Female musicians

Another misconception I have occasionally encountered is that "of course in the middle ages, women would not have been professional musicians". I'm not sure if this is based on the assumption that women did not have professions of any kind in the middle ages (certainly not true) or whether it is something about the status and nature of performing music that makes people think it an unlikely occupation for women.

In yesterday's post I mentioned the Ypres ordinances, the last one specifying "only two minstrels from Ypres, either men or women, could attend the wedding breakfast." A fairly clear indication that females could have the profession of minstrel, as is the fact of the 37 signatories of the 1321 Paris minstrel's guild statutes, eight were women.

Perhaps when it comes to women playing in a shawm band we are on shakier ground. I am not sure if there is any evidence of female 'town waites', nor have I seen pictures of a shawm band playing at a feast, or for dancing, including females. However there are depictions of women playing the shawm, for example this one:

N.B. I have taken this from the cover of "The Recorder Consort", vol. III, Steve Rosenberg and would be grateful if anyone can tell me the actual source (and apologies if this is a copyright infringement - I will remove it if there is a problem!). From the costume it looks 15th century. And to avoid confusion, I should mention that the picture at the top of this blog was painted by myself, so does not provide further evidence. It is based on a beautiful carved ivory 15th century chessboard, but the musicians in the original were all male.