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If the Could Only Talk by Richard Martner

Who better to speak for the bass viol (more technically known as the bass da gamba or “with the leg”) than the instrument itself? The following is an imagined interview I had with a seven-stringed, French bass viol born around 1690 (hereto referred to as “BV”). The answers she gives are as historically accurate as can be researched for the purposes of this paper. 1

ME: Thank you for taking the time for this interview. I am sure you have gotten questions like mine many times in the past.

BV: Oui, I imagine so, but it has been quite some time since anyone has asked any of me. 2

ME: To your recollection, when was the last time you gave an interview?

BV: This is easy. I was approached by director Alain Corneau for the 1991 film “ Tous les

Matins du Monde ” to play the viol of young Marin Marais, but I had to turn him down for a few reasons. First, to be historically accurate, Monsieur Marias played a six-stringed viol at that point in his career. Secondly, I was vehemently against the stunt where Monsieur Jean de Sainte-

Colombe would throw me against a wall and stomp on my shattered pieces.

ME: Sounds painful.

BV: Do not worry. He assured me that the special effects department would see to it no harm would befall me. I was against it for ideological reasons out of respect for Monsieur de Sainte-

Colombe, his daughters, and Monsieur Marais, so I respectfully declined Monsieur Corneau’s kind offer.

ME: Did you ever get to meet Sainte-Colombe or Marais?

BV: Non, not personally, but I had family members that were played by Monsieur Marais and his colleagues at court. 3 Monsieurs Marais and Sainte-Colombe were both well respected players of and composers for the viola da gamba in the Baroque period.

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ME: The bass in your title as “bass viol” implies that you are a low-pitched or perhaps a “soft” instrument. Are you related to the modern ?

BV: Non! From that famille merdique, the scélérat of closest proportions would be the

violoncello, or as your modern people call it! It is true, we are bowed underhand, but it is

not this “German” style bowing that your modern people are used to. Our bowing technique is

much more refined. The player must use the fingers of their bow hand to manipulate the hairs of

our bow, a technique it would take too long for me to explain to you at this time.

ME: Instead, let us talk about your family. Where is your family from?

BV: My [viol] family originates from the kingdom of Aragon in Spain, bordering Occitanie,

France to the northeast, in the late fifteenth century.4

ME: Occitanie? Land of the troubadour and trobairitz?

BV: Oui. Those folks played a distant ancestor, the medieval vielle , not to be confused with the later vielle à roue or as you Américains call it, the “hurdy-gurdy”. Before and during this time, there were a few, odd relatives about, the rebec and rebab, both of Arabic ancestry, in the area but I am unsure of our familial relationship except that they, too, were bowed and sometimes played in the da gamba style.5 In the late 1400s, my ancestors, the vihuelas, were

living and thriving there at the time, but were also having a family dispute about playing style.

ME: What was the issue?

BV: The Vihuela de Arco [bow] side preferred their strings bowed, while Vihuela de Mano

[hand] liked to be strummed or plucked with the fingers. Both had waists shaped like the guitar

of today. I am descended from de Arco side of the family.6

ME: If they were shaped like guitars, were they tuned likewise?

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BV: Oui. My six-stringed viola da gamba cousins are also tuned in fourths with the middle

strings tuned a third apart, like the modern guitar, showing our similar progeny. My French five-

stringed viol cousins are tuned in fourths throughout, like that double bass chose you mentioned

earlier. We [bass ] are not to be confused with my lowest sounding gamba mate, the

. Never mistake us for the family ancêtre of the modern double bass, the French

basse de violon or its alto cousin, the modern instrument you call the viola.7 In our family, we

call them the bassesse de violon , a little French blague. 8

ME: Besides the violone, who are your other closest relatives?

BV: I am glad you asked this question. You Americans and your English relatives have many misnomers for my kind. 9 My direct gamba siblings, from smallest to largest, are: Pardessus,

Treble, Alto, Tenor, Lyra, my half-brother Division (he spends most of his time in England, around here, he is known as Viola Bastarda ), myself, and Violene. 10 [see also; Figures 1, 2, 3]

ME: How do you differ from the cello?

