1890.] on Evolution in Music. 66 



parties of magnates, who kept private orchestras to encourage con- 

 versation and temper the asperity of any glaring absence of it. 

 These symphonies came very greatly into request in the next genera- 

 tion after Bach and Handel, and were supplied in cartloads apart 

 from their usual connection with operas, but were still called overtures 

 or sinfonias, both of which names had commonly been applied to them 

 while they were attached to operas. These works were of very 

 limited interest, and were evidently very roughly played. The 

 instruments were lumped together crudely to make a noise, and very 

 little variety was aimed at ; while the functions of the instruments 

 were not ascertained or their idiosyncrasies observed. When, under 

 more favouring circumstances, development definitely began, the 

 evolution took the same aspect as in other departments of art. A 

 violin player named Stamitz, who was conductor at Mannheim, gave 

 the development a push by endeavouring to obtain variety in nuances, 

 and by using the difierent qualities of the instruments for purposes 

 of frequent contrast. Mozart visited Mannheim when a young man, 

 just before his second visit to Paris, and was evidently struck by the 

 possibilities Stamifcz's procedure seemed to promise; and he gave 

 his higher abilities to the work of diversifying the effects of orchestral 

 colour. Before this time the violas commonly played a great deal with 

 the basses, the wind instruments with the strings of the same average 

 pitch ; while the horns, which were not tractable enough to follow so 

 slavishly, were the earliest to attain some independence, but did not as 

 yet do much more than fill up the harmonies and increase the mass of 

 sound. The colours had in fact been mixed up in aimless confusion ; 

 and the various instruments, except when playing long solos, did not 

 have much definite independence one from another. After this time the 

 violas drew away from the basses, and found their own separate place 

 in the group, as representing a special colour and a special in- 

 dividuality. In like manner the special individuality of the hautboys 

 found its true place as a factor in the complicated nexus of tone- 

 quality and instrumental idiosyncrasy. Other instruments were 

 added, which supplied other qualities of tone, and the particular 

 functions which each instrument was most fitted to perform were by 

 degrees ascertained by innumerable experiments and by development of 

 instinct; the natural tendency being, as time went on, for each 

 several instrument to attain more and more independence, and for 

 more and more respect to be paid to the various idiosyncrasies of 

 each member of the j^imily. The hautboy and the clarinet no longer 

 struggled to play fiddle passages, nor the bassoon only to reinforce 

 the bass and play passages which were better fi.tted for stringed 

 instruments ; even that distinguished survival from the primitive 

 music of savages, the drum, was no longer condemned merely 

 to add to the noise of forte passages, but was used with dramatic 

 significance, and even at times used to express characteristic 

 musical figures, or to play mysterious and hazy-sounding chords. 

 By such processes, and by establishing a clear distinction between 

 Vol. XIII. (No. 84.) f 



