Les âges du monde: French Music for Viol Consort Through the Ages

Chelys Consort of Viols

BIS Recordings BIS2733

Those with an interest in this kind of thing are undoubtedly well acquainted with the English school of music for viol consort on the one hand and the later soloistic innovations, for bass viol, of the French school on the other. The excellent Chelys Consort are therefore to be commended for reminding us that, (mostly) pre-Sainte-Colombe, Marais, Forqueray et al, ‘just across the English Channel, there was a hub of activity in the viol (consort) scene that rivalled the goings-on in the British Isles’.

Consequently, you will not find here any music by those aforementioned masters of the voix humaine. Instead, we have dances, fantasias and arrangements of popular songs for domestic and courtly consumption, written or arranged for viol consort by composers flourishing in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Read the full review at Gramophone.