Perhaps, if we could hear the gentlemen represented on page 160 draw his bow, we should think his tone very thin and we might not be at all enthusiastic over the style of his playing; but we must remember our ears hear very differently from those that listened to Bocan and Constantin and have been educated along other lines. But certainly the contemporaries of the “Twenty-Four Violins” considered that they were supreme artists. And literature is full of allusions to them.

We also know that Guillaume Dumanoir was first a member and than conductor of the “Twenty-Four Violins.”

Sometimes the King sent his “Twenty-Four Violins” to play for his great princes and favorite courtiers. We learn from a contemporary poem that at a superb dinner given by Cardinal Mazarin in 1660, “the feast was fine, joy universal and the ‘Twenty-Four Violins’ played while we ate melons, pâtés, tarts, biscuit and dishes of delicious fruit piled up like obelisks. We enjoyed ourselves immensely while they played a thousand beautiful airs.”

There was hardly a great gentleman who did not have his little band of violins, or his string-quartet, to entertain his friends and to amuse himself. Those who could not afford to support an Orchestra, or a quartet, would hire one on occasions.

There were many associations of musicians in the big cities like Paris and London (survivals of the old minstrel guilds) and in small towns throughout Europe where there were violinists, clavecinists, organists, flute-players and a few players of old instruments—like the lute—so fast becoming obsolete—ready to accept engagements. Such men carried the growing taste for instrumental music, and the latest compositions as well, to remote towns and country-houses. They were really preparing the ground for us to-day, though they did not know it.

At this period Jean-Baptiste Lully comes on the centre of the stage.

When we think of the magnificent reign of Louis XIV—he of the long, curling wig, the hooked nose, the supercilious smile, the long robes and the high-heeled and diamond-buckled pumps—we think of the men who made his century so great. We think of the great artists, Lepautre and Bérain; we think of the architect, Mansart; we think of the great furniture-maker, Boulle; we think of the landscape-gardener, Lenôtre; we think of the great ministers, Condé and Colbert; we think of the great generals, Turenne and Fontenoy; we think of the story-writers, Perrault and La Fontaine; we think of the essayists, La Bruyère and Bossuet; we think of the dramatists, Racine and Molière; and we think of the musician, Jean-Baptiste Lully.

Jean-Baptiste Lully was not a Frenchman. His name was Lulli and he was born in Florence in 1632. He was of humble origin and was taught by an old Franciscan monk to play the guitar and to sing. Lulli was unusually clever. He attracted the attention of the Chevalier de Guise, who was visiting Italy; and this gentleman was so fascinated with him that he took him to France and handed him on to Mademoiselle de Montpensier, the daughter of Gaston d’Orléans, that eccentric person who is known in history as “La Grande Mademoiselle.”

La Grande Mademoiselle, like every other person of place and wealth, had her own Orchestra; and Lully (as his name was now written) was given a place in it as one of the violins, while the Comte de Nogent, who became interested in him, saw that he had lessons. La Grande Mademoiselle gave very brilliant ballets and concerts at the Tuileries; but when the Royal Army occupied Paris, she was banished to her old Château de Saint-Fargeau, which was quite far in the country. Lully went with the rest of the household; and when he was not playing in the Orchestra, or dancing in the ballet, he was employed as page. Some say, indeed, he even served in the kitchen.

Lully, full of tricks and mischief and fun, composed a satirical song on his mistress, La Grande Mademoiselle, who was a tempting subject for a young boy’s wit. But La Grande Mademoiselle heard the song; and she very naturally dismissed him from her household. But this disgrace did not affect Lully. In fact, it helped him in his career; for he very soon got a place in the Twenty-Four Violins,—and there he was in the King’s private band! And La Grande Mademoiselle had to see and hear him play very frequently.

La Grande Mademoiselle does not refer to Lully’s insolence in her Memoirs. Her version is as follows: “He did not want to stay in the country and asked for his dismissal. I gave it to him and he has since made his fortune, for he was a very great dancer.”

