According to eighteenth-century accounts, the French violinist Jean-Baptiste Volumier, as concertmaster of the Dresden court orchestra, turned it into one of the best ensembles in Europe. After Volumier’s death in 1728, the position of concertmaster was taken over by violin virtuoso Johann Georg Pisendel. Before obtaining this position, Pisendel had developed his violin skills partly in Venice, where he studied with and befriended Antonio Vivaldi. Their friendship resulted in mutual dedications of works, as well as Pisendel’s transcribing of Vivaldi’s compositions. He also transcribed works by other composers, such as Francesco Geminiani, whose Concerto Grosso, Op. 2 No. 2 he arranged as a Sonata à quattro. Pisendel’s talent was also appreciated by other composers (including Tomaso Albinoni), who dedicated works to Pisendel. He also passed on his outstanding skills as a teacher, and one of his most famous pupils was Johann Gottlieb Graun, composer of virtuoso concertos for viola da gamba that were also influenced by great virtuosos and were composed with the outstanding gambist Ludwig Christian Hesse in mind. Hesse, in turn, probably learned to play the gamba from his own father, Ernst Christian, who had previously studied in Paris with Marin Marais and Antoine Forqueray.

Simply… Philharmonic! Project 4:

If one were to assign a specific instrument to each country of particular importance on the musical scene of Baroque Europe, the viola da gamba would certainly fall to France. Such an attempt to find national connections to instruments was also made by the eighteenth-century gambist Hubert Le Blanc, who opened his treatise on the instrument with the statement:

The Divine Intelligence, among its many gifts, has endowed mortals with Harmony. The violin fell to the Italians, the flute to the Germans, the harpsichord to the English, and the basse de viole to the French.

Although the roots of the French school of gamba playing can be traced to England (the first chordal compositions were written there, and the English are credited with popularising the instrument on the Continent), it was in France that some of the instrument’s greatest virtuosos worked and its construction was perfected. Foreign musicians also trained in France, such as the German gambist Ernst Christian Hesse. One instrument related to the viola da gamba is the lute, and works for lute were taken as models for gamba compositions by Antoine Forqueray, among others, a musician contemporary of Marin Marais. In their time, the eminent lute player, theorist and guitarist Robert de Visée, who was also a gamba player, worked in the ensemble of King Louis XIV at Versailles, as Jean Rousseau mentions in one of his letters.

The similarity between the gamba and the lute may also have been noticed by Johann Sebastian Bach, as is suggested by the aria ‘Komm süsses Kreuz’ from the St Matthew Passion, BWV 244, in which the composer envisaged a solo part for viola da gamba. In the original version, however, the solo instrument there was the lute.


Daniel Laskowski