Charles Dollé was a French

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

 viol

Viol

The viol is any one of a family of bowed, fretted and stringed musical instruments developed in the mid-late 15th century and used primarily in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The family is related to and descends primarily from the Renaissance vihuela, a plucked instrument that preceded the...

 player and composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

. Very little is known about his life. He was active in Paris and was a sought-after teacher of viol. His music, all of which involves the viol in some way, was influenced by Marin Marais

Marin Marais

Marin Marais was a French composer and viol player. He studied composition with Jean-Baptiste Lully, often conducting his operas, and with master of the bass viol Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe for 6 months. He was hired as a musician in 1676 to the royal court of Versailles...

 (whose death the composer commemorated in a tombeau

Tombeau

A tombeau is a musical composition commemorating the death of a notable individual. The term derives from the French word for "tomb" or "tombstone". The vast majority of tombeaux date from the 17th century and were composed for lute or other plucked string instruments...

) and Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 style, which is most prominent in Dollé's late works (although they retain the characteristically French ornamentation).

Dollé's music survives in five printed collections (all published in Paris):

• Sonates en trio pour les violons, flûtes-traversières et violes avec la basse continue, op. 1 (1737)
• Pièces de viole (for bass viol and basso continuo), op. 2 (1737)
• Pièces pour le pardessus de viole (for 1/2 pardessus de viole and basso continuo), op. 3 (1737)
• Sonates, duos & pièces (for 1/2 pardessus de viole/violin/violone/flute and basso continuo, op. 4 (1737)
• Sonates à deux pardessus de viole sans basse, op. 6 (1754)

Another print, Livres troisième, pour le pardessus de viole, tant à cinq qu'à six cordes (op. 5, c. 1749-1750), is lost. The extant music includes character pieces (twenty-five in op. 3, five in op. 4).