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The Canadian group Les Voix Humaines in its basic form consists of two viola da gamba players, Susie Napper and Margaret Little. The duo has expanded at times to a larger group, Les Voix Humaines Ensemble; both formations have specialized in music of the French Baroque.

Napper and Little joined forces in Montreal in 1985 to form Les Voix Humaines. The name is taken from that of a work by composer Marin Marais, whose music is often heard in concerts by the duo. The two musicians have also been active in other Canadian early music groups, including Le Studio de Musique Ancienne de Montréal and Les Boréades de Montréal on Napper's part, and Rebel, Four Nations, and Trinity Consort on Little's. The duo quickly gained popularity, touring in Europe, the U.S., Australia, and Israel in addition to Canada, and their popularity was only boosted by the appearance of the 1991 film Tous les matins du monde: the film dealt with the life of Marais' teacher, Jean de Sainte-Colombe, whose music fell squarely within the duo's repertory. Les Voix Humaines has performed with a variety of guest vocalists and instrumentalists in concert, including soprano Suzie LeBlanc, countertenor Daniel Taylor, and theorbist Sylvain Bergeron. The duo has also expanded to the larger Les Voix Humaines Ensemble, enabling them to perform viol consort music by the likes of Purcell and Dowland; its repertory also extends forward to Bach and other composers of the High Baroque. Les Voix Humaines has accumulated a large catalog of recordings, beginning with Le Constant et l'infidèle in 1995 on ATMA Classique. Many of their recordings have been made for that Canadian label, including 2019's Le Monde de Sainte-Colombe; that album consisted of selections from the complete set of Sainte-Colombe's duos that Les Voix Humaines recorded in the middle of the 2000s decade. Napper has taught at McGill University, and Little at the University of Montreal. ~ James Manheim

Capt. Tobias Hume was a remarkably unsuccessful composer in his lifetime, but the qualities that put off his contemporaries attract today's admirers of viol music. Hume's music was nearly as eccentric as the man himself; it exploited the viol's wide dynamics and ability to sustain a melodic line, in contrast to the more contrapuntally oriented lute, which the viol was slowly supplanting in popularity during Hume's lifetime. Hume filched brief musical phrases from other men's compositions and incorporated them into new pieces of widely varying moods, often with odd titles (My Mistresse hath a Pritty Thing, Twickledum Twickledum).

Hume himself was every bit as colorful as his music, perhaps more so. Despite his serious musical efforts -- he published two extensive collections of pieces -- he though of himself primarily as a soldier. Nothing is known of his early life; he seems to have spent many years traipsing across Europe as a mercenary, serving as an officer in the Swedish and Russian armies (it was in the former that he achieved the rank of captain; late in life, he claimed to be a colonel). The end of the war between Sweden and Poland in 1629 probably sent Hume back home to England for good. He did not enjoy financial success; that year he entered London's Charterhouse, a former priory redesigned as a home for "distressed" gentlemen, and died there in 1645, after several years of issuing periodic, unanswered missives offering his services to the English king to, among other things, crush the Catholic rebellion in Ireland that began in 1642.

Even while soldiering, Hume aspired to be a recognized composer promoting the virtues of the viol against those of the lute. He published two big books of music; the first, in 1605, is full of fanciful instrumental dances and meditations and stands as the largest collection of music for solo lyra viol by a single composer in the early seventeenth century. The second, from 1607, titled Captaine Humes Poeticall Musicke, is more stylistically circumspect, intended as it was to gain the patronage of Queen Anne. In general, Hume's pieces make few technical demands on their players (suggesting that Hume himself was no virtuoso), relying instead on interesting sonorities and musical invention.