across England – including at Hooton Pagnall in Yorkshire. The Luttrell family were relatively insignificant until Sir Geoffrey’s great, great grandfather – also Sir Geoffrey – married into the wealth and status of the Paganel family who had come from Normandy with William the Conquerer. His ancestor's loyal support and service to King John had been rewarded with grants of various properties.
In the 1330s Sir Geoffrey felt his death was coming and wanted to account for all his actions. However, at the start of that decade his wife, Agnes Sutton, was concerned that their marriage was illegitimate because of consanguinity. She sought the view of the pope, and in 1334 a dispensation clearing the marriage as legitimate was issued. In the same year their son, Andrew, came of age. It is possible that Sir Geoffrey wanted the psalter to celebrate that success as much as his life.
The purpose of a psalter was to help with the provisions for a will. In Sir Geoffrey’s will he requested, among other things, twenty chaplains to recite masses for a five-year period after his death (believed to speed the soul's passage), clerks to recite the psalms, and candles for his funeral. He spared little to ensure all this.
The psalter contains several pages showing Sir Geoffrey and his family: eating at a feast, at prayer, and getting ready for military service. In a portrait at the end of psalm 109, Sir Geoffrey Luttrell is shown fully armed and mounted on a war-horse, with an extravagant display of the Luttrell arms as well as the arms of his wife and his daughter-in-law Beatrice Scrope. The portrait presents Sir Geoffrey in the prime of his youth while Agnes is depicted as his supportive wife, and Beatrice as the future of the Luttrell lineage. Sir Geoffrey had been at pains to create a strong dynasty, and this image is believed to have served to emphasise his knightly status during a marriage union of a family member. To assert his role as patron of the work, the line Dominus Galfridus Louterell me fieri fecit (‘Lord Geoffrey Luttrell caused me to be made’) appears above the portrait. He is determined to make the subject matter and the purpose of the psalter crystal clear.
A psalter is a book of psalms, often accompanied by other material such as church calendars. The psalms are 150 ancient songs, grouped together to form one of the Old Testament books of the Bible. In the Middle Ages they formed a fundamental part of Christian and Jewish worship, for both ecclesiastics and lay people; many people learnt to read by being taught the psalms. They were the basis for both private and public prayer. The psalms were often written out separately from the rest of the Bible, preceded by a calendar of the Church’s feast-days, and followed by various types of prayers.
The Luttrell Psalter, however, is much more than merely a collection of written out psalms and prayers. It is a masterpiece of the illuminator’s art, containing hundreds of lavishly decorated pages. The illustrations within the manuscript display several scenes from Sir Geoffrey Luttrell's life, regular daily activities around the town, aspects of the countryside, and many different curious figures combining animal and human parts. The Luttrell Psalter provides a good illustration of everyday life in the Middle Ages, although its accuracy needs to be seen within the context of the ‘political’ purpose of Sir Geoffrey in creating the psalter. Aside from the common images of citizens and the Luttrell family, some images remain obscure, although others can be related to the text beside which they are painted. There are references to technological developments – the newly introduced windmill which Sir Geoffrey seems to have had on his land, and to historical events – for example, the War of Scottish Independence in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. However, many of the decorations around the margins are images of pure fantasy and naturalistic motifs.
The psalter was not the first to include scenes of contemporary everyday life, but it is exceptional in their number and fascinating detail. Its lively and often humorous images provide a virtual documentary of work and play during a year on an estate such as Sir Geoffrey's. As we turn the pages of the book, we see corn being cut, grain taken to the mill for grinding into flour, a woman feeding chickens, food being cooked and eaten, a rabbit warren, and a bee hive. There are wrestlers, hawkers, bear baiters, dancers, musicians, singers, a couple playing back gammon, and a mock bishop with a dog that jumps through a hoop. It is this collection of scenes from the world away from court that marks out the psalter’s significance.
The Luttrell Psalter is perhaps best known for its wild profusion of marginal and hybrid creatures - 'grotesques': hybrid monstrosities that may combine a human head, an animal/fish/bird body, and a plant tail. Their colourful depiction brings to mind some of the costumes and decoration of modern Morris dancers, with blacked-up faces and extravagant costumes designed to disguise the person beneath. The manuscript contains images of beggars and street performers and grotesques, all symbolizing the chaos and anarchy that was present in medieval society and feared by Sir Geoffrey Luttrell and his contemporaries. The 14th century was a period of social unrest and upheaval. In the middle of the century people of all classes were faced with the peril of the Black Death, and later the Peasants’ Revolt. Life was not easy, and continued life was not guaranteed. There are similar images carved on the misericords in nearby Lincoln Cathedral.
Music was a major part of secular and spiritual culture in the Middle Ages. The development of music and its notation can be seen in many manuscript sources. Several of the pages of the psalter show groups of singers with musical notation.
The most famous – and earliest - example of Medieval song in English is the rota, or round, ‘Sumer is icumen in’ which dates to the second half of the 13th century. The piece requires four singers to sing the same melody, one after the other, starting when the previous singer reaches the red cross on the first line. While this is happening, two lower voices repeat the words ‘Sing cuccu’. Instructions on how to perform the song are given in the bottom right-hand corner of the page. You can see the original document on display in the British Library. The psalter has a number of images of groups of clerics singing, with musical notation to hand.
Visual depictions of music-making form a large part of the Luttrell Psalter's iconography, showing not only a wide range of musicians and musical instruments (some 17 different instruments are shown), but also the range of settings in which music was performed. There are sixty four images of musicians, singers and musical notation in the psalter, showing many of the medieval instruments common at the time: harp, shawm, bagpipe, trumpet, fiddle, 3-hole pipe and tabor, gittern, handbells, cow’s horn, portative organ, double pipes and double shawms, drum, tambourine, rebec, psaltery, and symphonie.
People and hybrid creatures are represented singing poems, hymns and psalms as an expression of devotion. The psalter speaks of an integral aspect of everyday life in the 14th century. Music in the Middle Ages was not only used in clerical environments, but was also, to some extent, employed to represent the devil and corruption. The Devil is often shown playing bagpipes, sometimes depicted on misericords as indicated above. The Luttrell Psalter is interesting with regard to musical tradition in the Middle Ages because it seems to seek to integrate the religious, the everyday and the devilish side of the psalter. The chaos and danger of the present was seen to be ever-present, with the future uncertain.
​
de Mowbray’s Musicke are currently performing a concert of music, songs and dance of the period of the psalter in which they play all 17 of the instruments depicted in the psalter. In 2024 they performed in the church in Irnham where Sir Geoffrey is buried as well as in Hooton Pagnell church, near Doncaster which was another of his estates. This year they have performed at Dunster Castle in Somerset which was owned by a branch of the Luttrell family for some 600 years until the mid 1900s, and will perform in Saltby and at Croxton Kerrial near Grantham, both of which have Luttrell family connections. In the interval of the concert they display their own facsimile copy of the psalter for the audience to see at close quarters.
This has been a fascinating project to develop and then perform. We have become close to the members of the family and to aspects and locations of their life and past.
It’s not too late to see us perform it!