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Bowed Continuo Instruments in French Baroque Chamber Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1978

Julie Anne Sadie
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Extract

French Baroque composers, like their counterparts all over Europe, regarded the bass viol, the cello, the bassoon and, in some circumstances, the double bass as suitable sustaining continuo instruments. The choice of one or another, or a combination, depended no less upon circumstances than it did on the desire for a specific stylistic nuance or timbre. In this paper I propose to examine the evidence – in memoirs and other accounts, and in manuscript and printed scores – that documents the rise and decline of the bass viol and the emergence of the cello as a chamber music instrument. The nature of the musical evidence is often contradictory in itself, but ultimately it is indicative of a larger process, of which the use of the viol and the cello were a significant part: the assimilation of Italian genres into the French musical idiom.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 105 , 1978 , pp. 37 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © 1980 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

NOTES

1 Sébastien de Brossard, Elévations et motets à voix seule avec la basse continue, glossary. Retrospectively, Michel Corrette wrote in 1741 that: ‘Depuis environ vingt-cinq ou trente ans, on a quitté la grosse basse de violon montée en sol pour le Violoncelle des Italiens … son accord est d'un ton plus haut que l'ancienne Basse, ce qui lui donne beaucoup plus de jeu’ (Méthode théorique et pratique pour apprendre en peu de temps le violoncelle dans sa perfection, A).Google Scholar

2 Marin Mersenne, Harmonie universelle contenant la théorie et la pratique de la musique (Paris, 1636, repr. 1963), première préface générale.Google Scholar

3 Godefroy, Le cérémonial Francois (Paris, 1649), i, 970.Google Scholar

4 James R. Anthony, French Baroque Music from Beaujoyeulx to Rameau (new edition, New York, 1978), 161.Google Scholar

5 Yolande de Brossard, ‘La vie musicale en France d'après Loret et ses continuateurs 1650–1688’, Recherches sur la musique française classique, x (1970), 141; see also Frédéric Robert, ‘La musique à travers le Mercure galant’. Recherches sur la musique française classique, ii (1961–2), 173.Google Scholar

6 Catherine Massip, La vie des musiciens de Paris au temps de Mazarin (Paris, 1976), 156; see also Albert Jacquot, La musique en Lorraine. Etude d'après Us archives locales (2nd edn., Paris, 188 s, repr. 1972), 99.Google Scholar

7 Marcelle Benoit, Musiques de cour, chapelle, chambre, écurie 1661–1733 (Paris, 1971).Google Scholar

8 Massip, op. cit., 7.Google Scholar

9 Y. de Brossard, op. cit., 155.Google Scholar

10 See Cohen, Albert, ‘A Study of Instrumental Ensemble Practice in Seventeenth-Century France’, Galpin Society Journal, xv (1962), 8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Chantal Masson, ‘Journal de Marquis de Dangeau 1684–1720’, Recherches sur la musique française classique, ii (1961), 213; see also Norbert Dufourcq, La musique à la cour de Louis xiv et de Louis xv d'après les mémoires de Sourches et Luynes 1681–1758 (Paris, 1970), i, 33.Google Scholar

12 Walter H. Bishop, ‘Maugars's response faite à un curieux sur le sentiment de la musique d'Italie’, Journal of the Viola da Garnba Society of America, viii (1971), 11.Google Scholar

13 F-Pn: Vm7 4813; see the author's article, ‘Charpentier and the early French Ensemble Sonata’, Early Music, vii (1979), 330–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 F-Pn: Vm7 1156.Google Scholar

15 F-LYm: (Parc Dieu collection) 129.949.Google Scholar

16 See the inventories of Henry Du Mont (Louis-Henri Collard and Norbert Dufourcq, ‘Quelques documents sur Henry Du Mont’, Recherches sur la musique française classique, xv (1975), 244); Nicolas Mathieu (Michel Le Moël, ‘Un foyer d'italianisme à la fin du xviie siècle: Nicholas Mathieu, Curé de Saint-André-des-Arts’, Recherches sur la musique française classique, iii (1963), 43); Marie Françoise Certain (Le Moël, ‘Chez l'illustre Certain’, Recherches sur la musique française classique, ii (1961–2), 71); and Estienne Boucon (Lionel de la Laurencie, L'Ecole française de violon, de Lully à Viotti. Etudes d'histoire et d'esthétique (Paris, 192 2–4, repr. 1971), i, 389).Google Scholar

