Life After Death: The Viola da Gamba in Britain from Purcell to Dolmetsch
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aristocrats
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Charles Frederick Abel
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early music movement
eighteenth century
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exotic instruments
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Purcell
Restoration period
revival
sensibility
softlaunch
Viola da Gamba
Product details
- ISBN 9781843838203
- Weight: 640g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 18 Apr 2013
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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New research throws light on the history of the viol after Purcell, including its revival in the late eighteenth century through Charles Frederick Abel.
It is normally thought that the bass viol or viola da gamba dropped out of British musical life in the 1690s, and that Henry Purcell was the last composer to write for it. Peter Holman shows how the gamba changed its role and function in the Restoration period under the influence of foreign music and musicians; how it was played and composed for by the circle of immigrant musicians around Handel; how it was part of the fashion for exotic instruments in themiddle of the century; and how the presence in London of its greatest eighteenth-century exponent, Charles Frederick Abel, sparked off a revival in the 1760s and 70s.
Later chapters investigate the gamba's role as an emblem of sensibility among aristocrats, artists and intellectuals, including the Countess of Pembroke, Sir Edward Walpole, Ann Ford, Laurence Sterne, Thomas Gainsborough and Benjamin Franklin, and trace Abel's influence and legacy farinto the nineteenth century. A concluding chapter is concerned with its role in the developing early music movement, culminating with Arnold Dolmetsch's first London concerts with old instruments in 1890.
PETER HOLMAN is Professor Emeritus of Historical Musicology at Leeds University, and director of The Parley of Instruments, the choir Psalmody, and the Suffolk Villages Festival.
PETER HOLMAN is Emeritus Professor of Historical Musicology at Leeds University. When not occupied with writing and research, he organises performances of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music, mostly directing them from the keyboard. He is director of The Parley of Instruments, Leeds Baroque, the Suffolk Villages Festival and the annual Baroque Summer School run by Cambridge Early Music.
