e._, John Cooper). Also Playford (temp. Charles II.)
says of Charles I. that the king "often appointed the service and
anthems himself" in the Royal Chapel; "and would play his part exactly
well on the bass-violl,"--_i.e._, the viol da gamba.
George Herbert, who was by birth a courtier, found in music "his
chiefest recreation," "and did himself compose many divine hymns and
anthems, which he set and sung to his lute or viol.... His love to
music was such, that he went usually twice every week ... to the
cathedral church in Salisbury; and at his return would say that his
time spent in prayer and cathedral music elevated his soul, and was
his heaven upon earth." But not only was the poet-priest a lover of
church music, for (Walton's Life goes on) "before his return thence to
Bemerton, he would usually _sing and play his part at an appointed
private music meeting_." This was fourteen years after Shakespeare's
death.
Anthony Wood, who was at Oxford University in 1651, gives a most
interesting account of the practice of chamber music for viols (and
even violins, which, by Charles II.'s time, had superseded the feebler
viols) in Oxford. In his Life, he mentions that "the gentlemen in
privat meetings, which A.W. frequented, play'd three, four, and five
Parts with Viols, as, Treble-Viol, Tenor, Counter-Tenor, and Bass,
with an Organ, Virginal, or Harpsicon joyn'd with them: and they
esteemed a Violin to be an Instrument only belonging to a common
Fidler, and could not endure that it should come among them, for feare
of making their Meetings to be vaine and fidling.
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