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Updated: June 23, 2025
The violins raised their bows, the haut-boys and horns were clapped to the mouths of their respective performers, bass- viols were seized, harps were clutched, and drumsticks were raised in the air. Nevertheless, not a sound was heard from the orchestra!
IT was scarce past the meridian of a warm summer's day, when from the inn of old Gaspar Varni, underneath the heights of Sorento, might have been heard the sound of viols, and the deep notes of the bassoon ringing clear from amidst the clash of merry voices.
The study is panelled in tarsia of beautiful design and execution. Three of the larger compartments show Faith, Hope, and Charity; figures not unworthy of a Botticelli or a Filippino Lippi. The occupations of the Duke are represented on a smaller scale by armour, bâtons of command, scientific instruments, lutes, viols, and books, some open and some shut.
Animals as musicians, too, were often introduced, pigs playing on viols, or pipes, an ass performing on the harp, and similar eccentricities may be found in numerous places, while Reynard the Fox in all his forms abounds. The choir stalls at Lincoln exhibit beautiful carving and design: they date from the fourteenth century, and were given by the treasurer, John de Welburne.
"'Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols; the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground which didst weaken the nations!
In a music room, which is really the living room of a house, with viols hanging on the walls, a chamber-organ in one corner, a harpsichord in another, a clavichord laid across the arms of a chair, this music seems to carry one out of the world, and shut one in upon a house of dreams, full of intimate and ghostly voices.
Amos wrote, 'I hate, I despise your feasts, and I will not smell the savour of your assemblies.... Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not hear the melody of thy viols. But let judgment roll down as waters, and righteousness as an ever-flowing stream. 'Judgment' and 'righteousness' are not goddesses, but the voice which Amos heard was not the voice of an abstraction.
Suddenly the character of the music changed, ... from an appealing murmurous complaint and persuasion, it rose to a martial and almost menacing fervor; the roll of drums and the shrill, reedy warbling of pipes and other fluty minstrelsy crossed the silvery thread of strung harps and viols, ... the light from the fiery globe shot forth a new effulgence, this time in two broad rays, one a dazzling, pale azure, the other a clear, pearly white.
She had never looked handsomer, however, than she did that day. Her cheeks had the bloom of roses, and her black eyes seemed to give out their own light, like stars. She held up her head like a queen as she sang, and her wonderful voice sounded through and beyond the viols and violins, and all the other singing voices.
The clean profiles of the musicians, the gloss of their linen, the dull black of their coats, the beloved shapes of the instruments, the patches of yellow light on the smooth, varnished bellies of the 'cellos and the bass viols in the rear, the restless, wind-tossed forest of fiddle necks and bows I recalled how, in the first orchestra I ever heard, those long bow-strokes seemed to draw the heart out of me, as a conjurer's stick reels out yards of paper ribbon from a hat.
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