However, the reports we have concerning the Devil’s music are far from being unanimous. For some, it is a “devilish din”, a cacophony of effects designed to terrify the wretched victims in the abyss of Hell. Michael Praetorius, in the introduction to a Treatise written in 1619, gives us a precise description:

In depiction of the mortal sins, we may note that musical instruments are always present in representations of lust, one of the Devil’s favourite domains, from medieval manuscripts of the Pyschomachia of Prudentius to the many extraordinary paintings by Bosch [image 1].

Among the predecessors or cousins of diabolic musicians, we should also include the elves and dwarfs of the Celtic and Germanic worlds. Oberon, for instance, king of dwarfs and redoubtable wizard. When Huon de Bordeaux, in the medieval French epic poem which bears his name, meets him in the immense magic forest which is his domain, he sees at his neck a wonderful ivory horn, encircled with bands of gold, an instrument which had been made by fairies on an island in the middle of the sea. This horn is a magical object which can be used to call for help, or to force people to dance. This suggests an analogy with other legendary figures, such as the Pied Piper of Hamelin, who used his flute first to entrance the rats, then the children of his town, or with the skeleton musicians who lead the dance of death. Like devils, dwarfs live below ground, within mountains, and love music and dance. This is the world of Peer Gynt, of Ibsen and of Grieg. We might mention Alberich here, evil dwarf known to us through Wagner’s Ring, but in the original story of the Nibelungen endowed with musical powers of seduction.

Ministers of Satan

The Christian church had, of course, always been conscious of the dangers of music. Saint Augustine, Saint Basil, and Saint John Chrysostomus had all denounced these seductive sounds which so swiftly intoxicate the senses and weaken the soul. For them, the drum represented the death of the flesh, and other instruments such as flutes and harps belonged to the “Pomp of the Devil” and should thus necessarily be excluded from performance of psalms in church. Saint Ambrose, for his part, identifies the gittern, psaltery and drum with impiety and eternal death. He sharply criticises an offender:

While hymns are being recited, you are holding a gittern! While the psalms are being sung, you play on a psaltery or on a drum! This is truly outrageous, for in neglecting salvation you choose certain death!

For Saint Bernard, musical instruments “are not pleasing unto God”. The first Christians had envisaged a simple chant without ornament. Saint Cyprian had warned that God hears not the voice, but the heart. Saint Jerome even desired to hear a certain cacophony in singing, thus preventing the faithful from giving in to their admiration for beautiful voices.

In the Middle Ages jugglers and minstrels were considered to be the “Ministers of Satan”, furthering the works of the Devil. According to Alcuin, counsellor to Charlemagne, those who introduce into their houses actors, mimes, or dancers, should understand that, in so doing, they are bringing in a crowd of devils. Minstrels, banned by the Church, and condemned by Charlemagne, were “those who, through the ears and through the eyes, inculcate vice into the spirit”. In the twelfth century Henri d’Autun asked the question: “May a minstrel expect to attain eternal life?”, and gave the reply: “Indeed not, for they are the ministers of the Devil”. In the thirteenth century, Berthold von Regensburg, in a sermon, called minstrels “the Devils bagpipers”, which is interesting since the bagpipe is very often associated with the Devil and with death in medieval manuscripts, as in the frescos of the dance of death and the hallucinatory paintings by Bosch.

There is however a notable exception to the general fate of minstrels. A 13-century poem in French, Saint Pierre et le Jongleur, tells how a particularly riotous minstrel, a drunkard, womaniser, and great gambler at dice was on his death naturally taken by the Devil into Hell. The minstrel offered to sing to amuse the Devil, but rather was installed in the Devil’s house with instructions to keep the fires burning and keep an eye on the souls of the damned while the Devil was away. The minstrel gives way to his weakness for gambling when Saint Peter comes in person to challenge him to a game of dice. The only “money” available to the minstrel is souls, and, of course, he loses them all to the saint. Such is the fury of the Devil when he returns that he banishes all minstrels and their lineage from Hell for all time!

