Sam Kemp:

>isn't there a piccolo in the score of Handel's "Water Music" that
>predates Beethoven 5 by about 50 years (?).  And aren't there trombones
>in Monteverdi's "Orfeo"? Although, that said, the opera house orchestra
>has always been different to the symphony orchestra (e.g.  had horns way
>before the SO did).

If I don't remember bad, Vivaldi has a concert for piccolo, but I suppose
it was originally written for sopranino recorder (there's a nice recording
in piccolo by Hans-Martin Linde/ DG).  I would dare to suppose that this
passage of Haendel was also intended for sopranino. The trombones at
Monteverdi's "L' Orfeo" were actually sackbuts (or something like that).
As we know, at the baroque there wasn't what we call today an "orchestra"
(i.e.  a more or less standard group of instruments with a regular number
of players and different instrumental families mixed in a specifical
proportion).  Many works required different numbers and combinations of
instruments, according to the place and occasion of performance.  The only
"structural" requisite was simply to cover the range of SATB, and there are
even exceptions to it, as Bach's "Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben".

Pablo Massa
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