The Queen's taste in music had been cultivated from her earliest years. When almost an infant she had _minstrels_ attached to her establishment. On her return to Scotland, she had a small band of about a dozen musicians--vocal and instrumental--whom she kept always near her person. Five of these were violars, or players on the viol;[78] three of them were players on the lute; one or two of them were organists, but the organs in the chapels at Stirling and Holyrood were the only ones which had been saved from the fury of the Reformers; and the rest were singers, who also acted as _chalmer-chields_, or valets-de-chambre. Mary could herself play upon the lute and virginals, and loved to hear concerted music upon all occasions. She even introduced into her religious worship a military band, in aid of the organ, consisting of trumpet, drum, fife, bagpipe, and tabor. It was as one skilled in music that David Rizzio first recommended himself to Mary. He came to Edinburgh towards the end of the year 1561, in the train of the ambassador from Savoy. He was a Piedmontese by birth, and had received a good education. His father was a respectable professional musician in Turin, who, having a large family, had sent his two sons, David and Joseph, to push their own way in Nice, at the court of the Duke of Savoy. They were both noticed at that court, and were taken into the service of the Duke of Moretto, the ambassador already mentioned. The knowledge which David Rizzio possessed of music, says a French writer, was the least of his talents: He had a polished and ready wit, a lively imagination, full of pleasant fancies, soft and winning manners, abundance of courage, and still more assurance. "He was," says Melville, "a merry fallow, and a guid musician." He was, moreover, abundantly ugly, and past the meridian of life, as attested by all cotemporary writers of any authority. His brother, Joseph, is scarcely mentioned in history, though it appears that he also attached himself to Mary's Court. At the time of David's arrival, the Queen's three pages, or _sangsters_, who used to sing trios for her, wanted a fourth as a bass. Rizzio was recommended, and he received the appointment, together with a salary of 80_l._ Being not only by far the most scientific musician in the Queen's household, but likewise well acquainted both with French and Italian, Rizzio contrived to make himself generally useful. In 1564 he was appointed Mary's French secretary, and in this situation he continued till his death.[79]