Acheter Marine (joubert)

Marin Marais published his last collection in 1725, eight years after the appearance of his Quatrième Livre de Pièces de Viole . He was no longer playing in the Chambre du Roi by that time and had moved to a house in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau where he cultivated plants and flowers in his garden. He continued, however, to give lessons to people who wanted to improve their viol playing. The Cinquième Livre de Pièces de Viole reflects this image of a peaceful life; today we regard it as the final testament of a musician who was looking back upon his past years as their undisputed master — and which he remains today.

Marin Marais published his Quatrième Livre de Pièces de Viole two years after the death of Louis XIV, establishing himself as the undisputed master of the genre and providing pieces not only for musicians who had achieved some skill on the viol but also for the most virtuoso players. Here Marais reshaped the classical forms, altering the traditional sequence for the suites and making an increasing use of character pieces. The sometimes whimsical imagery and the new freedom of form that these pieces contain reach their peak in the astonishing Suitte d'un goût étranger; these thirty or so pieces employ as yet unheard-of keys and offer a multitude of characters and representations that can tend towards the exotic. Breaking further new ground, and somewhat influenced by the Italian trio, Marais ended the Quatrième Livre with two suites for three viols, a genre he claimed to be new to France.

Entre la publication du Deuxième Livre en 1701 et celle du Troisième Livre, dix années se sont écoulées et Marais s’est imposé comme compositeur de Tragédies lyriques. Mais, entre-temps quelques jeunes violistes, dont certains sont ses élèves, viennent de publier leurs premiers recueils de Pièces de Viole. Marais doit donc s’imposer comme étant toujours le maître du genre, exercice parfaitement réussi avec ce nouvel opus dans lequel il s’attache à proposer à son public des pièces plus faciles et d’autres plus exigeantes pour « contenter ceux qui sont plus avancés dans la viole ». Le style a également changé : aux suites traditionnelles les pièces de caractère apportent un complément de plus en plus important…

Marin Marais published his Quatrième Livre de Pièces de Viole two years after the death of Louis XIV, establishing himself as the undisputed master of the genre and providing pieces not only for musicians who had achieved some skill on the viol but also for the most virtuoso players. Here Marais reshaped the classical forms, altering the traditional sequence for the suites and making an increasing use of character pieces. The sometimes whimsical imagery and the new freedom of form that these pieces contain reach their peak in the astonishing Suitte d'un goût étranger; these thirty or so pieces employ as yet unheard-of keys and offer a multitude of characters and representations that can tend towards the exotic. Breaking further new ground, and somewhat influenced by the Italian trio, Marais ended the Quatrième Livre with two suites for three viols, a genre he claimed to be new to France.

Here is the start of a great adventure: the complete recording of the five books of pièces de viole of Marin Marais. The First Book, published in 1686, contains a dozen suites, two of which are scored for two bass viols and continuo. It also features a very moving Tombeau for ‘Monsieur Méliton’, probably one of Marais’s teachers, and a set of variations on a theme given to the composer by an ‘estranger’, which foreshadows one of the principal compositions of his Second Book, the Couplets des Folies d’Espagne.

Compiled from pieces that were clearly composed much earlier as well as from more recent works, the Deuxième Livre pays homage to its two masters and calls for tonalities that it had not yet employed; it evokes the past and the great lutenists of that time with the Pavane and yet also contains important innovations. It is truly a transitional work: published at the very dawn of the century, it opened the doors to the important stylistic changes that French music would undergo during the Age of Enlightenment.

Johann Bernhard Bach (1676-1749) is a somewhat ill-known member of the family, but known by his first cousin once removed, Johann Sebastian. A disciple of Pachelbel, he was in the service of the court of Eisenach and left us only instrumental music. His four Ouvertures for orchestra constitute the obvious link between French music of the Grand Siècle and the compositions that Johann Sebastian would write in Weimar and Cöthen. A missing link to be (re) discovered.