Our second medieval instrument is the shawm. It’s another woodwind instrument and it makes the sound that you probably most associate with medieval music. It can be rather raucous and rough, but it can also be very sweet.
At first glance it looks like a cross between a recorder and a trumpet, but it’s not really like either of them. It’s a wooden tube, like the recorder, with a trumpet-like flare at the bottom. There are two reeds in the top of the tube and the player makes the reeds vibrate to produce the sound. It’s a precursor of the oboe.
These are modern double reeds used with a bassoon and you can see that there are two separate bits of reed in the bottom left of the photograph.
The tube of the shawm has quite a wide bore and it flares out at the bottom. At the top there is much narrower tube and this is where the reeds are inserted. This is called the pirouette. Although it looks as if it is stuck into the shawm like a cork into a bottle, the shawm was usually made from a single piece of wood. The pirouette has a small piece hollowed out from it and the reeds are inserted through it into the top of the tube. As you can see from the photograph at the top of the page, not much of the reeds stick out from the pirouette. There’s just enough for the player to get their lips around them and the lips rest on top of the pirouette. As with all wind instruments, the shape the lips make (the embouchure) is important in producing a good sound, because it changes the way in which the musician’s breath interacts with the part of the instrument that makes the sound.
Shawms were loud instruments, as you’ll hear, and were useful for playing outdoors.
Here is David Munrow’s Early Music Consort of London demonstrating the shawm.
If you enjoyed that and would like to hear more, with a bit of an explanation about the shawm as an instrument and medieval music in general, here is another video demonstrating the versatility of the shawm.
Sources:
A History of Western Music by J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout and Claude V. Palisca
April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.
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A Writer's Perspective 
Hadn’t heard of or seen one of these before, love the videos.
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Every now and again I think about getting one, but I’m useless with reed instruments. They make a wonderful sound.
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The name sounds similar to the Old German for “swan”. Can’t find my Jesperson reference from which I base this. Albert Baugh doesn’t mention swans in his iconic “History of the English Language”, but maybe there’s a treatise out there that studies the roots of “schwam”.
I bring this up because I have heard swan whistling and there’s a similarity to sounds the schwam can make. People tended to name things after what they resemble.
Anyway, it’s just a hunch. Really like the music! Thank you! 💜
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Wikipedia says it comes from the Latin word for reed, which came into Middle English from Old French, but you’re right, it does sound a bit like a swan. When it’s played by someone who knows what they’re doing, the shawm does sound wonderful.
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I love how the woman used multiple overlayed screens to record different parts of the song. The shawm is awesome!
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It is rather wonderful.
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Nice blog
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Thank you.
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