The orchestra of to-day is the outcome of a long series of developments. In a general manner it may be said that the first combinations of instruments were without special purpose. The reader should bear in mind that for several centuries the whole labor of artistic composers was directed toward the production of unaccompanied church music. The centuries preceding the seventeenth produced little, if any, purely instrumental music. There were some compositions for clavichord, one of the precursors of the piano, and many for the organ; but these were wholly modelled on the great contrapuntal choral works of the church. The style was similar, and the method of development of musical ideas was the same.

When these old composers first wrote for small combinations of instruments, they produced works which could be sung just as readily as they could be played; and, indeed, it was not uncommon for them to write over their compositions, “Da cantare e sonare”—“to sing or to play.” When the thing was sung it was “cantata,” and when it was played it was “sonata.” But these early “sonatas” were in no respect like those of Beethoven.

The manner of composing for the orchestra naturally developed side by side with an appreciation of the true functions and relations of the various instruments. It is impossible to separate the two processes. Consider that composers had for centuries written only for the human voice heard in masses, and you will readily perceive that it must have taken some time for them to discover that melodic ideas suitable for singing were not always adapted to the utterance of instruments. After the discovery of that fact there would necessarily follow a realization that the method of developing musical ideas in compositions for voices was not the best one for instrumental writing. And then would come also a perception of the fact that certain melodic ideas were best suited to certain instruments; that what a horn could utter most eloquently, was enfeebled if intrusted to an oboe, and that a thought which was poetic in the pallid, moonlight accents of the flute, became vulgar if pealed out by a trombone.

Modern orchestration owes the kaleidoscopic glories of its instrumental coloring to the mastery which composers have attained over the characteristics of the various instruments. One effect of the long series of experiments made by their predecessors was the establishment of the constitution of the orchestra itself, as well as of the methods of writing for it. As composers came to understand better the nature of each individual instrument, they also acquired a certainty as to the proper place of each in the general scheme. Those which were unnecessary or feeble were set aside, and the inevitable selection and survival of the fittest followed.

It is very difficult, indeed, to ascertain the dates at which the various instruments made their appearance in the orchestra, or to determine by whom each was introduced. Frequently an instrument was employed in some now forgotten composition, and then laid aside for a time before it came to be habitually used. The works of the great composers do not afford safe guidance in this matter, for it was often some obscure writer who first perceived the true value of an instrument. Yet it is possible to trace the general growth of the orchestra, and this is really the most important thing to do.

In the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries the forerunners of many of the instruments of the modern orchestra were in use in Europe. The early forms of the instruments of the viol family were employed and the bassoon, schalmei (ancestor of the clarinet), horns, trumpets, and kettle-drums are mentioned and illustrated in some of the early books. The harp, of course, was known wherever the troubadour or the gleeman travelled, and that was all over Europe. But there was no system of combining these instruments in any manner that could possibly be recognized as leading toward our orchestra. A troubadour used a harp or a viol to accompany his song. The nobleman carried a hunting horn of brass—the forerunner of the present French horn—and the noble lady went to the chase with a silver horn of smaller size. Drummers and trumpeters found occupation in military organizations, and the town piper sounded the Christmas chorale from the church-tower. The banquets of the nobles were enlivened by instrumental music, but of its artistic nature we cannot form any satisfying conception. The instruments were simply those that chanced to be at hand, and they must have played together in a very rude and elementary style, for we know that prior to the beginning of the seventeenth century no one wrote for an orchestra of any kind.

The first compositions for groups of instruments resembled our chamber music rather than our orchestral compositions. It is the desire of the writer to adhere as closely as possible to the story of the orchestra pure and simple, so nothing need be said here about the instruments employed in these early works. The modern orchestra really began to take shape toward the end of the sixteenth century in pieces of dramatic form, the precursors of the modern opera. In 1565 Striggio and Corteccia scored their intermezze (light plays with much music) for 2 gravicembali (embryo pianos), 4 violins, half-a-dozen different sizes of lutes and lyres, half-a-dozen flutes and flageolets, 3 violas of different registers, 4 cornets, of different powers, 4 trombones, and several minor instruments. The fatal defect of this orchestra was its deficiency in stringed instruments played with a bow, and its large force of brass. It must have been painfully weak in the bass and extremely poor in sustaining power. But as no system of instrumentation had begun to appear at this time, its playing must have been of the most rudimentary kind. As an accompaniment for voices, if it was ever used all at once, it was probably both thin and noisy.

