Basses Reunited

 The Poetics of an Enlightenment Rivalry

In 1740, the diplomat and writer Hubert Le Blanc published his celebrated treatise defending the French basse de viole against the growing "pretensions" of the italian violoncello. Now seen as a sort of caricature of the two instruments, this controversy reflected a profound transformation in European musical taste, marking a debate between the viola da gamba's refined aristocratic tradition and a new aesthetic that embraced the Italian language of the violoncello and the expressive ideals of the emerging modern style.

Basses Reunited revisits this historic quarrel through works by Sainte-Colombe, Marin Marais, Domenico Gabrielli, Carl Friedrich Abel, Johann Sebastian Bach, Giuseppe Clemente Dall'Abaco, and Jean-Baptiste Barrière. The program presents two contrasting musical worlds in which the viola da gamba and the violoncello engage in dialogue, challenge one another, and ultimately reveal their complementarity.

Inspired by the rhetoric of the Enlightenment, the concert unfolds as a series of musical debates, inviting audiences to appreciate the differences between these two instruments without reducing them to a contest. Eloquence and intimacy, memory and innovation, subtlety and strength emerge as complementary aesthetic values, demonstrating how contrast itself can become a source of imagination, expression, and beauty.

Archivo visual: Marly Juliana Torres