BV: Mon dieu! Again, you mention that vile family in my presence!

ME: Forgive my ignorance. Why do you so vilify the ?

BV: Je suis désolé.11 How could you have known of our bitter rivalry? À la fin de la journée , their kind caused our virtual extinction. 12 As Monsieur Michel Corrette said:

The elderly viol, after having shone at court and in town… saw the cello preferred to it, …and was only too glad to retire to a little lane on the Champs Elysees, …without being missed by a single amateur. 13

ME: What did he mean by that comment?

BV: He meant that not only did professional musicians prefer the cello, but also the amateur ones. To survive as a species, an instrument must have music written for it. At that time, as it is now, and forever shall be, music that thrives is usually based upon popular demand. Ergo, as

MARTNER 4 composers wrote less solo music for us, we began to only find gigs in groups, then were relegated to obscurity.

ME: How did you survive until now?

BV: I spent most of my life in the cachot of small château in southern France. I was first put

away by my original owner and was kept as an heirloom by his family.

ME: Are there internal structural differences between your family and the cello?

BV: Oui. My early viol family were constructed with no . 14 The lack of this simple piece of engineering made their lifespan much shorter than viols of my generation and the cello, most of whom had this. The sound post reinforces our top near the where the most pressure is exerted by our bow. Without it, over time, the front of them would weaken and eventually break causing death to that instrument. Réposez en paix, frères!

ME: [after a moment of silence] Is there any difference between your and their strings?

BV: We have more strings, of course! Another major difference between our families is the tension of our strings. The violin family’s construction makes their string tension much higher than ours making it easier for a player to get a louder sound. Beginning in the 1660s, string technology changed, to our detriment, by wrapping the lower sounding gut string with wire 15 .

Our innate structure could not support the increased tension necessary to produce a viable sound with the new strings. After the advent of the cello, many of my family were given “cello makeovers” by instrument makers like the Stradivari [family], but, in my opinion, that is like giving a human an unnecessary breast implant. 16 By the time my bass viol family received our seventh string, the technology had passed us by. Had we kept up with contemporary string technology, we may have continued to flourish. 17

ME: I did notice you have seven strings. Where did your seventh string come from?

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BV: The French composer and viol player Sainte-Colombe purportedly added our seventh string, but as with most legends, this may or may not be true. 18

ME: What was the difference in the quality of sound produced by these “new”, wire-wrapped

strings?

BV: In my opinion, the sound was more brash whilst our gut string is sweeter. I was not alone

in this feeling. In 1740, a certain French lawyer and music connoisseur, Monsieur Hubert Le

Blanc, wrote an entire 164-page treatise in my family’s defense, “Defense de la Basse de Viole

Contre les Entréprises du Violon et les Prétentions du Violoncel” . In it, he writes:

The Violin, therefore, cannot dispute at the Viol the delicacy of his touch, and his fine Harmony of resonance in the places proper to closely examine its attractions, and allow them to make an impression, [the Violin] thinks of transporting the scene to a hall of immense space, where there would be many effects as harmful to the Viol as favorable to the violin. 19

ME: Did the public embrace the new sound?

BV: Oui. One thing to remember is my family was designed for chamber music, meaning

smaller spaces. With the ’ ability to fill large halls, they took many of our jobs away. In

France, as the musical compositions got longer and more involved, like the sonata form, for

example, composers wanted greater range of dynamics from soft to loud. When Italian music

became in vogue , French composers became less interested in nationalism in orchestration, and

called for Italian style instrumentation.

ME: Is there a work that exemplifies this battle between you and the cello?

BV: Oui. Marc-Antoine Charpentier, in the “first” French sonata, has the bass viols play in the

French Style, while the cellos play in the “new” Italian style. 20 It has been said:

[T]he use of Italian instruments to perform increasingly Italiante music was inevitable... the viol [musical] parts became less idiomatic and hence more readily adapted to instruments with smaller ranges and less facility in playing chords. 21

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ME: You and yours can play chords as well as single notes? I rarely hear compositions for the violin family with more than a written.

