Ever since the thirteenth century, a one-man pipe and drum ensemble called pipe and tabor (pronounced tabber
by purists) had been in use, first in northern Spain and southern France, and spreading in the next century until by the Renaissance it covered most of Europe: a sort of layman's precursor of the fife and drum combinations. Its chief function, that of playing for dances, was noted by
Jean de Gerson
(d. 1429), who described it as a two- or three-holed...
