Please
note: This website is in its early phases and will be continually
updated and improved and therefore should be regarded as always
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Please
note: This website is in its early phases and will be continually
updated and improved and therefore should be regarded as always
"under construction".
This file updated 9 August 2007
1603:
Publication of a great collection 400 pieces of lute music from all
over Europe, Besard's Thesaurus Harmonicus.
1607: For his opera, L'Orfeo, composer Monteverdi wants to
use two harpsichords! Unheard of!
1607: The first performance of
Monteverdi's baroque opera, Orfeo, based on the Greek myth of
Oprheus and Eurydice. (Orpheus wishes to bring his doomed lover back
from the underworld.) To match his settings, the pastoral fields of
Thrace and the underworld's infernal fires, Monteverdi stretched his
chocie of instruments to be used to an 0"enormous range"
and demanded great technical skill from their players. This was
especially so for the cornetto, early versions of which (of
course) had no valves, and had widely spaced holes for fingering, in
days when the cornetto was regarded as the best match for a human
voice. (At the time, along with the cornetto, other instruments used
might be chitarrones, cithers and sackbuts).
1610: Circa: One of the most valued books on old instruments is that of Michael Praetorius, (1571-1621), director of music for the Duke of Brunswick at Wolfenbuttel. Praetorius' work was shortly amplified by Marin Mersenne (1588-1648) working in France.
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1610: Barnaby Rich writes that in 1610, "the Irish have harpers and these are so reverences among them that in the time of rebellion they will forbear to hurt either their persons or their goods ... and every great man in the country hath his rhymer and his harper". Bacon once wrote, "No harp hath the sound so melting and prolonged as the Irish harp."
1618: By now, the clavichord, which is cheap, conveniently-sized and discreet in tone, is described as "the foundation of all keyboard instruments" by Praetorius.
1619: Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum. Wolfenbuttel, 1619, reprint, Kassell, 1929.
Circa 1620: The fierce anti-Spanish prejudice of
post-Elizabethan England is shown in the two lyrics below:
Anti-Spanish vehemence lasted long in English cultural life.
Take
this scone to wear this horn, it was the crest when you were born,
Your father's father wore it and your father wore it
too...
Hal-an-Tow, jolly rumble-o, We were up, long before the
day-o.
To welcome in the summer, to welcome in the May-o.
The
summer is a comin' and the winter's gone away-o.
What happened to
the Spaniards, that makes a greater boast though?
Why they shall
eat the feathered goose, and we shall eat the roast-o
Hal-an-Tow.
Jolly rumble-o. We were up, long before the day-o.
And again:
And now I will tell of brave Elliott, the first youth that
enters the ring,
and so proudly rejoice I to tell it, ... he
fought for his country and king.
When the Spaniards besieged
Gibraltar t'was Elliott defended the place,
and he soon caused
their plans for to alter, some died, others fell in disgrace..
From (1) Hal-an-Tow and (2) Earsdon Sword Dance Song, sung by UK folksingers, The Watersons, Frost and Fire: A Calendar of Ceremonial Folk Songs. Topic Records, UK. 12T136.
1625: Hans Heiden of Nuremburg in Germany constructs a Geigenwerk, a variant of the harpsichord - "a sort of big viol with a keyboard, shaped like a grand piano, with four wheels emerging from the soundboard, worked by a crank, against which the strings were lowered when the keys were depressed". It is soon copied in Spain by Raymundo Truchador, in France by Cusinier, by Le Voir, and in Germany. (Cusinier in 1708 built a clavecin-vielle and perfected it by 1734.)
1636-1637: Marin Mersenne, Harmonie Universelle. Paris,
1636-1637. 
1637-1690: J. A. L. de Meraux, Les Clavecinistes de 1637 a 1690. Paris, 1867.
1640: P. Trichet, Traite des instrument de musique. c. 1640. Ed., F. Lesure, Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1957.
1650: A. Kircher, Musurgia universalis. Rome, 1650.
1650: A new type of horn instrument appears, first in France (but
this is a disputed fact), with a small bore than the helical horn and
made in the form of a hoop, first with two coils, then by 1690 with
one coil. It becomes the ancestor of the French horn. It probably
reaches England around 1661 with the English Restoration. In London
they were manufactured by William Bull.
1687: Daniel Speer, Grundrichtiger
Unterricht der musikalischen Kunst. Ulm, 1687, 1697.
1687: In
Germany, Daniel Speer revives the tradition of providing music tutors
and commentaries on music and instruments.
For this website's growing Glossary of Musical Terms and definitions, &c, and other items of interest, see: The HoTM Glossary
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