BV: We were quite frequently asked to play chords. This is an advantage to having a slightly different shaped sound board and less tense strings. With a flatter sound board and slacker strings, a player can dig in with his bow further picking up more strings. Our necks are also slightly wider to accommodate more string. We have frets, unlike the violin and theirs, making chords easier to finger. This is a disadvantage, though, for some virtuosic techniques, like sliding a pitch up or down on a string.

ME: Did your frets affect tuning?

BV: Our frets got us into trouble in the Baroque period when the tuning systems started to change:

‘Precision of pitch’ was compromised by the viol’s lack of flexibility: once the fret was set so was the pitch, and the player was less able to accommodate the shifting pitch of others than on an instrument of the violin family. 22

ME: Why did the tuning change?

BV: These newer tuning systems were necessary as music became tonal from the older, modal systems. This also set the poor keyboard instruments on their never-ending sojourn toward the

“perfect half step”, ending up with “equal temperament” at the close of the Baroque period, but mais je m'égare .23

ME: Why can I not find many books on how to play a viol?

BV: As was the practice in antiquity, most teaching of how to play was passed down orally, from master to student. Even with the printing press, viola da gamba players were somewhat secretive. With the death of the old masters and little repertoire being published, knowledge of our intricacies and nuisances died with them. 24 Most musicologists of old put the year 1787 as

MARTNER 7 our fade in obscurity, coinciding with the death of the last virtuoso gamba player, Carl Friedrich

Abel.25 Slightly out of my era, the following sums up contemporary feelings toward my kind in the early nineteenth century:

[Carl Friedrich Abel's] instrument was buried and forgotten with him in 1787 ...Within the space of a generation there will not be any idea in Europe of this once ubiquitous and beloved instrument. 26

ME: He was a composer and viol player from the classical era, correct?

BV: Oui, but he is worth mentioning for both his viol playing and compositions.

ME: Who are your all-time favorite composers through the Baroque period of music (1750)?

BV: This question is very hard for me. I am very old and cannot remember them all, especially the ancient ones. Here [see Figure 4] is a list of my top forty or so I can remember.

ME: Top three?

BV: For that, I must go with Marin Marais, Jean Sieur de Sainte-Colombe, and Le Sieur De

Machy.

ME: Machy? Is he not too old?

BV: Mon ami, sometimes it is not the music itself that moves me. Sometimes it is how the player moves me to the music. If you have not yet noticed, mon pire ennemi, the cello, has, what you call, an , or spike, coming straight out of its bas, oui? 27 At little phallic, non? We

viola da gamba have none. A player must be much more intimate with us, feel the music, au sens

propre et figure, as we say. 28

ME: So, your “top three” list were players as well as composers?

BV: Oui! The greatest that I can think of, until 1750.

ME: Are there any players alive today that, in your opinion, could “move you to the music”?

BV: Only one. Jordi Savall.

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ME: What type of musical works were composed for your family?

BV: Many different types: airs, cantatas, chaconnes, concertinos, fantasias, intavolaturas, pavans, preludes, pièces, sérénades, sonatas, suites, recercadas, ricercars, and variations to name a few. [see also; Figure 4]

ME: You mentioned the Stradivari family earlier. Were there other viol makers that you liked?

BV: Although he was an Englishman, I have always appreciated the work of Barak Norman.

My relatives made by him are still very famous. 29

ME: One last question. What modifications would be necessary for you family to make a huge

comeback in the modern era?

BV: There was a slight resurgence in the twentieth century, but I cannot think of anything that

would keep our overall personality while making us effective in the modern . Now, you

Americans would probably make “Buddy Holly” modifications to us, giving us a solid body,

adding electronic pickups on our soundboards, and giving us amplifiable, steel strings. All of

these machinations would be for naught, in the end. We would loose every trait that makes us

who we are.

ME: Thank you again for speaking with me today.

BV: Le plaisir était pour moi.