Lully was as clever as he was musically gifted. It was not long before he had charge of all the “King’s Music,” which consisted of the Chamber Music, the Chapel Music and the Grande Écurie (the Stable). The latter comprised the music for hunting and processions and out-of-door fêtes. The famous “Twenty-Four Violins” played at dinner, at the Court balls, and gave concerts for the Court, as we have seen.

In 1655 the King created a new Orchestra especially for Lully called the “Petits Violons.” At first it consisted of sixteen players, but soon it was increased to twenty-one. This Orchestra played at the Court balls, at the morning toilet (or lever) of the King, at the dinner (or grand couvert) and on various other occasions. Some persons thought it played even better than the “Twenty-Four.” Lully composed a great number of dances for it—sarabandes, gigues, chaconnes, etc., which delighted the King and his Court. Sometimes the two Orchestras played together under Lully’s guiding hand.

Jean-Baptiste Lully now became the most important musician in Europe. After a time he felt that the violin, which he played so well, was beneath his dignity, so he gave it up and devoted himself to the harpsichord. He staged and danced in ballets for the Court; wrote operas to the poetic libretti of Quinault and produced them with superb scenery; and he composed all the musical interludes for all of Molière’s plays!

He also played in several of Molière’s comedies. He took the part of the physician in Pourceaugnac and he played the comical Muphti in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.

Lully ruled like a king.

Lully was the King of Music, not only in France, but in all of Europe in those grand days when France stood at the head of all nations in wealth and power under her “Sun-King.”

One day in 1687, while conducting a Te Deum in honor of the King’s recovery from an illness, Lully, “the better to demonstrate his zeal,” the contemporary account relates, “he himself beat the time with the cane he used for this purpose, and he struck himself in the heat of action a blow upon the end of his foot. This caused a small blister.”[42] The quack doctor who was summoned was incompetent and Lully died from blood-poisoning. He left four houses in Paris and a large fortune.

His portraits, which represent him in the big flowing curls of the day—much like the King’s own wig—and with large heavy features, are said by contemporaries to flatter him.

Lully was an undoubted genius and he was always clever. We sometimes wonder if he did not know what he was doing when he wrote his satirical song on “Big Mademoiselle,” who had plenty of enemies ready to laugh at her expense.

Lully always knew how to attract attention to himself and he never seems to have made a mistake.

I think we may call him the first real conductor of an Orchestra. Certain it is that Lully was the first to gather together a virtuoso Orchestra and train it by methods that approach those of to-day.

Lully’s Orchestra is, therefore, of the greatest interest to us. So let us stop and examine it: “Lully got together the best Orchestra of his time in Europe. It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that he was the first man to train an Orchestra in France and that before him (accordingly to Perrault) musicians did not know how to play from score and had to learn their parts by heart. But he certainly did improve instrumental execution, especially with regard to the violin, and he created traditions in the conducting of Orchestras, which rapidly became classic and were followed in France and even served as a model in Europe. Among the many foreigners who came to Paris to study was an Alsatian, named Georges Muffat, who especially admired the perfect discipline and strict time of Lully’s Orchestra. He said that Lully’s method was characterized by trueness of tone, by smoothness and evenness of execution, by clean attack and by the way the bows of the whole Orchestra bit into the first chord, that famous ‘first stroke of the bow,’ as well as by the irresistible ‘go,’ the well-defined rhythm and the delightful combination of vigor and flexibility, of grace and vivacity. But of all these qualities, the best was the rhythm.”[43]

Robert Eitner called it an “incisive and expressive rhythm.” Others tell us that Lully thought quite as much of delicacy of expression; for there are many marks on his scores, such as “Play softly—almost without touching the notes” and “Do not take off the sordini until you are told to.”

Lully’s Orchestra showed off splendidly in his operas.

