ON 4 March 1889 Edward Payne, lecturing on the viola da gamba to the Musical Association in London, stated: ‘I could prove, if it were necessary, that the art of playing it has never died out in this country, but that the traditions of the instrument have survived in a constant succession of amateur players’. This assertion will come as a surprise to those brought up with the myth that the gamba needed reviving in the late nineteenth century, and that Arnold Dolmetsch was the person who accomplished the task in Britain. Yet Payne knew what he was talking about, and was not the sort of person to make wild, unverifiable claims. He was a lawyer, honorary recorder of his native High Wycombe, and distinguished historian of America and the colonies. As a musician, he played the violin, the gamba and the lute, and was an acknowledged expert on early stringed instruments, contributing many articles to Grove 1, including ‘Violin’. His obituary singled out his concern for historical accuracy: ‘it must be allowed that there was nothing careless or slipshod about his mode of reaching his results. He accepted no mere gossip or idle tradition such as readily accumulate about famous workers in all careers’.

This chapter and the next will substantiate Payne’s statement from two contrasted perspectives. This one examines Abel’s influence on his colleagues, competitors and successors, and traces his legacy in nineteenth-century Britain. For much of that time players continued to treat the gamba as an exotic but essentially contemporary instrument, and played modern or relatively recent music on it. Chapter 9 discusses the gamba’s role in the developing early music movement, the emphasis there being on a decisive break with tradition and the self-conscious revival of old music played on old instruments. These two attitudes existed sideby-side for much of the century and can sometimes be found expressed in the activities of a single individual. Thus Edward Payne stands at the end of a tradition inherited from Abel, but was also involved in early music revivals of the 1880s.

Abel’s Competitors

ABEL’s presence in England had as profound an e“ect on his fellow professionals as it had on amateurs (Ch. 7).