The perfection of the bow and of the classical technique—The French school: Kreutzer, Rode, and Baillot—Paganini: his predecessors, his life and fame, his playing, and his compositions—Ludwig Spohr: his style and his compositions; his pupils—Viennese violinists: Franz Clement, Mayseder, Boehm, Ernst and others—The Belgian school: De Bériot and Vieuxtemps—Other violinist composers: Wieniawski, Molique, Joachim, Sarasate, Ole Bull; music of the violinist-composers in general—Violin music of the great masters.
The art of violin music in the nineteenth century had its head in Paris. Few violinists with the exception of Paganini developed their powers without the model set them by the great French violinists at the beginning of the century. Most of them owed more than can be determined to the influence of Viotti. Even Spohr, who with more or less controversial spirit, wrote of the French violinists as old-fashioned, modelled himself pretty closely upon Rode; and therefore even Spohr is but a descendant of the old classical Italian school.
The technique of playing the violin was thoroughly understood by the end of the eighteenth century. Viotti himself was a brilliant virtuoso; but, trained in the classic style, he laid less emphasis upon external brilliance than upon expressiveness. The matters of double stops, trills, runs, skips and other such effects of dexterity were largely dependent upon the fingers of the left hand; and this part of technique, though somewhat hampered by holding the violin with the chin upon the right side of the tailpiece, was clearly mastered within reasonable limits by the violinists of the middle of the century, Tartini, Veracini, Nardini, Geminiani, and others. Indeed Geminiani in his instruction book recommended that the violin be held on the left side; and in range of fingering gave directions for playing as high as in the seventh position. Leopold Mozart, however, naturally conservative, held to the old-fashioned holding of the instrument.
The technique of bowing, upon which depends the art of expression in violin playing, awaited the perfection of a satisfactory bow. Tartini’s playing, it will be remembered, was especially admired for its expressiveness; and this, together with certain of his remarks on bowing which have been preserved in letters, leads one to think that he may have had a bow far better than those in the hands of most of his contemporaries. Whether or not he made it himself, and indeed just what it may have been, are not known. Certainly it must have been better than the bows with which Leopold Mozart was familiar. The clumsy nature of these may be judged by the illustrations in his instruction book.
The final perfection of the bow awaited the skill of a Frenchman, François Tourte (1747-1835), who has properly been called the Stradivari of the bow. It was wholly owing to his improvements that many modern effects in staccato, as well as in fine shading, particularly in the upper notes, became possible. He is supposed not to have hit upon these epoch-making innovations until after 1775; and there is much likelihood that he was stimulated by the presence of Viotti in Paris after 1782. No better testimony to the service he rendered to the art of violin playing can be found than the new broadening of violin technique and style accomplished by men like Viotti, Kreutzer, Baillot, Rode, and Lafont, who availed themselves immediately of the results of his skill.
Something may now be said of these men, whose activities have without exception the glaring background of the horrors of the French Revolution. Though Kreutzer was of German descent, he was born in Versailles (1766) and spent the greater part of his life in and about Paris, intimately associated with French styles and institutions. Apart from early lessons received from his father, he seems to have been for a time under the care of Anton Stamitz, son of Johann Stamitz. At the Chapelle du Roi, to which organization he obtained admittance through the influence of Marie Antoinette, he had the occasion of hearing Viotti. The great Italian influenced him no less than he influenced his young contemporaries in Paris. Concerning his activities as a composer of operas little need be said, though one or two of his ballets, especially Paul et Virginie and Le Carnaval de Venise, held the stage for some years. As a player he ranks among the most famous of the era. His duets with Rode roused the public to great enthusiasm. In 1798 he was in Vienna in the suite of General Bernadotte, and here made the acquaintance of Beethoven. Subsequently Beethoven dedicated the sonata for violin and piano (opus 47) to Kreutzer.
By reason of this and his book of forty Études ou caprices pour le violon, he is now chiefly remembered. His other compositions for the violin, including nineteen concertos and several airs and variations, have now been allowed to sink into oblivion. To say that the concertos are ‘more brilliant than Rode’s, less modern than Baillot’s’ distinguishes them as much as they may be distinguished from the compositions of his contemporaries. They are dry music, good as practice pieces for the student, but without musical life. But Kreutzer was a great teacher. He was one of the original professors of the violin at the Conservatoire, and with Baillot and Rode prepared the still famous Méthode which, carrying the authority of that sterling institution, has remained, almost to the present day, the standard book of instruction for the young violinist. His own collection of forty studies likewise holds still a place high among those ‘steps to Parnassus’ by which the student may climb to the company of finished artists.
