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The year 1457 marks the first eyewitness account of large kettledrums, or timpani, in Western Europe, on the occasion of the entrance into France of a large envoy sent by the young Hungarian King Ladislas to ask King Charles VII for his daughter Madeleine's hand in marriage. This story is mentioned in most historical accounts of kettledrums. James Blades and Edmund Bowles report in Grove Music Online that "the size and sound of these instruments prompted a Father BenoÎt to say that he had never before seen such drums 'like large cauldrons . . . carried on horseback.' "1
As it happens, Father BenoÎt could not have seen this himself. BenoÎt Picard (1663-1720), a Capuchin monk, was born over two hundred years later, and he recounted this story in his L'origine de la très illustre maison de Lorraine, published in Toul, France, in 1704. Over time his identity became conflated with that of an archbishop from either an Eastern European diocese or from Cologne. This article attempts to sort out the inconsistencies in accounts of this episode and adds a further piece of evidence suggesting that large kettledrums may have been used in Western Europe almost a century earlier than 1457.
The First Eyewitness Account of Kettledrums in Western Europe
One of the earliest references to BenoÎt's L'origine can be found in Gabriel Daniel's Histoire de la Milice françoise, published in 1724 (fig. 1):
It appears from l'Histoire de Lorraine by Father BenoÎt, a Capuchin, that this instrument was in use in Hungary in the year 1457, but completely unknown in Lorraine. In speaking of a magnificent embassy that Ladislas, king of Hungary, sent to France to request the hand of Mademoiselle Madeleine, daughter of Charles VII, in marriage, he cites an old chronicle concerning the entry of the archbishop of Colossa, leader of the embassy, into Nancy,
where it is said: "we have never seen such drums like big cauldrons, which were carried on the horses."2
The phrase concerning the kettledrum is quoted directly from BenoÎt's book, which apparently quoted it from the ancienne Chronique ("old chronicle"). BenoÎt includes further details that Daniel omits (fig. 2):
The chronicle M.S. de Lorraine states that the delegation that Ladislas sent to France arrived at Nancy...