At the present day music has become such an extensively developed science, particularly as regards orchestration, that it is difficult to apprehend the state of things which existed in Purcell's time; but to estimate his genius fairly we must recall the condition of the musical artistic world in which he lived. In so far as orchestration is concerned he had no models, nor had he any instrumental performers to suggest or incite his creative powers. Purcell was familiar with the family of stringed instruments called viols, and although Charles II. introduced violins from France, yet the instrument was not regarded with favour by musicians or by the people generally. Doubtless this arose from the fact that there were no remarkable players. Anthony Wood of Oxford, speaking of the year 1657, says:--
"Gentlemen in private meetings, which A. W. frequented, played three, four, and five parts with viols--as treble viol, tenor, counter-tenor and bass, with an organ, virginal or harpsicon joined to them; and they esteemed a _violin_ to be an instrument only belonging to a _common_ fiddler, and could not endure that it should come among them, for feare of making these meetings to be vain and fiddling."
The first musician to introduce violin playing proper was Thomas Baltzar, who played at Oxford in 1658, and A. W. "saw him run up his fingers to the end of the finger-board of the violin, and run them back insensibly, and all with great alacrity and _very good tune_, which he nor any one in England saw the like before."
He also was the first to exhibit in England the practice of shifting, or the whole shift on the violin, and the half shift was not introduced until about 1714. Baltzar died in 1663, so that it is not probable Purcell ever heard him play; indeed it has been justly remarked that the probability is he never heard a great violinist. Corelli's works were not introduced into England until after Purcell's death, and the only violin music Purcell knew was that composed by Bassani.
In 1773 Daines Barrington, a well-known writer, speaks of the "Amazing improvements in execution which both singers and players have arrived at within the last fifty years. When Corelli's music was first published, our ablest violinists conceived that it was too difficult to be performed. It is now, however, the first composition attempted by a scholar. Every year now produces greater and greater prodigies on other instruments in point of execution."