Jacopo Peri, in his “Eurydice” (1600), the first opera performed in public, employed an orchestra consisting of a harpsichord, a lute, a theorbo (a kind of large lute), a large lyre, and three flutes. But there was little, if anything, in his work which influenced his successors. He used his instruments merely to supply the simplest kind of chord accompaniment to a primitive species of dramatic recitative. Emilio del Cavaliere in the same year produced his oratorio “La Rappresentazione dell’ Anima e Corpo,” and his orchestra consisted of a double lyre, a harpsichord, a bass lute, and two flutes. One interesting fact about this orchestra is that it was concealed, like that at Bayreuth. But the instruments were not used as a modern composer would have employed even so simple an assembly. Cavaliere, for instance, recommended that a violin should play in unison with the soprano voice throughout the work.

The foundation of the modern orchestra may fairly be attributed to Claudio Monteverde, born at Cremona, 1568, died in Venice, 1643. He was distinctively an operatic writer, and it was in the search after dramatic effects that he discovered the relative values of some of the important instruments, and invented some of the most familiar orchestral devices. In his “Orfeo,” produced in 1608, he employed the following list of instruments: 2 harpsichords, 2 bass viols, 10 tenor viols, 1 double harp, “2 little French violins,” 2 large guitars, 2 organs of wood, 2 viole di gamba, 1 regal, 4 trombones, 2 cornets, 1 octave flute, 1 clarion, and 3 trumpets with mutes.

The array of brass in this orchestra is formidable, but we must remember that Monteverde did not use it as a modern writer would. The system of combination which has been developed had hardly begun in his day, and most of “Orfeo” is accompanied by a simple figured bass, so that we are left to infer that the orchestral performers played very much as they pleased through many pages of the work.

The “two little French violins” were undoubtedly such violins as we know to-day, and this is generally regarded as their first appearance in the orchestra; for the four violins enumerated in the intermezzo orchestra of 1565 were most probably members of the old viol family, and not such instruments as we now call violins. To be sure, Monteverde’s violins played a very small part, but even that master himself learned something from experience in their use, for in later works we find him depending more and more upon his bowed instruments. The title “French” should not be misleading. The first of the famous violin makers was Gasparo di Salo (1542-1610), the founder of the Brescian school. Brescia is in Lombardy, which province was continually in the throes of French invasion. That may easily account for the term “French” as applied to these violins.

It was in his “Tancredi e Clorinda,” produced in 1624, that Monteverde introduced many novel effects, showing that he had begun to appreciate the expressive powers of his instruments. One of these was the tremolo for bowed instruments. It is said that this passage “so astonished the performers that at first they refused to play it.” In the scene of the combat in the opera, the composer, using three violas and a double-bass, wrote a descriptive accompaniment to the recitative. Rhythmic figures, syncopations, alternating scales, as well as the tremolo and the pizzicato, were employed in this, the first independent dramatic orchestration of which we have any record. The real significance of the work lies in the fact that Monteverde here opened up the realm of special instrumental effects, as distinguished from vocal ones, and also indicated the fundamental value of the stringed instruments played with bows.

This truth having been acquired, and the purely military value of trumpets and drums being already known, it was inevitable that composers should move gradually but slowly toward the establishment of the string and brass choirs of the modern orchestra. The wood-wind came to its position more slowly, chiefly because of the rude and difficult system of fingering, which made the instruments troublesome to learn. The value of their tonal differences was not perceived at an early date, and indeed it was not until near the middle of the eighteenth century that any direct attempts at tone-coloring were made.

