The viola da gamba is a chamber instrument with a soft, sweet tone, incapable of the dynamic extremes and brilliance of the violin. This helps to account for its decline.”
— Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th Edition
CMT: During the interval I had a chance to glance at some of the music that Jordi had left on his music stand and on the floor. Beautiful hand-prepared manuscripts! Based on some idiosyncrasies in his scores, he seems to have intended to maximize exploiting the possibilities presented by the viola da gamba’s extended range. The gamba’s seven-string guitar-like tuning allows the performer a range of almost three octaves without shifting or changing positions (compared to two octaves plus a step on the cello). And its seven-string setup is conducive to virtuosic, arpeggiated passages. In one of the Marin Marais muzettes last night where a range of four octaves is spanned in only a few bars, Jordi demonstrated the flexibility the instrument allowed the composer. Phenomenal! The extended range of the viola da gamba is an “enabling technology” for a really dramatic melodic lyricism.
DSM: Together with Montserrat Figueras, Jordi Savall has founded three ensembles—Hespèrion XX, La Capella Reial and Le Concert des Nations. Each has in its own way charted new waters in terms of expressive beauty and lyricism. Savall’s performance in Alain Corneau’s film Tous les Matins du Monde (All the Mornings of the World), which won a César award for the best soundtrack, also charted new waters.
CMT: Sitting just 3 meters from Jordi at last night’s
Friends of Chamber Music concert allowed me to observe his technique in detail. I was especially fascinated by his dramatic treatment of these pieces. According to Stowell’s Cambridge Companion to Cello, among the viola da gamba players of the 17th Century vibrato was associated with a tender, passionate or wailing quality. Jordi seems to favor a ‘flattement’ style of vibrato—one that’s extremely moving in tender pieces and on long notes. There is an intimate, introspective, confessional aspect to Jordi’s rendering of the Ortiz Folias—a storyteller’s sentimentality in his account of the Marais pieces. Almost autobiographical, when you are in the front row in a stone cathedral like this.
- Diego Ortiz—Recercadas sobre tenores (Folias, Passa mezzo moderno, Romanesca)
- Tobias Hume—Musickal Humors (Whope doe me no harme)
- Gaspar Sanz—Piezas para la Guitarra (Jacaras-Canarios)
- Marin Marais—La Viole de Louis XIV (Prelude-Le Labyrinthe)
- Mr. De Sainte-Colombe de Fils—Fantasie en Rondeau
- Mr. De Sainte-Colombe de Fils—Les pleurs
- J.S. Bach—Bourrèe
- J.S. Bach—English Suite in A minor
- Antoine Forqueray—La Marella
- Antonio Martin y Coll—Diferencias sobre las Folias
- Jean-Baptiste Forqueray—La du Vaucel (Très Tendrement)
DSM: The movement of playing should serve to illustrate the music. Jordi does this superbly and consistently. These scores read as though they had a verbal text—well, in some cases they did have a verbal text, since much consort music was vocal in conception. But to
see and hear Jordi Savall play is to believe that the entirety of the music is vocal in conception! The player must be ready to use a light, heavy or medium bow stroke according to the demands of the music. The melancholic music should be bowed lightly and evenly, while the left hand can use a tasteful amount of ‘tremolo’ to enhance the melancholy. Cheerful music requires the bow to animate the instrument and animate the music. You can only really
see this adequately in live performance, close up! These pieces make you wonder for whom were the pieces written. Just who were the viola da gamba players and cellists capable of playing these pieces? Whoever the original dedicatees were, the performers must have been ones of great talent in order to do justice to this music.
CMT: You’re referring to the fact that every one of these pieces reveals big biomechanics issues, for the performer? These issues arise not only with the viola da gamba but basically with all other fretted stringed instruments that have more than four strings. Gambas and lutes and are tremendously delicate instruments. The bridge curvature on the gamba is pretty modest, and this makes it very difficult to apply bow pressure on a single string without touching off adjacent strings. Jordi is a phenomenal gymnast when it comes to expert bowmanship in the face of such risks. In the 16th Century, the necks of viols had very little backward tilt, making it necessary for the necks to be thick, to withstand the string tension. They were also narrow at the nut, bringing the strings very close together. There’s tremendous difficulty with chords and double-stops, especially for a player with a large hand or thick fingers, who would have difficulty in holding chords without overlapping other strings.
DSM: Compared to a modern cello, the absence of an endpin also makes the gamba awkward to play—hard to stabilize and hold between your gambas, I imagine. This physical precariousness of the gamba accentuates the delicacy of the sound, I think. For audience members who are in close proximity to the performer, the precariousness is visually captivating—somewhat in the way that we are captivated by watching a tight-rope walker—or a gymnast, as you put it. I was wondering in one of the Marais pieces whether Jordi had alternate-tuned one of the strings—scordatura? By the way, the fretted members of the string family, like the viola da gamba, came to be regarded as musical relics by the mid- to late-18th Century and were way out of fashion by the 19th Century, didn’t they?
