abeth I, did not only filter down into the shepherd poetry, but also into music. In England music was played only at shepherd festivities, like the beginning of spring and the autumn solstice whereby the shepherd's instruments, especially the bagpipes, always remained in the hands of the
shepherd [fn]. The fashion in France on the other hand had quite different effects.
The French shepherd fashion which had already begun under Louis XIII lasted more than 150 years until the very beginning of the French Revolution. The peculiar aspect of this trend was that people did not just limit themselves to adapting shepherd motifs to poetry, but even took up the shepherd's musical instruments and introduced them into society. Anton van Dyck (1599-1641) painted the French book dealer Langlois with a musette [fn].
Up until the 16th century the bagpipes belonged to the instruments of the French court music [fn] but then lost its place in the orchestra. It was in the 17th century that the first peasant instrument was again received into the instrumentarium of good society.
The most important difference between the old French cornemuse and the musette of the 17th and 18th century court consisted in that the blowpipe of the cornemuse was replaced by small bellows operated by the arm. This device, which had already been introduced at the beginning of the 17th century [fn], formed the prerequisite for the long-lasting popularity of the musette in courtly society. Since the bagpipes were played by the ladies as well as by the gentlemen of the aristocracy, it was probably quite quickly removed from the mouth once blown, since blowing required some exertion and would have shattered the desired picture of charm and elegance.
Martin Hotteterre, a member of the famous Hotteterre family, added an additional improvement to the instrument: he extended the tonal range by adding a
a second small pipe on which the accidentals could be played: "pour faire les dièzes et les bémols" [fn].[trans JW: "to play sharps and flats"].
The attention of the society to playing the musette found its first results in the "Traité de la musette, avec une nouvelle méthode pour apprendre soy-même á jouer de cet instument facilement et en peu de Temps" [trans JW: "Treatise on the musette, with a new method to teach oneself to play this instrument easily and in a short time"], by Charles-Emmanuel Borjon, appearing 1672 in Lyon [fn].
Although the musette was hard to play, it remained popular among the aristocratic amateurs during the entire 17th century. Under Louis XIV there existed a special division of royal music in the so-called "Bande de la Grande Ecurie". Each of the 25 musicians of this band had to master two instruments. Besides flutists, oboists, drummers, kettle-drummers, and trumpeters (among whom since 1679 there were also crumhorn players and tromba marina players) in this ensemble there were four musette players who had been engaged from the Poitou [fn].
Aside from the large Marstall band [?? original text has "Marstallkapelle"] for outdoor performances the musette was also used for other occasions. At a memorable festivity, which was given in 1688 the Prince of Condé in Chantilly in honour of the Dauphin Louis, the host appeared as Pan accompanied by a procession whose members were costumed as shepherds or shepherdesses or as satyrs. They all danced and leaped to the sound of oboes, bagpipes and similar instruments [fn]. Jean Baptiste Lully used the musette in some works, in which he wanted to show the pastoral character of a scene on the stage [fn].
In the last third of the 17th century the hurdy-gurdy was also received into the instrumentarium of courtly society. The introduction of the hurdy-gurdy into the aristocracy is often viewed as a curiosity, but it is to be considered simply as a consequence of the adoption of the musette, without the popularity of which the sudden prestige of the hurdy-gurdy could not be explained.
There are above all two things that smoothed the hurdy-gurdy's way into society. The musette which had been familiar to the aristocra