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perform the popular yet relatively simple sonatas by Abel that correspond in
today's terms to around a grade [52] 3-4 standard, professionals were striving
for much higher things: for example, there is no gamba music by C. F. Abel in
Hammer's supposed personal library (see p. 37 above), despite the fact that
Abel visited his brother, the violinist Leopold August Abel, at Ludwigslust in
1782. Why Abel, the greatest gamba player of his or possibly any age, should
frequently compose such relatively simple music for the instrument is
explained both by the inherent simplicity of the galant style and the amateur
market for which it was intended, but, in addition, as Burney also noted:
His compositions [for gamba] were easy and elegantly simple, for he
used to say, 'I do not chuse to be always struggling with difficulties, and
playing with all my might. I make my pieces difficult whenever I please,
according to my disposition and that of my audience.' 77
'
The combination of technical difficulty with a style not normally associated
with the gamba may partly explain the modern lack of interest in its late-eighteenth-century
music. Whilst professionals have often preferred to concentrate
on the well-established repertory of gamba music by J. S. and C. P E. Bach or
the unaccompanied solo works by Abel, for example, in order to display their
talents, it is on the conservative genre of early English consort music and on
Abel's simple sonatas that many (if not most) amateurs still apparently rely, in
England at least. The lack of published editions is clearly another factor, one
that the present writer amongst others is attempting to alleviate.
The predominance of Germanic musician-composers in this field also
requires some comment. According to Valerie Walden, 78 it was in Italy that the
transition from viola da gamba to violoncello first became established, 79 slowly
followed by the rest of Europe, with Paris being the last major centre wholeheartedly
to adopt the newer instrument:
pitted against the viola da gamba, whose popularity among the French nobility
kept that instrument fashionable throughout Europe for the better half of the
eighteenth century, the violoncello became an unwitting pawn in the war of
French taste against Italian. 80
77 Burney, A General History (1935)11, 1019.
78 V Walden, One Hundred Years of Violoncello - A History of Technique and Performance
Practice, 1740-1840 (Cambridge, 1998), 3.
79 Ibid., 8. Dr Walden cites the Italian Giorgio Antoniotti (Antoniotto) (1692-1776),
whose sonatas were published in Amsterdam in 1736, as one of the last Italian composers to
write for the viola da gamba. Viola da gamba performing techniques (including fingering
patterns) were adopted by most early cellists until the 1740s at least, since 'few musicians
before the mid-part of the eighteenth century performed exclusively on one instrument and
this was especially true of those who took up the violoncello ...[who] were frequently
familiar with either the violin or the viola da gamba' (p. 107). As late as 1806, French
theorists 'confirmed that violin and viola da gamba technique continued to influence the
learning process of many players' (p. 117). She even notes the tendency of some cellists to
add frets to their instruments as late as 1765 (p. 61).
80 Ibid., 270. It is perhaps surprising, then, that it has proved impossible to locate any lateeighteenth-century
French viola da gamba music for the purposes of the present author's
research, although the three Lidl sources in Paris (see note 31) suggest a certain degree of
popularity there. In addition, as Dr Walden notes, 'French regard for this instrument extended
into the nineteenth century, as witnessed by [Jean-Marie] Raoul's attempt to repopularize the
viola da gamba even after he had published his violoncello method [in c1802]' (p. 284).