Ancient sources and manuscripts, as well as well-preserved original instruments, give us direct access to early music today. Unfortunately, none of these "time machines" are capable enough to convey a true sense of the sublime art of improvisation. Even the enthusiastic accounts of the musical flights of fancy of J.S. Bach on the organ or Mozart on the piano at most make us regret being too young to have witnessed them. However, with this interpretation, one feels vividly transported back to the time and the music room of Marin Marais (1656-1728), who, born the humble son of a shoemaker, became the greatest gambist of his era.
Marais's famous improvisational skills may have originated in his secret eavesdropping on the mysterious Sieur de Sainte Colombe. The anecdote that Marais, dismissed by his teacher because he felt overshadowed by him, eavesdropped on him under a mulberry tree in his treehouse has survived the centuries.
It is not known whether Sainte Colombe collected the silkworm cocoons from his tree to weave fabrics. In any case, the young Marais found sufficient "material" there to join the ranks of the royal silks, where he soon became a gambist at the court of Versailles and regularly played with the "Soupers du Roy." The trained ear of King Louis XIV must also have heard him repeatedly performing different variations on the motifs of the "Sautillante" or the "Muzette," which were finally recorded in Book 1717 in 4. In 1725, at the age of almost seventy, Marais proved with "Petit Caprice" or "La Mariee" that his inspiration had not yet run dry—although it requires a great deal of imagination to reproduce these pieces as they must have sounded in the king's suites, or as Marais received them from his teacher in his youth, before he was chased beneath his hut. Perhaps some of the improvisations on this CD, almost exclusively in A minor, are not entirely historical: Here, the performers address a timeless audience with their artistic freedom. While a second viola da gamba would normally be included, the theorbo's accompaniment on a few strings underscores the expressive power of the solo viola da gamba with its discretion and delicacy—like a breeze in the branches of a mulberry tree.
1 Gavotte
2 Prelude
3 German
4 Gavotte
5 Petit Caprice
6 La Sautillante
7 Gigue
8 Minuet
9 Rondeau Louré
10 La Sautillante
11 The Marriage
12 German
