This recording shines a rare light on Johann Michael Nicolai, a composer about whom almost nothing personal is known despite a sizeable surviving output — probably born near Weimar in 1629, he died in Stuttgart in 1685, the same year J.S. Bach was born. The programme gathers his sonatas and suites for two and three bass viols, works that trace a fascinating shift in 17th-century German music: away from the hierarchical blend of consort polyphony and toward a new, almost Enlightenment-era individualism, with the bass viol taking on a soloistic, violin-like voice rare for its register.

The disc includes both duo suites (in C major, A minor, and D minor) and trio sonatas (A minor and D major), the latter presented in two different continuo configurations — with organ in one, and stripped bare in the other — reflecting the ambiguity of the original sources. The programme closes with an anonymous Sonata a 3 drawn from the Düben collection in Uppsala, whose fantastical closing pages gesture toward the stylus fantasticus of the North German school. As L’Achéron’s François Joubert-Caillet notes in his liner essay, Nicolai’s inventive, individualist writing seems to anticipate the coming Age of Reason — proof, in his words, that originality can emerge from even the darkest registers.

L’Achéron
François Joubert-Caillet & Sarah Van Oudenhove – bass viol
Julie Dessaint – bass viol (continuo)
Yoann Moulin – harpsichord & organ