The voice today...
What is a voice? A person who sings, an instrument that speaks, different voices coming together to form a single sound… A voice can take many forms. Inspired by the theme Giving Voice, each day in this daily festival feature we highlight a different way in which the voice can be used. Earlier, we explored how an instrument such as the Boccalari harpsichord can represent a voice. Today, we turn our ears to an instrument that can come remarkably close to the human voice: the viola da gamba.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the viola da gamba was regarded as one of the instruments best able to imitate the human voice. Perhaps that is not so surprising. Like a singer, the sound of the gamba is not simply struck into existence, but continuously sustained by the bow. A note can therefore keep breathing, swell and gradually fade away. With subtle movements of the bow, vibrato and articulation, the player can also make the instrument sound as if it were speaking, whispering, sighing or singing. The gamba thus acquires qualities we would normally associate with the human voice.
The French composer Marin Marais was particularly well acquainted with the possibilities of the viola da gamba. He was a virtuoso gambist himself and wrote five extensive books of Pièces de viole. Throughout this music, he continually explores ways of allowing the instrument to speak expressively. Perhaps the most famous example is Les voix humaines, literally ‘The Human Voices’. But the voices here do not come from singers. They emerge from the strings of the viola da gamba.
It is precisely this paradox that lies at the heart of Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht. During Giving Voice, the human voice is heard not only through singing, but also through instruments. And Marais’ Les voix humaines shows just how close the two can come: an instrument so expressive that we can almost recognise a human voice within its sound.
We can hear this today in the concert by Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, featuring gambist Lucile Boulanger. Alongside Les voix humaines, the programme includes music that Marais wrote for other instruments, or that was later arranged for them. The result is a programme in which different instruments are each given their own voice.
There is another fascinating discovery to be made today. In 2023, an early eighteenth-century manuscript surfaced containing previously unknown works by Marais for flute and basso continuo. François Lazarevitch and Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien present this new discovery alongside arrangements of Marais’ music for viola da gamba. The flute, in turn, is described as an instrument capable, in a sense, of producing the human voice.
But perhaps the gamba remains the most convincing example. Listen to Les voix humaines and try not to hear an instrument. Listen instead to the breath in the long phrases, the subtle inflections of a note, the speech between the notes. Perhaps then you will hear not only the voice of Marin Marais, but something of the human voice itself.
