Johann Christoph Ziegler: Intavolatura zur Viola di Gamba

Very little is known about Johann Christoph Ziegler, aside from a few mentions of the fact that he was a music director and organist at the University of Wittenberg around 1700. This information is cited in Johann Gottfried Walther’s Musicalisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1732), and in another similar source: the Musikalisches Conversations-Lexikon of 1879, along with a reference to the publication of his work Intabulatura zur violadigamba, aus Entraten, Allemanden, Sarabanden, Couranten und Capriccien bestehend, in oblong 8vo. This collection of pieces for Viola di Gamba, compiled into six suites of five movements each, has gone unnoticed by musicians and gambists of several generations for reasons I find inexplicable. Even in the book History of the Violoncello, Viol da Gamba, Their Precursors and Collateral Instruments, by Edmund S. J. Van der Straeten (London, 1915), they are listed as lost or missing at that time (p. 82), along with a similar work by Peter Zachaeus (Zachov): Erster Theil verstimmter Viol’ d’Gamb. Lautenspielen solo, consisting of allemandes, courantes, ballos, sarabandes, and “chiqven” (gigas). Van Straeten also mentions a very interesting work by J. E. Kindermann: Neu Verstimmte Violen Lust mit drei violen nebst dem Generalbass… (Frankfurt, 1652), probably also lost, yet worth mentioning in order to prove this peculiar musical practice. It seems that this type of work was not uncommon among viola da gamba virtuosos of the time in Germany, nor was the practice of the verstimmte viola da gamba, a kind of English “Lyra way” (Lyra-viol) in which the instrument is played in different tunings to enhance its expressive potential. What at first appears to be an isolated and minor work ultimately proves to be of enormous historical significance and great musical quality.

The pieces that make up the six suites include, in addition to the usual sarabandas, allemandas, and courantes, a movement that opens the suite called an “entrata” and a finale called a “capriccio”, in the style of a gigue. Unfortunately, the surviving manuscript is missing its last page, where the continuation of each musical stave of the capriccio from the final suite No. 6 would have been printed. Furthermore, Suite No. 5 is missing two measures needed to complete the formal symmetry and logic found in the rest of the suites. Through an in-depth comparative study of the form and style of the entire work and months of careful analysis, I gradually reconstructed the missing parts while respecting the composer’s aesthetic and style as much as possible, so that this lack of material might go unnoticed.

I hereby state that these added measures are not the composer’s originals and therefore stem from the creative imagination of my own musicological intuition so that there may be no confusion among those who choose to study and perform this work in the future. The title of the work, “Intabulatura de Viola di Gamba”, in the style of other publications for lute or theorbo from this period and earlier, describes a style of musical notation in tablature that involves the use of different tunings (scordatura) for the instrument. The choice of a specific tuning for each suite opens up a broad and diverse world of color and texture thanks to the resonances and chords naturally generated by the instrument, which goes beyond the selection of a particular temperament for the tuning. This combination amplifies the expressive range, giving each mini-piece a minimalist personality within its formal brevity and simplicity, optimizing it for performance in a rhetorical theatrical language.

Each suite is in a different scordatura (“Accordo”), some of which are shared with those used by the composer Jacob Kremberg in his book of 40 arias “Musicalische Gemüths-Ergötzung …”. For example, the 1st suite is tuned the same as Kremberg’s arias 14, 19, and 34, known as “Harp Way Sharp”: defhf; and the 4th suite is tuned the same as arias 6, 20, 31, and 40, known as “French-Sette”: efdef. The remaining suites are tuned as follows: edfhf for the 2nd suite, fdefh for the 3rd suite, dfedf for the 5th suite, and ffeff (or “ordinary tuning”) for the 6th suite. The first differs from the second, and the fourth from the fifth, by only one string, which is lowered by a semitone, thereby changing the overall tuning of the viola from a major key to a minor key.

This serves as evidence, alongside the mentioned source by Kremberg in which the tuning for the viola (accord de la viole) appears in 12 different variations, of a common practice of the time that is either very little known or for which no other surviving works exist to corroborate it. In my interpretation I have strived to express the full rhetorical content of the musical motifs and phrases characteristic of the works belonging to these artistic enclaves, which are the result of the revival of a school of rhetoric in the 17th-18th centuries inspired by antiquity. It is no coincidence that these great musicians, such as Schütz, Bach, or Kremberg, drew inspiration from the writings on rhetoric and works by Caspar Ziegler (curiously, he shares the same last name as our protagonist), a professor and rector at the University of Wittenberg, author of Von den Madrigalen (Leipzig, 1653; Wittenberg, 1685) whose poems were set to music. Bach and Schütz were inspired by his work for their compositions; in fact, one of Caspar’s poems: “Ich freue mich in dir”, became the hymn in J. S. Bach’s Cantata No. 133. This relationship between rhetoric and music can be seen in Jacob Kremberg’s Musicalische Gemüths-Ergötzung, oder Arien (Dresden, 1689), recently published in its entirety in my previous recording for Da Vinci Classics (C01089, Cantar alla Viola). This recording was made using an instrument I built myself, modeled after a Matthias Regenspurger viola da gamba housed in the Nuremberg Museum dating from 1682 which was converted into a cello in the second half of the 18th century, and made as its original viola da gamba form for my recreation of these interpretations.

All the instrument’s strings are handcrafted exclusively from natural lamb gut, including the bass strings. This work represents a distinctive musical style, virtuosic and erudite, that typically emerges in small, intimate environments with sociocultural and stylistic characteristics specific to a particular time and place. These were small circles where prominent artists developed their own language and style due to their specific influences; however, they also tended to imitate other styles, particularly those in vogue in other countries, which, in the case of German Baroque, were typically Italy and, above all, France. Specifically, in the case of German Baroque during the Counter-Reformation, a particular expressive need arose that developed due to its ideology and drew upon the resources of the new school of rhetoric as applied to music.

The use of gesture and declamation as vehicles for microstructure is the basis for the construction of musical phrasing. This collection of suites is a musical gem that connects directly with other works of immense value and musical quality, such as Kremberg’s arias, and suggests that other works of similar craftsmanship most likely existed but were lost, or, as in Ziegler’s case, have yet to be discovered. Fernando Marin © 2026