“The Orchestra had for its chief instruments: violins in five parts, which played the ritournelles, doubled the choruses and beautified the solos with their harmonies. In excited airs expressing quick passion, the voice was accompanied by two violins which played a very elaborate part and when the passion abated returned to their ordinary recitative. Flutes, usually straight flutes and flutes à bec, though sometimes ‘transverse,’ or ‘German,’ were much used by Lully. Sometimes they played in unison with other instruments. Sometimes they formed separate ‘concerts’ and sometimes they were combined with the trumpets and violins. The trumpets had a magnificent rôle. They played alone in three, or five, parts with the drums. Lully also employed oboes, bassoons, and instruments of percussion, and in his ballets he made a great use of the tambour de basque, (tambourine), castanets and drums. He also introduced bag-pipes, guitars and hunting-horns (in La Princesse d’Élide); the charcoal-burner’s whistle (in Acis); and, like the composer of Siegfried, he did not fear the sound of the forge and the noise of anvils (in Isis). The characteristic trait of the Orchestra (and one essentially French) is that Lully rarely employed it all at once. He divided his Orchestra into groups that have conversations with one another, or with the voices. This system puts lots of light into the picture, as it were, and the air circulates freely. Strangers were always struck by this.

“Lully’s Orchestra was large. It was carefully recruited and trained by him. The violins were extraordinary, especially in ‘the first stroke of the bow.’ People came from Italy, England and Germany to hear Lully’s Orchestra. Everybody admired his correctness, rhythm, the perfection of his ensemble; and, above all, the sweetness, preciseness and smoothness of his violins.”[44]

And now let us see what a contemporary has to say:

“Lully would have nothing but good instrumentalists. He tested them first by making them play Les songes funestes from Atys. It was a nimble hand that he demanded. After all, ease of execution was a reasonable qualification to require. He supervised all the rehearsals; and he had so nice an ear that from the far end of the theatre he could detect a violinist who played a wrong note. And he would run up to the man and say, ‘You did that. It is not in your part.’ The artists knew him and they tried to do their work well. The instrumentalists particularly never dared to embellish their parts, for he would not allow any more liberties from them than he would from the singers. He thought it far from proper that they should assume a greater knowledge than his own and add what notes they pleased to their tablature. If this happened he became angry and would make lively corrections. More than once he broke a violin on the back of a man who was not playing to his taste. But when the rehearsal was over, Lully would send for the man, pay him three times the value of his instrument and take him out to dine.”

This characteristic little picture well shows the methods of the conductor.

Now these were neither ordinary men, nor ordinary musicians, whom Lully was accustomed to strike with their instruments. Some of them were indeed famous in their art and friendships. It only proves how supreme Lully was that they would submit to his temper and rude treatment. Evidently it was a distinction to play in Lully’s Orchestra. So they put up with anything at rehearsals.

Take, for instance, Descoteaux, one of the most famous flute-players of the time. Descoteaux was a great friend of Boileau, Molière and La Fontaine. He lived to be very old, and Marais (the viola da gamba of Lully’s Orchestra) speaks of him in his Journal in 1723 as follows: “During the fêtes I saw Descoteaux, whom I thought was dead. It was he who carried the German flute to its highest point and who brought to perfection the pronunciation of words in singing according to the rules of grammar. The value of literature he understood better than anybody. He sang words very correctly. Descoteaux had the love of flowers to a supreme degree and he was one of the greatest amateur florists in Europe. He lives in the Luxembourg, where they have given him a little garden, which he cultivates himself. La Bruyère has not forgotten to include him in his Caractères and that fad of his for tulips, to which he gave names as he pleased. He wants to be a philosopher now and talk Descartes; but it is quite enough to be such a musician and such a florist.”

Thirty years before, when the tulip mania had spread from Holland throughout Europe, causing people to win and lose large sums—fortunes indeed—upon choice bulbs—and to spend time and money on the production of new species—(a fad so well described in Dumas’s novel of The Black Tulip), La Bruyère wrote of Descoteaux in De la Mode (1691). He did not mention Descoteaux by name; but everybody knew for whom the pen-portrait was intended. Descoteaux had his garden then in the faubourg Saint-Antoine.

