Turning to Monteverde's labors in the field of instrumentation, we find, in place of the very rudimentary and heterogeneous combinations heretofore employed, a well-defined and fairly logical assortment of instruments, the nuclei of which were strings, and it is the establishment of this nucleus that is epoch making. True, his first dramatic attempt, "Orfeo," was scored for organs, harpsichords, lutes, harps, guitars, trombones, trumpets, flutes, and various members of the viol family, including so-called little French violins,[2] constituting an orchestra of thirty-six men, of whom nearly one third were performers upon brass instruments. On the other hand, it is necessary to take several contingencies into consideration. In the first place, this orchestra, like Cavalieri's, was concealed behind the scenes, instructive in its suggestion for the modern sunken orchestra at Bayreuth. Again, it has been supposed that the loud-voiced trumpets were muted, a device sometimes employed for special effects in modern scoring. (As to this supposition, however, the present writer is of the opinion that the instruments actually employed were the _cornetti muti_ or soft-speaking trumpets of wood, and that in translation, the word "muted" has been erroneously applied.) Finally, although Monteverde was not, like Peri and Cavalieri, content to depend entirely upon the performers to supply the necessary chords and embellishments, nevertheless in the art of instrumentation he was but a pioneer, and most of his accompaniments were light and of a primitive nature. The very simplicity of his rudimentary method of scoring is proof that neither he nor his contemporaries could have realized the resonant powers of so formidable an aggregation of brass when properly handled; and just this non-realization was propitious for the early development of the orchestra, in that, by negative means, noisy trivialities were excluded from the scores of the early masters. But in antithesis to this undue preponderance of metallic tone-quality, the employment of no less than seventeen instruments played with a bow was an immense stride forward, especially when we consider the fact that within the same decade lutes and the harpsichord had constituted the body of embryo orchestras. [Footnote 2: Ex. 2.] At the close of the sixteenth century there were still many varieties of the viol family, but the value of the erroneously styled "little French violin" is said to have been first appreciated by Monteverde, who introduced it into his orchestra where its inestimable value was at once recognized. Profiting by this felicitous innovation, he continued to emphasize the importance of the string band, enlarged it, and, by a judicious suppression of the weaker members of the viol family, established a body of strings that conforms, at least approximately, to the violins, violas, 'cellos, and basses of the present day.