In its heyday, the bass viol was played and composed for by many celebrities we have

heard of today, among them Machy, Marais, Couperin, J.S. Bach, Byrd, and many more. Even

King Louis XIV, the “sun king”, was a fan:

One typically French aspect of the King’s taste was his love of the viol: it was Louis XIV who instructed the five-year-old Antoine Forqueray, then an infant prodigy upon the base de violin, to learn the viol instead. 30

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Alas, even with all the accolades it received, its inherent structure, soft-spoken nature, and the public tastes for increasingly louder instruments, even to this day, have left it in the past. It can still be heard, though, ever whispering in certain circles of ancient music around the world, but its once proud patronage is a distant memory. 31

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Figure 1: Violin vs Viol Reference 32 Part Violin Family Viol Family shoulder Square Sloping, Festooned, later Square sound holes F-form C-form (later F-form) rosette Rare Frequent back Rounded Flat (later rounded) corners Frequent Rare neck Short Long frets Rare 7 frequent; 8 rare tuning Fifths (Fourths double bass only) Fourths, with a third in the middle strings 4 (5 rare) 6 frequent (5 or 7 rarer) stringing high tension low tension edge overhanging overhanging or flush with ribs Playing position violin/viola: on the shoulder between the legs (gamba ) bow hold Overhand frequent; underhand rare Underhand

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Figure 2 Viola da Gamba Family : Syntagma Musicum, 1619

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Figure 3 Violin Family Michael Praetorius: Syntagma Musicum, 1619

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Figure 4: Noncomprehensive List of Viol Composers and Works 33

Work or Type of Work Composer Music for Viola da Gamba ; Pièces ; Sonatas Abel, Carl Friedrich 1 Sonatas (BWV 1027 -9) Bach, J.S. Sonatas Bach, C .P.E. 2 Sonatas ; P ièces Boismortier, Joseph Bodin de 3 Méthode raisonnée pour apprendre la musique Bordet, Toussaint 4 Cantatas ; Sonatas Buxtehude 5 Fantasias ; variat ions Byrd, William 6 Pièce s; Sonatas Charpentier, Marc -Antoine 7 Airs Corkine, William 8 Pièces ; La Sultan e; Concerts royaux ; Sonatas Couperin, François 9 L'Art de toucher le dessus et le basse de violle Danoville 10 Pièces De Machy, Le Sieur 11 Suite Dubuisson 12 Musicus autodidaktos Eisel, Johann Philipp 13 Pièces Forqueray, Antonie 14 Lettione seconda ; Regola Rubertina Ganassi, Sylvestro 15 Musica Teusch Ge rle, Hans 16 Piesce de Mr Hauttemant Hotman, Nic olas 17 Capta ine Humes ; Pavan ; Airs; Love's Farewell ; Now I come Hume, Tobias 18 Sonatas ; A ir s; Jenkins , John 19 Suite Klaes , Torben 20 Fantasias ; Airs Lawes , William 21 Musick's Mo nument Mace, Thomas 22 Pièces ; Sonatas ; Chaconne s; Tombeau s; Suites Marais, Marin 23 Compendium musicæ instrumentalis chelicæ Merck, Daniel 24 Sérénade Montéclair, Michel Pignolet de 25 Recercada s; Trattado de Glosas Ortiz, Diego 26 The Compleat Musick -Master Pearson, William 27 An Introduction to the Skill of Musick Playford, John 28 Sonatas ; Concertino ; Purcell, Henry 29 The Schoole of Musicke Robinson, Thomas 30 Essempi ; Modo facile di Passeggiar Rognoni Taeggio, Francesco 31 Rost Codex Rost, Franz (copyist) 32 Traité ; Rousseau, Jean 33 Gavotte s; Suite s; Les Pleurs ; Concerts ; Sainte-Colombe 34 L'écho du Danube ; Scherzi musicali ; Suite s Schenck, Johann 35 Sacred music Schutz, Heinrich 36 The Division Viol Simpson, Christopher 37 Grund -richtiger Unterricht der Musicalischen Kunst Speer, Daniel 38 Sonatas Studeny, Bruno 39 Prelud es ; Queene Maries Dumpe Sumarte, Richard 40 Fantasias ; Der getreue Music -Meister ; Sonatas Telemann, Georg Philipp 41 Ricercar s Virgiliano, Aurelio 42 Intavolatura Ziegler, Johann Christoph

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Notes:

1 DISCLAIMER: The views, feelings, and opinions offered by the character “BV” are not my own. I believe them to be what a bass viol would say, think, and feel. Most of the more heinous comments are kept in the original French.