17 F-Pn:Vm71110–1111.Google Scholar

18 F-Pn: Vm7 1477.Google Scholar

19 Recueil de douze sonates, à III. et III. parties avec la basse chifrée [sic] (Paris, 1712).Google Scholar

20 F-Pn: Vm7 1157.Google Scholar

21 Ancelet, Observations sur la musique, les musiciens, et les instrumens [sic] (Amsterdam, 1757), 171.Google Scholar

22 p. 836.Google Scholar

23 François Lesure, ‘Marin Marais. Sa carrière-sa famille’. Revue belge de musicologie, vii (1953), 135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Benoit, op. cit., 408, 410; during 1729 the symphonistes employed to perform at Marly in the queen's concerts included players of the viol, the bassoon, the basse d'accompagnement and the harpsichord (404, 407).Google Scholar

25 Sylvette Milliot, ‘Reflexions et recherches sur la viole de gambe et le violoncelle en France’, Recherches sur la musique française classique, iv (1964), 179.Google Scholar

26 James R. Anthony recently discovered this humorous cantata in the Musée Calvet, Avignon (MS 1182).Google Scholar

27 Johann Mattheson, Grundlage einer Ehren-Pforte (Hamburg, 1740), ed. by Max Schneider (Berlin, 1910), 367.Google Scholar

28 F-Pn: X. 961.Google Scholar

29 F-Pn: Vm2 125.Google Scholar

30 Ute Zingler, ‘Ueber die Rolle zusätzlicher Noten im Basso continuo bei Violoncellsonaten’, Helmuth Osthoff zu seinem siebzigsten Ceburtstag, ed. W. Stauder, U. Aarburg, P. Cohn (Tutzing, 1969). 135.Google Scholar

31 Alto and tenor clefs are used somewhat indiscriminately, though the tenor clef eventually became associated with the cello. Rousseau, who devoted a chapter in the Traite de la viole (Paris, 1687, repr. 1975) to transposition, stressed the need for fluency in all clefs (p. 119).Google Scholar

32 Robert Donington, The Interpretation of Early Music (new version, London, 1974), 276.Google Scholar

33 Edith Borroff, An Introduction to Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre (Brooklyn, c. 1966), 93.Google Scholar

34 Brossard defined ‘obligato’ [sic] in his Dictionaire de musique (Paris, 1703, repr. 1964), specifically citing ‘con viola obligata/avec une Basse de Viole obligée’. In his manuscript copies of his own sonatas and those of La Guerre, Brossard applied the term to both the viol and the cello. However, Brossard's usage here seems to refer to the presence in the texture of a basse d'archet, doubling the bass and contributing points of imitation and occasional batteries, rather than a part independent of the others.Google Scholar

35 Rousseau, op. cit., 59–64; see also Demachy, Pieces de violle (1685), 7–8.Google Scholar

36 Michel de Saint Lambert, Nouveau traité de l'accompagnement du clavecin, de l'orgue, et des autres instruments (Paris, 1707), 58.Google Scholar

37 p. 25.Google Scholar

38 Rousseau, op. cit., 118–19.Google Scholar

39 Ancelet, op. cit., 24; Hubert Le Blanc had remarked earlier that, ‘Forcroi le Père s'étoit trop fait valoir en de certaines occasions, où il avois affecté d'être quinseux, fantasque et bisare, par un désir de gagner trop hautement, lequel il ne concilia pas assez avec les interêts de la Viole (op. cit., 40).Google Scholar

40 Le Blanc, op. cit., 60–2.Google Scholar