The film depicts an austere musician, raising two daughters by himself, living in an isolated castle and refusing the pomp and security of a fixed job at the court of Louis XIV. The novel as well as the film were based on the scarce documentation that was available to musicians and musicologists in 1991.

How close was the film character to the real Sainte-Colombe? We may never know with absolute certainty, but years of patient research[2] have unveiled leads as to who he was and how he lived. This essay will not give conclusive answers; at the moment there are none. However, the documentation presented here will hopefully correct certain mistakes and misconceptions that have slipped in over the past decade concerning the biography and works of this illusive genius as well as serve as a point of departure for future researchers.

The film was an overwhelming commercial success, winning seven French Césars. It brought world-wide recognition to the viola da gamba and its music. While the hitherto unknown Sainte Colombe was receiving so much attention an article claiming to have discovered Saint Colombe’s real identity appeared on the first page of the Le Monde.[3] According to the musicologist who wrote the article, Saint Colombe’s real name was Augustin D'Autrecourt and he lived in Lyons in the 1650's. However, a close look at the original sources revealed this to be a misinterpretation. Indeed, there had been a music teacher who also taught the viol and who lived in Lyons in the 1650's. According to the archives of the Hospice de Charité in the year 1657:

Acte de reception du Sieur de Ste Colombe, Maitre musicien, pour la maison.

Sieur Augustin Dandricourt dict Sainte Colombe, maître musicien à Lyon, a esté recu par la compagnie appres avoir esté informée de ses bonnes vies mœurs et cappacité pour enseigner et establyr la musique aux enfans adoptifs de ceste maison au nombre nécessaire maintenir celle des filles de Sainte Catherine aussi adoptives, et à ceux qu’il verra les plus proprres leur apprendre la composition et la viole, et leur fire les leçons tous les jours affin de faire au plus tos qu’il se pourra ung cœur de musique complet, et venir assister aux divins offices pour les festes acoustumees, et pour les deffuncts bienfacteurs, ce qu’il a promis de faire et de s’en aquiter le mieux qu’il luy sera possible. A remercie lesdits sieurs recteurs qui lui ont accordé pour ses gages la somme de cent cinquante livres par an, quartier par quartier.

The name D’Autrecourt mentioned in Le Monde was a misreading of the cursive hand-writing in the 17th century archives in Lyons. Rather, it was a Monsieur Dandricourt[4] who, as proven in this document, used the pseudonym Sainte Colombe or Sainte Culumbe (an important family by the name of Saint Colombe was benefactor to the Hospice de la Charité[5] and it can be assumed that there may have been some connection between the music teacher and this family). Since the publication of this article in Le Monde the misread name ‘D’Autrecourt’ has proliferated and can be found in articles, books, record sleeves, etc. It is high time to eradicate all association of the name D’Autrecourt with that of the musician Sainte Colombe.

We know too that Sainte Colombe studied with Hotman in Paris[6]. Would he have regularly made such a long journey from Lyons to Paris and back? Moreover, it seems highly unlikely that this modestly paid choir director (Dandricourt), who as part of his job taught a few girls to play the viol as a continuo instrument to sustain the choir, was the same Sainte Colombe who later, in 1678, was proclaimed in the Mercure de France to be ‘si celebre pour la viol’[7] and who was performing in Paris and teaching highly gifted students such as Marin Marais and Jean Rousseau[8].

Further search for the real Saint Colombe led to the "Insinuations de Châtelet"[9] in the French National Archives where I discovered a Françoise de Sainte-Colombe who married in 1669[10] . Her father was a certain “Jean de Sainte Colombe bourgeois de Paris” and one of the witnesses to her marriage was an organist by the name of Nicolas Caron (organist at St. Thomas de Louvre and at the Eglise St Oppurtune). Later I discovered that Jean de Saint Colombe had stood as witness to Caron’s own marriage in 1658.

Looking further I found that in the 1650’s and 1660’s Jean de Sainte Colombe had two daughters, Brigide and Françoise and lived on the Rue de Betizy (today the Rue de Rivoli) in the Saint Germain l’Auxerois district. This street intersects the Rue de la Monnaie and the Rue Bertin Poirée, curiously enough two of the first addresses of the young Marin Marais. Moreover on the Rue Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, one street over, was the residence of the celebrated violist Du Buisson's.

