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Updated: June 3, 2025
His opera, "Orfeo," 1608, had an orchestra of two harpsichords, two bass viols, two violas di gamba, ten tenor viols, two little French violins, one harp, two large guitars, three small organs, four trombones, two cornets, one piccolo, one clarion and three trumpets.
In the Chapel Royal there were about eighty musicians daily in attendance, violins, hautboys, violas, double-basses, choristers, etc.; and, cards not being allowed, they had a long table inlaid with a number of chess-boards, with which they amused their leisure time. When fourteen years old Philidor was the best chess-player in the band.
A Scherzo, after the ballad of Goethe, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," tells the famous story of the boy who in his master's absence compels the spirit in the broom to fetch the water; but he cannot say the magic word to stop the flood, although he cleaves the demon-broom in two. Dukas uses them later in divided violins, violas and cellos, having thus a triad of harmonics doubled in the octave.
Some of them are nearly as tall as myself. They almost alarm me when I am dividing violas, and trifling with alpines. We shall grow as long as we think it desirable." Farewell for the present, Little Friend, Yours, &c. "When Candlemas Day is come and gone, The snow lies on a hot stone." Old Saw.
What ingenious discoveries! What treasures of sudden inspiration! These flutes in the depths; this quartet of violins; these passages in sixths between violas and 'cellos; this crescendo bursting into refulgence at the close; these pauses during which the passions seem to be gathering themselves together in order to launch their forces anew with greater vehemence!
We can imagine, therefore, the stupefaction and horror when a young man, just out of school, demanded fifty violins, twenty violas, twenty violoncellos, eighteen contrabasses, four flutes, four oboes, four clarinets, eight bassoons, twelve horns, and a chorus of two hundred voices as a minimum. And that is not all.
Half the violas, joined later by half the 'cellos, maintain an accompaniment of broken chords.
Suddenly turning towards them he called in a sepulchral tone, 'Are the violas dying? The two pale and incurably melancholy old men who held on tenaciously to their posts in the orchestra, notwithstanding their right to a pension, stared at Spontini with real fright, reading a threat in his words, and I had to explain Spontini's wish in sober language in order to call them back to life.
The rhythm of the Fate motive is hinted by violas, 'cellos, and horns as Golaud, in answer to Mélisande's compassionate questioning, observes that he is "made of iron and blood." Nothing has happened, no one has harmed her, she answers, in response to Golaud's questionings: "It is no one. You do not understand me.
On the whole, therefore, a spirit of devotion to the master gradually pervaded the orchestra; the violas alone bore him a grudge for a while, and for this reason. In the accompaniment of the lugubrious cantilena of Julia at the end of the second act, he would not put up with the way in which the violas played the horribly sentimental accompaniment.
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