The establishment of the string quartet was really the first vital step toward the arrangement of the orchestra of to-day, and this step was the direct result of Monteverde’s experiments. For a time there was a tolerable system in which viols of various kinds were used. The thorough-bass was played by the deeper-toned viols, and the harpsichord filled out the harmonies. It must be remembered that at the end of the sixteenth century and beginning of the seventeenth, there were two kinds of viola, the viola da gamba (held between the knees), and the viola da braccia (held at the shoulder), and there were a dozen or more species of these two kinds. But the study of the special characters of instruments led to the selection for permanent use of the best of these. The bass viol became our double-bass; the tenor viola da gamba, the violoncello; the tenor viola da braccia, the viola, and so on. The violin began to make known its value, and after that progress was steady.

In 1649 Cavalli, in his opera “Giasone,” wrote an accompaniment for two violins and a bass in a style which endured for half a century. Only a few years now elapsed before the modern string quartet, in its primitive form, found its way into the orchestra. Alessandro Scarlatti, born in 1659, was one of the great geniuses of Italy, and founded that style of opera of which Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini were the most popular modern exponents. He enlarged and improved almost every department of operatic writing, and contributed much to the development of the orchestral part.

In its general features his orchestra was not unlike that of to-day. Violins, violas, and basses were its foundation, but their employment was naturally crude. The ’celli always played in unison with the basses, and so, for the most part, did the violas; but there were many instances in which he used his violas independently and even in two parts. The oboe was the principal wind-instrument, while the bassoons were used to strengthen the bass and were seldom heard alone. Flutes were introduced for their special character.[2] Scarlatti’s use of violas independent of the basses and in real parts led him toward the true distribution of the string quartet, and in several of his operas we find him writing accompaniments for two violins, viola, and bass in a style which has been employed frequently by all subsequent composers.

It is not possible to say that Scarlatti invented this style, for it must have been the result of long experimenting; but he saw its superiority and used it so systematically that it was copied by his successors together with other salient features of his style. The chief importance of this manner of writing was its establishment of the proper distribution of the four notes of a chord among the four instruments. The balance and solidity of tone thus gained was of vital importance to the development of orchestral writing, and of the orchestra itself. Scarlatti gave the treble part to the first violin, the alto to the second, the tenor to the viola, and the bass to the bass; and that is what composers have done ever since. About the same time we find Alessandro Stradella writing, in a manner afterward employed in their concerti grossi by Bach and Handel, for two solo violins and a solo violoncello, with an accompaniment of violins, violas, and basses.

In France the most important musician of the period was Jean Baptiste Lully (1633-87), who was also a composer of operas. His orchestra was less elastic than Scarlatti’s, yet it was of a type which survived for many years. Its foundation was a body of strings, violins playing the upper parts, and viols of different registers the middle and lower parts. These were supported by a harpsichord, to which was given a figured-bass part. Trumpets, flutes, and oboes were employed to increase the volume of tone and to produce certain obvious color-effects. For example, trumpets were heard in martial passages and oboes in pastoral scenes. Tympani came into the orchestra at this time also. It cannot be said that Lully showed genius for orchestral writing, and for that reason his orchestra is an excellent example of the conventional arrangement of the day. The use of the harpsichord goes to show that composers of that time did not know how to get a full and sonorous harmony out of the purely orchestral instruments, and their attempts to supply the deficiency with the tinkling percussive notes of the keyed instrument were foredoomed to failure.

Giovanni Legrenzi, a famous Venetian composer (1625-90), employed what looked like a fairly rational orchestra. It consisted of 19 violins, 2 violas, 2 viole di gamba, 4 large lutes, 2 cornets, 1 bassoon, and 3 trombones. The chief shortcoming of this orchestra, aside from its deficiency in wood-wind, is its want of stringed basses. A most important contributor to the development of the orchestra at this period was Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713). He was a great violinist, and, in composing for the violin as a solo and chamber-music instrument, he explored its resources and illustrated its relation to other instruments. Some of his important works were: “Twelve Sonatas for Two Violins and Violoncello, with Bass for the Organ” (Rome, 1683), “Twelve Chamber Sonatas for Two Violins, Violoncello, and Violone, or Cembalo” (Rome, 1685), and “Concerti Grossi,” for two solo violins and solo violoncello, with accompaniment for additional instruments (1712). In these works Corelli did much to point the way toward modern chamber music and its forms, and in doing so contributed directly toward that understanding of the relative powers and limits of the members of the string quartet without which good orchestral writing is impossible.

