Crathes Castle ceiling: a source of heavenly harmony

September 2009

Crathes Castle: In the painted ceiling of the Nine Muses, which dates from 1599, seven of the muses in the little consort (all, of course, female) are shown playing instruments.

by John Purser

To anyone interested in the history of Scottish music – and, indeed, medicine, the family of the Burnetts of Leys is of fundamental significance. One of their number, a Duncan Burnett, is attributed with having written the single most significant manuscript of Scottish keyboard music from the period of the great composers for virginals. It includes masterpieces by England’s William Byrd and Scotland’s William Kinloch, and it also provides vital clues to the political intrigues centred around Mary Queen of Scots.

In addition, the ancestral seat of the Burnetts, Crathes Castle, boasts one of the finest painted ceilings in the country, and it is a ceiling of musicians. Finally, the castle contains one of the most intriguing musical instruments it has ever been my frustrating pleasure to encounter. The Horn of Leys, as it is known, is possibly made of ivory. It is frustrating because the story, that it was presented to the Burnetts by Robert the Bruce following the victory at Bannockburn, is disputed. Moreover, the instrument itself cannot be closely examined as it is kept sealed behind glass, and were it ever to be taken out, it is never to be played. The reason is that, on the few occasions it has been played, a member of the Burnett family is said to have promptly died.

The painted ceiling of the Nine Muses dates from 1599, but was substantially restored following its discovery in 1876 and its complete removal for conservation in 1961. Seven of the muses (all, of course, female) are shown playing instruments. Polyhymnia plays a clavichord, Thalia a fretted fiddile, Melpomene the bass viol, Terpsichore a large lute, Euterpe plays the flute, Calliope the harp, and Erato the cittern. Probably they made up a consort – a little ensemble. The flute (the verses call it a quhissile) is curious, for it swells to a bell at the end, though it is blown sideways like the modern flute.

But the ceiling as a whole goes much further than illustrating the Greek muses as musicians. Each is accompanied by her own verse quatrain, both descriptive and admonitory; and the same ceiling is adorned with quotations representing the Seven Virtues – Faith, Hope, Charity, Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance.

There is a connection between the seven musicians and the Seven Virtues, for the muses are supposed to give praise to the virtues. As the leading inscription in the room says:

_Honour & grace is the dew recompence
Of vertuous workes done in this lyfe
Quhilk maketh men to be haid in reverence
And als their praise to be soundit ryfe_

From this, it seems clear that the whole conception is as much concerned with the harmony of the soul as it is with the harmony of instrumental sounds. Take, for instance, the stanza assigned to Urania:

_Urania behalde me heir
My globbe may trauel testifie
I reule the planetis and the speir
As maistres of astronimie_.

This might seem disconnected from music were it not that, to all educated musicians of the time, the harmony of the spheres was the basis of the harmony of music. The theory was as old as Pythagoras, repeated by countless music theoriticians thereafter – notably Boethius – and was taken up by Kepler in his _Mysterium Cosmographicum _of 1597, in which he related the motion of the planets to the divine harmony as represented by the proportional ratios of their orbits.

Harmony of the spheres

The conception of the harmony of the spheres was also fundamental to the story of Orpheus who, by his supreme musicianship, almost won back his wife from the underworld. In his magnificant version of this myth, the great Scottish poet, Robert Henryson, uniquely sent Orpheus on a journey through the planets. It is on that journey that he acquired the depth of underestanding of music – the celestial harmony – that was so persuasive in Hades. The nine muses themselves represented the music of the eight spheres plus their combined harmony.

The artist and designer of the ceiling paintings was not necessarily following Henryson, especially as Henryson has Urania as the last muse, because she is ‘callit armony celestiall’, where the ceiling has Urania as the second last and Polyhymnia as the last. That said, Polyhymnia is separated from the other musicians by Urania, and she is also particularly associated with Memory:

_Polymnia the last of nyn
My monicordis may weill expresse
Quick memorie and scharp ingyn
Abhorring still forgetfulnes_

The role of Memory is normally given to Mnemosyne, who is the mother of the Muses, so it is possible that, although she has a monicordis, or clavichord – a keyboard instrument – she is not part of the consort.

Although the whole scheme draws upon European-wide traditions, there are indications that it was partly influenced by Scottish preferences, and one should not discount the likelihood that its commissioner, possibly the physician Duncan Burnett (15??-1640), might have influenced the texts, which are matched by Duncan’s moralistic style of writing. Some of the rhymes (assuming they were correctly reproduced when restored) depend upon Scots pronunciation: and Calliope is pictured playing a harp rather than the bandora lute shown in other such images of instrumental consorts.

The distinctly curved Crathes harp

The harp was, and is particularly associated with Scotland and Ireland, though of course it was well known throughout Europe where travelling harpists from Scotland, Ireland and Wales were present at a variety of courts in the late 16th- and early 17th-centuries. The distinctly curved forepillar of the Crathes harp is also present in the two harps depicted on the early 17th-century Dean House ceiling. This is a feature of the Celtic harp scarcely evident in the more Gothic designs prevalent in England and mainland Europe. Artists unquestionably took their designs from pattern books, but they did not necessarily do so slavishly.

Although I am suggesting that the primary function of the Nine Muses ceiling paintings was a spiritual rather than a material one, that does not exclude the material side. All seven instrumentalists are shown playing. They do not hold their instruments purely symbolically. There is also a fair degree of credibility in the depiction of the flautist’s lips, and in the arm and hand positions, and finger placements of the other musicians: and the instruments are also reasonably well observed, though deficient in details of tuning pegs and the like.

