Text-Books on Orchestration Before Berlioz

posers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, if they learned these things from books, could gain information about the compass and capabilities of instruments only from the pages of such works as Virdung's ' Musica getutscht' (i 51 i), Agricola's ' Musica instrumentalis deudsch' (1528), Luscinius's ' Musurgia' (1536), Praetorius's 'Syntagma musicum ' (I619) and Mersenne's 'Harmonie universelle' (i636). Excepting Luscinius's and Mersenne's books, which were, respectively, in Latin and French, all of these were written in German, and their outlook and the information they provided would be largely out of date by the end of the seventeenth century. In 1687 there appeared Speer's ' Grundrichtiger Unterricht der musikalischen Kunst', a practical work which, if it was not so archaic as those by Praetorius and Mersenne, still treated of some instruments which were obsolescent and belonged to a musical past that was hardly conscious of the art of orchestration as it began to be understood during the course of the eighteenth century. In his 'Neu er6ffnetes Orchester' (I713) Mattheson discoursed on the orchestral and other instruments of his day, dwelling on their characteristics and use rather than on their technique. In all these books the old instruments which were doomed to disappear from the orchestra during the eighteenth century still held their places; the lute, theorbo, viola d'amore and da gamba, the recorders and medieval cornetts, still lingered while the orchestra was taking shape and growing out of the old instrumental groups into an organized body which eventually discarded them and called for power, colour and technique which was not theirs to give. Towards the end of the seventeenth and during the eighteenth century a large number of instrumental tutors were issued which, although primarily intended for players, may also have served to

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