Books › The Violin and its Music, 1881 › scan 164
Scan 164
The Violin and its Music, 1881
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 144. See the scan on archive.org.
1as Viols among the Italians at an earlier date. These are what I have called madrigal Viols. Now, although Duke Hercules had these instruments mentioned among others, we are not to conclude that they were all played at the same time. No composer or musical director was bold enough to arrange his music for such a medley of instruments in the fifteenth century, nor has such a daring feat been attempted since. There can be no doubt they were used as before described; each class of instrument had its particular province of accompaniment, and if they ever were used together it could only have been in processions, where noise was needed rather than music.
3Leaving the court of Hercules, we will pass to that of Gonzaga, at Mantua, where the arts were much cultivated and encouraged. It was here that Jacques Berchem, the Netherlander, passed thirty years of his life writing masses, motetts, and madrigals. It was here that Dardelli, the Viol-maker, italianised the Viol of the Mastersingers, and at Mantua the first sounds of these instruments were heard in the madrigals of Berchem and a few others. There yet remains to notice the crowning event in the musical history of old Mantua. At Cremona was born Claude Monteverde, in the year 1568, a period when Andrea Amati and his sons Antonius and Hieronymus were busy there with the art of Viol and Violin making. The Viol was the instrument that Monteverde delighted in, and
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