Scan 265
A dictionary of old English music & musical instruments 1923, 1923
4 lines. Read by computer on 19 September 2026. Printed page 235. See the scan on archive.org.
1went forth against the ornate Cathedral music, all music should be banned. The notorious Solomon Eagles, who became a Quaker in 1660, burned his Viols and music. But the action of a few men like Eagles did not prevent music being cultivated very largely during the Commonwealth, though more space cannot be spared for a history of the music of those famous eleven years than suffices to draw attention to the musical publications that appeared. In 1653 East's Fantasies for Viols were issued. Roger L'Estrange's description of a private concert attended by Cromwell will be enough to show that the Protector did not ban music secularly, and since it includes references to the Viols it is worth quoting once more: "Being in St. James his Parke, I heard an Organ Touched in a little Low Room of one Mr. Hinckson's (John Hingston). I went in, and found a Private Company of some five or six Persons. They desired me to take up a Viole, and bear a Part… By and By (without the least colour of a Design or Expectation) in comes Cromwell. He found us playing and (as I remember) so he left us."
3With the accession of Charles II the violin became a more serious competitor of the Viol. The formation of the select band of violins, already mentioned, gave the coup-de-grâce to the Treble and Tenor Viols, at any rate. The increasing number of the violinists required for the royal music and that of the nobility, offered a new incentive to musicians to take up the newer instrument. With artists like Davis Mell to imitate and teachers like John Banister (the Elder) to learn from, a school of violinists arose in England that compared very favourably with the Viol-players of two or three generations earlier. The Bass-Viol alone persisted in public favour, and it was a full century more before the Gamba could be said to have become antiquated. Samuel Pepys gives a few pieces of interesting information in his Diary concerning the Bass-Viol of his time. In 1663 he went to his Viol-maker in Bishopsgate Street, London: "his name is Wise, who is a pretty fellow at it." He paid three pounds for his instrument,— "besides the carving which I paid this day 10s. for to the carvers." The diarist also makes frequent mention of ladies playing the Gamba. On February 19, 1663/4, Mrs. Jaggard played "… but so well as I did not think any woman in England could and but few Maisters." The Bass-Viol was also
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