But the truth must be clear to all students that these orchestras were not brought together with any definite musical design.

They consisted of the players who chanced to be at hand.
Even the letter of the Duke of Milan in 1473 (see Chapter III), in which he announces his intention of engaging a good orchestra from Rome, can hardly mean anything more than a purpose to get as many good instrumentalists as he could.[28] [Footnote 28: "Although the existence of 'Orfeo' as an opera appears to me to be problematical, there would be nothing impossible about the construction of a tragedy accompanied by music, because instruments were cultivated in Italy more than in France.

Before that epoch the Medici had given concerts at Florence.

Giovanni de Medici died in 1429, and Cosimo, who succeeded him and reigned till 1464, gave at the Pitti Palace concerts where there were as many as four hundred musicians.

Under his successors and before the death of Alexander de' Medici in 1537, the violinists Pietro Caldara and Antonio Mazzini were often the objects of veritable ovations, and about the same time, 1536, at Venice, was played a piece called 'Il Sacrificio,' in which violins sustained the principal parts."-- "Les Origines de l'Opera et le Ballet de la Reine," par Ludovic Celler.