ABSTRACT
So few medieval instruments survive today that we are repeatedly forced to use the resources of iconography and literature in order to discover what instruments existed, how they were built, and how they were played. But the lack of pictorial and literary realism inevitably hampers our studies. As Emanuel Winternitz has shown in many of his writings, and summarized in a recent article in Early Music, 1 iconology (the elucidation of visual symbols) must usually precede iconography (the visual description of a subject), lest unwarrantable conclusions be drawn. My intention here is merely to do some of this groundwork.
