The Orchestra is a corporate body that is ruled by the Conductor. His is the power that holds all these forces together; he it is who guides these ninety men through the mazes of the vast musical composition, or fabric of woven melodies and harmonies, the patterns and colors of which he will place before our auditory nerves, which will carry to and impress upon our brains the musical forms and figures that also charm our senses; and to do this the Conductor must understand the technique of his Orchestra every bit as thoroughly as each man knows the technique of his instrument.
The Orchestra began to be an instrument just about the time that Gasparo di Salò (see page [21]) fixed the form of the violin.
Let us look for a moment at the instruments that were in use at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century—the instruments that formed an Orchestra in Shakespeare’s time—the Orchestra of the Renaissance. Whether in Italy, France, or England, it was the same.
“We are in a small square chamber, panelled and floored with oak. It has a table with two silver candle-sticks, a couple of chairs and a few dozen books arranged on a sort of dresser. In the window is a settle, and on it a jumbled heap of music. We turn it over and see that it is almost all manuscript—single-line parts of madrigals, ballets and canzonets. But there are one or two printed books, such as Mr. Anthony Munday’s Banquet of Dainty Conceits, published in 1588, and some later things, such as Mr. Peter Philips’s Madrigals that came out four years ago. Here is even a proof-copy of Mr. Morley’s new five-part Ballets. Clearly the owner of this room is an advanced thinker. That locked case opposite, of stamped Spanish leather, evidently contains his favorite gamba.[29]
“However, we must not loiter any longer in this room. We had better make our way into the corridor, go down the staircase, and walk through the great gallery that runs the whole length of the building. We are now in the East Wing, where apparently the musicians have their quarters. In the main room the logs are blazing; and on the table are scraps of lute-tablature altered and re-altered, with odds and ends of minnikins—the thin top-strings of the lute. There has evidently been a rehearsal here.
THEORBO MADE IN PADUA IN 1629
“Near the fireplace are the lutenists’ boxes. We notice on them French and Italian, as well as English, names. If we open any of the boxes we shall find inside them some very lovely instruments. Their vaulted bodies are built up of strips of pine and cedar, and there are exquisite purflings and ornaments of ebony, ivory and silver. In front is at least one beautifully carved and inlaid ‘rose’; while the necks are all ‘fretted,’ semitone by semitone. Each lute has twelve strings of catgut tuned in six unison-pairs. But if we touch two or three lutes in succession, we shall see that all players do not adopt the same tuning. The average lutenist seems to prefer for his six pairs of strings a system of fourths joined by a third in the middle.