L'Achéron

Works by SAINTE-COLOMBE, MARAIS, FORQUERAY, DE VISÉE…

The viola da gamba experienced many hours of glory between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries: from Italy reborn to England from the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods and to France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it has seen its repertoires to flourish and its identity to assert itself, becoming one of the instruments to sound so close to the voice that it came to symbolize human expression.

It is in France that the music for viola solo or accompanied has developed the most and if some composers like Sainte-Colombe, Marais or Forqueray left their imprints in the collective memory, it is fascinating to hear also the other musicians having contributed to the construction of what could be considered today as a French school of viola da gamba, each generation of violists testifying to an instrumental and aesthetic evolution in echo with the metamorphosis of the spirits of this time.

Hotman and Dubuisson, Sainte-Colombe and Demachy, Marais and Forqueray the father, Marais son and Caix d'Hervelois, Dollé and Forqueray son: these five intertwined generations will have accompanied the History of Louis XIII to the French Revolution, painting a music where interiority and self-awareness are brought to light, revealing a deep look at intimacy. This opening of the spirit and the soul finds with the viol a magnificent tool: by its unique sonorities, all in resonance, in subtle hues and poignant lyricism, it exhorts the Man to see himself as he is, to feel, to question and to seek authentic freedom and happiness.
If the intimacy of this repertoire calls for introspection, its virtuosity and brilliance invite the intelligence of reasoning and an agile and critical mind: like the painted Vanities and the moralistic writings, the music for viol accompanies the incipient Enlightenment from the seventeenth century, the pieces of these composers forming the musical counterpart of the works of La Bruyère, Pascal, Rousseau, Diderot and many others ...