In his Parnasse François (1732) Evrard Titon du Tillet gives us a vivid account of Sainte-Colombe the man. From him we learn that the composer "gave Concerts at his home in which two of his daughters participated, one on the treble viol, the other on the bass, forming with their father a Consort of three Viols.[11]" Could these daughters have been Jean’s two daughters Françoise and Brigide? Again, further research unveiled that Jean’s eldest daughter, Françoise de Sainte-Colombe married Jean Varin, a teacher of mathematics to the King who was appointed to a post in Belfort while her sister, Brigide, married Louis Lebé, a secretary for the Marquis de Segnelay, who was stationed in Versailles. The Lebés, a family of printers of both books and music, were closely associated with the famous Ballard family. We also know that Saint Colombe the musician had close ties to a family of publishers named "Allain" (cf. the Concert a deux violes called "L'allain")[12]. It is interesting to note that several of the names associated with Jean de Sainte-Colombe were confirmed protestants.

These many documents all make a strong case for Jean de Sainte Colombe and yet, in my many years of searching through the French archives I have never found Jean de Sainte Colombe referred to as a musician but consistently as a "bourgeois de Paris". The possible protestant connection is an important one; antagonism against non-Catholics was quite prevalent after the 1685 revocation d’Edit de Nantes. Could Sainte Colombe have been protestant and, consequently, slighted in the official registers? Until we find at least one document referring to the musician as Jean, or referring to Jean as a musician, we cannot be certain that this was the revered French musician.

Then there is the claim to a son or sons, perhaps illegitimate and consequently not in the official registers. In his work Réflexions sur l’Opéra published in 1742 the writer, Rémond de Saint-Mard claims to have known one of Sainte-Colombe’s sons. He referred to him as "a simple man...who had not enough imagination to tell a lie[13]."

Six suites for solo bass viol by "Mr de Sainte Colombe le fils"[14] are to be found in the Durham Cathedral library. They are part of a volume of 300-odd pages of solo bass viol music, including works by Marais, Dubuisson, Simpson and many other composers. The music had all been copied by an amateur violist and protestant minister by the name of Phillip Falle.[15] Curiously, markings in red ink are found only on the music by Sainte Colombe le fils. Could Falle have been a student of Saint Colombe le fils, who we know lived in Edinburgh which is not far from Durham?[16]

The Durham library also houses a theological dissertation in Latin by a Henri Auger de Sainte-Colombe who was a protestant minister originally from the Béarn region in France[17]. His birth record indicates that he was born near Pau, in France, on the 1st of June 1680 to Monsieur le Baron Jean de Sainte Colome (one "m", no "b") and Marie de Landorte.

Many letters have been left by Henri Auger and, oddly, he can be found in London at the same time as Sainte Colombe le fils. Sainte Colombe‘le fils’is mentioned in a London newspaper, "The Daily Courant," in 1713 in a notice for a "concert benefice for Mr Sainte Colombe" held at the Hickford Room in London[18]. Were they perhaps related? Given the dates they could have been cousins. A viol teacher in London in 1716 by the name of "Mr Cynelum,"[19] may well be the same Sainte Colombe le fils, his name anglicized for easier pronunciation for English speakers.

It would seem that there were at least two branches of the original Sainte Colombe family, one protestant and from the Béarn region of France and the other Catholics from Lyons. The Paris Protestant archives have a mention in the "repertoire Haag" of a Parisian Sainte Colombe (no first name) mentioned in 1700 as being “fort suspect de religion.”

A list of Parisian musicians compiled in 1692 by Abraham du Pradel gives a Sainte-Colombe but rather than an address there is a dotted line[20] and this Sainte-Colombe’s name is not to be found in the tax register of musicians from 1696. [21]

The Tombeau de Sainte Colombe of course is in Marais’ second book of Pièces de Viole published in 1701. But the same book contains the Tombeau for Lully who of course died in 1687. This suggests that Sainte Colombe may have died some time between 1686 – 1700.

