13 Titles - Viola da Gamba Society

tantalising references from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuriesappear to show that other manuscripts existed at one time, but little or nothingis known about them. Charles Burney mentions a ‘Ms. collection of his pieces’that had ‘more force and variety in them, and consequently required morehand to execute them, than any Music then known for his instrument’. 63 Onthe face of it, it seems that the manuscript contained some of the ‘neat lutefashionedlessons’ that Roger North [26] describes, particularly since Burneystates that he received it from North’s son, the Rev. Montagu North. But inthe sale catalogue of Burney’s library, taken shortly after his death in 1814, lot644 is given as:Solos for Violin with Bass, supposed by Baltzer, Ms. 2 do: [i.e. two part-books] 64Two years later, the sale catalogue of J.B. Cramer’s library contained thefollowing as lot 21:Baltzer’s Violin Solos. Pavans, &c. do. by D. Oglio, and Pieces by Froberger, M.S.4 books 65It is impossible to know at this distance whether we are dealing here withone, two or three manuscripts, and whether they (or it) contained anyunaccompanied violin music. Moreover, although the ‘Solos for Violin withBass, supposed by Baltzer’ could have been an authentic collection of otherwiseunknown music for violin and continuo, it could equally well have beenwrongly attributed to Baltzar on the strength of his posthumous reputation as avirtuoso violinist; the phrase ‘supposed by Baltzer’ suggests that his name did notactually appear on the manuscript.At first sight, Baltzar’s unaccompanied violin music appears to belong to theGerman tradition of chordal and scordatura music. Edmund Van der Straetenwas reflecting a commonly-held nineteenth-century view when he wrote that‘Baltzar astounded the English by his chord playing, which at that time waslargely cultivated in Germany (Strungk, JJ. Walther and Biber)’. 66 The problemis that these three composers, who were born in 1640, c. 1650 and 1644respectively, only began to write solo violin music long after Baltzar had leftGermany. In fact, very little chordal violin music, and virtually none usingscordatura, exists by German composers earlier than the last quarter of theseventeenth century; Baltzar’s scordatura suite is, to my knowledge, onlypossibly predated in Germany by a sonata in Johann Erasmus Kindermann’sCanzoni, Sonatae II of 1653, and Kindermann was a Nuremberg composer whobelonged to a very different tradition from the northern German Baltzar. 67A more rewarding approach to Baltzar’s unaccompanied violin music is toexamine its connection with English lyra viol music, a highly developedstyle of solo music for stringed instruments using chords and the equivalentof scordatura. A good starting point is the remarkable but little-studied63 Charles Burney: A General History of Music from the Earliest Ages to the Present Period (London,1776-89, new ed., 1935, R/New York, 1957), i, p. 33864 Lbl C.61.h.1(12), 2665 Lbl C.61.h.1(13)66 Edmund Van der Straeten: The History of the Violin (London, 1933, R/New York, 1968), i, p.9867 William S. Newman: The Sonata in the Baroque Era (Chapel Hill, 1959), p. 211