Unaccompanied: Volume Two - A 17th Century Dialogue

I didn’t know this when I first picked up the instrument, but if you play the bass viol you’re going to play suites. French suites. Suites of dances that were the backbone of the court ballet. Swaggering allemandes, daring courantes, sensual sarabandes, poised minuets, and nimble gigues. All of this was a surprise when I left the double bass to study the gamba, mostly because of how unrecognizable these suites were when compared to the familiar cello suites by J.S. Bach. The names of the dances were the same, and so were the meters, but the scale of the works and their figuration were so different as to seem unrelated. With French suites bearing such little resemblance to those of Bach, I always wondered when and where the conversations between French and German music happened that led to Bach’s more familiar works. Luckily a little curiosity and the enforced boredom of the pandemic led me to a collection of music that might bear witness to at least part of that conversation.

Entitled the Berliner Gambenbuch, this modern publication from Edition Güntersberg is a slim nineteen page selection of pieces from a massive original source that spanned 270 pages. Now residing in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, this manuscript first came to light when in 1880 it was bought at a Berlin auction by a librarian from the Conservatoire de Musique in Paris. A significant source, notable for its size and breadth, the calf leather bound book contains music spanning much of 17th century Europe, with works from Germany, France, England, Sweden, and Poland present. But this publication that I discovered while rummaging through my music library seemed to focus largely on the French and German compositions. Sitting alongside music by mid-17th century French court composers Hotman and Dubuisson were anonymous German replicas, responses, and contributions. Seeing a courtly allemand by Dubuisson beside a harmonization of a Lutheran chorale made me realize I had stumbled into one of those spaces where German and French music met and began their dialogue.

After I had spent some time playing the music, exploring the textures, and studying the technique I decided to record the results, organizing the album as a progression from original French dances towards a German response. Unaccompanied: Volume Two begins with four pieces by the French viol virtuoso and composer, Le Sieur Dubuisson. From there I blur the lines, mixing anonymous German works with French, ending with a suite of six pieces in G minor that I structured to be a 17th century reflection of Bach’s 18th century suites.

           Adding to the thrill of overhearing this musical conversation was my acquisition of a new viol by California-based viol builder, Warren Shingleton. A copy of a 1624 bass viol by the Englishman Henry Jaye, the original instrument was itself a transnational conversation. Now residing in the Musée de Musique in Paris the small viol was built in England, later making its way to France where its neck was converted to suit the new fashion at the time – seven strings instead of six. The small scale of the instrument combined with the added resonance of the 7th string made playing the lute-like music even more enjoyable – plus I figured it would be cool to explore one dialogue with another.

All the music on the album is united in its use of the viol as a chordal instrument, directly pointing to its shared heritage with the guitar and lute. Every piece uses at least one chord, and even when playing notes one at a time the left hand is often holding resonance-building chord shapes on the fingerboard. As I studied the works I saw that regardless of origin all the music benefited from attention to resonance beyond the bow stroke. Whether that resonance was used to increase volume or to provide harmonic support to melodies with ringing strings, this music demanded I pay attention to what I now call the “shadow” or the “back” of the viol’s sound. Combining that with the nimble acrobatics written into the dances, I found all the repertoire an exercise in efficiency, poise, and control. As the works came into sharper focus one other detail came to my attention: why worry so much about resonance when my bow strokes almost entirely cover that sound?

This question of volume had been in my head for a long time, and a recording studio was a great venue for an attempt to answer it. When I say “question of volume” I mean exactly how loud did historic viol players play? This led me to further questions like how big were the rooms that they played in? What were their walls made of? What were they furnished with? How loud were the actual instruments? How heavy were their bows? What were their strings like? What did those strings sound like? Who was listening? How many were listening? What did the audience hear? And what about the performer? As with most questions asked of history I knew that I would never have a satisfying answer, so I just decided to get myself into a small recording studio and see what I could hear and let that experience be the result.

A detail of my small bass viol built by Warren Shingleton.

When I moved into the studio I decided I wouldn’t listen to my performance “in the room” - meaning there would be nothing coming between me, my ears and the sound of the viol. Instead I would use in-ear monitors (aka fancy headphones) to hear what the microphones heard from six feet across the room. I was already familiar with listening to myself through a microphone from recording both A Portrait of Melancholy and Trios For One, but not exactly in this sense. With those albums using in-ear monitors wasn’t a choice since I had to play and record one part while listening to a recording of another. Playing unaccompanied music while using in-ear monitors allowed me to overhear myself, paying attention to all the sounds the viol and I create. Resonance, finger noise, the sound of the hair on the string, fabric swishing as I move from one part of the instrument to another, breathing, and even whistling quietly while in the flow of the music (I didn’t know I did that!). As I made my way through the record I would occasionally take the monitors out and listen to myself without any intermediary. I was frankly surprised by how much quieter I was playing than I would on a concert stage. The detail I heard while recording emerged from a different balance of aspects of the viol’s sound than I was familiar with from live performance. On stage I do my best to fill a modern concert hall with a period instrument and frankly, it’s a difficult task that puts anachronistic demands upon the viol. While I’m not saying all solo viol music was played in small rooms, I would suggest much of our repertoire might be better experienced if we stopped attempting to reach the back row of the auditorium. A more intimate sound and its rewards can’t really be experienced by a large audience, but I don’t think it was meant to be. Recording, amplification, and performances in tiny rooms are perhaps the only ways some of these aesthetics can be experienced today. The modern stage has its own values and demands, and likewise its own rewards.

