Delair: The Violin Sonatas

In the royal privilege to the second edition of Denis Delair’s widely-read treatise ‘Traité d’accompagnement pour le théorbe, et le clavecin’ from 1724, Delair mentions his instrumental compositions. Today’s reader of the treatise, one of the most important and detailed sources for French basso continuo practice at the turn of the 18th century, may be disappointed to find out that no printed music by Delair is known to exist.

Uppsala University's ‘Düben Collection Database Catalogue’ contains a manuscript copy of some ‘Sonates Violino seúl’ by a ‘Mr De L’air’. Our initial research and successful request for a digitalisation of these sonatas have allowed us to create an edition and get to know this extraordinary music.

Delair’s sonatas are not entirely typical of French music of the time; rather, they display a desire to marry the Italian and French styles - something referred to at the time as les goûts réunis. Much of the harmonic language and figured bass practices can be described as typically French. Many movements are inspired by Italian models: extended Fugato sections, fast movements not based on dance models, and broken-chord figurations. This mixture of styles creates an interesting problem for the performers of Delair’s music, as decisions about stylistic identity need to be made when adding anything which is not notated in the music (inégal, ornamentation, realisation of figured bass). Whose traditions should we use as a guide?

Not only is Delair’s music both French and Italian in style, but some features are also entirely unique. In each sonata we can find movements which imitate vocal music in their rhetorical writing and use of dramatic speech rhythms. Some movements in this category are reminiscent of recitative, with the violinist taking the role of the singer above a sustained bass; more often, however, the bass and treble are in equally-matched dialogue. The harmony of these sections is very rich and often takes unexpected turns, combining typical French harmonies with an exploration of remote tonalities and shifting between major and minor. The extended harmonies in the sonatas correspond to those mentioned by Delair in the section titles  ‘acompagnemens extraordinaires’ from his treatise. 

It is difficult to date these sonatas. There are no other existing sources, nor any other compositions by Denis Delair. The parts are in the hand of Carl Hintz, who copied around 20 works in the Düben Collection, primarily French theatre music, but also small-scale instrumental works by composers such as Jean-Féry Rebel and Anders von Düben. Hintz's death year was either 1710 or 1711, so Delair's sonatas must have been written and circulated at the turn of the eighteenth century or before, but for today’s audience - they are new.