Music Personified

Music Personified Commentary by Frederica Law Turner Bible Passage The majestic Windmill Psalter was made in England, probably in London, in the late thirteenth century. It has lost its calendar, and with it much information about its early origins, but its refined painting technique and sophisticated decoration has led to its association with manuscripts made for the royal Court. Its name comes from the delightful—and highly unusual—depiction of a windmill supported on three posts in the large E on folio 2r, the second letter of ‘Beatus vir…’, the opening words of Psalm 1. The initial at Psalm 80 illustrates one of the standard responses to this psalm: King David reaches up to play a set of bells, known as a cymbala. The king is seated on an elegant blue, green, and gold couch, with a curved back ending in a lion’s head. His harp rests on the bench behind him, and he twists sideways to strike at the bells suspended above him with a pair of hammers. Behind him is a multi-coloured tower, rather like a giant cake. Cymbalas appear in manuscript illumination from the end of the eleventh century, but they seem to have been a recollection of a classical instrument rather than a depiction of a contemporary one. So why is David shown playing an obsolete instrument which is not referred to in the text? The cymbala and the harp appear as the attributes of the figure of Musica, one of the Seven Liberal Arts depicted on the Royal Portal at Chartres, dating to the mid twelfth century. Like David, she reaches up to play bells hanging above her with a pair of hammers. The similarity of the iconography suggests that David here is shown as the ‘Musica’ of the Bible, an ideal musician playing an ideal instrument. The classical connotations of the instrument in the Middle Ages would also have reminded viewers of the long visual tradition associating David with Orpheus.