In 1605 Captain Tobias Hume (who deserves an honourable place
in the fine line of English eccentrics) published his collection
called The First Part of Ayres or, to give it its full
title: The first part of ayres, French, Pollish, and others
together, some in tabliture, and some in pricke-song with pavines,
galliards, and almaines for the viole de gambo alone, and other
musicall conceites for two base viols, expressing five partes,
with pleasant reportes one from the other, and for two leero viols,
and also for the leero viole with two treble viols, or two with
one treble. Lastly for the leero viole to play alone, and some
songes to bee sung to the viole, with the lute, or better with
the viole alone. Also an invention for two to play upon one viole.
The volume carried a striking address ‘To the understanding
Reader’, in which Hume is concerned to make important claims –
claims he felt it necessary to make – for the status of the solo
viol and its music:
“I Doe not studie
Eloquence, nor professe Musicke, although I doe love Sence,
and affect Harmony: My Profession being, as my education hath
beene Armes, the onely effeminate part of me, hath beene Musicke;
which in me hath beene always Generous, because never Mercenarie.
To prayse Musicke, were to say, the Sunne is bright To extol
myselfe, would name my labours vaineglorious … from henceforth,
the statefull instrument Gambo Violl, shall with ease
yeelde full various and as devicefull Musicke as the Lute.
For here I protest the Trinitie of Musicke, parts, Passion
and Division, to be as gracefully united in the Gambo Violl,
as in the most received Instrument that is, which here with
a Souldiers Resolution, I give up to acceptance of all noble
dispositions”.
Anyone (whether
or not they are of noble disposition) not yet persuaded of
the virtues of the bass viol could do much worse than listen
attentively to these two CDs by Sarah Cunningham, which offer
a thoroughly enticing conspectus of music for solo viol ranging
in date from 1605 to 1981. Both CDs have been issued previously
– the first as Virgin Veritas VC7 91451-2, the second as Seagull
Records SGR 1. Both are full of “devicefull Musicke”.
Hume’s volumeumeH of 1605 was one of the earliest substantial collections
of music for unaccompanied viol. Hume’s music is never short
of vivacity and invention, whether in the whimsical charm
of ‘Tinckeldum Twinckeldum’ or, more substantial and dignified,
almost meditative, ‘Captain Hume’s Pavan’. ‘Love’s Farewell’
and ‘Love’s Galliard’ are delightful pieces, playful and full
of unexpected twists and turns.
The first French
collection of music for solo viol did not appear until 1685;
this was the Pièces de Viole of Le Sieur Demachy. Demachy
studied with Nicholas Hotman (who was an accomplished performer
on both viol and lute), and was a protagonist of (and propagandist
for) a chordal manner of playing which clearly drew on the
traditions of the lute, whereas the school of Saint-Colombe
tended to put greater emphasis on melody. The two suites heard
here – each in seven movements, with the identical sequence
Prélude-Allemande-Courante-Sarabande-Gigue-Gavotte-Menuet
– have a slightly old-fashioned air to them (remembering that
the more sophisticated first collection by Marais was to be
published in the very next year). But, even if they lack the
subtle elegance and delicacy of Marais’ best work, these suites
have a more robust grace and a certain expressiveness of their
own that makes them of enduring interest.
The D major Suite
from Marais’ Pièces de Viole, Ier Livre
has a range of mood and metre which was perhaps just beyond
Demachy’s reach. Though he could hardly have escaped the long
and intimate relationship between lute and viol, and all that
it implied, Marais’ work has a fluency of melodic line which
steps beyond anything to be heard in Hume and Demachy. Adjectives
like sophisticated and sensuous, luxurious and haunting all
seem to demand use. This really is astonishingly beautiful
music and while I have heard other performances I would, finally,
prefer to this excellent one by Sarah Cunningham, I suspect
that such distinctions are matters of the merest subjectivity
in music which leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
The German tradition
is represented by sonatas from the pens of August Kühnel,
Johann Schenk and Georg Philipp Telemann. Kühnel, another
accomplished performer on the viol, studied and played in
Paris and London (where he was heard in 1685) though most
of his career was spent in Germanic musical centres such as
Zeitz, Dresden, Munich, Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Weimar and Kassel,
in most of which he held posts at one time or another. Sarah
Cunningham puts it well herself when she says that Kühnel’s
work has a “distinctly German flavour, more intense than the
English, less suave than the French”. His five movement Sonata
has a gravity of manner which carries a fair emotional clout,
even if we are infrequently reminded of the origins in dance
of such movements as the Sarrabande and Giga which close it.
