Marin Marais

Marin Marais (1656-1728), French viol player and composer, appointed Ordinary Musician of the King’s Chamber (that is, director of music for the king) from 1679 to 1725, at the courts of Louis XIV and Louis XV. A pupil of the French viol player Augustin Dautrecourt (known as Sainte-Colombe) for the bass viol, and of Jean-Baptiste Lully for composition, he was a virtuoso of the viola de gamba and between 1686 and 1725 published five Livres de Pièces à Une ou Deux Violes avec Basse Continue, which between them contain more than 500 individual pieces.

While his rival Forqueray followed the Italian style of viol playing, Marais cultivated the French style (Hubert le Blanc’s partisan treatise Défense de la Basse de Viole, 1740, compared Marais to an angel and Forqueray to a devil). He also composed operas in the style of Lully, including the lyric tragedy Alcione (1706), famous for its “tempest” scene. He had 19 children, including Roland (born in 1680), who published two collections of Pièces de Violes (1735 and 1738), and Vincent, who succeeded him at the court. The relationship between Marais and Sainte-Colombe was the subject of the acclaimed film Tous les Matins du Monde (1991).