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Marin Marais, ornaments, and strings on my 1741 Paris viol A few personal thoughts on certain ornaments in Marin Marais—and on the strings he might have known—played on my old viol by Salomon, built in Paris in 1741. This is not an attempt at a final historical verdict, but a practical, listening-based exploration: how agréments can shape gesture, rhetoric, and timing; and how different string choices alter the instrument’s resistance, colour, articulation, and resonance. With an instrument this old, the past is never entirely recoverable. But it can still be a wonderfully productive partner in the search.