In his Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana or Española dated 1611, Sebastian Orozco gave his definition of Folia: “It is a very rowdy Portuguese dance and the noise is so loud and the music so fast that everyone seems to have gone mad. They’re all crazed – the dancers and the musicians who keep up the beat...”. But with time the popular tunes softened up a bit, and so did the vast anthology of over 700 pieces that Marin Marais, one of Louis XIV’s musicians at his court in Versailles, dedicated to the viola da gamba. So Robert de Visée’s guitar pieces too were gentler, compared to Francesco Corbetta's rougher, popular items.
Musical forms develop in line with the changes made to instruments and to social customs. Between the end of the 1500s and early 1600s, the viola da gamba became increasingly popular in England, leading to some wonderful creations. English viola players – such as Alfonso Ferrabosco and Tobias Hume – tried to compete with the lute by composing harmonies and fantastic passages based on techniques such as scordatura tuning. This method, originally employed in Italy, became highly fashionable in 17th century England. A piece played using this alternative tuning method was referred to as lyra-viol.
The Tratado de glosas, published in Rome in 1553 by Diego Ortiz tolledano (as he called himself) is a fundamental reference work, as a valuable source of Recercadas and instrumental variations. Ortiz boasts Spanish and Neapolitan experience – around 1553 he was Maestro de Capilla for the viceroy of Naples, Fernando Alvarez de Toledo.
Still more amazing are the Musicall Humors by Tobias Hume. This musician and composer is a bit of a mystery – a professional solder, subject of her Britannic Majesty Elizabeth I, who died in 1603, but also a mercenary in the pay of the Swedish crown.
His main victory, however, and (posthumous) fame, lie in the two volumes of Humors. The first, dated 1605, contains about a hundred pieces for viol solo. The second, two years later, was entitled Captaine Hume’s Poeticall Musicke (note the insistence on his military rank!) and groups items for viola da gamba and other instruments.
Jordi Savall in an interview some years ago told how he came upon this original composer in the magic silence of the Reading Room at the British Museum in London: “Imagine my excitement as I tried to work out, in those venerable surroundings, how I could play these Loves farewell, Death & Life, or the various Souldiers March, Galliards and Resolutions.”

Sandro Boccardi