merely to encouraging the players by voice or gesture, as the commander of an army encourages troops about to charge. All this music, despite the variety and complication of its parts, is executed without any beating of time." And this proves, no doubt, that the variety and complication of this music were not as yet very great, or it could not have been accorded such liberty; but it is also a proof of the experience and the musical spirit of the Italian orchestras.[1] It is enough to consider the French orchestras of those days, which did not play more difficult music, but which none the less had to be conducted by great sweeps of the bâton—and stamping of the feet.—"These people" writes De Brosses "greatly excel us in accuracy. Their orchestras have a great feeling for gradations of tone and chiaroscuro. A hundred string and wind instruments will accompany voices without smothering them."[2]
In Milan above all symphonic music was greatly esteemed. We might almost say that it originated in Milan, for there dwelt one of the two or three men who may lay claim to the glory of having created the symphony, in the modern sense of the word—and he was, I believe, that one of the three whose titles to this fame were most considerable.[3] He was G. B. Sammartini, Haydn's precursor and model. He was chapel-master to almost half the churches in Milan and for them he composed innumerable symphonic pieces. Burney, who knew him and
- ↑ It seems that this custom had become obsolete by the end of the century. Goethe complains, at Vicenza (1786) "of the accursed beating by the maestro, which I had thought peculiar to France."
- ↑ This was no longer so in Burney's time, when the orchestra was tending to dominate the voices.
- ↑ The two others are Gossec (France) and Stamitz (Germany).
