e of the musicians did
not play, but beat time as a director. It is interesting to make a brief
comparison between the two representations, for this shows the novelties
which entered between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. The lute,
the trombone, the pommer and the triangle were new acquisitions. If now
we refer again to the orchestra of 1518 mentioned by Pauluzo we shall
seem to have gone backward. But the truth must be clear to all students
that these orchestras were not brought together with any definite
musical design. They consisted of the players who chanced to be at hand.
Even the letter of the Duke of Milan in 1473 (see Chapter III), in which
he announces his intention of engaging a good orchestra from Rome, can
hardly mean anything more than a purpose to get as many good
instrumentalists as he could.[28]

[Footnote 28: "Although the existence of 'Orfeo' as an opera
appears to me to be problematical, there would be nothing
impossible about the construction of a tragedy accompanied by
music, because instruments were cultivated in Italy more than
in France. Before that epoch the Medici had given concerts at
Florence. Giovanni de Medici died in 1429, and Cosimo, who
succeeded him and reigned till 1464, gave at the Pitti Palace
concerts where there were as many as four hundred musicians. Under
his successors and before the death of Alexander de' Medici in
1537, the violinists Pietro Caldara and Antonio Mazzini were often
the objects of veritable ovations, and about the same time, 1536,
at Venice, was played a piece called 'Il Sacrificio,' in which
violins sustained the principal parts."--"Les Origines de l'Opera
et le Ballet de la Reine," par Ludovic Celler. Paris, 1868.]

While, then, it must be confessed that no conclusive evidence can be
produced that an orchestra was employed in the "Orfeo," the indications
are strong that there was one. We may assume without much fear of error
that it was used only to accompany the choral numbers and the dance and
that in fulfilling the last mentioned function it was heard to the best
advantage. Years after the period of the "Orfeo" of Poliziano
independent instrumental forms had not yet been developed. Fully a
century later compositions "da cantare e sonare" betray to us the fact
that bodies of instruments performing without voices merely played the
madrigals which at other times were sung. Such compositions wer