Les Voix Humaines is a Canadian viol ensemble based in Montreal, Quebec. The two principal members are Susie Napper and Margaret Little, two gambists. [1] [2] The group performs mainly Baroque music, in particular works by French composers. [3]
Les Voix Humaines first came together in 1985; they named their group after a viola da gamba composition by Marin Marais. [3] The duo have made several recordings for the Canadian ATMA Classique label, including The Spirite of Musicke with soprano Suzie LeBlanc, featuring the viol music of Alfonso Ferrabosco, Tobias Hume, John Jenkins and Christopher Simpson in 2001.
In 2009 the group recorded an album, Fanstasies, using six eighteenth century instruments from the collection of the University of Toronto. [4] The instruments had to be restored to playing condition before the group could use them. [5] Two other recordings are Sainte Colombe: Concertos for bass viol/Les Voix Humaines and Sainte-Colombe Concerts a deux Violes Esgales, which study and perform the works of two composers who were father and son. [6] [7]
In 2013 the group released an album, Bach: L'Art de la fugue. [8]
The viol, viola da gamba, or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitch of each of the strings. Frets on the viol are usually made of gut, tied on the fingerboard around the instrument's neck, to enable the performer to stop the strings more cleanly. Frets improve consistency of intonation and lend the stopped notes a tone that better matches the open strings. Viols first appeared in Spain and Italy in the mid-to-late 15th century, and were most popular in the Renaissance and Baroque (1600–1750) periods. Early ancestors include the Arabic rebab and the medieval European vielle, but later, more direct possible ancestors include the Venetian viole and the 15th- and 16th-century Spanish vihuela, a six-course plucked instrument tuned like a lute that looked like but was quite distinct from the four-course guitar.
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Marin Marais was a French composer and viol player. He studied composition with Jean-Baptiste Lully, often conducting his operas, and with master of the bass viol Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe for six months. In 1676 he was hired as a musician to the royal court of Versailles and was moderately successful there, being appointed in 1679 as ordinaire de la chambre du roy pour la viole, a title he kept until 1725.
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Jean (?) de Sainte-Colombe (c. 1640 – c. 1700) was a French composer and violist. Sainte-Colombe was a celebrated master of the viola da gamba. He is credited (by Jean Rousseau in his Traité de la viole (1687)) with adding the seventh string, tuned to the note AA (A1 in scientific pitch notation), on the bass viol.
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