Pierre Rode (1774-1830) was the greatest of the players of this period. He was for two years a pupil of Viotti, and when he made his initial public appearance in 1790 at the Théâtre de Monsieur he played Viotti’s thirteenth concerto in such a way as to win instantly the admiration of all musical Paris. Considering that he was then but a boy of sixteen, and that Paris was accustomed to the playing of Kreutzer, Viotti, Gaviniés and other violinists of undisputed greatness, one can have little doubt that Rode had the power of true genius. This is further borne out by the fact that when he passed through Brunswick on a concert tour to Poland in 1803, Spohr heard him and was so struck with admiration for his style that he determined to train himself with the ideal of Rode in his mind. Later his playing fell off sadly and even in Paris he finally ceased to hold the favor of the public.
Like Kreutzer he came into contact with Beethoven. Beethoven’s sonata for violin in G major (opus 96) was completed for Rode, and was apparently performed for the first time (1812) by Rode and Beethoven’s pupil, the Archduke Rudolph. Even then, however, Rode’s playing was faulty, and, according to Thayer, Beethoven sent a copy of the violin part to him that he might study it before attempting a second performance.
Like Kreutzer’s, Rode’s compositions, with the exception of twenty-five caprices written as exercises, have been nearly forgotten. And yet, though Rode was without conspicuous musicianship, he had a gift for melody which made his compositions widely popular in their day. Of his thirteen concertos two, the first, in D minor, the eleventh, in A minor, were in the repertory of Paganini, who, moreover, professed a high admiration for Rode. And among the earliest of his compositions was a theme in G major, with variations, which won such broad success that it was transposed and arranged for the voice, and sung again and again on the stages of Paris.[51] Perhaps only Paganini’s variations on the ‘Carnival of Venice’ have been so popular.
Pierre Marie François de Sales Baillot (1771-1842) was the last of the great French violinists of this time. Though as a mere boy he was an accomplished player, and though he spent some years in Italy as a pupil of Pollani (who was a disciple of Nardini’s), he seems not to have decided to take up the profession of music until 1795. At this time, according to Fétis, he first became thoroughly acquainted with the masterpieces of the Italian classical composers, Corelli, Tartini, and others, and the enthusiasm they stirred in him settled the future course of his career. Upon the founding of the Conservatoire he was appointed professor of violin playing, with Kreutzer and Gaviniés. Subsequently he was active as a teacher, and not only as a solo player but as a quartet leader. His was the greatest share in the preparation of the Méthode which has already been mentioned. He was a friend of Mendelssohn and of Ferdinand Hiller, and was much admired by them for his qualities both as a player and as a leader. His compositions, including fifteen trios for two violins and bass, various studies, nine concertos, and a series of twenty-four preludes for violin in all keys, have suffered the fate that has overtaken the music of his friends and colleagues, Kreutzer and Rode. But his instruction book, L’art du violin, is still worthy of most careful study, not only for the technical advantages of its many exercises, but for his own remarks on the condition of violin music in his day. These offer to the student the best analysis of the qualities of the Paris school of violin music, and of the relations of that school to the past.
The French school of classic violin music, represented by Rode and Baillot, may be said to have come to an end at least partly by the influence of Paganini. This greatest of all virtuosos made his first appearance in Paris on March 9, 1831, after having astonished Austria and Germany. His success was here as elsewhere instantaneous and practically unbounded; and the examples his playing offered of extraordinary technical effects became the model for subsequent French violinists.
There are three virtuosos of the violin whose names stand out conspicuously in the history of violin music: Locatelli, Lolli, and Paganini. Each of these men is noted for special and in many ways overstretched efforts to bring out of the instrument sounds and combinations of sounds which, in that they can have little true musical significance and are indeed often of questionable beauty, are considered rather a sign of charlatanism than of true genius. This really means that the men are not geniuses as musicians, but as performers. Their intelligence is concentrated upon a discovery of the unusual. They adopt any means to the end of astonishing the multitude, such as altering the conventional tuning of the instrument, and employing kinds of strings which are serviceable only in the production of certain effects.
Of Locatelli some mention has already been made. He was a pupil of Corelli and the serious traditions of his master have found a worthy expression in many of his own works. On the other hand, his twenty-four caprices, in the L’arte del Violino (1733), and the Caprices enigmatiques in the L’arte di nuova modulazione, are sheer virtuoso music and little more. They are the prototypes for many of the studies and caprices of Paganini, who apparently devoted himself almost with frenzy to the study of these caprices during the year 1804.
