Campanaire plays with colours and timbers in order to create for its audience a sound palette close to what Renaissance women and men would be able to hear in their time. Indeed the ensemble's performances are an opportunity to discover a surprising range of period wind and percussion instruments...
The "chabrette", typical bagpipe from the Limousin region, is part of the "cornemuses et hautbois de Poitou" family, described by Marin Mersenne in the beginning of the 17th century and found at the French court up until the 1660's.
Marin Mersenne, L'Harmonie Universelle,
Des instruments à vent (1636)
The dulcian is the ancestor of the modern bassoon. The principle behind this instrument was to fold a very long (hence very low) Renaissance oboe, also called shawm. It is one of the few instruments whose first model was a bass one, before smaller sizer were created to form a consort.
bassons renaissance in Marin Mersenne, L'Harmonie Universelle,
Des instruments à vent (1636)
The three-hole pipes also belong to the recorder family but are played with one hand while the other is hitting the drum. The pipe and drum was extensively used in Renaissance dance music.
Recorders were, like most Renaissance instruments, declined in various sizes and pitches. They can thus form very big consorts whose sounds resemble small organs, but they can also be mixed with other instruments, from which their pure and warm sound stands out very well.
Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum (1614)
The string drum is an instrument that is already found in Medieval and Renaissance iconography, and later in folk music from the south of France. Its gut strings are tuned in fifth, and the player hits them with a wooden stick with one hand, while playing the pipe with the other.
In the Renaissance period, percussion instruments are varied: thanks to iconography and text, we know the existence of drums made with skin or with strings, of tambourines with jingles, of frame drums (round or square) close to the iranian daf, of bells, timpani, etc.
Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum (1614)