Monsieur De Sainte-Colombe

For a long time next to nothing was known about Sainte-Colombe. He was known to violists as the inventor of the seventh string to the bass viol of the Baroque era in France. And there was the pleasing story of Marin Marais coming to listen to his master in secret, a scene that Alain Corneau used in his film about Sainte-Colombe, Tous les matins du monde (1991), written by Pascal Quignard. And then there was the music of Sainte-Colombe, strange, somehow distant and aloof, grave and erudite, unlike any other genre. It turned out that not much of the fictional biography Corneau and Quignard invented was true. Not even the name of Sainte-Colombe, which probably was Augustin Dautrecourt, a music teacher living in Lyon. What newer historic research did not change, though, is his unique music, the style of light and shade, that influenced many French violist since then.