A few years ago a correspondent indicated an article by a certain Claude Astor, “Musique et Musiciens à Saint Julien au XVIIe siècle, Un Sainte-Colombe à Brioude”[22]. The article includes a testament as well as an inventory of Marie d’Estoupe widow to Le Sieur de Sainte Colombe who had been buried in Brioude by the 13th of November 1688 in the cemetery of the Saint Julien church[23]. This musician, who arrived in Brioude at an unknown date, brought with him an impressive number of musical instruments. The list contains two portative organs, two spinets, seven viols (four basses and three trebles) and a lute. Unfortunately his first name is never mentioned in any of the documents.

With more patient and meticulous research we may come up with firm and conclusive evidence that gives a birth as well as a death date and perhaps even a genealogy for this great maître de viole. In France many archives have literally vanished in smoke both in Paris as well as in the provinces. Perhaps research in Great Britain, where many archives remain for the most part intact, will one day resolve the Sainte Colombe enigma.

Works

All the extant music by Monsieur de Sainte Colombe is to be found in four books:

- Two books of solo viol music (106 pieces) in the Scottish National Library. They are not signed but in an inventory from 1685 the two books are described as “viole lessons of Mr. St. Columbe in two books”[24].

- One book of solo viol music (144-odd pieces) in Tournus (Burgundy), known as the Tournus manuscript. This manuscript is not signed but about seventy of the pieces are also found in the Scottish manuscripts. This and the style of the music make it clear that it is the work of Sainte Colombe.

- Les Concerts a Deux Violes Esgales, a collection of 67 duos now housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. About fourty of these pieces are found in solo versions in the above mentioned manuscripts.

It has been proposed that the solo manuscripts are missing a second viol part. However, there is strong reason to believe that, rather, these works were part of a long tradition of solo viol music prevalent in 17th-century Europe. In France alone there is, to begin with, the large solo repertoire of Hotman, who left us with approximately forty-five solo bass viol pieces and Dubuisson whose surviving works amount to over one hundred pieces. This tradition continued with the solo music of Demachy and later Marin Marais and Sainte-Colombe’s own son. Marais’ first book of viol pieces were for solo viol and was published in 1686. By 1688 Jean Rousseau reported in a letter that “everyone is playing [Marais’] music”. It was only in the following year, 1689, that Marais took an unprecedented step and published a ‘basso continuo’ part for his first book. This was the first time an accompaniment was published for the viol or for any other instrumental music in France thus beginning a new trend which would continue into the 18th century.

The bass viol in seventeenth century French society was, I believe, heard like its close cousin the lute, as an unaccompanied solo instrument[25] and Sainte Colombe’s music was very much in the continuing 17th-century tradition of solo unaccompanied viol music. As the century ended he began exploiting and developing his own new form, the duos for two viols.

The tradition of turning a solo piece into a duo for two bass viols started in France with Nicolas Hotman[26], but it is well documented in England as well with pieces for solo or duo viols by Hume, Corkine and Ferrabosco and many others. In fact, a few of the solo pieces by Sainte Colombe can be found rewritten as duos in his Concerts à Deux Violes Esgales. Often the second viol part in the Concerts is the more demanding one. One might imagine the solo part being given to a student with whom Sainte Colombe would improvise a more virtuosic second part[27].

Sainte Colombe is credited with having added the 7th string to the bass viol in France as well as inventing the wound bass strings "... we owe to him this beautiful left hand position which brought viol playing to perfection [and] allowed him to imitate the greatest qualities of the human voice ... ; we also owe to M. de Sainte Colombe the 7th string which he added to the viol. Finally, he ... introduced the use of silver-spun strings in France, and he continually works to find anything to improve this instrument, if it were possible."[28] Whether this is true or not is irrelevant. Sainte-Colombe’s music speaks for itself. It is the first music in France that uses the seventh string, evident from the very first prelude for solo viol in the Tournus Manuscript. The virtuosity required to play this music highly exceeds predecessors such as Hotman or contemporaries such as Dubuisson. Both the solo music as well as the duos show Sainte-Colombe’s flair for improvisation and a highly agile “diabolic” bow stroke that drew the admiration of disciples such as Marin Marais.