[35] It is to be found in the autograph collection of Count Wimpfen at his estate near Gratz.
[36] According to Fürstenau, Abel was engaged as violoncellist at Dresden. See his “History of Music and of the Theatre at the Elector of Saxony’s Court,” Vol. II., p. 240.
[37] Sebastian Bach’s youngest son, Joh. Christian, was born in 1735, in Leipsic, and died in London in 1782, whither he had gone in 1759 as Band Conductor.
[38] According to Pohl, the number of these metal strings was raised to twenty-seven. (S. C. F. Pohl: “Haydn,” I., 250.) Information regarding the barytone and barytone compositions are to be found there.
[39] Pohl: “Haydn,” I., 257.
[40] Gerber mentions him as a violoncellist, which must be a mistake, since in the Parisian Opera orchestra, up to 1727, as far as is known, only gambists were employed. He may, however, have played both instruments.
[41] See “The History of the Violin,” by W. Sandys and Simon Andrew Forster. London, 1864.
[42] What would Gerber have said had he lived to see the present demand for instruments required to make up an orchestra?
[43] Gerber’s “Old Musical Lexicon,” p. 617, and Note, p. 86.
[44] In the preface to the violoncello tutor already mentioned, by Corrette, the untenable assertion is made that the violoncello was discovered by Bonocin (Buononcini), “preséntement Maître de Chapelle du Roi de Portugal.” A Bononcini, with the Christian name of Domenico, actually lived in 1737 at the Lisbon Court. At that period, according to Fétis, he must have been eighty-five years old. He must therefore have been born in 1652. He could not have invented the violoncello (if one could call it an invention), as it evidently existed before his birth. It is not even certain that Domenico Bononcini was a cellist. Possibly Corrette confounded him with Giov. Battista Bononcini mentioned later.