Freddy urged me to stay with the cello until I was good enough to perform professionally. There was always work for cellists in chamber groups, orchestras, even the pits of Broadway musicals. I followed Freddy’s practical advice for three years, until I was fifteen. Then came another pivotal moment. Late one May night Freddy telephoned my mother. A place had opened in a week-long viol workshop, there was a scholarship available, was I interested? What Freddy could not know was that the workshop was being held the same week as the state-wide Regents examinations. These comprehensive exams, given at the end of several years of study in various high school subjects, were grave, important, and essential if you were to graduate along any normal path. So there stood my mother, phone pressed against her ear, shuffling from foot to foot, trying then and there to prognosticate my future. Luckily, in a blaze of instinct she said “workshop”. The die was cast.

When I was sixteen I was admitted to the New England Conservatory in Boston, a great institution fortunately not too finicky about the exact high school credentials of applicants who did well in their auditions. There I committed myself to the viol exclusively, studying with Grace Feldman and Laura Jeppesen. To these teachers I also owe my first introduction to the solo viol recordings of Jordi Savall. My Boston neighbors from that time may still shudder at the memory of how I played Jordi’s records over and over, taking short breaks for class, practice and, occasionally, sleep. Three years later, to my delight, I went off to Basle to study with the great Catalan Master himself, taking an American break to return to Boston to earn a Master’s degree from the conservatory. During my second stay in Basle I met Sylvia Abramowicz, a Parisian viol student in Jordi’s class. Musicke was definitely the food of love in our case. We married soon after and have been playing together for sixteen years, part of the time as A Deux Violes Esgales, a duo based in Paris which we formed together.

During the thirty years that have passed since I was a twelve year old boy enraptured by its sound, the viol has soared ahead in public acceptance. Freddy, who died tragically young, would have been amazed by the viol as film star in the much-honored movie, Tous les Matins du Monde, a far cry from church basements and only a small indication of the instrument’s current popularity.

15th century Spain

Although many people unfamiliar with the viol assume it is a member of the violin family, it is not—it is more closely related to the Spanish guitar. The viola da gamba, or viol “of the leg” (since it is held between the knees when played), most likely developed in 15th century Spain when vihuelists tried playing their instruments with the bow usually used to play a North African instrument, the rabab. Bow aside, this early version of a “viol” retained all the features of a plucked instrument: frets, tuning, even playing position in that it was held like a guitar and bowed vertically. Not always bowed, however. In early representations we see the same instrument sometimes bowed, sometimes plucked. These early viols, also named vihuela d’arco or “bowed vihuela” were small and had flat bridges which allowed you to play all of its strings at once, a perfect chordal accompaniment to singing. Visitors to the Louvre in Paris can see Veronese’s The Marriage in Cana in which two viol players hold their small instruments in a guitar position, and another holds a larger instrument in a cello position.

The new instrument was quickly taken up in Neapolitan court circles. There it became the custom to hold it vertically. A round bridge was added, enabling the player to bow one string at a time and thus play melodies as well as chords. Soon afterwards makers began to offer these pleasing instruments in a choice of sizes—treble, tenor, bass, and double bass—ornamenting the scrolls with carved heads representing friends, classical subjects, sometimes even animals. Following that tradition, one of our bass viols, made by the Paris-based builder Judith Kraft, has a likeness of my son Thomas, himself a thirteen year old up-and-coming lute player. Instruments were sometimes painted, carved with roses like lutes, or carved on the table, back, or fingerboard, or decorated with marquetterie.

Viols are always bowed with the palm in an outward-facing position as was their ancestor, the rabab, and with the ancestral left hand technique of the vihuela and lute. During its long history, the instrument might have anywhere from four to eight strings, normally made of gut, tuned in a variety of manners, and equipped with gut frets, usually seven. As with a lute, these frets could be moved upwards and downwards on the instrument’s neck, so it could be played in different temperaments. Some late-18th century viols had inlaid metal frets like a guitar. This indicates that from time to time the viol used equal temperament, as did the lute. Research suggests that this may have been the case as early as the 16th century. Moreover, some English viols added sympathetic metal strings. Starting in mid-17th century viols added some metal-wound gut strings.

