Lucile Boulanger, messenger of the viola da gamba through the centuries

In her new album, Lucile Boulanger offers us a journey through time with the viola da gamba, from the 17th^e century XXI^e century. A fascinating dialogue, from Marin Marais to Philippe Hersant.

Lucile Boulanger’s latest album is called The Messengernamed after a piece by Philippe Hersant dedicated to him. But it could just as easily be titled La Fugitive or Shadowsother titles of works, as the journey that the new “queen” of the viola da gamba offers us goes off the beaten track, taking us to new lands, both luminous and dark.

« I want to believe that today it is no longer necessary to prove that my instrument is fully part of our musical landscape. The viol is alive and well“, declares Lucile Boulanger in the booklet of her album. And, in fact, from the essential Marin Marais to Philippe Hersant, Gérard Pesson, Claire-Mélanie Sinnhuber, via the Sieurs Demachy and Sainte-Colombe, Lucile Boulanger spans almost four centuries of music. And demonstrates with immense talent the incredible contemporaneity of an instrument that we thought was confined to the baroque repertoire. It is true that with its polyphonic and harmonic capabilities, this way of sounding and resonating, of transporting us outside of time and ourselves, the viola da gamba can only interest contemporary composers. All the works selected by Lucile Boulanger resonate with each other.

Isn’t this undeniably modern Suite in D minor by Sieur de Sainte Colombe, although composed in 1690? The violent bowing in the bass, the abrupt style, the harmonic deviations already anticipate the sound research of the invited contemporary composers, who easily claim their affiliation and their admiration for the 17th century repertoire.^e century.

This is the case of Philippe Hersant who, in the five miniatures of Shadow of a doubt (2008), written for a documentary film dedicated to Caravaggio, directly quotes The Orpheus by Monteverdi, manipulates chiaroscuro, and transforms the viol into a lute or a harp.

The composer Claire-Mélanie Sinnhuber dedicated The Eleven O’Clock Lady (2022) to Lucile Boulanger. Here again, this magical piece, punctuated by a long continuous swing, exploits all the harmonic capacities of the viol, right down to the plucked strings of an imaginary guitar.

In La Fugitive (2024), Gérard Pesson offers Lucile Boulanger a subtle meditation of great virtuosity, where furtive shifts and harmonic sweeps transport the listener into an incredible sound universe, until the final evaporation.

So many mirrorings with the pieces of Marin Marais, Sieur Demachy or the pioneer Nicolas Hotman (master of Sainte Colombe), thus offering a “ dialogue between the expected and the unexpected » in the words of Lucile Boulanger.

Ending on the impressive chaconne of the Suite in D major from the First Book of Pieces for one and two viols by Marin Marais (1686), played in a single breath, this marvelous disc offers a multiple portrait of the viola da gamba, an instrument of timeless beauty.

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