Pièces De Viole

Pièces de viole were collections of suites for

bass viol The viola da gamba (), or viol, or informally gamba, is a bowed and fretted string instrument that is played (i.e. "on the leg"). It is distinct from the later violin, or ; and it is any one of the earlier viol family of bowed, fretted, and ...

and usually continuo written by several French

Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

composers, most notably

Marin Marais Marin Marais (; 31 May 1656, in Paris – 15 August 1728, in Paris) was a French composer and viol player. He studied composition with Jean-Baptiste Lully, often conducting his operas, and with master of the bass viol Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe ...

, whose five Livres form a core of the viol repertoire. Early pièces did not include continuo parts; examples of these may be found in the oeuvres of

Sieur de Sainte-Colombe Jean (?) de Sainte-Colombe () was a French composer and violist. He was a celebrated master of the viola da gamba and was credited (by Jean Rousseau (violist), Jean Rousseau in his ''Traité de la viole'' (1687)) with adding the seventh string, tu ...

and

Nicolas Hotman Nicolas Hotman (also ''Autheman'', ''Haultemant'', ''Hautman'', ''Otteman''; ca. 1610–1663) was a baroque music, Baroque composer, who spent most of his career in France. He is believed to have been from Germany, but was probably born in Bru ...

. Derived from lute and theorbo music, they often featured preludes sans mesures, and virtuosic bowed trills, whilst remaining French in their dance rhythms and melodies. Formally they also mirrored the

pièces de clavecin The French Baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau wrote three books of ' for the harpsichord. The first, ', was published in 1706; the second, ', in 1724; and the third, ', in 1726 or 1727. They were followed in 1741 by ', in which the harpsicho ...

being written by virtuoso harpsichordists. Marais and his contemporaries further established a uniquely French tradition of virtuosic pieces for viol and continuo. The pièces were typically written in dance forms like the

Allemande An ''allemande'' (''allemanda'', ''almain(e)'', or ''alman(d)'', French: "German (dance)") is a Renaissance and Baroque dance, and one of the most common instrumental dance styles in Baroque music, with examples by Couperin, Purcell, Bach ...

Gavotte The gavotte (also gavot, gavote, or gavotta) is a French dance, taking its name from a folk dance of the Gavot, the people of the Gap, Hautes-Alpes, Pays de Gap region of Dauphiné in the southeast of France, where the dance originated, accordin ...

Sarabande The sarabande (from ) is a dance in triple metre, or the music written for such a dance. History The Sarabande evolved from a Spanish dance with Arab influences, danced by a lively double line of couples with castanets. A dance called ''zara ...

, and

Gigue The gigue ( , ) or giga () is a lively baroque dance originating from the English jig. It was imported into France in the mid-17th centuryBellingham, Jane"gigue."''The Oxford Companion to Music''. Ed. Alison Latham. Oxford Music Online. 6 July ...

, augmented by a Prélude or a Fantaisie and with additional character pieces like Plaintes and Tombeaux. The French pièce de viole is also recognizable by the trend, brought to perfection by Marais, of the composer including detailed directions for performance in the score. Ornaments, bowings, dynamics, and incredibly specific fingerings make this repertoire a veritable time capsule for modern performers to explore. Marais went so far as to distinguish between two different kinds of vibrato and direct which chords should be “broken”. This particular repertoire is one of the first to have such consistent attention paid to giving directions for technical execution, in contrast to the vast majority of contemporaneous compositional practices. It is all the more remarkable given the inherently costly and labour-intensive business of printing and publishing sheet music at that time. Composers who wrote ''Pièces de viole'': *

* Sieur de Sainte-Colombe le Fils *

* Sieur de Machy * Sieur de Danoville *

François Couperin François Couperin (; 10 November 1668 – 11 September 1733) was a French Baroque music, Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was known as ''Couperin le Grand'' ("Couperin the Great") to distinguish him from other members of the musi ...

Louis de Caix d'Hervelois Louis may refer to: People * Louis (given name), origin and several individuals with this name * Louis (surname) * Louis (singer), Serbian singer Other uses * Louis (coin), a French coin * HMS ''Louis'', two ships of the Royal Navy See also * ...

Joseph Bodin de Boismortier Joseph Bodin de Boismortier (23 December 1689 – 28 October 1755) was a French baroque composer of instrumental music, cantatas, opéra-ballets, and vocal music. Boismortier was one of the first composers to have no patrons: having obtained a ...

* Antoine Forqueray *

Jean-Baptiste Forqueray __NOTOC__ Jean-Baptiste Forqueray (3 April 1699 – 28 June 1782), the son of Antoine Forqueray, was a player of the viol and a composer. Forqueray was born in Paris. He is most famous today for his 1747 publication of twenty-nine pieces for ...

* Charles Dollé * Roland Marais Compositions for viol {{classical-composition-stub