13 Titles - Viola da Gamba Society

There is some reason for thinking that Wood’s comparison between Melland Baltzar was based on the experience of hearing them play in competitionwith each other, probably at an Oxford music meeting. It is known that Mellwas in Oxford less than a month after Baltzar’s performance at William Ellis’son July 24 1658, for on August 17 Wood’s personal accounts show that hespent no less than 3s. 6d. on ‘Mr. Me11’. 29 If there was such a competition,then it probably included a performance of rival sets of divisions on theEnglish popular song John come kiss me now’, a descant to the passamezzomoderno chord sequence; settings by both composers exist side-by-side in JohnPlayford’s printed collection The Division-Violin, first printed in 1684. 30 If thesetwo sets of divisions accurately record the way the two violinists played, thenthe outcome of the competition can have been in very little doubt. Baltzar, aswe might expect from Wood’s comments, requires much more virtuosity fromhis player than Mell. He takes him regularly into third position - thoughnowhere does he require him to ‘run his finger to the end of the finger board’ -and he gives him several passages that cross the boundary between meredouble-stopping and genuinely polyphonic writing for the violin. Mell’sdouble-stops are tame by comparison, partly because most of them come twicein the work with very few changes:Example 1. Extracts from Davis Mell and Thomas Baltzar, Divisions on ‘Johncome kiss me now’and clattering’.29 Bellingham: op. cit., p. 4930 Nos. 11 and 12; a facsimile edition of the collection is forthcoming from Oxford UniversityPress, edited by Margaret Gilmore.