Eduard Rusu
Musical Instruments in the Paintings and Miniatures from Dragomirna Monastery | p. 63–84


Keywords
Anastasie Crimca, Dragomirna Monastery, miniature, Moldavia, music, musical instruments, painting

Abstract

The history of old Romanian music is less studied and known precisely because of the scarcity of sources. However, by combining all sorts of sources, one can find very useful and important information. One of these sources is the mural painting of the churches, where several musical instruments were represented in different iconographic scenes. To these we can add the miniatures found in some manuscripts, which also provide valuable information. A place where we can see musical instruments both in mural paintings and miniatures is Dragomirna Monastery. Several musical instruments, such as trumpets, drums or lutes are represented in the church painting and in the miniatures of Anastasie Crimca’s Psalter. They give us information about our musical past. In this approach, we try to identify them as accurately as possible and establish the role they played in the musical-artistic context of early 17^th-century Moldavia.