2 “Yes,”

3 “No,”

4 Woodfield, Ian. "The Early History of the Viol." Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 103 (1976): 141.

5 Payne, E. J. "The Viola Da Gamba." Proceedings of the Musical Association 15 (1888): 94.

6 see also; Woodfield, Ian. “The Early History…”. Ibid: 142.

7 “ancestor”; Chapman, David. "Historical and Practical Considerations for the Tuning of Double Bass Instruments in Fourths." The Galpin Society Journal 56 (2003): 225.

8 “joke.”

9 Neece, Brenda. "The Cello in Britain: A Technical and Social History." The Galpin Society Journal 56 (2003): 77.

10 Dolmetsch, Nathalie. "Of the Sizes of Viols." The Galpin Society Journal 17 (1964): 27.

11 “I am sorry.”

12 “At the end of the day,”

13 Corrette, Michel. " Méthodes pour apprendre à jouer de la contre-basse à 3, à 4, et 5 cordes, de la quinte ou alto et de la viole d'Orphée." Paris, 1773: 2.

14 Harwood, Ian. "An Introduction to Renaissance Viols." Early Music 2, no. 4 (1974): 239.

15 Bonta, Stephen. “Terminology for the Bass Violin in Seventeenth-Century Italy.”, JAMIS 4 (1978): 5.

16 Herzog, Myrna. "Stradivari's Viols." The Galpin Society Journal 57 (2004): 185.

17 Abbott, Djilda, and Ephraim Segerman. "Strings in the 16th and 17th Centuries." The Galpin Society Journal 27 (1974): 52.

18 Rousseau, Jean. Traité de la Viole. Paris: C. Ballard. (1687): 24.

19 Le Blanc, Hubert. "Defense de la Basse de Viole Contre les Entréprises du Violon et les Prétentions du Violoncel." Amsterdam: Pierre Mortier, 1740: 38.

20 Sadie, Julie Anne. "Bowed Continuo Instruments in French Baroque Chamber Music." Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 105 (1978): 37.

21 Sadie, Julie Anne. "The Bass Viol in French Baroque Chamber Music." Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press., 1980: 20.

22 Summers, M.A.C. "La mort de la viole en France pendant le dix-huitieme siecle: an enquiry in the viol's fall from grace." Chelys, 29. 3 (2001): 49-50.

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23 “but I digress.”; Hanning, B.H. Concise History of Western Music. New York, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2014: 236, 280.

24 see also; Summers, M.A.C. “La mort…”. Ibid: 55-56.

25 Rutledge, John. "Towards a History of the Viol in the 19th Century." Early Music 12, no. 3 (1984): 331.

26 Gerber, Ernst Ludwig. Neues historisch-biographisches Lexikon der Tonkuenstler. Leipzig: 1812-14: cols. 5-6.

27 “bottom, yes?”

28 “literally and figuratively”

29 Hebbert, Benjamin. "A Catalogue of Surviving Instruments By, or Ascribed To, Barak Norman." The Galpin Society Journal 54 (2001): 285.

30 see also; Summers, M.A.C. “La mort…”. Ibid: 45.

31 Savall, Jordi. “FRANÇOIS COUPERIN – Les Nations.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nM3zaa4KyA

32 Foundation, Orpheon. “The Violin (or viola da braccio) and the Viola da gamba Families Differences and Similarities”. https://www.orpheon.org/OldSite/Seiten/education/Violin_Vdg_Families.htm.

33 This “Top 40” list was compiled throughout my research. I cross-referenced the numbered ones with https://imslp.org and other reference material for the dates of the composers and works. The italicized items are newer than the Baroque (> 1750) but are worth mentioning. As is stated, this list is NOT comprehensive, but an exemplative list of composers and styles.