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da gamba, that remnant of the old chest of viols ... It has been justly
observed in an account of Abel, well drawn up, and inserted in the
Morning Post, June 22d, 1787, soon after his funeral, that 'his favourite
instrument was not in general use, and would probably die with him'. It
was practised longer in Germany than elsewhere; but since the death of
the late Elector of Bavaria, who next to Abel was the best performer on
the viol da gamba I had ever heard, the instrument seems laid aside. 56
That this was clearly not the case, even in England, is attested to by the fact
that Dahmen continued to perform publicly on the viola da gamba in London
until at least 1800.
Whether Burney was actually reflecting on his own personal experiences
when writing his account, expecting (or hoping!) never to hear a gamba played
again, or simply venting his spleen on the instrument is unclear. His evident distaste
for the viola da gamba is also reflected in his subsequent comments on
Lidl, where, although he mistakenly confused the gamba with the baryton, his
sentiments about the former are most clearly stated:
The late M. Lidl, indeed, played with exquisite taste and expression upon
this ungrateful instrument ... The tone of the instrument will do nothing
for it, and it seems with Music as with agriculture, the more barren and
ungrateful the soil, the more art is necessary in its cultivation. And the
tones of the viola da gamba are radically so crude and nasal, that nothing
but the greatest skill and refinement can make them bearable. A human
voice of the same quality would be intolerable. 57
Burney's opinion was not universally shared by the end of the eighteenth
century, especially in Germany, where late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century
lexicographers generally commented more sympathetically on the gamba's
undoubted decline. An anonymous report on the viola d'amore in the
Musikalische Real-Zeitung fur das Jahr 1789, for example, refers most favourably
to [49] the instrument's tone in relation to that of the human voice in direct
contradiction of Burney's statement:
The borderline that the player of this instrument [viola d'amore] must
never cross is what is singable, and, with the exception of the ...gamba
56 56. C. Burney, A General History of Music From the Earliest Ages to the Present Period
(1776-89), ed. F: Mercer (1935), II, 1019-20. In a footnote to this passage Burney adds, 'the
place of gambist seems now as totally suppressed in the chapels of German princes, as that
of lutenist'. Burney heard the Elector of Bavaria, Maximilian III Joseph (1727-77), perform
at Schloss Nymphenburg, Munich, in August 1772: see C. Burney, The Present State of Music
in Germany, The Netherlands, and United Provinces (1773), I, 135, 139-140.
57 Burney, A General History (1935), II, 1020. Further derogatory comments about Lidl's
instrument are included in a lengthy passage between these two sentences, but Burney's
mention of 'base [sic] strings at the back of the neck, with which he accompanied himself'
indicates that he was indeed confusing the viola da gamba with the baryton (not the only
eighteenth-century writer by any means either to confuse or to write erroneous material
about the two instruments). His final comment nevertheless clearly refers to the gamba by
name! Few eighteenth-century lexicographers and other writers on music actually played the
gamba, but most were sufficiently well informed to comment with some degree of authority
on it.