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prepared to accept a more modest sum from a music lover ('Liebhaber'),
indicating the strong continued interest for such instruments that must have
lain in the domestic amateur market. 70 The fact that all of these accounts in
Forkel and Cramer date from 1782-3 is of course highly significant, since the
viola da gamba's decline, although marked, can really only just have been
starting to gain serious momentum at that time.
Later references to the viola da gamba are a comparative rarity, although
those in the Musikalische Real-Zeitung of 1788 and 1789 make no apologies
whatsoever for the instrument, mentioning it as it were still commonplace. 71 A
gamba forming lot 156 in an auction of effects belonging to the violinist
Wilhelm Cramer (1746-99) in London on 17-18 June 1795 sold for £1 10s, 72
whilst a viola and cello that formed part of a full string quartet set of
instruments were sold as a single lot for £1 11s 6d, implying that the viola da
gamba must have both been in good condition and in substantial enough
demand to have fetched such a relatively high price at public auction.
The comparative lack of published references to the viola da gamba and its
practitioners during the last two decades of the eighteenth century is therefore
due not only to the instrument's decline but also to the fact that its
professional and, for the most part, virtuoso exponents were chiefly employed
in court or other musical establishments as cellists rather than gamba players.
There can be no doubt that they would have performed on the dynamically
more powerful and robust cello, whose timbre better matched and was more
able to balance that of the other members of the violin family, as part of their
day-to-day employment duties, especially for orchestral and ensemble use. In
contrast, they appear to have preferred the more intimate, more flexible and
subtler sound of the viola da gamba for their own solo work, especially in
chamber music performed in relatively informal private or semi-private
surroundings or in comparatively intimate venues. The relatively small number
of references to gambas being heard [51] in public concerts can be explained
by the fact that gamba players only rarely participated in these and undoubtedly
encountered problems of sound projection in larger concert halls. As for
concertos, the instrument simply could not compete with a classical orchestra
of strings with at least a pair of oboes or flutes as well as horns: hence,
perhaps, Dahmen s cited appearance in 1799 playing the cello in his own
70 Cramer, Magazin der Musik, 1783 edn, 1029-30. The term 'Liebhaber' was often used
to distinguish musical amateurs from professionals ('Kenner'). See also note 53 regarding the
publication of a tutor for the gamba in America as late as 0800.
71 A serialised report in the 1788 volume entitled 'Charakteristik der Singstimmen and
einiger gebrauchlichern [sic] Instrumente', an investigation into the influence of music on the
human body by D. Weber of Heilbronn, states, for example, 'The viola d'amore, the gamba,
the baryton...have so much corresponding in their nature, as the violin, the viola, the cello and
the double bass between them possess' (col. 176), clearly relating the first three instruments to
the last four on terms of equality In col. 182, a reference to the baryton player Carl Franz,
whom Weber states he heard perform in 1786, claims 'one heard a gamba and a harp at the
same time', which provides another possible explanation for the not infrequent mixing up of
these two instruments already referred to.
72 Lbl 1479.bb.16: A Catalogue of the Neat and Genuine Household Furniture and other
Effects, of a Gentleman, Well known in the Musical World, sold at auction by a Mr Boulton
of 7 Newman Street (off Oxford Street). Thanks are due to Ms Eva Zöllner of Hamburg for
informing me of the existence of this document.