Carnival time

The connection between minstrels and the work of the Devil is sometimes reinforced by the musicians themselves, and especially at carnival time. This is marvellously illustrated by the images in the musical version of the early 14-century satirical romance of Fauvel [image 2]. Fauvel is a demon in the form of a horse, his name being made up of the initial letters of the vices he represents. We see the minstrels gathered together in the streets of Paris to demonstrate against the wedding of Fauvel with the Lady Vain Glory. They wear demonic masks and themselves behave like devils while playing on various instruments; a bowed fiddle is accompanied by drums, a metal cauldron, cymbals and little bells—the bells maybe to protect the performers against real demons who most certainly are hovering around! The charivari, as it is called in French, is a truly devilish music, recalling that of the company of Hellekin, originally a Nordic god, but later transformed in Germany to Erlkönig, and into Harlequin elsewhere. In the 13-century French poem Des Avocas et la jument au Deable, witches and wizards are summoned to Hell to dance before Hellekin. At carnival time, in the Middle Ages as today, the street became a theatre. For the Shrove Tuesday procession the participants improvised dances, often acting like demons. Records tell us that quite often at these times robberies were committed by actors disguised as devils. Not only those who made this dangerous music were sure of eternal damnation, but also those who took pleasure in it, as was thundered in a sermon dating from that fatal year of 1492:

And those who take pleasure in singing and the flute, shall lament and groan miserably and terribly in Hell.

According to the 13th-century Rule of Anchorites the proud are the Devil’s trumpeters, filling their lungs with the breath of Vain Glory, letting it escape in empty boasts, and making a loud noise to announce their own importance. They would do better to think of the trumpets of God, which shall sound, terrifyingly, at the four corners of the world, on the Day of Judgement. The same view is taken by a fifteenth-century Scots poet, William Dunbar, in The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins: In the company of Pride, we read, “many a boastful trumpeter danced with him, leaping through the flames”.

Innumerable medieval images serve as commentary on the direct links between the seductive powers of music and the weakness of the flesh. One of the most famous of these images is carved on a column from about the year 1100 in the church at Vézelay in France [image 3]. With a rebec hanging at his side, a minstrel is sounding a curiously-shaped flute, thus inciting a demon with flaming hair to fondle the breasts of a naked and apparently willing woman.

Churchmen were not allowed to receive minstrels in their households, a ban renewed by the Council of Paris in 1212. The mendicant orders who, like the minstrels, depended on a good welcome at the chateau gates, were bitterly opposed to this rival group. In their sermons, they affirmed once again that minstrels were the servants of the Devil and that whoever gave them presents was aiding the Devil’s work. This attitude was satirised in the fourteenth-century by the French poet Jean de Condé, who reminded his critics that King David had played the harp before Saul and even recommended, in his psalms, the use of musical instruments for the praise of God. The official church reply to this argument was to say that instruments are named in the psalms purely as allegorical expression, simple symbols of moral and non-musical virtues.

In spite of the bans and the traditional hostile attitudes of the church, numerous bishops and even Popes did nevertheless have in their service court as well as church musicians. In Avignon in the 14th-century, for example, Pope Clement VII in particular patronised secular composers and performers of love songs, some of whom also performed religious music.

The Devil rarely appears in church in person, for he detests the sound of bells. Church bells, baptised and engraved with a cross, have the power to expel demons, and also stop in their flight witches on their way to their Sabbath. Even today, in carnivals in the south of France and north of Spain, for example, dancers sound bells to keep the forces of evil at bay.

The music of Hell

What is the exact nature of the music practised in Hell? No biblical source describes it. For the medieval mind in general the reply was clear, based on a logic of duality. God is the opposite of the Devil; Heaven is the opposite of Hell; thus the music of Hell must be the opposite of heavenly music. Innumerable images in medieval manuscripts show us this opposition between celestial music—in general consisting of angelic song accompanied on the harp or on stringed instruments—and infernal music, most often noisy, played on shawms, drums, and trumpets.

