Morel: Premier Livre de pièces de violle

In a personal introduction to his own authoritative booklet essay, the Spanish violist Alejandro Marías relates how he acquired the rare facsimile of an even rarer manuscript, and came to realize that its contents had never seen the light of day in the modern era, let alone received attention on record. Thus he presents here the First Book of pieces – a second does not survive – by Jacques Morel. The volume itself was published in 1709, two years before Marin Marais’s Third Book of pieces. Morel’s date of birth is now obscured by time, but we know that he was this book. And indeed Morel makes no a pupil of Marais, to whom he dedicated attempt to disguise the debt he felt to his master within his music. The book contains four Suites for viola da gamba and continuo – in A minor, D minor, D major and G major, respectively – and a Chaconne en trio for a traverso flute, viol and basso continuo. This gentle and courtly six-minute Chaconne is the only piece of Morel’s that is regularly perfor