The first complete Demachy recording by Flore Seube

We know almost nothing about Sieur Demachy: neither his first name nor his exact dates. Yet one essential collection remains, comprising eight dance suites for solo viol, preceded by an Avertissement (“Preface”) that has become invaluable for understanding the art of French viol players of the Grand Siècle. With Pièces de violle du Sieur Demachy, released this year by Les Belles Écouteuses, Flore Seube presents the culmination of ten years of research and close engagement with a rare body of work, which she first encountered during her studies at the Conservatoire de Lyon. Trained by Marianne Muller and later Paolo Pandolfo, the viol player advocates a reading as close as possible to the text, attentive to ornaments, fingerings, note values, deep bass sonorities, and the polyphonic writing inherited from the lutenists. Here, she reflects on Demachy, the freedom of the unmeasured preludes, French dance, and the rediscovery of a composer who undoubtedly deserves to be better known.

This recording is the first complete recording of Sieur Demachy’s works for viol. What made you want to devote an entire album to this composer, who is now almost forgotten?

Flore Seube: My passion for the French repertoire of the seventeenth century led me to undertake personal research into this composer and his music. Demachy is a very important composer, both because of his music and because of the Avertissement that opens his collection and serves as a kind of short treatise for viol players wishing to perform his music. Very little is known about him: even his first name remains unknown. We know only that he came from Abbeville, settled in Paris, and studied with the celebrated viol player Nicolas Hotman. Apart from opera, we know that dance was one of the great musical concerns of the Baroque period. Through the eight dance suites that make up the entirety of his surviving output, Demachy reveals his mastery of the art. In doing so, he asserts his style through one of the most fashionable musical forms in France at the time. He was the first composer to have viol music engraved and printed in France. Despite this, he remains, in my view, far too little known, and that is what prompted me to undertake this complete recording.

You speak of nearly ten years of engagement with this repertoire. Concretely, how has that long period changed your understanding of this music: your relationship to the text, the style, and instrumental gesture? Were there turning points, discoveries, or even decisive moments of reassessment?

F. S.: I did indeed spend ten years working regularly on Demachy’s music, sometimes moving away from it in order to return to it with fresh ears, while placing it alongside other repertoires from the same period (including the lute repertoire). It takes time to understand his language (he uses two systems of notation: staff notation and tablature), which is very different from that of his contemporaries Jean de Sainte-Colombe and Marin Marais. His influences and his taste for polyphony define him; from these emerges a distinctive style of writing for the viol that is at once extremely demanding and highly accomplished, with a rare ornamental refinement. Demachy provides a great deal of information regarding the proper execution of ornaments, finger placement, and even the two positions of the left hand. He sometimes asks for bow strokes and slurs that bear little resemblance to what is customary on the viol, yet when properly executed, they make perfect sense and render the musical language natural and transparent. It took me time to decipher, analyse, and assimilate all of these elements, and to reproduce his music as faithfully as possible!

By recording such a rare body of works today, you are also helping to shape how it is received. Did you feel that you were “opening up a field” of interpretation, with the responsibility—and freedom—that this entails?

F. S.: I am honoured and aware that this recording opens doors, because some of these pieces had never been recorded before. The precision of Demachy’s writing provides a valuable framework within which everyone can express themselves. The unmeasured preludes offer great interpretative freedom, allowing performers to adapt tempo, phrasing, articulation, and character according to their own taste, while still respecting the logic implied by the harmony. This freedom is also present in the dances, where the variety of ways in which ornaments can be realised allows for performances that are both faithful to the text and deeply personal. After years of work, this complete recording came to seem self-evident to me, as a way of making the entirety of his output known to as many people as possible and of offering my own interpretation, in the hope that it will inspire other viol players to explore his music.

For someone approaching this recording for the first time, which piece would you recommend listening to first? Why? And finally, which is your favourite piece?

F. S.: To get into this music, I would recommend an unmeasured prelude, namely the Prelude in D minor from the Fifth Suite, for the freedom of both its interpretation and its writing, its use of the full range of the viol (especially the lower register), the total commitment it demands from the musician, and the fullness of its musical expression. I would also recommend the Gavotte en Rondeau and the Chaconne from the Fourth Suite in G major for their brightness and their dance character.