CAR OF MUSICIANS. TRIUMPH OF MAXIMILIAN
By Albrecht Dürer, about 1518
The only instruments that French ears cared to listen to were Strings (including the whole Violin Family), oboes and flutes. France always loved the flute, which was comparatively little cared for in Italy, where it was chiefly used in operas, as we have observed, for pastoral scenes.
The violin was becoming more and more popular every day. In every kind of music it took the lead. It had been so much used for dance-music that it had developed into a supple and graceful instrument and one that gave itself most willingly to many delicate shades of expression in the hands of a good player. The violin was often combined with the clavecin and theorbo.
The combination was delicate and charming, rich and beautiful.
The old author of the Comparison of Italian with French Music says: “I beg to remark that with its four or five strings, the violin makes you feel certain passions in the most striking manner, for it expresses them in a way peculiar to itself. It really does not matter if it has four strings, or five strings. The Italians tune their five strings in fourths, we tune our four strings in fifths; and it comes to the same thing. The violin mounted in either way is always the perfection of music.”[40]
About this time the first real French Orchestra came into existence. We may almost consider it as an ancestor of our own, as we shall presently see. This was the famous “Twenty-Four Violins of the King.” Although it originated in the days of Louis XIII, it is more identified with the reign of his successor, Louis XIV.
The “Twenty-Four Violins” were the best performers of the period and they are constantly spoken of in the Memoirs and Journals of the day. One of them, for instance, Jacques Cordier, called Bocan, was dancing-master at the Court of France, as well as violinist, and followed Henrietta Maria, the King’s daughter, to England when she married Charles I. When the Revolution broke out and Charles was beheaded, Bocan returned to France and to the King’s household. He was one of the best violinists of his day.
“The sound of his violin is ravishing,” writes Mersenne (who wrote a book about the instruments of his time); “he plays perfectly, just as sweetly as he wishes; and he makes use of a kind of trembling sound, which charms our spirits.”