Paris, 1656
Marin Marais, the son of a Paris cobbler sprang from an ordinary, almost humble background. Born to Vincent Marais and his wife in 1656, he was baptized in Saint Medard church on the 31 May. Shoemaking was something of a family venture-Marais’ uncle was a cobbler too and his brother Louis was to become one. But as luck and musical history were to have it, the Marais family also included a more exalted uncle, also named Louis, who held the title of Doctor of Theology at the Faculty of Paris and served as priest at the church of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, one of the richest in Paris.
This uncle obtained a place for his gifted young nephew in the church school, enrolling him on the 15 April 1667. The ten year old was lodged and fed, and taught music. Participating in a choir was an integral part of the curriculum, as well as a choice of an instrument-harpsichord, organ, lute, or viol. The study of a musical instrument was crucial, as when the boys’ voices changed they could continue enjoying music. Among Marais’ classmates was Michel-Richard de Lalande who himself went on to renown as a composer; present-day visitors to the church may notice a plaque in his honor.
Marais left the school six years later with a vocation for the viol; records show that he soon after became a pupil of the most eminent viol teacher of the period in Paris, known as Monsieur de Sainte Colombe.
A vocation for the viol
The viol was always highly esteemed in France. Mersenne tells us in his book Harmonie Universelle (Paris, 1636) “Certainly if instruments are valued in proportion to their ability to imitate the voice, and of all artifice we esteem most the one which best represents the natural, it seems that one cannot refuse the prize to the Viol, which counterfeits the voice with all its modulations and even its most significant accents of sadness and joy”.
Two of the first French solo viol players were André Maugars, known for his improvisations, and Nicolas Hotman, who started composing suites for the instrument. Solos by Hotman for the bass viol exist in many different manuscript versions, as well as a few Airs à Boire. Because he improvised, the situation with Maugars is very different, and none of his music has yet been discovered.
Nicolas Hotman hailed from Spanish Flanders (now Brussels). He was an eminent performer, both on the viol and the lute, and held, among other prestigious positions, that of treble viol and theorbo player to the Duc d’Orléans; a little over a year before his death he was given an appointment as treble viol player with the musicians of the King’s Chamber. He has the added distinction of being the teacher of two important musicians of the following generation, Demachy and Sainte-Colombe.
What little can be gleaned from archives seems to lead us to conclude that M. de Sainte Colombe “famous for the viol” (as reported in the Mercure de France, a seventeenth/eighteenth century Parisian gazette), was a certain Jean de Sainte Colombe living on the “rue de Betizy” (which no longer exists) in the same Parisian neighborhood as the church of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois. Perhaps in the garden of these three-story “maisons de ville” (town houses), Marais spied on his teacher, hiding under a hut built in the branches of a mulberry tree, a scene celebrated in the film Tous les matins du monde.
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