Jacques Besson was born a protestant around 1540 in Grenoble. In 1559 he published an alchemical book about how to extract oils and waters from simple compounds. In 1567 his Le Cosmolabe described an extraordinary invention that could be used for navigation, surveying, cartography and astronomy. Two years later, on his visit to Orléans, Charles IX was introduced to Besson who became his Master of the King’s Engines allowing him a short time under Royal favour, however he fled from France in 1572 following the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, and died there in 1573. Besson’s last work was produced during this time. I err on thinking that the haste and brevity of the inscriptions suggests Besson’s absence from the project, so it may be that he conceived of it in 1572 and had escaped to England whilst it was in the process of being published. Nevertheless, Theatrum Instrumentorum et Machinum was an important work, republished in 1578 and 1582. It includes sixty plates including such inventions as stone-cutters, lathes, sawmills, carriages, barrels, dredges, pile drivers, grist mills, hauling machines, cranes, elevators, pumps, salvage machines, nautical propulsion machines and amongst others one NOVA ORGANI MUSICI FORMA – a new form of musical instrument which attracts our interest.
Plate 29 is a NOVA ORGANI MUSICI FORMA, CUIUS FIDES METALLICAE DIGITIS ET PLECTRO PULSATAE CONCENTUM EDUNT VARIUM, ET IUCUNDUM, MODIS TEMPERATUM PARIBUS, QUIBUS LYRAE ET BUCCINAE SONI QUODAMMODO REFERUNTUR. Translated, this reads “A new form of musical organ, whose metal strings, struck with the fingers and plectrum, produce a varied and pleasant harmony, tempered by equal modes, to which the sounds of the lyre and trumpet are in a way related.”
I have spent hours wondering about the technical elements of this and there are parts that are perfectly nonsensical and others that seem to complicate others… I suspect that the engraver was completely bamboozled by an inaccurate drawing without the explanation of the inventor. Hence we see the following declaration in the 1578 edition: “Scito esse deffectuosum ita a me non explicatum” – I know it’s flawed, it wasn’t explained by me. (i.e. Besson’s declaration).
With early books it is always helpful to look at every edition, rather than to take it for granted that these are reprints of the same thing.
Here in the 1582 edition it seems that the engraver, Jacques Androuet du Cerceau may have been a little frustrated himself by the inability to translate the instrument into any kind of workable form, for he clarifies Besson’s phrase I know it’s flawed, it wasn’t explained by me with the following editorial addition to the text: It is not indeed through the fault of the Painter or Sculptor that this Instrument remains imperfect; but because the Author himself (whatever the cause) did not perfect it. Which, however, he willed to be done here, that it may be recognized as an invention, if anyone should absolve it of any wrongdoing.
There is much to unpack from the description and illustration. It is possible too that CUIUS FIDES METALLICAE is a reference to metal strings rather than keys. At the time this was being made, metal strings were already present on the cittern, of similar size to the violin or viola. Again there is some ambiguity, and this may have been Besson’s assertion of metal strings on a bowed instrument as an original idea of his own. After much consideration, I think that the rod-like element of the engraving is a misunderstanding of Besson’s original drawing that is better ignored. At best it is an attempt to show the fret positions relative to the string length, and with a further illustration of how the mechanism coming out of the tailpiece looks in profile. This may explain MODIS TEMPERATUM PARIBIS (tempered by equal modes) with some explanation of how the frets are located.
QUIBUS LYRAE ET BUCCINAE SONI QUODAMMODO REFERUNTUR is the most interesting of all the descriptions: to which the sounds of the lyre and trumpet are in a way related. My thoughts are that Jacques Besson was looking at the culture of the lira da braccio, used for narrative poetry and the telling of myths. This largely Italian tradition had some sixteenth century resonance in France, for example Marco Girolamo Vida’s pirated Paris edition of De Arte Poetica from 1527, and his response of publishing his own edition that year with the dauphin Francis as its dedicatee. From here there is a direct line to the remarkable festivities in celebration of Charles IX organised by his mother, Catherine de Medici, for which the mass dancers, actors and singers required a grouping of stringed instruments to provide polyphonic accompaniment to the choir of singers necessary for such a large scale dramatic performance of ancient myth and modern history plays. Hence Besson must have been aware of the questions in the French court linked to the Andrea Amati instruments and the performing environment for this new concept of a band of 24 violins.
Elsewhere, I have written about the Marsyas Paradox (this post is laying the groundwork for it), out of which the identity of the gods with the lyre, and the mortals with the aulos is totally bound up. In the narrative poetry tradition, it seems that the lira da braccio was mostly able to represent both of these realms, but a considerable amount of mythology touched upon the underworld – Orpheus and Eurydice perhaps the most significant of all of these, leading to Jacopo Peri, and Giulio Caccini’s rival scorings of Ottavio Rinnuccini’s Eurydice in 1600 and ultimately to Monteverdi’s Orfeo.
Whilst the Lira da Braccio (and presumably the band of violins) represented the world of the gods and mortals in ancient myth, the expression of underworld sounds from different kinds of instruments was already a significant question for composers and other critics of music. Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1510) can be thought of as a kind of critique of the purpose of instruments within the realm of the underworld, that remains relevant up through the scoring of instruments in Monteverdi’s libretto a century later (performed 1607, published 1609) gives particular voices for the mortal world and other voices for the underworld. .
Given the nature of such myths as Orpheus and Eurydice, the performance demands of the narrative demand, as founding Orfeo, a separate voice for the underworld. Hence a solo rendition of these myths would be rendered incomplete by the usual Renaissance use of a lira da braccio, unless something could be contrived to modulate between either side of the mythical River Styx. This is perhaps what Besson alludes to in his QUIBUS LYRAE ET BUCCINAE SONI QUODAMMODO REFERUNTUR to which the sounds of the lyre and trumpet are in a way related in his ingenious if hypothetical invention. Here we have an instrument capable of playing sweet sounds of the lira da braccio, but with a mechanical apparatus that transitions it to playing with a kind of ‘bray’. The mechanical device is activated by pressure on the chinrest, which activates a set of levers that raises what looks like a length of wire into contact with the playing string. This would produce a rasping or buzzing sound, rather like the bray harp or the regal which Bosch or Monteverdi had assigned to the underworld.
From an engineers point of view, it is easy to see how this prototype should work, and how difficult it would be to make it work in practice. It seems to me that the apologies appended to the design both by Besson and his engraver show that the idea gained interest after it was published, and the idea should not be dismissed as the far-fetched creation of an ingenious inventor, but as an attempt at an answer to a need that evidently needed a greater shift in practicality. Besson had already attempted to resolve some of the most obvious issues, hence metal strings rather than gut would make the regulation of the instrument easier in a period where equal tension would otherwise mean huge differences in the thickness of gut strings. But perhaps this attention to detail suggests that he was overthinking it. A strip of paper woven through the strings and pushed against the bridge could easily produce the desired sounds, but before we are too quick to judge, would so simple a solution gain the favour and praise in a world looking for ingenious inventions?
As a postscript to this, here is a rather lovely violin bow.. I feel I have more to add about it at a later time.
