“The Orchestra had for its chief instruments: violins in five parts, which played the _ritournelles_, doubled the choruses and beautified the solos with their harmonies. In excited airs expressing quick passion, the voice was accompanied by two violins which played a very elaborate part and when the passion abated returned to their ordinary recitative. Flutes, usually straight flutes and _flutes à bec_, though sometimes ‘transverse,’ or ‘German,’ were much used by Lully. Sometimes they played in unison with other instruments. Sometimes they formed separate ‘concerts’ and sometimes they were combined with the trumpets and violins. The trumpets had a magnificent _rôle_. They played alone in three, or five, parts with the drums. Lully also employed oboes, bassoons, and instruments of percussion, and in his ballets he made a great use of the _tambour de basque_, (tambourine), castanets and drums. He also introduced bag-pipes, guitars and hunting-horns (in _La Princesse d’Élide_); the charcoal-burner’s whistle (in _Acis_); and, like the composer of _Siegfried_, he did not fear the sound of the forge and the noise of anvils (in _Isis_). The characteristic trait of the Orchestra (and one essentially French) is that Lully rarely employed it all at once. He divided his Orchestra into groups that have conversations with one another, or with the voices. This system puts lots of light into the picture, as it were, and the air circulates freely. Strangers were always struck by this. “Lully’s Orchestra was large. It was carefully recruited and trained by him. The violins were extraordinary, especially in ‘the first stroke of the bow.’ People came from Italy, England and Germany to hear Lully’s Orchestra. Everybody admired his correctness, rhythm, the perfection of his _ensemble_; and, above all, the sweetness, preciseness and smoothness of his violins.”[44] And now let us see what a contemporary has to say: