I looked for a thread to post my worldbuilding essay about music in, and there wasn't one---so while I'm beginning this one with "music in the Shine and Wild Empire," feel free to chime in with how music is used and viewed in your world too.

Music is an essential part of daily life in the Shine and Wild Empire, the main country with which my Shine Cycle is concerned. In major cities, hardly anywhere is out of earshot of at least one street musician. Concerts are nearly always well-attended. And making music in groups is a common pastime, even for the rankest of amateurs—hardly anyone is so poor as to not own at least one good-quality musical instrument, at least after the first hints of industrialization began, and even those too poor to own instruments have their voices.

Recorded music, and the devices to play it, has been available in the Empire since less than a decade after the arrival of the Chosen (a group of people who arrived en masse in---according to the current revision of the history---the year 110), but for some reason never became popular; neither did radio, television, or any equivalent technology as a pastime. Perhaps some of this is due to the fact that a bard (a mage whose primary tool for working in the Power is music), even untrained or unconscious of this effect, often sends a small thrill through her audience when she performs, but this tends not to come across when a performance is recorded.

But without our world’s system of recorded and telebroadcast music, how do musicians survive? A few are talented and lucky enough to make busking profitable. Composers can sell sheet music. Some musicians make do as in our world, touring and giving concerts in place after place. Some are independently wealthy, or make their living in some other way and perform as a hobby. But many rely on patronage, and it’s expected that those with a certain level of income employ musicians or other artists.

And all of this is ignoring the most consistent occasion for music: the Church. Nearly every service in nearly every denomination includes congregational singing of psalms, hymns, and choruses, and some churches even sing much of their liturgy. Most of the music is provided by amateurs, willingly volunteering their time and talent to lead the singing, help accompany the voices by playing an instrument, or compose new music, but if a somewhat affluent congregation includes an impoverished composer it may commission new liturgical music from him.

In the Empire, music is nearly inescapable.

In my current series, music is primarily associated with the elves, being haunting and poignant. The instruments used are more old-fashoined: lute, lyre, drum, trumpet. Nothing as modern as a violin or a piano. Since it's set in a medieval type world, there's no way to record music or play it back.

Trumpets are fairly advanced instruments, requiring precision metal tubing, valves, etc. (See also Lloyd Biggle's SF novel The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets.) How about something like a hammered dulcimer (or the variants played in other parts of the world, such as the cimbalom, the santur, the hackbrett, etc.) or a simpler bowed instrument?

Modern-day trumpets are advanced, but I was thinking more along the lines of the quintessential trumpet that one imagines when thinking of the middle-ages: long, slender, no valves. Maybe they were referred to as horns then, but I have horns (think Boromir) as well as trumpets just to avoid confusion.

Dulcimers and bowed instruments? Those I hadn't thought of. Really, I haven't focused too much on the musical aspects of my work. Just another indication that I need to delve deeper into worldbuilding before I actually begin writing!

Well ... I don't tend to think of "trumpets" in the Middle Ages at all. (Partly, when I have my worldbuilding hat on, I hardly ever think of our world's medieval period; my world's initial culture is fairly medieval, but includes bits from all over.)

Fair enough ... but when talking about our world's history, I tend to think of various kinds of horns: ram's horn (i.e. shofar) in ancient Hebrew worship, Alpenhorn, etc.


Dulcimers are something I would think of because my dad plays the hammered dulcimer and my mom the lap dulcimer. And bowed instruments came to mind because you mentioned violins as too advanced ... but it seems to me that they're complicated mainly by the amount of detail required to fit the modern specification, rather than by the notion of bowed strings over a soundbox. The bowed psaltery, while actually invented in the 19th or 20th century (I think), could have been invented anytime after the principles behind the viol family were discovered.

Not necessarily ... will this ever come up? It's entirely possible to spend too much time delving into corners of the world that have nothing to do with the story, and never actually write the story. This is just an interesting cultural detail (and you'll note that my post about music in my world focused more on the culture than the specific instruments).