Quatrième livre de pièces de viole

Description

It is two years after the death of Louis XIV that Marin Marais publishes his Quatrième Livre de Pièces de Viole.
He asserts himself as the master of the genre, offering his audience both pieces intended for “those who are advanced on the Viola” but also for the most virtuosic musicians. Stylistically, the classical forms are distorted, the suites no longer adhering to the traditional scheme and increasingly calling upon character pieces. This sometimes fanciful imagery brought by these new pieces and the asserted formal freedom reach their peak in the surprising Suitte d’un goût étranger, whose good thirty pieces address both unusual tonalities up to that point and offer a multitude of characters and sometimes exotic evocations. And in a new way, somewhat influenced by the genre of Italian trios, Marais concludes this Quatrième Livre with two suites for three violas, a genre he asserts as “new in France.”