Here is La Bruyère’s picture of Lully’s first flute: “The florist has a garden in a faubourg. He runs to it at break of day and he visits it before he goes to bed. We see him as if he were planted and had taken root in the middle of his tulips and before the Solitaire. He opens his eyes wide; he rubs his hands with delight; he goes closer to look at it; he kisses it; his heart swells with joy, for he thinks he has never seen it look so beautiful. Then he leaves it for the Orientale. From the Orientale, he goes to the Veuve (the widow); then he goes to the Drap d’or (Cloth of Gold); then he goes to Agathe; and then he goes back to the Solitaire, where he takes root again. There he stands or sits, rapt, and forgets all about his dinner. How beautiful her shading, her stripes, her satiny, oily skin! How lovely her chalice! He gazes upon her, admiring God and nature in her; and he would not give up that tulip bulb for a thousand écus. But he will be glad to give it away for nothing when tulips go out of fashion and pinks come in. This sensible man, who has a soul and a religion, as well as a fad, returns home fatigued but very contented; for he has seen his tulips!”

Descoteaux was a great virtuoso. So was Philbert, who was also a member of Lully’s Orchestra. Descoteaux and Philbert often played together; and they often played with Vizé, who was just as celebrated on the theorbo and guitar as they were on the flute.

Philbert was famous for his gayety, his wit and his talent for mimicry. He saw the ridiculous in everything and everybody; and he burlesqued everything and everybody to make his friends scream with laughter.

In his chapter on Des Femmes, La Bruyère touches him off under the name of Dracon. Addressing Lélie, he says: “But you have Dracon, the flute-player! No one else in his profession can puff out his cheeks so decently in blowing into an oboe, or a flageolet. The number of instruments that he can make talk is infinite! Pleasanter still, he can make children and young women laugh! Who can eat and drink more than Dracon at a single meal? Dracon enlivens a whole company, and he is always the last to get up!”

Poor Dracon had a sad love-story. A woman fell in love with him—not an unusual thing to happen with Philbert—but she poisoned her husband so that nothing might stand in the way of marrying him. At the last moment she confessed her crime; and she was hanged and burned in the old Place de Grève in Paris. Philbert was perfectly innocent; but he, doubtless, suffered terribly—poor fellow!

An artist’s life is not always a happy one!

Both Descoteaux and Philbert were great favorites of Louis XIV. As the Philidor and Hotteterre families were renowned for their skill on the flute, oboe and bassoon, some of them, undoubtedly, played in Lully’s Orchestra. These families were famous in musical Paris for generations.

One of the bassoons was La Bas. He married an opera-singer, named Mlle. Le Rochois. The marriage was somewhat unusual. Mr. Bassoon wrote his promise to marry the lady on the back of a card—the Queen of Spades (Pique Dame) and then he tried to get out of it; but the lady showed the Queen of Spades to Lully; and Lully made Mr. Bassoon keep his promise.

Conductors have many duties!

One of the first violins, Verdier, was also the husband of an opera-singer; but we do not know the story of his marriage.

Then there was Jean Baptiste Marchand, who played the lute and also the violin. He wrote such a fine Mass that it was performed in the noble old cathedral of Notre-Dame of Paris.

Then there was Teobaldo di Gatti, a native of Florence, who was so charmed with the “symphonies” in some of Lully’s operas that he had heard (and perhaps played in) that he went to Paris in 1676 especially to see Lully. As soon as he arrived, he hurried to call on the great composer and conductor and told him why he had taken the journey. Lully was highly flattered; and, after hearing him play, he recognized his ability and gave him a place in the Orchestra at once. And here Teobaldo, the basse de viol, played for fifty years! He died in 1727, playing in the Orchestra up to the last. Teobaldo was a very well-known figure in Paris; and everybody went to hear his opera, Scylla, when it was performed in Paris.

Perhaps the best musicians in all this Orchestra of virtuosi were the two violinists, Lalouette and Collasse, and the bass violist, Marais, whose snap-shot of a fellow-member is quoted on page 165. Each of these three artists became Lully’s assistant conductor.

Jean François Lalouette, the first of Lully’s conductors, was born in 1615. He studied the violin under Guy Leclerc (one of the Twenty-Four Violins) and began to play under Lully when he was only twenty. First he played among the violins; and then Lully made him his secretary and put him to writing recitatives. He also instrumented some of Lully’s operas. But when he boasted that he had composed the best parts of Lully’s opera of Isis, Lully discharged him. Lalouette then devoted himself to composition. Finally, he became maître de chapelle at Notre-Dame, Paris. He died in 1728. When Lalouette was dismissed in 1677, Lully gave his place to Pascal Collasse.

