Iain Fenlon’s scientific contributions

In 1608, the English traveller and eccentric Thomas Coryat visited Venice, an experience which he described in some detail in his Crudities published in London three years later. Among the wonders of the city ‘hastily gobled up’ (as the title-page puts it) were a number of musical events, principally the celebration of the feast-day of S Roch which Coryat had attended in the main hall of the Scuola di S Rocco. There, surrounded by the vast glowing canvases of Jacopo Tintoretto, he had listened for some three hours to what seems to have been a concert (rather than a strictly liturgical occasion), which: consisted principally of musicke, which was both vocall and instrumental, so good, so delectable, so rare, so admirable, so super excellent, that it did even ravish and stupifie all those strangers that never heard the like … For mine own part I can say this, that I was for the time even rapt up with Saint Paul into the third heaven. His lyrical description continues by praising the choir of 20 voices and the instrumental ensemble of 24 performers (ten trombones, four cornetts, two violas da gamba, one violin and seven organs), precisely the kind of forces which we normally associate with Venetian polyphony of the High Renaissance.