The sound hole was often in a “c” form, sometimes in a “flame”, and often, as recent research has shown in the case of many of the instruments between the 15th and 18th centuries, with “f” holes like violins. Some of these “f” hole viols underwent subsequent transformation to cellos.

As it was relatively easy to play, the viol became popular with amateur musicians. Families liked it—children could play the smaller instruments and adults the larger. Once you learned on one size, you could play any. Sizes varied greatly—a concert near Milan in 1493 is documented as featuring instruments “as large as a man.” During the Renaissance they were used to accompany singers, or to play transcriptions of pieces written for other instruments, rather like the “home” spinet in the early part of the 20th century.

One of the first printed books for the viol as a solo instrument was Diego Ortiz’s Tratado des glosas, published in 1553. This book is meant to teach violists how to improvise in a linear division style, as improvisation has always been one of the hallmarks of viol playing. As time went on, virtuoso viol players improvised on vocal music as well, taking a bit of the bass, adding divisions, then jumping to the alto, tenor or soprano. This style, which became known as viola bastarda, was highly popular in Italy. By the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century composers including Selma, Bonizzi, Della Casa, and Bassani all composed in the viola bastarda style.

The viol in England

According to a mid-17th century note by one Mr. Peacham, “Beere and viols da gamba came into England both in one yeare in Henry the Sevenths time.” Whatever may have been the case with their sobriety, the English took enthusiastically to the instrument and to music for viol ensembles known as “consorts” by Byrd, Jenkins, Lawes, Purcell, and a great many others. In English homes, where an evening’s entertainment would often be music made with friends, composed by friends, you could find large trunks known as “chests” in which viols were stored. A great pleasure for a modern violist is to find fine musicians to play on a perfectly matched “chest of viols” by the same builder. Nothing could be more ravishing!

In his 1676 book Musick’s Monument, Thomas Mace recommends “a Good Chest of Viols; Six in Number, viz, 2 Basses, 2 Tenors, and 2 Trebles: All Truly and Proportionably Suited.”

The English also attempted to reproduce on the viol what they imagined to be the sound of a Classical Greek lyre, which led to virtuoso playing of solo music in a chordal fashion that became known in England as “lyra-viol” technique. Although this highly virtuosic playing involves chords, it can also incorporate divisions. It demands great athletic dexterity from the performer, requiring him to leap from string to string. The tuning of the viol could be altered to play in a specific key. At the end of the 17th century one finds as many as 60 different tunings. To avoid having to cope with 60 different sets of fingerings lyra-viol composers wrote down their music in French lute tablature. Music exists for one as well as for ensembles of viols known as “lyra consorts” played in the “lyra-way.” Composers such as Hume, Coperario, Jenkins, Lawes, Simpson and the obscure Ditrich Stöffken among many, many others contributed to a repertoire which numbers almost 5000 pieces.

Many European courts in the 17th and 18th centuries had resident violists da gamba. Charles I of England was a particular fan and was said to be proficient enough on the bass viol to sit in with his favorite musicians. In Amsterdam local authorities tried to keep people from playing viols as they were frequently stored in beer and wine taverns, thus placing their players precariously near temptation to become drunk and disorderly.

Baroque France

In France the viola da gamba was favored by the Paris intellectuals, perhaps because it was one of Louis XIV’s favorite instruments. In 1741 Hubert le Blanc neatly summed up the French attitude toward the viol: “the Divine Intelligence among its gifts to us distributed harmony to mortals: the violin was given to the Italians, the flute to the Germans, the harpsichord to the English, and to the French the bass viol.” Philibert Jambe de Fer noted in 1556 that the French viol had only 5 strings. And Mersenne pointed out that “Jacques Mauduit added the sixth string to the viol, which only had five beforehand, and he was responsible for the viol’s use in France instead of the bass violin.”

Two of the first French solo viol players were André Maugars, known for his improvisations, and Nicolas Hotman, who started composing suites for the instrument. Hotman, who was also a lutenist, has a special footnote in French viol history as the teacher of Sainte-Colombe. About forty-five of his pieces exist in many different manuscript versions, as well as a few airs à boire. Because he improvised, the situation with Maugars is very different, and none of his music has yet been discovered.

