Among the genres of keyboard music, two of the oldest are the toccata and the fantasia, dating back to the Renaissance. As early as the fifteenth century, we find German manuscripts containing keyboard works composed in an independent way from the song or dance model, based on the alternation of chordal sections with brilliant passages. It was only a century later, towards the end of the sixteenth century, that the term toccata was first used in relation to a keyboard work. That name was given to works in which one hand performed virtuosic passagework across the notes of the scale against a chordal accompaniment in the other. Fantasias allowed for even greater freedom on the part of the composer. According to the Spanish composer and vihuela virtuoso Luis de Milán, their origins should be sought solely in the composer’s imagination and talent. These genres gained their greatest splendour during the Baroque, in the output of Johann Sebastian Bach. One might search in vain in the Leipzig cantor’s oeuvre for works scored for a soloistically treated viola da gamba. Despite this, suites and ostinato variations appeared far more often in the repertoire of gambists than in that for violinists. Thus transcriptions for viola da gamba of Bach’s partitas for solo violin seem perfectly natural. They are preceded by three works by Carl Friedrich Abel – one of the last of the early gamba virtuosos.
Simply… Philharmonic! Project 3:
The seventeenth-century gambist Jean Rousseau, in the preface to his Traité de la viole, described the history of the viola da gamba. He emphasised the special role of the English in the instrument’s development, pointing to their links to the composing of the first chordal works for viola da gamba and to their dissemination in other kingdoms. Although Rousseau’s interests were focussed mainly on the French school of viola da gamba playing at that time, he noted how, before the instrument reached France, the English traditions spread to German lands. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, those traditions were influenced by a local school of violin virtuosity, which led to an equally virtuosic treatment of the viola da gamba. A significant development in the north of Germany was the composing of sonatas for viola da gamba and an obligato keyboard instrument; three such works were written in Leipzig by Johann Sebastian Bach. In Berlin, one of the most outstanding gambists of the day, Ludwig Christian Hesse, collaborated with Johann Gottlieb Graun, and his skill probably inspired Graun to compose concertos of a virtuosic character. The history of the German School ended with Carl Friedrich Abel, whose output included twenty-seven demanding compositions for solo viola da gamba, inscribed together with seventeen sonatas by Arcangelo Corelli and an anonymous harpsichord work in The Drexel Manuscript.
Daniel Laskowski
