uish
himself as a performer on the violin. He wrote music for Shakespeare's
Tempest, and was the first to attempt, in London, concerts at which the
audience paid for seats. Announcements of the initial performance,
September 30, 1672, read: "These are to give notice that at Mr.
Banister's house (now called the Musick School) over against the George
Tavern in White Friars, this present Monday will be performed musick by
excellent masters, beginning precisely at four o'clock in the afternoon
and every afternoon for the future at precisely the same hour."

Credit for shaping the first violin has been given Gasparo Bertolotti
(1542-1609), called Gasparo da Salo, from his birthplace, a suburb of
Brescia, that pearl of Lombardy so long a bone of contention among
nations. Violins were doubtless made before his time, but none are known
to-day dated earlier than his. A pretty legend tells how this skilful
viol-maker imprisoned in his first violin the golden tones of the
soprano voice of Marietta, the maiden he loved and from whom death
parted him. Her likeness, so the story runs, is preserved in the angel
face, by Benevenuto Cellini, adorning the head. The instrument thus
famed was purchased for 3,000 Neapolitan ducats by Cardinal
Aldobrandini, who presented it to the treasury at Innsprueck. Here it
remained as a curiosity until the French took the city in 1809, when it
was carried to Vienna and sold to a wealthy Bohemian collector, after
whose death it came into the possession of Ole Bull.

Gasparo's pupil, Giovanni Paolo Maggini (1581-1631), improved the
principles of violin-building, and gave the world the modern viola and
violoncello. A rich viola-like quality characterizes the Maggini violin.
De Beriot used one in his concerts, and its plaintive tone was thought
well suited to his style. He refused to part with it for 20,000 francs
when Wieniawski, in 1859, wished to buy it. To-day it would command a
far higher price. It is stated on authority that not more than fifty
instruments of its make now exist, although a large number of French
imitations claim recognition.

While Gasparo was founding the so-called Brescian school, Andrea Amati
(1520-1580), a viol and rebec maker of picturesque Cremona, began to
make violins, doubtless to fill the orders of his patrons. He must have
believed the pinnacle of fame reached when King Charles IX. of France,
in 1566, commissioned him to construct twenty-four violins, twelve large
and t