Virginal in shape of a work-box.
The same opened, showing the instrument
within, which can be taken out.
The instrument taken out.
Constructed in 1631 by Valerius Perius Romanus.
De Wit collection, Leipsic.
So far is the early Italian clavier (when the violin begins its victorious career) from assuming a leading position, that the cembalo can do nothing better than make use of the experiences of the violin. For we must give up the legend of the genius of Michel Angelo Rossi. This story is one of the most amusing freaks of musical history. We find in many popular collections of old music an andante and allegro in G major by this man, who is tolerably well known as an operatic composer and violinist. He was a pupil of Frescobaldi and died in 1660. This piece is so captivating in its melody, so decided in its form, so restrained in its arrangement, that it would have done honour to Mozart. Had these pieces truly sprung from the intavolatura of Michel Angelo Rossi, the modernity of their form and melody would give such a shock to musical history that it would be shivered into fragments. Yet a man like Pauer, who published them, could actually believe that this music was possible before 1660.[61] A later historian, Rolland, in his “Histoire de l’Opéra avant Lully et Scarlatti,” led astray by the same mistake, fancies he detects in the choruses of Rossi’s opera of Hermione anticipations of the Zauberflöte.[62] Parry alone, the author of the brilliant article on the sonata in Grove’s Dictionary of Music, has boggled at this pseudo Rossi. Heaven knows to whom the pretty little pieces really belong. It is not unlikely that Scarlatti wrote them in his old age.