For some, it is true, Hell is characterised by total and glacial silence, or else the air is so thick than no sound could travel in it. However these realms of silence are exceptional. As a rule, Hell is full of noise. Or even worse, according to G.B. Shaw, a music critic as well as a dramatist: “Hell is full of amateur musicians”!

One is struck above all by the shouting and groaning. According to a hymn of the ninth century:

The light of the dawn glows;
Heaven resounds with praises;
The world overflows with joy;
Hell shouts and groans.

When a sinner dies, if there are no extenuating circumstances, if he benefits neither from the protection of the Virgin, nor from the Grace of God, then he is dragged to Hell by devils. Even this painful journey may be accompanied by music, as we can tell from a curious picture dating from the end of the thirteenth century and found in the margin of a Bible from the Abbey of Saint-Bertin in northern France [image 4]. A small horned demon plays the bagpipes and leads a wagon loaded with souls, including a king and a bishop. An angel sounds his great trumpet, but more to announce the Day of Judgement than engage in musical competition.

That the forces of evil may on occasion prevail over heavenly music is shown in an unusual image in an Italian manuscript of about 1355 [image 5]. The text, by Domenico Lenzi, is entitled Il Baidaiolo and concerns the distribution of grain in Florence at a time of famine. In the sky three broken trumpets are abandoned by the angel of the Lord, who represents Prosperity and has been expelled by the black Demon of Famine. On the tomb of King Dagobert, at Saint-Denis, and which dates from about 1265, one can see the King’s soul transported by demons in a boat, to the sound of trumpet and drum. At the gates of Hell the terrified lost souls are welcomed by yet more fanfares, yet more drum-rolls. At Wenhaston, on the Suffolk coast in England, an immense 15th-century painting on wood panels depicts the Last Judgement, with a particularly malevolent demon playing a serpent or an “S”-shaped trumpet perched on the nose above the gaping mouth of Hell [image 6]. In the very depths of the abyss, music may serve as a means of torture, to increase the agony of the damned. Often this consists of a noisy accompaniment, on a bagpipe for instance. The noise is to encourage the executioners and frighten the lost souls. Flames frequently emerge from the bell of a trumpet, fanned by some terrible demon to reduce his victim to ashes! But Hell may reserve a few surprises. In a strange illumination devised by Robinet Testard for a famous manuscript of the allegorical romance of the Echecs amoureux towards the end of the 15th century, the music of Pluto and Proserpine does not seem to correspond to the usual tastes of Satan or Lucifer [image 7]. The aged couple, with the three-headed dog Cerberus docile at their feet, are listening to what is apparently a sophisticated concert, played by two elegant ladies on harp and bowed fiddle. In the background to the left three demons in red, each playing the harp, look almost like courtiers. But on the right, we see that the music is still an accompaniment to the traditional tortures of Hell. In a most surprising German text, a 16th-century Passion Play in medieval tradition, Lucifer asks a former stone mason to build a dance hall in Hell, so that he may better receive his guests:

Since you are such a great Master,
Then build me a Hall in the embers:
There we would dance and leap;
Let there be music in Hell!

In general, when the great lords of Hell turn their hands to music the results are catastrophic. In the Mystery of the Passion by Arnoul Greban for instance, dating from the middle of the 15th-century, we witness the futile attempts of the diabolic host to realise a polyphonic musical performance to be presented before Lucifer. Each one takes a part, and even the three-headed Cerberus accompanies them, “God knows how”, as the text has it. The result is so utterly dissonant that Lucifer has to stop his ears, for he can bear no more!

A disturbing painting by Alberegno, a 14th-century Italian artist, shows a choir not of devils, but of the dead, directed by the Devil in the form of a skeleton [image 8]. There is often little distinction to be made in the medieval mind between the Devil and death. Here they are apparently chanting some parody of the liturgy; the skeletal singers on the left of the picture are surrounded by the flames of Hell.

The dance of death

For others the Devil’s music is sweet, disturbing, mysterious, floating on the breeze to seduce the mind

We have noted the Devil’s interest in dance, either for his own entertainment and that of his “guests”, or as a means to entice people into sin.