Collasse was born in Rheims in 1649. At an early age he was taken to Paris, where he became a chorister at St. Paul’s and a pupil of Lully. He was more fortunate than Lalouette, for he stayed with Lully until the latter’s death and completed his operas that were left unfinished.

Marin Marais was conductor at the same time as Collasse. Perhaps they alternated, perhaps there was so much to do that two were kept busy. It looks as if Lully only conducted when he wanted to—perhaps on a first performance of one of his operas. At any rate, Marais and Collasse worked together. Marais was a Parisian and was born in 1656. He sang in the choir of Sainte-Chapelle and took lessons on the basse de viole[45] with Sainte-Colombe. At the end of six months Sainte-Colombe, seeing that his pupil was likely to surpass him, told him that he could teach him nothing more. But this did not satisfy Marais; for he loved the basse de viole passionately and wanted to perfect himself by learning from this master. At that time Sainte-Colombe used to practise in his garden in a little shed he had built around a mulberry-tree where he could be undisturbed. Marais hid behind the shed and listened to his master practise some very difficult passages and bowings that Sainte-Colombe wished to keep for himself. This did not last long because Sainte-Colombe found it out. The next time he heard Marais he congratulated him on his progress. Moreover, one day when Marais was playing for a company of great distinction, Sainte-Colombe, who happened to be present, was asked what he thought of Marais. He replied that “there were always pupils who could surpass their master, but that nobody would ever be found who could surpass Marais.”

Marais became the best performer on the basse de viole of his time. It was Marais who gave the instrument a seventh string and it was he who wrapped the three lowest strings with wire. In 1685 he was soloist in the King’s Chamber Music and he also played in Lully’s Orchestra. Lully gave him lessons in composition. In 1686 he published a collection of pieces for the basse de viole. An Idylle Dramatique came out in the Mercure de Paris in 1693.

Marais wrote a great deal of music for the strings. “We know,” writes a contemporary, “the fecundity and beauty of the genius of this musician by the number of works that he composed. They are astounding in taste and variety. His great knowledge appears in all his works; but particularly in two pieces: one, in his fourth book called the Labyrinth, where, after having gone through various scales and touched on diverse dissonances, and marked his way by grave tones and then by lively and animated ones, describing the uncertainty of a man who is going through a labyrinth, he comes out happily in a graceful and natural Chaconne. But he astonished connoisseurs still more by a piece called the Scale—La Gamme—a symphonic composition which mounts insensibly through all the notes in the octave and then descends again with harmonious and beautiful melodies through all the musical scales.”[46]

Marais also wrote several operas, one of which, Alcyone (1706), had in it a storm that the people of the time thought perfectly terrific; for the drums rolled continually; the violins played on the highest string—the chanterelle; the oboes screamed; and the bass viols and bassoons added to the horrors in depicting the agitated sea and the whistling wind.

Many were shocked!

In 1725 Marais, very old, lived in a house in the rue de Lourcine and devoted himself to the cultivation of flowers. He also rented a room and gave lessons two or three times a week to talented pupils.

Marais died in 1728.

Then there was La Londe, who began life as a valet de chambre to the Maréchale de Grammont. He was very talented and became one of the best violinists in Europe. Then there was another violinist known as Baptiste. It is supposed that he was Baptiste Anet, a pupil of Corelli. We know of a few other names: Nicholas Baudry, dessus de violon; Julien Bernier, German flute; Bernard Alberty, theorbo; Jean Théobalde, basse de violon; and Jean Rabel, clavecin. There was also connected with the Orchestra Jean Fischer (born in Swabia in 1650), who came to Paris when very young and belonged to Lully’s orchestral family as a music-copyist.

