Twenty years after a first recording that became a landmark in the viola da gamba discography, Lucile Boulanger and Les Lucioles pick up the thread cut short by the death of Sophie Watillon. From July to December, from summer to autumn, they complete Christopher Simpson’s two great cycles in an album conceived both as a tribute and as a fresh take on the English art of ‘division’. 
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Nearly twenty years separate the two halves of this story. In 2005, Belgian viol player Sophie Watillon recorded The Seasons, The Monthes & Other Divisions of Time – I for Alpha, devoted to winter, spring and the first six months of the year. Her untimely death the following year left this exploration of Christopher Simpson’s music unfinished. Lucile Boulanger, for whom Watillon was one of the formative musical figures of her childhood, now picks up the thread with Les Lucioles: this second volume brings together the months from July to December and the two remaining seasons, summer and autumn.
Completing the cycle twenty years on
The project is thus as much about passing on a legacy as it is about rediscovery. Lucile Boulanger and Les Lucioles see the recording both as a tribute to Sophie Watillon and as a personal interpretation of this music. In particular, they draw on Simpson’s own instructions to restore the Graces, the English ornaments – rises, back-falls, double rellishes… – that embellish the musical lines. Their choice of a treble viol rather than a violin is intended to preserve the homogeneity of the consort; an English organ specially designed to accompany viols also joins the continuo.
At the heart of the recording lies the art of division, of which Simpson was one of the great masters and theorists. The principle involves ornamenting a melody or improvising over a bass by ‘dividing’ it into shorter note values, according to the performer’s taste and invention. His treatise The Division-Violist, published in 1659 and reissued several times, covers viol technique as well as ornamentation, improvisation and composition. In The Monthes and The Seasons, this practice reaches a particularly high degree of virtuosity.
Months and seasons
Yet the two cycles follow different models. The twelve Monthes, each named after a month of the year, are single-movement pieces for two bass viols, treble and continuo, cast in a free form akin to the fancy. The Seasons, probably composed in the 1660s, instead adopt a three-part structure – fancy, ayre and galliard. Their autograph manuscripts are now held at the Royal Library of Belgium.
Les Lucioles do more than simply complete these two cycles. Interspersed between the months and seasons are a Division in D minor preserved at the Bodleian Library, a Duet for two division viols in F from another manuscript in the same collection, and an Almain solo in high harp-way sharp from the Manchester Gamba Book.
Alongside Lucile Boulanger, Les Lucioles bring together viol players Myriam Rignol and Manon Papasergio, Gabriel Rignol on lute and Elisabeth Geiger on keyboards; Josh Cheatham joins the ensemble for the viol duet. Several modern instruments based on historical models are heard alongside two historical bass viols. Recorded in the Netherlands in December 2025, the album was released by Alpha Classics on 18 September 2026.
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