Since prehistoric times, in the oldest civilisations and still in certain civilisations even today, magicians or witch doctors dance wearing masks representing animals or demons. This is the origin of the many representations of animal musicians in the margins of manuscripts or carved in stone during the Middle Ages. These animals, representatives of the Devil, by their music lead people into sin and perdition. Little by little in the course of the Middle Ages, these animals were replaced by demons and devils. The idea of the dance of death is combined with that of the dancing condemned by the church in numerous images. The message is clear. Sinners dance with the Devil. A church council held in Paris in 1212 determined that it was more sinful to dance than to plough fields on a Sunday. The 7th-century Spanish encyclopaedist Isidore of Seville observed that “Musica movet affectus” (Music lights up carnal desire).

Nevertheless, despite so many terrible warnings, dancing was one of the principal forms of entertainment in the Middle Ages, at all levels of society, from court to peasant. Even clerics and monks, it seems, sometimes gave into temptation and took part in the dance. A moralising poem from Brittany warns women about these monks:

What terrible sins they commit
By frequenting monks, whoever they
may be,
Dancing with them in the circle...

In the 13th century Jacques de Vi-try observes in a sermon that women who lead dances wear at their neck a little bell given by the Devil, who follows them with his gaze. According to this preacher, the dance is a circle, at the centre of which is the Devil himself. The circle turned always to the left (in sinistrum), it was said, towards Hell, which proved that the dance was inspired by the Devil. The higher one leapt in dancing, the lower one would sink into the abyss of Hell; the more one took pleasure in the sound of the instruments, the more one would lament in the hereafter. Holding each other by the hand and by the arm was to form a chain allowing the Devil to lead the dancers into the pit. The more one made oneself beautiful for the dance, the more one would one day be black and ugly, like a demon. The idea of dancers being attacked by demons is illustrated by a remarkable 15th-century painting on wood from Bar-sur-Loup in southern France [image 9]. According to a local tradition, a lord arranged a ball in the time of Lent, the dancers thus becoming an easy prey were all attacked by little black devils—one can see them on the dancers’ heads or at their throats— and then they were all cast down into Hell through a gaping hole which opened up in the floor. The figure of Death is present also, shooting his arrows. The scene is thus associated with the tradition of the dance of death. The painting is accompanied by a text in Provençal, inscribed beneath, and which addresses all sinners:

E vous ballas souven e mena folla
dansa
E fates autres mals ave grant
seguransa...
...E puis vous ballerias en la terribla dansa
Laqual s’apella ben perpetual
cremansa...

[And you dance often a dance
foolishly
And commit other sins, thinking
yourself safe...
...And then you shall dance that
terrible dance
Which is called eternal cremation...]

The most celebrated story of this kind, and which takes us very close to one thousand years ago, concerns the German town of Kolbijk, in Saxony. According to several sources, as the preacher was about to celebrate Mass in the church of Saint Magnus in the year 1012, a certain Otbert, together with eighteen companions (fifteen men and three women), started dancing outside in the cemetery adjoining the church. They made so much noise with their secular songs that they distracted the preacher, who even repeated part of a song text as he stood at the altar! He went out of the church and asked the dancers to stop, but they would not listen to him. And so he pronounced a curse, calling on God and Saint Magnus to force the sinners to carry on singing and dancing for a year. And this came to pass. The preacher’s daughter was one of the dancers and when her son seized her by the arm, the arm broke off from her body, without a drop of blood being spilled. She remained with the group, singing and dancing without rest, all year long. Rain did not fall on them; they suffered neither from heat nor cold, hunger nor thirst. Their clothes and shoes did not wear out, and they carried on singing like mad persons. They sank into the ground up to their knees, then up to their thighs. At the end of a year, they were freed by the Bishop of Cologne. The priest’s daughter and two others died at once. The others slept for three days and nights. Some died, others having repented sincerely became famous.

