A History of the Symphony Orchestra

People have been putting instruments together in various combinations for as long as there have been instruments, thousands and thousands of years. But it wasn t until about the last 400 years that musicians started forming into combinations that turned into the modern orchestra. In the old days, when musicians got together to play, they used whatever instruments were around. If there were three lute players, a harp, and two flutes, then that s what they used. By the 1500 s the time known as the Renaissance, the word consort was used to mean a group of instrumentalists, and sometimes singers too, making music together or in concert . Early Renaissance composers usually didn t say what instrument they were writing a part for. They meant for the parts to be played by whatever was around. But around 1600 in Italy, the composer Claudio Monteverdi liked things just so. He knew just what instruments he wanted to accompany his opera Orfeo (1607), and he said exactly what instruments should p
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