Sainte-Colombe, Hotman’s student, famously added the low seventh string to the French viol, a moment that found its way into the film Tous les matins du monde, which created a stir of popular interest in this composer. Understandably, he was also the first to write for the newly invented seventh string. Recent research suggests that Saint-Colombe was probably a Jean de Saint-Colombe who lived near the Louvre on the rue de Betizy (which no longer exists), near Marin Marais and another famous Parisian viol player, Jean Lacquemant, better known as le sieur Du Buisson. In the Ironies of Fate Department, the rue de Betizy became the chic rue de Rivoli, and the site of Sainte-Colombe’s house has become —you guessed!— a McDonald’s.

Sainte-Colombe composed over 170 pieces for solo seven-string viol as well as 67 for two bass viols. In addition to his most famous student, Marin Marais, he also taught his own daughters and his son, M. Saint-Colombe le fils as he was known. Sainte-Colombe may have been a Protestant, which possibly accounts in part for the difficulties modern researchers have in tracing his history. It is important in this connection to bear in mind that the Edict of Nantes, which promoted religious tolerance, was revoked in 1685. A few relevant documents recently came to my attention, thanks to a correspondent, Claude Astor. They include a will of Marie d’Estoupe, widow of one Sainte-Colombe that lists six viols belonging to her husband, two organs, a spinet, and a bass violin. This particular Sainte-Colombe died in Brioude in 1688; it is tantalizing to think he may have been the famous violist.

Oddly, Sainte-Colombe le fils, who lived out his life in and around England, is even more obscure than his father. There is evidence that he was in Edinburgh in the first half of 1707 teaching viol to the Scottish Lady Grizel Baillie. The only other firm evidence placing the young Sainte- Colombe in a specific location is a 1713 notice of a concert in a London Gazette, to be given on the 14th of May “for the benefit of Mr St. Colombe”. His music, which was for solo six-string viol is highly virtuosic and in many ways more harmonically developed than his father’s.

The Sainte-Colombe student, Marin Marais, now renowned as one of the supreme masters of the French Baroque, was born in Paris in 1656 and also studied with Lully. His chief, and sublime, contribution to viol music can be found in his five-volume Pièces de viole, published between 1686 and 1725. The American gambist John Hsu was responsible for bringing attention to three manuscripts in the Scottish Library in Edinburgh incorporating about 150 manuscript pieces by Marais, including over forty never published. Two of these have recently been shown to be in Marais’ own handwriting; this may help in time to identify other pieces or annotations by this uniquely great viol player.

The violists da gamba at Versailles included Antoine Forqueray, said to “play like a devil”. There was more than a little devilishness in his other behavior too. When he was not improvising preludes or playing Italian violin sonatas on the viol, he was busy seducing the servants or beating his wife and viol-playing son. Trying to ameliorate the scandal he caused Antoine, the father banished his son Jean Baptiste from France. Despite the father’s machinations, his talented son was quickly brought back, thanks to the intervention of powerful friends. After his father’s death young Forqueray, remarkably able to admire his father as a composer, published five of his suites in 1747. The music was so difficult that Titon du Tillet said in 1732 that “only his son was capable of playing this music perfectly, and with the same enthusiasm as his father”.

Marais and Forqueray were jealous rivals at court. One story has Ernst Christian Hesse, a German violist, attempting to study with both masters. Knowing of their rivalry, Hesse studied with one under his real name and with the other as “Sachs”. Unfortunately for him, Forqueray and Marais eventually got around to bragging to one another about their respective brilliant German students. A competition between Sachs and Hesse was arranged. Needless to say, poor Hesse showed up alone and tried to calm the roiled waters by playing first in Marais’ style, then in Forqueray’s. For this impertinence he was packed off home to Darmstadt and was seen no more in Versailles. Other French violists include Demachy, Morel, Cappus, Caix d’Hervelois, and Dollé. All composed and published books of solo viol music with or without basso continuo.

In the 1740s a small viol with sometimes five, sometimes six strings, the pardessus de viole, became the rage of Paris. It was helped along in popularity by the fact that violin playing for women of the bourgeoisie was condemned as “indecent” but viol playing was not. A certain Mme. Levy is recorded as having played Corelli’s and other Italian sonatas on her chaste pardessus viol.

