Music for the Royal Fireworks made clear to Handel that King George had a preference for only martial instruments and drums, and hoped there would be "no fiddles". Handel omitted the string instruments against his will. Also against Handel's will, there was a full rehearsal of the music in Vauxhall Gardens and not in Green Park. On 21 April 1749 an audience, claimed to be over twelve thousand people, each paying two shillings and six pence (half a crown) rushed to get there, causing a three-hour traffic jam of carriages on London Bridge, the only vehicular route to the area south of the river. Six
Early music of the British Isles accompany the mass had to employ bands of musicians with trumpets, drums, fifes, bagpipes and tabors. In England her cousin Elizabeth I was also trained in music. She played the lute, virginals, sang, danced, and even claimed to have composed dance music. She was major patron for English musicians composers (particularly in the Chapel Royal) while in her royal household she employed numerous foreign musicians in her consorts of viols, flutes, recorders, and sackbuts and shawms. Byrd emerged as the leading composer of the Elizabethan court, writing sacred and secular polyphony, viol, keyboard and consort music, reflecting the growth in