But Locatelli was a thorough musician as well as an astonishing virtuoso. The type of empty-headed virtuoso who has apparently nothing in his musical equipment but tricks, is represented by Antonio Lolli (1730-1802). Here was a man who won unprecedented success in most of the capitals of Europe, yet who, by all accounts, knew little or nothing about music. Indeed, there is something pathetic in his frank admission that he was an ass. ‘How can I play anything serious?’ he is reported to have asked when requested to play a simple adagio. Apparently he could neither keep time nor read even easy music at sight. Yet he could so fiddle that many a man believed he heard, not the violin, but voices, oboes, and flutes. And some cried out that he must have ten fingers on the left hand and five bows in the right. And at least two of his pupils, Woldemar (1750-1816) and Jarnowick (1745-1804), were famous for no greater accomplishments. But in the main the ‘tone’ of violin playing was set, at the end of the century, by the great Italian, Viotti, and his followers. This endured, as we have said, until the advent of Paganini in the world of music.
Paganini’s early life in Italy (1784-1828) was at first not free from hardship, but after 1805, at least, it was brilliantly successful. The only lessons of importance in his training were received from Alessandro Rolla (1757-1804). His prodigious skill was almost wholly due to his own ingenuity, and to his indefatigable industry. There is every reason to believe that he practiced hour after hour until he was so exhausted that he fell upon the ground.
During the years between 1801 and 1804 he lived in retirement under the protection of a lady of high rank, and during these years gave up his violin and devoted himself almost wholly to the guitar. This is among the first of his eccentricities, which every now and then during his triumphant career cropped out to the amazement of the public of all Europe. He was in fact so unaccountable in many ways that a whole cycle of fables grew up about him, through which he loomed up, now as a murderer who had acquired his skill during long years of imprisonment, now as a man more than half spectre, who had bought at some hideous price the intimate, and it must be said wholly serviceable, coöperation of the devil. How many of these stories were originated and purposely circulated by Paganini himself, who knew how to cast a spell over the public in more ways than one, cannot be definitely answered. On more than one occasion he openly denied them and complained of them not without bitterness, all with the greatest of plausibleness; and yet one cannot but suspect that he knew the value of them in attracting the crowd out of a fearsome curiosity.
After his extended tour over Europe (1827-1834), which brought him a fame and a fortune hardly achieved since by any performer, he retired into a semi-private life at his Villa Gaiona, not far from Parma. From time to time he came again before the public. The more or less scandalous affair of the ‘Casino Paganini’ in Paris (1836) took a slice out of his fortune and perhaps seriously impaired his health. He died on May 27, 1840.
There can be no doubt that whatever the so-called serious musical value of his playing may have been, it took hold of the whole world and left a mark upon it. His technique was at once colossal and special. He built it up with the idea of playing before huge audiences, and Spohr has remarked that in small surroundings he did not show to good advantage. He had, of course, an incredible swiftness of fingering, an amazing skill with the bow, particularly in staccato passages, which he played, not in the classic manner of Rode, with a movement of the wrist for each separate note, but by allowing the bow to spring upon the strings. His intonation was faultless, in runs, in double-stops and in octaves. Though he used oftenest light strings in order to secure special effects in harmonics, and these precluded a full, rich tone in the playing of melodies, yet he could play simple passages with great sweetness and charm.
So far, however, his technique could hardly have exceeded that of Rode. It was in the realm of special effects that he proved himself little less than a wizard. Of these at least three are now within the command of all the great players of the present day. One was the combination of the left-hand pizzicato with notes played by the bow; another the playing of ‘harmonics,’ particularly double-harmonics; the third the playing of long and difficult movements upon a single string. Musicians were in that day so baffled by these amazing sounds, of which Paganini alone seemed to be master, that for years they attributed to him a special secret power. There was no end of speculation about Paganini’s secret, which, by the way, he was said to have imparted to but one man, his pupil Sivori. Now, however, it is all revealed. In playing pieces upon a single string he was accustomed to raise the pitch of the string, and to go into the highest registers by means of harmonics. He changed the tuning of his violin also in playing his concertos and some of his caprices, and he made a frequent practice of sliding his fingers, and was not above imitating sobs, cries, laughter, and on one occasion, of which he has left an account, somewhat maliciously the braying of donkeys in Ferrara!