The viol in Germany

Although France was paramount in developing a virtuosic baroque style for viol playing, viol music also evolved in other European countries. Most of them, even faraway Poland, developed suites in either the English or French form, divisions, and Italian style sonatas. The lyra viol was in great vogue in seventeenth century Germany, and English virtuosi such as Walter Rowe and William Young were brought in as court composers and performers. German composers, including Kühnel, Telemann, and many others, were busy too, writing suites, sonatas, Choralsatz (Lutheran chorales harmonized for solo viol), and dances.

J.S. Bach, as always, stands alone. He adapted three sonatas written for other instruments for the viol and cembalo, most likely for his student Karl Friedrich Abel. Bach the innovator wrote these sonatas for the viol, normally an instrument for suites, and suites for the cello, normally used for sonatas. Bach is also famously the composer of two magnificent viol solos in his passions (the one in the St. Matthew Passion was originally for the lute) and of viol passages in his cantatas.

During its long life, as noted earlier, the viol was also often an accompanying instrument, sometimes as part of a continuo group, sometimes as the only continuo instrument. We can find an example of a vocal piece accompanied by a viol as early as 1542-3 in Ganassi’s Regola Rubertina. Robert Jones’ Ayres (London, 1601) also includes an accompaniment for voice written for the viol. Many 17th century English song books note that they are “to be sung to the bass viol,” a practice that has often been abandoned in modern performances.

In France the use of the viol as the sole continuo instrument is highly documented. Hubert Le Blanc tells us in 1741, “nothing in this world equals two bass viols in parallel, as perfectly performed by the treble and the bass parts in the hands of the father Marais playing his pieces, accompanied by M. de St Félix, and Forcroi father executing Sonatas, accompanied by M. de Bellemont.”

Even the violin sometimes had a viol realizing the continuo. In the 1725 Mercure de France there is a notice for the concerts spirituels in which three different violinists play solos accompanied by bassoon and viol. One elegant example in French music is an air in Rameau’s cantata Les amants trahis where the viol accompaniment to the voice has expansive, up to five-note, chords. Bach also used the viol as a harmonic continuo instrument. The recitatives that precede both viol solos “Geduld” and “Komm, süsses Kreuz” in the St. Matthew Passion feature chords or arpeggios.

Which is not to say that all Germans were enthusiastic about this style of accompaniment. Mattheson wrote in Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre (Hamburg, 1713) that “The harpsichord with its universality provides an almost indispensable accompanying bass for church, theatrical and chamber music. Among French musicians the clavier is not considered as absolutely necessary, and they usually are satisfied with a bass gamba or the like as bass: however it sounds so naked and bare that a connoisseur is ashamed, and an uninitiated often cannot tell at all what is lacking. But it is to be hoped that the French, as has already happened in many musical things, will likewise change their resolution here and will dispense with such a useless caprice.”

19th and 20th centuries

The viol’s activity dwindled but did not all together disappear during the 19th century. First, a brilliant virtuoso school, often called the “Berlin school,” appeared in the late 18th century in Germany. C.P.E. Bach also played concerts in London with the above mentioned Abel. A certain Franz Xavier Hammer (1741 - 1817) composed admirable sonatas for the viol. Even so, by the mid-1880s concerts on the viol were already called “historical.” One such concert on old viols was given in various European cities by a player named Paul de Wit who played music by Bach, Tartini, and Marais, adding the fourth of his friend Franz Liszt’s Consolations for good measure. On a more informal scale, the tradition of Hausmusik continued in Germany, as “home” consort music did in England. There were other performers during the rest of the century who played Marais and Forqueray or the solo in the Bach St. Matthew Passion.

At the beginning of the 20th century the Dolmetsch family appeared on the scene as great revivers of interest in the viol. In the 20s the family could be heard in six-part consorts; Rodolph Dolmetsch performed music by Forqueray, for which he wrote a realized continuo part for a second viol; in the 30s he played music by Simpson. Columbia recorded Rodolph playing virtuoso divisions by Norcombe in 1933. Also in the 1930’s Germans such as Helmut Mönkemeyer (who published a method for the viol in 1938) and Folkmar Langin revived viol playing.