An old document came to light in Paris several years ago that gave the pay-roll of Lully’s Orchestra. Here it is:

This shows that there were forty men in the Orchestra and that the average pay was 400 livres. We also learn that the clavecin player received 600 livres. The ten instruments that had the biggest salary were, of course, Lully’s pet Petits Violons.[47]

The Abbé Raguenet, in comparing the Italian and French Orchestras of the time, says: “Besides all the instruments they have in Italy, we still have the oboes, which, with their equally soft and piercing tones have such advantage over the violins in ‘airs of movement,’ and also the flutes such as the illustrious Philbert,[48] Philidor, Descoteaux[49] and the Hotteterres know how to make wail in a manner so touching and to make sigh so amorously in our tender airs.”

How we wish that we could go to one of the King’s Little Suppers at Marly and hear a concert by this famous Orchestra! How we should like to hear Descoteaux and Philbert play a duet on their flutes, or hear the whole Orchestra play a Sarabande, or a Courante, under Lully’s careful conducting!

Charles II of England had not been on the throne very long before he created an Orchestra of Twenty-Four Violins like that he had heard so many times with delight at the Court of Louis XIV.

The chief violinist and leader of this organization was Thomas Baltzar of Lübeck.

“His Majesty, who was a brisk and airy prince, coming to the crown in the flower and vigor of his age was soon, if I may so say,” says Burney, “tired with the grave and solemn way which had been established by Tallis, Byrd and others, ordered the composers of his Chapel to add symphonies with instruments to their anthems; and thereupon established a select number of his private music to play the symphony and ritournelles which he had appointed.

“The old way of consorts was laid aside by the prince immediately after his restoration when he established his band of Twenty-Four Violins after the French model; and the style of Musick has changed accordingly. So that French Musick became in general use at Court and in the theatres. Indeed, performers on the violin had a lift into credit before this period when Baltzar, a Swede, came over and did wonders upon it by swiftness and double stops. But his hand was accounted hard and rough, though he made amends for that by often tuning in the lyre way and playing lessons conformable to it, which were very harmonious.

“During the first years of King Charles’s reign all the Musick in favor with the beau-monde was in the French style, which at that time was rendered famous throughout Europe by the works of Baptiste Lully, a Frenchified Italian and master of the Court Musick at Paris, who enriched the French Musick by Italian harmony which greatly improved their melody. His style was theatrical; and the pieces called branles, or ouvertures, consisting of an entrée and a courante will ever be admired as the most stately and complete mouvements in Musick. All the composers in London strove hard to imitate Lully’s vein. However, the whole tendency of the air affected the foot more than the ear; and no one could listen to an entrée with its starts and leaps without expecting a dance to follow.

“The French instrumental music, however, did not make its way so fast as to bring about a revolution all at once; for during a great part of this King’s reign the old Musick was still used in the country and in many private meetings in London; but the treble viol was discarded and the violin took its place.

“It may be ascribed to the peculiar pleasure which King Charles II received from the gay and sprightly sound of the violin that this instrument was introduced at Court and the houses of the nobility and gentry for other purposes than country-dances and festive mirth. Hitherto there seems to have been no public concerts and in the Musick of the chamber, in the performance of Fancies on instruments which had taken the place of vocal madrigals and motets the violin had no admission, the whole business having been done by viols.

“The use of the violin and its kindred instruments, the tenor and violoncello, in Court was doubtless brought from Italy to France and from France to England; for Charles II, who, during the Usurpation had spent a considerable time on the Continent, where he heard nothing but French Musick, upon his return to England, in imitation of Louis XIV, established a band of violins, tenors and basses, instead of the viols, lutes and cornets of which the Court band used to consist.”

Anthony Wood, that quaint old English writer, also throws a light on the question of violin-playing in England at that time.

“The gentlemen in private meetings,” he writes, “which A. W. frequented, played three, four and five parts with viols as treble viol, tenor, counter-tenor and bass, with an organ, virginal or harpsicon, joined with them; and they esteemed a violin to be an instrument only belonging to a common fiddler and could not endure that it should come among them for fear of making their meetings to be vaine and fiddling. But after the Restoration of Charles I, viols began to be out of fashion and only violins used, as treble violin, tenor and bass violin; and the King, according to the French mode, would have Twenty-Four Violins playing before him while he was at meals, as being more airy and brisk than viols.”