The Sonata by
Johann Schenk, another gifted viol player, from his volume
L’Echo du Danube of 1706 (or before), is an altogether
more flamboyant affair. Born in the Netherlands, Schenk spent
much of his working life in the German courts, although all
his music was published in Amsterdam. He seems to have been
something of an eclectic, musically speaking. There are English
elements in his work, but it is clear too that he has listened
to both French and Italian exemplars too. In this Sonata,
No. VI from L’Echo du Danube, such heterogeneous
musical elements are fused (or at least tellingly juxtaposed)
in a work full of a sense of theatricality and display.
Telemann was not,
so far as I know, any kind of specialist when it came to the
viol. This sonata appears, indeed, to be his only composition
for the solo viol but – as Telemann seems unfailingly to do,
whatever instrument he writes for – he writes music which
sits entirely comfortably and shows an understanding of the
instrument’s distinctive possibilities. There’s some attractive
melodic writing here, cast in forms entirely natural to the
instrument, and assured advantage is taken of the viol’s capacity
to provide its own accompaniment. Telemann’s sheer musical
intelligence and fluency never ceases to amaze.
The end of the
original tradition of the viol is conventionally said to come
with the work of Carl Friedrich Abel. Abel was born in Cöthen;
he may very well have studied with J. S. Bach at the Thomasschule
in Leipzig. He worked with Hasse’s opera orchestra in Dresden
and then, in the late 1750s he moved to London and worked
there for the remainder of his life, except for a short spell
back in Germany between 1782 and 1784. His playing of the
viol attracted many admirers in London, and it is not hard
to see why when one hears some of his surviving short pieces
(preserved in manuscript) for the unaccompanied viol, full
of expressiveness and charm.
After the instrument’s
effective decease (which, in a sense, coincided with Abel’s
own death) it had to wait until the ‘early music’ movement
of the twentieth century for its revival. When that revival
happened it came to involve not only musicians taking up the
instrument so as to play the music originally written for
it – whether as solo or continuo instrument – but also the
creation of some new music for it, the work of modern composers
attracted by the instrument’s possibilities. Sarah Cunningham’s
programme includes two such works.
Richard Cornell’s
Reis Glorios Variations is built upon a tune by the troubadour
Guiraut de Bornelh and was written specifically for Cunningham
when she and the composer were both studying in Boston (where
Cornell now teaches) in the 1970s. It’s an intricate, well-crafted
piece, which speaks of the viol tradition without being hamstrung
by it or settling into mere pastiche. The use of pizzicato
is especially effective and the whole is intriguing. The excellent
John Joubert is represented by his Tombeau (written in memory
in memory a young guitarist, Timothy Tunnicliffe, who died
in 1975. The piece’s subtitle indicates something of its relationship
to a famous ‘original’, which is only heard in something like
full form towards the end of Joubert’s work, which is poignantly
affecting.
Sarah Cunningham’s
playing throughout both discs is of a high order. Just occasionally
one feels that some slightly lighter bowing might have paid
dividends, but such quibbles pale in the face of the quantity
of fine (and sometimes unfamiliar) music this two-disc set
gives us the chance to hear and relish.
There is something
distinctively expressive about the viol, well played. In his Harmonie
Universelle (Paris, 1636) Marin Mersenne writes: “Certainly
if instruments are valued in proportion to their ability to imitate
the voice, and of all artifice we esteem most the one which best
represents the natural, it seems that one cannot refuse the prize
to the Viol, which counterfeits the voice with all its modulations
and even its most significant accents of sadness and joy”. Those
“significant accents of sadness and joy” are certainly to be heard
abundantly on this pair of very rewarding discs.
Glyn Pursglove
Sarah Cunningham
(bass viol) 