Nearby, the Swiss master August Wenzinger taught, performed, and recorded some of the first viol music his audiences ever heard. The same was true of the English Desmond Dupré, who like his counterparts began to unearth the viol repertoire that had been lying fallow for so many years. The big group in the United States was Noah Greenberg’s New York Pro Musica which started using viols in the 50s. Soon after, one of their founding members, the cellist Judith Davidoff, started her own group, the New York Consort of Viols, of which my first teacher Freddy was a member.

The present

Which brings us roughly to the present. From where I sit, viol clasped between my knees, the scene looks good. Two of the key figures responsible for instrument’s current popularity are the Belgian Wieland Kuijken and my teacher, the Catalan Jordi Savall, who himself studied with both Kuijken and August Wenzinger. Thanks to them the number of viol players has multiplied dramatically, and their audiences along with them. No small thanks are also due to the (relatively) cheap, ubiquitous compact disc which permits anyone, anywhere who is interested in music played on “ancient, authentic” instruments to hear them via modern technology.

I am often asked whether any contemporary composers write for the viol, and am gratified to answer in the affirmative. The American Viola da Gamba Society organizes periodic competitions for new viol works. Nor is the instrument confined to its role as a classical instrument; since it can produce fine chords it has been taken up by a few pop composers. In the spirit of Sainte-Colombe, a recent Australian innovator, not satisfied with anything as insignificant as an added string or a reshaped bridge, has developed an “electric gamba.”

In one huge departure from my day, where many, if not all, violists da gamba were lapsed or hooky-playing cellists, the new generation of performers has often started directly on the viol. Whether or not this affects their ultimate technique, it certifiably makes a statement about the popularity of the instrument and the respect in which it is now held.

Many new viol consorts have sprung up, some of the better-known ones being Fretwork (which commissions contemporary works) and Phantasm. As has been the case throughout its history, the instrument continues to appeal to amateur players who make music for their own and their family and friends’ pleasure. I can testify from my own observation that students range upward from age five to above eighty. Viola da gamba societies have sprung up like dandelions —in England, the United States, Switzerland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Australia, Belgium, Holland, Japan, and of course, France. The US Society numbers more than 1000 members and the newly-revived French society 230. In addition to regular regional meetings during the year where members can play consort music, the American society organizes an annual conclave attended by hundreds of violists. They occasionally turn waggish—at one such meeting in Philadelphia, the hundreds simultaneously played a Jenkins fantasy for six—one of the more obscure instances of American gigantism.

In France and elsewhere the viola da gamba is offered to very young conservatory students as a first instrument. Many of the major European conservatories, including those in Paris, The Hague, and Brussels, as well as some American universities, now offer degrees in viol-playing.

This all requires many new instruments. Viol builders have appeared to fill the need in all viol-playing countries. The level of craftsmanship has grown so high that it has become difficult to tell a modern copy from an old instrument. Not all builders are rarified however, and it is the real good fortune of students that some have specialized in affordable student instruments.

In France, as I mentioned earlier, something of a viol craze developed around the film Tous les matins du monde. Many different symposia were organized, the Centre de Musique Baroque in Versailles organized a whole viol day and radio broadcast around the Tournus manuscript by Sainte-Colombe for solo viol, and students flocked in droves to conservatories clamoring for viol lessons. All this was lively good news, if somewhat bewildering, for us gambists.

Christophe Coin, one of the French virtuosi, has organized popular symposia on the instrument, so that once a year those lucky enough to attend can hear the expert performers, viol makers, musicologists, and others whom he has brought together speak on recent discoveries and innovations in the field. Likewise, The British Viola da Gamba Society has similarly organized meetings; some recent subjects have been French music, William Lawes, and music for the lyra viol.

And now a last word from me. One of my consuming desires has been to do what I could to ensure that the viol will continue to be played, heard, and appreciated. That is why I have worked hard in many archives to uncover unedited pieces and add them to the viol repertoire, to record, and then to publish this music. I think of the younger people studying now and those who will come after, and am gratified that I have done a little to expand the rich choices for our well-beloved instrument. May others continue to hear it and love it as well as we do. May its beguiling tones never fall silent!