Then he goes on to tell us something about the chief violinist.

“Tho. Baltzar, a Lübecker born, and the most famous artist for the violin that the world had yet produced, was now in Oxford; and this day, July 24, A. W. was with him and Mr. Ed. Low, lately organist of Christ Church, at the house of Will Ellis, A. W. did then and there to his very great astonishment hear him play on the violin. He then saw him run up his fingers to the end of the fingerboard of the violin and run them back insensibly and all with alacrity and in very good time, which he, nor any in England, saw the like before. A. W. entertained him and Mr. Low with what the house could then afford and afterwards he invited them to the tavern; but they being engaged to go to other company, he could no more hear him play, or see him play at that time. Afterwards he came to one of the weekly meetings at Mr. Ellis’s house and he played to the wonder of all the auditory; and exercising his finger and instrument several ways to the utmost of his force. Wilson, thereupon, the public professor, the greatest judge of music that ever was, did, after his humorsome way, stoop down to Baltzar’s feet to see whether he had a hoof on, that is to say to see whether he was a devil or not, because he acted beyond the parts of man.”

Burney goes on to say:

“We are able to ascertain the time when concerts consisting of two treble violins, a tenor and a bass violin, or violoncello, came into practice; that they had their origin in Italy can scarce admit of a question; and it is no less certain that they were adopted by the French.

“Indeed the idea of a performance where the instruments for the bass and intermediate parts were in number so disproportionate to the treble, seems to be absurd; and there is reason to suspect that the song ‘Four and Twenty Fiddlers all in a row,’ in D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy, was written in ridicule of that band of twenty-four violins, which, as the French writers assert, was the most celebrated of any in Europe.”

This old song begins:

and goes on in the same way for several verses.

The next name of importance after Lully is that of Corelli.

We must not imagine that Corelli suddenly appeared like a great shining star in a dark night. No artist ever leaps suddenly upon an astonished world. Every artist builds on the works of those who have gone before him.

To understand Corelli, we must go back a little and recall something that we have already noticed; and that is the importance of the work of the Italian violin-makers.

Let us then fix it in our minds that when Corelli was born, in 1653, Nicolò Amati had already made a great number of fine violins and that Stradivari was working all through Corelli’s life and that he outlived him. So that the question of violin-playing was the chief one that engaged the attention of the composers of Corelli’s time. They were all working on the question of how to play the new instrument, just as the makers had been, and were still working on the technique of the instrument itself. Amati and Stradivari, like those who had gone before them, were trying for tone. The composers were now trying to show off the voice, or tone, of the new instrument to the best advantage.

This question is of the greatest importance for us to remember, because the violin is the very foundation of our modern Orchestra.

At first the violin was the prima-donna of the Orchestra; but eventually the other members of the Violin Family—viola, violoncello and double-bass—also became singers. In short, the Violin Family became the very backbone of the Orchestra.

Corelli had much to do with making this the case.

Before Corelli was born in Fusignano in 1653, the Italian composers, particularly those who were attached to the cathedrals and private Orchestras of the wealthy princes and lords of Lombardy—Brescia, Cremona, Mantua and Padua—who were right in the midst of the activities of violin-making, had been writing sonatas, “Flowers” and dances of all kinds for the new violin, to be accompanied by the spinet, the organ, or two or three other stringed-instruments. Their compositions gradually grew more elaborate as they discovered the possibilities of the last new model sent from the workshop of Gasparo di Salò, Maggini, Amati, or Stradivari. There was a great deal more Italian music—and good music, too—composed at that time than most people have any idea of.

Arcangelo Corelli studied the violin under Giovanni Battista Bassani, a musician who is almost forgotten to-day, but who was a great violinist, a composer, a conductor of the Cathedral-music, first in Bologna and afterwards in Ferrara; and he was particularly happy in his writings for the string-quartet. Bassani was about the same age as Corelli; and to his pure instrumental style and knowledge of counterpoint Corelli and modern music owe not a little.

