Collasse was born in Rheims in 1649. At an early age he was taken to Paris, where he became a chorister at St. Paul’s and a pupil of Lully. He was more fortunate than Lalouette, for he stayed with Lully until the latter’s death and completed his operas that were left unfinished.
Marin Marais was conductor at the same time as Collasse. Perhaps they alternated, perhaps there was so much to do that two were kept busy. It looks as if Lully only conducted when he wanted to—perhaps on a first performance of one of his operas. At any rate, Marais and Collasse worked together. Marais was a Parisian and was born in 1656. He sang in the choir of Sainte-Chapelle and took lessons on the basse de viole[45] with Sainte-Colombe. At the end of six months Sainte-Colombe, seeing that his pupil was likely to surpass him, told him that he could teach him nothing more. But this did not satisfy Marais; for he loved the basse de viole passionately and wanted to perfect himself by learning from this master. At that time Sainte-Colombe used to practise in his garden in a little shed he had built around a mulberry-tree where he could be undisturbed. Marais hid behind the shed and listened to his master practise some very difficult passages and bowings that Sainte-Colombe wished to keep for himself. This did not last long because Sainte-Colombe found it out. The next time he heard Marais he congratulated him on his progress. Moreover, one day when Marais was playing for a company of great distinction, Sainte-Colombe, who happened to be present, was asked what he thought of Marais. He replied that “there were always pupils who could surpass their master, but that nobody would ever be found who could surpass Marais.”
Marais became the best performer on the basse de viole of his time. It was Marais who gave the instrument a seventh string and it was he who wrapped the three lowest strings with wire. In 1685 he was soloist in the King’s Chamber Music and he also played in Lully’s Orchestra. Lully gave him lessons in composition. In 1686 he published a collection of pieces for the basse de viole. An Idylle Dramatique came out in the Mercure de Paris in 1693.
MARIN MARAIS
Marais wrote a great deal of music for the strings. “We know,” writes a contemporary, “the fecundity and beauty of the genius of this musician by the number of works that he composed. They are astounding in taste and variety. His great knowledge appears in all his works; but particularly in two pieces: one, in his fourth book called the Labyrinth, where, after having gone through various scales and touched on diverse dissonances, and marked his way by grave tones and then by lively and animated ones, describing the uncertainty of a man who is going through a labyrinth, he comes out happily in a graceful and natural Chaconne. But he astonished connoisseurs still more by a piece called the Scale—La Gamme—a symphonic composition which mounts insensibly through all the notes in the octave and then descends again with harmonious and beautiful melodies through all the musical scales.”[46]
Marais also wrote several operas, one of which, Alcyone (1706), had in it a storm that the people of the time thought perfectly terrific; for the drums rolled continually; the violins played on the highest string—the chanterelle; the oboes screamed; and the bass viols and bassoons added to the horrors in depicting the agitated sea and the whistling wind.
Many were shocked!
In 1725 Marais, very old, lived in a house in the rue de Lourcine and devoted himself to the cultivation of flowers. He also rented a room and gave lessons two or three times a week to talented pupils.