Legendary French lute player Pascal Monteilhet dies at 67
The lute player Pascal Monteilhet died last Tuesday, August 23, as a result of a myocardial infarction, at the age of 67. Recognized for his brilliant career as a soloist and as a continuo player, Monteilhet stood out for being the first French lutenist to graduate from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where he was a student of Eugen Dombois and Hopkinson Smith.
Monteilhet collaborated with the best historicist directors from his country (Christophe Coin, Gérard Lesne, Marc Minkowski or Christoph Rousset), as well as foreigners (Fabio Biondi or Philippe Pierlot). He was a permanent member of Il Seminario Musicale during the golden stage of Lesne’s formation. In 1995 he created his own ensemble, Les Libertins, and a year later he made his own with Les Basses Réunies, alongside Bruno Cocset, Blandine Rannou and Richard Myron).
He taught at the CNR in Paris at the National Conservatory of Music and Dance in the French capital, until one fine day he decided to drop everything without explanation: he sold his theorbo (a copy of a Venetian instrument from 1638 by Matteo Sellas), he gave a boat party on the Seine River with several of his best friends and little else was heard from him.
Born in 1955, Monteilhet learned classical guitar at the age of 9. He graduated in 1982 from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. But as soon as he launched his career, he felt the need for a break in 1983 and went to the Pacific for two years. Extremely perfectionist, Monteilhet even underwent surgical surgery on the pulp of his fingers to obtain a better sound when playing plucked strings.
Of the many recordings in which he starred, one from 2005 with music by Robert de Visée, together with the violinist Amandine Beyer, the flutist Amélie Michel and the viola player Marianne Muller (Zig-Zag Territoires) deserves to be highlighted. The musician himself announced that it would be the last recording. It was also then that he decided to withdraw completely from musical life and sold all his instruments to Benjamin Perrot (co-director of the ensemble La Rêveuse), probably fed up with the fact that the Ministry of Culture did not pay the due attention that he considered baroque music should receive. and, especially, the lute.
