Victor de Montbuisson

Victor de Montbuisson, also known as Victor von Bergwald, was a French lutenist born in Avignon around 1575. He is known to have been still alive after 1638. His career belongs to the musical milieu of Central Europe in the early seventeenth century, when the lute remained a central instrument in court practice and in the publication of music for keyboard and strings.

Between 1598 and 1627 he was in the service of Landgrave Maurice of Hesse at the court in Kassel. After that period, he apparently settled in The Hague as a teacher until 1638, although this detail is not known with certainty. His name appears in several collections of the period: Denss cited him in his Florilegium of 1594 as the composer of three courantes, and Besard attributed three galliards to him in his Thesaurus of 1603, where he appears as 'Avenionensis'.

The manuscript preserved in Kassel, dated January 1611 and dedicated to Princess Elisabeth of Hesse, contains pedagogical studies, more than a hundred dance pieces, mostly courantes, and some fifty vocal works, many of them intabulations. His legacy is of interest above all for its harmony and rhythm rather than its melody, with frequent changes of metre from 3/4 to 6/8 and a free treatment of accidentals.