Marin Marais

Gérard Depardieu’s portrayal of Marin Marais in the 1991 film Tous les matins du monde did much to popularise the French musician, and his rags-to-riches rise from the son of a Parisian cobbler to one of the most esteemed composer/performers at the court of Louis XIV. Born in Paris in 1656, Marais studied the bass viol with the shadowy virtuoso Sainte-Colombe, and was a protégée of the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully; he later paid homage to his mentors in two melancholy tombeaux—funerary monuments in music. As a musician in the royal chamber, Marais composed, and played, solo and chamber works in the king’s private apartments as well as for public occasions and entertainments. His vast collection of more than 550 pieces for the bass viol epitomises the refined, embellished French idiom. Among them are free-flowing preludes and fantasies, dances, and vivid programmatic works imitating chiming carillons, droning musettes, strumming guitars, or conjuring up exotic marches, a twisting labyrinth, playing badminton—even a surgical operation complete with sound effects and annotations describing the tremulous patient, the incision and the flowing blood. Marais also composed sacred works for the royal chapel, and four operas—most famously Alcione of 1706 which exploits the role of the sun god Apollo to glorify the “sun king” Louis. Its electrifying storm scene was remembered for decades after the composer’s death in 1728.