We can hear, today, the kind of music that the Burnetts might have heard at Crathes, played by instruments similar to those on the ceiling. In the case of the viola da gamba, one of the greatest exponents of the age was the Scot, Tobias Hume. His two books of music, published in London shortly after the Scottish court had moved south, contain not only the most adventurous music composed for the instrument at that stage, but also substantial consort pieces and songs which might well have been performed by such a group as is depicted on the ceiling. There is no reason why this music should not have been known in Scotland. Two Burnett doctors were living in Essex and Norwich at the time; one being the Duncan Burnett referred to above, whose nephew, also Duncan Burnett, was soon to become a music teacher in Glasgow:

5 May 1638… (the council) …seeing that the musik school is altogether dekayit within this burgh to the great discredit of this citie… and that Duncane Birnett, who sumtyme of befoir teatchit musik within this burgh is desyrous to tak up the said school againe and teitche musik thairin, hes granted licence to the said Duncane Birnett to tak up ane musik school within this burgh.

The elder Duncan could have been responsible for the transmission of the Clement Matchett Virginal Book to Scotland, as Matchett came from Norfolk, or he might have given it to his nephew, who is usually credited with being the compiler of The Duncan Burnett Music Book. This latter manuscript is variously dated from the 1580s to c.1610 and contains some of the most exciting keyboard music of the time.

The contrast between Burnett and Kinloch

Whether it was compiled by the older or the younger Duncan has yet to be decided, but we may at least assume that the Burnett family both sides of the border was fully conversant with keyboard music at its very best, notably in the works of William Kinloch, whose lively music features prominently in the manuscript. The music credited to Burnett, however, contrasts strongly with Kinloch’s exuberant style. Where Kinloch uniquely doubles the length of one dance form by immediate elaboration (hence its title The Galliard of the Lang Pavan), Burnett, who copied the piece out, wrote music of a more sober character, but perhaps with more inherent depth of feeling. Though technically less demanding than Kinloch, who exploits an ability to articulate repeated notes, Burnett’s music also makes free use of bravura passages for the left hand in The Queine Of Inglands Lessoune; and his magnificent Pavan has solemnity and vigour.

The Crathes ceiling, however, does not display an instrument sufficiently large for such music to be performed, though the Castle might well have had such an instrument.

Most likely to have been frequently heard at Crathes was the beautiful and lively lute music of the period. It reflected a strong and very characteristic Scottish influence, as well as absorbing music from France. Indeed the lute manuscripts from the 17th-century display awareness of continental practice and make clear the growing acknowledgment, by native composers and arrangers, that the vernacular style was a legitimate resource for more elaborate music.

Much of the repertoire of Scottish music that might well have been performed at Crathes around the period the ceiling was painted, has been published and recorded. The Bibliography and Discography of my book, Scotland’s Music (Mainstream, Edinburgh 2007, £30) provide details: but the Horn of Leys has not been recorded, indeed has not been heard for many years, and I sincerely hope will never be heard again in this life.

Dr John Purser, born in 1942 in Glasgow, is an eminent composer, musicologist, and music historian. Scotland’s Music is a major reference work on musical history from the Bronze Age to the present. The BBC radio series of the same title included reconstructions of early music and works by many little-known composers.

SOURCES

Purser, J., On the Trail of the Spies, In: Scotlands 5.1, 1998, pp.23-44.

Hart, W., and Jackson, R., _The Horn of Leys: Myth and History_ In: The Aberdeen University Review, LVIII, no,203, Spring 2000, pp.213-225.

Hargreaves, H., The Crathes Ceiling Inscriptions, In: McClure, J. and Spiller, R. (Eds.), Bryght Lanternis, Aberdeen 1989, p.373.

See Forrester, P., A Scottish Consort, in The Lute Vol XXVII 1987, 38-39 and Apted, M.R. and Robertson W., Two painted Ceilings… In: Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Volume 104, 1971-1972, pp.222-235.

Bath, M., Renaissance Decorative Painting in Scotland, Edinburgh 2003, pp.199-200.

MacQueen, J., The narrative poetry of Robert Henryson, Amsterdam-New York 2006, p.262, n.4.

Several of his letters are reproduced in Burnett, G., The Family of Burnett of Leys, Aberdeen 1901, pp.206-216.

Hargreaves, H., The Crathes Ceiling Inscriptions, In: McClure, J. and Spiller, R. (Eds.), Bryght Lanternis, Aberdeen 1989, pp.373-375.

Forrester, P., A Scottish Consort, In: The Lute Vol XXVII 1987, p.38.

See, for instance Holman, P., The harp in Stuart England, In; Early Music, Vol. XV, No 2, May 1987, pp.188-203, and Donnelly, S., An Irish Harper in the Royal Musick, In: Ceol, Vol. VI, No 2, April 1984, pp.34-37, and Galilei, V., Dialogo della Musica Antica, Florence 1581, reprinted 1968, p.143.

Sanger, K. Tree of Strings, Temple 1992, p.52, makes a similar suggestion.

Forrester, P., A Scottish Consort, In: The Lute Vol XXVII 1987, p.39.

See Purser, Scotland’s Music, Edinburgh 2007, pp.136-140.

Extracts From the Records of the Burgh of Glasgow 1573-1642, The Scottish Burgh Records Society, 1876, p.388.

Purser, J., On the Trail of the Spies, In: Scotlands 5.1, 1998, pp.23-44 and Edwards, W., The musical sources, In: Porter, J., (Ed.) Defining Strains, Bern 2007, p.52.

McKillop, R., For kissing for clapping for loving for proveing: Performance practice and modern interpretation of the lute repertoire, In: Porter, J., (Ed.) Defining Strains, Bern 2007, p.96.

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