Turning back to the dialogue between French and German music, I believe this collection might bear witness to that conversation’s beginnings nearly two generations before J.S. Bach. As I mentioned above, the original source was a manuscript bought and most likely originating from the environs around Berlin. With a date of 1674 and the initials “I B R'' on the modest cover, the manuscript was most likely assembled by a professional viol player (perhaps Joachim Rose) in the employ of one of the courts in northeastern Germany. Court musicians of the day often moved from one principality to another, providing their skills to burnish the reputation of their employer. As such they’d often collect musical works from those they crossed paths with, explaining the multinational nature of the works in this collection. The mixing of musical culture and styles that happened at these cosmopolitan courts led to musical results that still echo across the centuries, whether that is Mozart’s Italian operas, Marais’ Les Folies d’Espagne, or Bach’s suites. While these pieces are far more modest in scope and scale, we see the influence of the French suite a generation later in the music of German violinist Johann Paul von Westhoff. Born in Dresden, he traveled across Europe for 20 years before returning to Wittenberg, and eventually settling at the court in Weimar where he’d later work with J.S. Bach. Westhoff’s suites for solo violin are seen to be undisputed influences on Bach’s violin partitas and cello suites. When I looked at Westhoff’s music I noticed a strong resemblance to the writing within the Berliner Gambenbuch, with only the gigues having a grander scale than their earlier French models. While I certainly do not know if Westhoff crossed paths with “I B R” and this manuscript, I do know that the courtly world of 17th and 18th century eastern Germany was a small one. If there is no connection here with this source of music, its owner and contributors, there was certainly a similar dialogue happening elsewhere with Westhoff, and eventually Bach, as participants.

This brings me to the six movement suite I assembled to round out the album. I wanted to see if this source had works in it that I could imagine pointing the way towards Bach almost fifty years later. I began the suite with an anonymous Fantasia, a piece that’s largely a barrage of seemingly unorganized 16th notes - something familiar to anyone who has taken a swing at many Bach preludes. Using insinuated harmonies to organize the music into something a listener can follow was a skill I first began to develop while studying Bach’s third cello suite - and it was a skill I certainly leaned upon with this petite prelude. Next is an allemande by Dubuisson, followed by a courante and sarabande, reflecting the order used by Bach himself. While the courante stays more to its French roots than those later written by Bach, the sarabande has an austerity that recalls the famous saraband of his 5th cello suite. In place of the galanteries Bach would situate at this point in his suites I selected a harmonization of the chorale ”Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr.” Written in the early 16th century and one of the earliest hymns of the Lutheran reformation, this simple arrangement presages the virtuosic chorale variations of Kuhnel and Bach, and the interweaving of liturgical and instrumental music. Rounding out the suite is a deceptively devilish gigue, the classic ending to any baroque dance suite. What made this gigue particularly intriguing to me was its use of chords on weak offbeats in its first section, something I’d never before encountered in the repertoire.

One oddity near the middle of the record is the “Allemande with Variations.” As soon as I read it I recognized it for exactly what it was: a classic English division upon a ground bass. Notated with the bassline (the ground) followed by a melody that uses that bassline as its basis (the division), this form was all the rage in mid-17th century England, with its most notable contributors being the composer-performers Christopher Simpson and John Jenkins. A light and charming piece, finding this English musical form with a French name in a German manuscript was too much to resist. While it is presented on Unaccompanied: Volume 2 as a solo, I couldn’t resist releasing it as a single with the bassline overdubbed. Its oddness within this collection and its charm made it a wonderful addition to the album.

This study of a centuries old meeting of cultures and imagining its influence on J.S. Bach led me to some interesting conclusions. One is that cultures are always eager for dialogue and exchange, even when seemingly at odds. There’s no question that the cultural impact of the French court was unparalleled in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, but to witness that influence from the inside by playing this music was fascinating. I would guess that no music, present, past or future, is truly original. Instead most of our art is a response to some conversations and continuations of others, always owing its existence to some sort of dialogue. Another thing I learned from the project is that this particular music was undoubtedly intimate, with many of its details totally wasted on the concert stage. I imagine a lone player before an audience whose number could be counted upon one hand, in a room lit by candles, with the only sounds being this music and their breaths.