The Middle Ages give us a number of incidents of this kind from all over Europe: frantic, demented dancing of groups of people, often in cemeteries, often at the time of solstice. At the time there was no doubt in people’s minds that this dancing was inspired by the Devil. Modern medical opinion provides other explanations, including that of “vegetal intoxication”. We might add, nevertheless, that aggressive modern popular music (inspired by the Devil?) seems sometimes to produce these same delirious effects!

Tartini, Paganini, Stravinsky

If diabolic musicians are sometimes sent into the world to further the cause of evil, the traffic is in two directions, even though the number of musicians who have voluntarily descended into Hell must certainly be limited. We might recall the satirical passage in the thirteenth-century French fabliau of Aucassin et Nicolette, where the hero (or rather the anti-hero) declares that rather than go to Heaven he would go to Hell, since that is where one finds valiant men at arms, amorous ladies, minstrels and harp-players.

The most famous example of a musician who deliberately made the journey into the Underworld is, of course, that of Orpheus. His reputation as an incomparable virtuoso, and the story of his quest to retrieve his wife Euridice from the realm of the dead inspired countless poets and composers. Guillaume de Machaut, the greatest poet and musician of fourteenth-century France, tells his adventure:

He took his harp and tuned it well,
And went into the valley of horror,
Nor did he halt until he came to the
door
Of Hell: there he lamented greatly
For his love whom he had lost.
There he played on the harp most
sweetly
The Mortal Lay, at the gate of Hell.

All gates, all doors, all obstacles fall by the power of the music of Orpheus. Even the devils and demons of Hell, we find, can be affected by music of great quality. The most celebrated musician reputed to be in league with the Devil, if not the Devil incarnate, is of course the 19-century violinist, Niccolò Paganini. The legend of Paganini was however itself based on that of Tartini, who in 1713 had composed his famous Violin Sonata, The Devil’s Trill, purportedly after the Devil had dictated the music to him in a dream. However, we might well trace back to the Middle Ages this fear of and fascination with musicians of exceptional talent. A German churchman, for instance, recites the story of how a certain cleric sang with such melodious perfection that he awoke the suspicions of a Saint, who recognised the voice of a demon. After exorcism, the demon was expelled, only a corpse being left.

In the folklore of many countries, the Devil is particularly associated with the violin, and this association has given rise to numerous tales and musical compositions—one need think no further than Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale. The Devil and his demons are however capable of playing many instruments, including some of their own invention. They may take many forms, including those of the diabolic skeletons who lead the dance of death. Most interesting, though, for the history of the demonic violinist is the large number of stringed instruments associated with animals of various kinds, animals who in this context symbolise sin and lust. The widespread image of an ass attempting to play the harp is a notable example [image 10].

From animals, representatives of the Devil and of his temptations, it is a short step to demons, then to horned devils, and then to human musicians. But according to the church they remain the Devil incarnate, associated with lascivious dance, above all in biblical imagery as the accompaniment to the infamous dance of Salome [image 11].

Later history

The later history of the Devil’s music is rich and varied, whether we think of 17-century descriptions of trials for witchcraft and the witches’ Sabbath, or of grand opera in the 19th-century, when the Devil tends to become a comic figure, especially in Parisian vaudeville. But this comic aspect of the Devil’s character, as we have seen, had been anticipated in the drama of the Middle Ages. The story of Faust and his temptation by the Devil, of medieval origin, was of course a particular success, and is known in more than sixty different operatic versions in addition to inspiring compositions by composers such as Schumann, Wagner, and Berlioz. Franz Liszt, another virtuoso sometimes considered as demoniac, left us four dazzling piano solos entitled Mephisto Waltz as well as his Faust Symphony. The sinister side of the Devil has, of course, made a comeback in the twentieth century, in film, television and horror video, and especially in certain violent manifestations of popular music associated with Satanic rites!

It is a surprising fact that today the music of the Devil is as omnipresent—and perhaps as dangerous—as it was a thousand years ago—and indeed a thousand years before that! The Devil, it seems, is present, in all times and in all places [image 12]. He may be terrifying, but at the same time he fascinates!