the madrigal, that
delightful flower of the Elizabethan age. Singers not always being
available for all of the difficult voice parts viols of the same compass
supplied the lack. It was but a step for masters of music to compose
pieces marked "to be sung or played," thus contributing to the forces
that were lifting instrumental music above mere accompaniment for song
or dance.

When musicians make demands musical instrument makers are ever ready to
meet them, and the viol steadily improved. One who contributed to its
progress was Gasper Duiffoprugcar (1514-1572) a luthier and mosaic
inlayer, known in the Tyrol, in Bologna, Paris and Lyons. The belief
that he originated the violin rests chiefly on the elaborately
ornamented forgeries bearing his name, the work of French imitators from
1800 to 1840. There is an etching, supposed to be a copy of a portrait
of himself carved on one of his viols with this motto: "I lived in the
wood until I was slain by the relentless axe. In life I was silent, but
in death my melody is exquisite."

The words might apply to the perfected violin, whose evolution was going
on all through that period of literary and artistic activity known as
the Renaissance. When or at whose hands it gained its present form is
unknown. The same doubt encircles its first master player. Perhaps the
earliest worthy of mention is one Baltzarini, a Piedmontese, appointed
by Catherine de Medici, in 1577, to lead the music at the French court,
and said to have started the heroic and historical ballet in France.

He is sometimes confounded with Thomas Baltzar, a violinist of Lubec,
who, in 1656 introduced the practice of shifting in London, where he
wholly eclipsed David Mell, a much admired clockmaker fiddler, although
the latter, as a contemporary stoutly averred, "played sweeter, was a
well-bred gentleman, and was not given to excessive drinking as Baltzar
was." His marvelous feat of "running his fingers to the end of the
finger-board and back again with all alacrity" caused a learned Oxford
connoisseur of music to look if he had hoofs. Notwithstanding the jovial
tastes of this German, he was appointed leader, by Charles II., of the
famous violins, and had the final honor of a burial in Westminster
Abbey.

Here reposed also in due time his successor in the royal band, John
Banister, who had been sent by the king to France for study, and who was
the first Englishman, unless the amateur Mell be counted, to disting