CMT: Well, yes. The dark timbre and limited volume were the main reasons why, I suppose, given the acoustic demands of larger concert halls. Notably, the bright tone of gifted harpsichordist Pierre Hantaï achieved a volume perfect for balance between the instruments last night. Theorboist-guitarist Xavier Diaz delivered an exquisite offering as well. The full-to-capacity audience at Grace & Holy Trinity Cathedral responded enthusiastically—an appreciative standing ovation for the deeply moving and technically superb performance.
DSM: But the acoustical properties of the viola da gamba and theorbo and harpsichord still have consequences in terms of the economics of live performance then, don’t they? It’s unreasonable to program this Trio into a venue with an audience of more than a few hundred—with an unamplified sound so delicate as this Trio has. And, after all, how much can you charge per seat? So it’s hard for the presenter to gross more than $20,000 for this kind of program. Therefore, for the artists the financial viability of this delicate music really depends upon CD sales and paid digital downloads—to augment the proceeds from performance fees. And for the presenters, the financial viability of this delicate music really depends upon interested donors/patrons and upon grants from public-sector agencies, foundations, and commercial benefactors—to augment the proceeds from ticket sales/subscriptions.
CMT: You were speaking of ‘physical precariousness’ of the instrument earlier. I suppose a correlate of that is the ‘financial precariousness’ of the artform itself. Just as there is an appreciation of beauty created against all odds by artists like Jordi and Pierre and Xavier—the adversity and risk that their chosen instruments present to them—there’s also an appreciation of beauty and rarity—conservation of endangered early music and chamber music species against all odds, by chamber music presenters and other organizations around the globe. Attending concerts or supporting organizations that nurture these species in the Arts, don’t we participate in a kind of beauty that’s somewhat like observing a rare orchid?—contributing to habitat preservation for the spotted owl? Aren’t the gesture and its internal rewards a little like supporting Nature Conservancy?
- Jordi Savall website (Alia Vox)
- Aaron Concert Artists (agent, Jordi Savall)
- International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Endangered Species
- Abbing H. Why Are Artists Poor?: The Exceptional Economy of the Arts. Amsterdam Univ, 2004.
- Barclay R. Preservationa and Use of Historic Musical Instruments: Display Case or Concert Hall? Earthscan, 2004.
- Corneau A. Tous les Matins du Monde. (Koch Lorber, 2006.)
- Pan Y-H. The Transcription for Two Double Basses of Selections from Pièces de Violes, Quatrème Livre, Deuxiême Partie: Suitte D’un Goût Etranger by Marin Marais. Dissertation, School of Music, LSU, 2006. [1MB pdf]
- Pink D. A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. Riverhead, 2005.
- Planer J. Sentimentality in the Performance of Absolute Music: Pablo Casals’s Performance of Saraband from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Suite No. 2 in D Minor for Unaccompanied Cello, S. 1008,” Musical Quarterly 1989; 73:239-53.
- Savall J. Mr. de Sainte Colombe le Fils. (Alia Vox, 2003.)
- Savall J. Marin Marais. (Alia Vox, 2003.)
- Scherer F. Quarter Notes and Bank Notes: The Economics of Music Composition in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Princeton Univ, 2003.
- Siminoff R. The Luthier's Handbook. Hal Leonard, 2002.
- Stowell R, ed. Cambridge Companion to the Cello. Cambridge Univ, 1999.
- Wainwright J, Holman P. From Renaissance To Baroque: Change In Instruments And Instrumental Music In The Seveteenth Century. Ashgate, 2005.
- Weber W, ed. Musician as Entrepreneur, 1700-1914. Indiana Univ, 2004.
- Woodfield I. Early History of the Viol. Cambridge, 2006.
- Viola da Gamba Society website
- Federation of Viola da Gamba Societies
- Viola da Gamba Society of America
- Viola da Gamba Society of New England
- Société Française de Viole
- Viola da gamba Gesellschaft
- Viola da Gamba Foundation of the Netherlands
- Viola da gamba Föreningen (Uppsala)
- Viola da Gamba Society of Japan
- British Harpsichord Society website
- San Diego Harpsichord Society website
- Harpsichord Unlimited website
- Theorbo website
- Scordatura (Wikipedia page)
E arly music trio last night at Deutscherordenkirche Wien was really excellent.
T he sanctuary at Deutschordenkirche is small and narrow—only about 10 meters wide. The consort last night positioned themselves near the altar, in a 60° circular-segment arrangement with chairs separated by about 1.5m. They recorded the performance using a Roland EDIROL R-44 4-channel digital recorder and two Schoeps MK-21 condenser microphones on a mic stand elevated 2.0m above the floor and angled downward 10° so that the mic axis of the left mic was midway between the dulcian and viola seats and the mic axis of the right mic was midway between the viola and theorbo seats. This distance to the instruments is a good compromise for these pieces—enough separation and directivity for the solo passages and appropriate lower-directivity for the tutti playing, so the listener’s attention is not confronted by unnatural left-right contrasts. 