We have now reached the beginning of the eighteenth century. The typical orchestra of the time consisted of strings, distributed in the fashion set by A. Scarlatti, but not always with a correct adjustment of the number of each kind, two pairs of wind-instruments, and the harpsichord as the impotent agent to fill out the harmonies. It was at this period that two great composers arose and exerted an influence which affected the entire subsequent development of music. These composers were George Frederick Handel (1685-1759) and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Both of these writers made improvements in the orchestra and in orchestral music. Something has already been said about their methods of writing for the orchestra, but the reader will pardon some repetition of facts which throw light on the constitution of the orchestral body under these composers. Bach was essentially a polyphonic writer, and he treated his orchestral instruments as if they were voices. Each one had an essentially melodic part to sing, and the beautiful interweaving of these voice parts constitutes one of the never-ending charms of the great master’s music. He contrasted with this style passages of extreme simplicity, in which the strings and the keyed instrument—organ or clavier—were used.

Handel, on the other hand, was chiefly a composer of operas and oratorios, and his orchestral style was developed to a considerable extent in the direction of building up huge climaxes by means of mass effects. It may be said, therefore, with some reservation, yet with general correctness, that Bach’s orchestral style has afforded later composers a model for solo effects in the orchestra, while for solidity and sonority of the entire instrumental body Handel has been mainly followed. One of the forms in which Bach exercised his genius was the Concerto Grosso, in which two or three solo instruments, instead of one, are heard with orchestral accompaniment. In 1721 Bach wrote six of these works, known as the Brandenburg Concertos. Only one of these, the first, would be regarded as an orchestral work in our time. The others belong rather to the department of chamber music, though by increasing the number of instruments in each part they may be made to have an orchestral effect. The first concerto, however, was written for the string quartet, aided by the double-bass and the violino piccolo (a little violin with a high compass), two horns, two oboes, bassoon, and harpsichord. These instruments were employed in three groups: horns, wood, and strings; but one must remember that Bach’s polyphonic method of using his wind-instruments was altogether different from the manner in which the same instruments are now employed.

In his church music Bach combined the orchestra and the organ. As Dr. Spitta points out in his biography of Bach, the organ in these works occupied a position similar to that of the string quartet in the modern orchestra. “Just as the wind-instruments group themselves round this as a centre,” he says, “so all the instruments grouped themselves round the organ. The relations were different, however, in this way: that the organ remained always in the background, its effect being merely that of power, and that on this background the other instruments were seen not so much as solo instruments, but rather as choric groups. One of these groups was the quartet of strings, another the oboes and bassoon, a third the cornet and trombones, and a fourth the trumpets (or sometimes horns) and the drums.” Bach’s method of writing for the orchestra did not influence his immediate successors very greatly, for the reason that his retired life and modest position prevented his works from becoming generally known until long after his death. Sir John Hawkins’s “History of Music,” published in England in 1776, contains only half a page about Bach, communicated to the author by one of Bach’s sons, a resident of London.

Handel, on the other hand, enjoyed a world-wide fame during his life, and his works were studied by musicians far and near. Handel employed, though very rarely all at once, all the instruments used in the modern orchestra except the clarinet. He approached more nearly than Bach to the modern methods of orchestral contrast in massive effects of instrumental color, yet he did not reach the fundamental principles on which the distribution of the instruments in the orchestra of to-day rest. Perhaps the most important difference is to be found in the large number of wind-instruments employed by Handel, who used them frequently in masses simply to reinforce the strings. The number of oboes and bassoons, for instance, was much larger in Handel’s orchestra than in a modern band. This was due partly to the inferior power of the instruments of his time, but equally to the different method of his scoring. The brass instruments were used by both Bach and Handel differently from the manner in which modern composers employ them. The reader will recall that they wrote trumpet parts of such high compass that players of to-day cannot perform them. In conclusion, as to Bach and Handel it should be noted that their orchestration is rarely heard. Most of their great works, such as the “St. Matthew Passion” and “The Messiah,” are performed now with modern orchestral arrangements, not according to the original scores.