After studying the violin with this master, Corelli went to Rome and studied with Matteo Simonelli, who had had a splendid musical education.

Corelli travelled in Germany and was for a time attached to the Court of the Elector of Bavaria. Then he went to Paris in 1672, and, returning to Italy, settled in Rome. He became a favorite in society and lived in the household of the splendid Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, taking charge of that prince’s music. His regular Monday concerts were a feature of the social and artistic life in Rome.

Pupils swarmed to him. One of them was Geminiani. Corelli became one of the great personages of Rome. When Christina of Sweden went to Rome, Corelli conducted an Orchestra of a hundred and fifty men in her palace. When he died in 1713 he was buried in the Pantheon, not far from Raphael. For years after his death a musical service was held annually at his tomb, where some of his compositions were piously played by his pupils.

Geminiani’s estimate of Corelli’s character seems very just. He said: “His merit was not depth of learning, like that of Alessandro Scarlatti; nor a great fancy, nor rich invention in melody or harmony, but a nice ear and most delicate taste, which led him to select the most pleasing harmonies and melodies and to construct the parts so as to produce the most delightful effect upon the ear.”

At the time of Corelli’s greatest reputation Geminiani asked Scarlatti what he thought of him. Scarlatti answered that “he found nothing greatly to admire in his composition, but was extremely struck with the manner in which he played his concertos and his nice management of his band and uncommon accuracy of the whole performance gave the concertos an amazing effect; and that, even to the eye as well as the ear”; for, continued Geminiani, “Corelli regarded it as essential to the ensemble of a band that their bows should all move exactly together, all up or all down; so, that at his rehearsals, which constantly preceded every public performance of his concertos, he would immediately stop the band if he discovered one irregular bow.”

“There can be no doubt that above all Corelli was a great violin-player and that all he wrote grew out of the very nature of his instrument. In his Chamber-Sonatas and Concerto-Grossi he must be considered the founder of the style of orchestral writing on which the future development is based; while in the Sonatas (op. 5) which have merely an accompanying fundamental bass, he gives a model for the solo sonata; and, thereby, for all writing for the violin as a solo-instrument.

“All his works are characterized by conciseness and lucidity of thought and form, and by a dignified, almost aristocratic, bearing. The slow movements show genuine pathos as well as grace, and bring out in a striking manner the singing-power of the violin.

“Corelli’s Gavottes, Sarabandes and other pieces with the form and rhythm of dances, do not materially differ from similar productions of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries, although, like everything that he wrote, they are distinguished by great earnestness and dignity of style and are especially well adapted to the instrument. He was not so much an innovator as a reformer; he did not introduce new striking effects; it cannot be denied that his technique was a limited one—he never goes beyond the third position—but, by rigidly excluding everything that appeared to him contrary to the nature of the instrument, and by adopting and using in the best possible way everything in the existing technique which he considered conformable to the nature of the violin, he not only hindered a threatened development in the wrong direction, but also gave to this branch of art a sound and solid basis, which his successors could, and did, build upon successfully.”[50]

Burney tells us that “After the publication of Corelli’s works, the violin seems to have increased in favor all over Europe. There was hardly a town in Italy, about the beginning of the present century (the Eighteenth), where some distinguished performer on that instrument did not reside.”

The next link in our chain is Scarlatti.

Alessandro Scarlatti was born in Trapani, Sicily, in 1659. We find him at a comparatively early age settled in Naples, where he was celebrated as a singer, and a performer on the harp and the harpsichord and as a composer of operas. He was the chief of the Neapolitan School. Modern critics have proved that on his ideas the great Gluck built his musical edifice.

Scarlatti was a prolific composer. He wrote one hundred and fifteen operas and two hundred masses, besides oratorios, cantatas and other works.

He is of importance to the Orchestra because of the new way he wrote for the instruments. He made the accompaniment of vocal recitative of new importance and gave the Orchestra a great part to do throughout the entire opera. The strings formed the groundwork of his Orchestra; and he also used oboes, flutes, bassoons, trumpets, drums and horns (the latter an innovation).