Marin Marais

A virtuoso viola da gamba player, Marin Marais left a legacy of elegant pieces for the instrument and four operas, including the masterpiece Alcyone. Although rooted in France's "Grand Siècle", his music has been revived by the film Tous les matins du monde, and remains relevant today. Born into a modest Parisian family on May 31, 1656, the son of a shoemaker discovered music in church. As an altar boy, he studied singing and music theory at the church of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, alongside Michel-Richard de Lalande and Jean-François Lalouette. When his voice matured at the age of sixteen, he decided to pursue a musical career, and turned to the viola da gamba, an essential component of Baroque works. Although he had little formal training, he nonetheless showed a certain aptitude for the instrument, taking lessons from François Chaperon and then, around 1672, going to a master of the genre, Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, for advice and knowledge. The latter taught him the art of ornamentation, the subtleties of playing and an intimate style all his own, but saw in Marais a potential rival capable of supplanting him, and declared after six months of lessons that he could teach him nothing he didn't already know. So, as Titon du Tillet reports in Le Parnasse françois (1732), the pupil takes advantage of the teacher's moments of seclusion to play, and slips under the mulberry-tree cabinet to unlock the master's secrets. However, Sainte-Colombe discovered the deception and expelled him from his estate. Armed with the lessons he had learned, the musician joined the orchestra of the Académie Royale de Musique (the future Paris Opera), conducted by Lalouette. At the age of twenty, he entered the court of King Louis XIV and his music master, Jean-Baptiste Lully, founder of the Académie. In 1676, Marais married Catherine d'Amicourt, with whom he is said to have had nineteen children, many of whom became musicians. Three years later, in recognition of his abilities, he was awarded the prestigious position of musician "ordinaire de la chambre du roi pour la viole", which ensured him a regular salary until 1725. This position, which he held for forty years in addition to his job at the Académie Royale, also enabled him to rub shoulders with composers such as Marc-Antoine Charpentier and François Couperin, who were also court musicians. Following their example, he began composing pieces for the viola da gamba, and in 1686 published the Premier Livre de pièces à une et à deux violes, dedicated to Lully and comprising a total of 93 compositions, including a wide range of dances (allemandes, courantes, sarabandes, gigues, menuets, gavottes, rondeaux), alongside more intimate pieces. This essay was followed by five others published in 1701(Second Livre, with the "Tombeau pour Monsieur de Lully" and the thirty-two variations on the theme Les Folies d'Espagne), 1711(Troisième Livre), 1717(Quatrième Livre) and 1725(Cinquième Livre), bringing the total to 584 pieces for one or two viols with continuo, and evolving his style towards a more complex technique and greater intensity of interpretation, as exemplified by the "Tombeau pour M. de Sainte-Colombe" or "Le Labyrinthe". In 1686, he wrote Idylle dramatique, a vocal work performed at Versailles, of which only the libretto survives. In 1687, after Lully's death, he worked with the latter's son, Louis Lully, on the composition of an opera with Alcide, on a libretto by Jean Galbert de Campistron, successfully performed in 1693 and followed three years later by Ariane et Bacchus (1696). As early as 1692, he was one of the first French musicians to compose trio pieces, with the collection Pièces en trio pour les flûtes, violons et dessus de viole avec la basse continue. As a court musician, he took part in private concerts at the request of royalty such as the Duc de Bourgogne, Madame de Montespan and Madame de Maintenon. In 1701, commissioned to organize a concert for the recovery of the dauphin Louis XV, he assembled an ensemble of 250 musicians and singers for a ceremony featuring two of his motets, including Domine salvum fac regem(God save the king).In 1704, he replaced André Campra as conductor of the Paris Opéra orchestra, where two years later premiered his third and best-known opera, Alcyone (February 18, 1706), a "tragédie en musique" with a libretto by Antoine Houdar de La Motte based on Ovid's Metamorphoses . The work includes the famous scene La Tempête, marking the introduction of the double bass to opera, and from which the "Marche pour les matelots", now a dance aria, was extracted. In 1708, he handed over his position as court violist to his son Vincent, at a time when new virtuosos were emerging: Antoine Forqueray and Louis de Caix d'Hervelois. In 1709, his fourth and last opera, Sémélé, proved a failure. Although he continued to perform after the death of King Louis XIV in 1715, his activity dwindled as the violin and cello took center stage. In 1723, he published La Gamme et autres morceaux de symphonie pour le violon, la viole et le clavecin, the third piece of which is the famous "Sonnerie de Sainte-Geneviève du Mont de Paris". Marin Marais died on August 15, 1728 at the age of 72, leaving a legacy of some 600 pieces for the viola da gamba. His work received unprecedented acclaim following the release of Alain Corneau's film Tous les matins du monde (1991), based on Pascal Quignard's novel. The success of the film, which won a César for Best Film in 1992, and of its soundtrack performed by Jordi Savall, contributed to the renaissance of Baroque music, and led to numerous recordings of the instrument.

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