The core of the Baroque orchestra was a group of instruments of the violin family. The famous orchestra maintained by Louis XIV of France was called “The Twenty-Four Violins of the King” — meaning twenty-four instruments of the violin family: six violins, twelve violas, and six cellos. A great deal of Baroque music was written for such an orchestra or a similar one that today would be called a “string orchestra”: violins, violas, cellos, and one or two basses.

To this was added a keyboard instrument as continuo (see page 110) — usually a harpsichord in secular music and an organ in church music.

Woodwinds and brass instruments were sometimes added to the string orchestra, too, but there was no fixed complement, as was to be the case later. For special occasions of a festive nature — music celebrating a military victory, for example, or Christmas music ordered for the town cathedral — composers augmented the basic Baroque orchestra with trumpets or French horns, timpani, bassoons, and oboes and/or flutes. This festive orchestra has a particularly grand, open, and brilliant sound.