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:
“Four and twenty Fiddlers all in a Row;
And there was fiddle fiddle and twice fiddle fiddle.
’Cause ’twas my Lady’s Birthday,
Therefore we kept holiday,
And all went to be merry.
“Four and twenty Drummers all in a Row,