Scan 69
Celebrated violinists, past and present; ("The Strad" library), 1897
6 lines. Read by computer on 18 September 2026. Printed page 57. See the scan on archive.org.
1Procurator-General, and there for a long time his son was without a teacher, but a few months after his arrival the father died, and Baillot was received into the household of the royal "intendant," one de Boucheporn. This noble-minded official next sent him, together with his own children, to Rome, where Pollani, a pupil of Nardini's, gave him instruction. Pollani, "laid especial stress upon big tone," so that Baillot was receiving first from one master and then another, the best points that characterised each. For a time he lived first at Rome, next in Corsica, then at Pau, Bayonne, Auch, and other places, where he acted as secretary and in other capacities to his patron. In 1791, however, he returned to Paris, where through Viotti's instrumentality he was appointed first violinist at the Théâtre Feydeau. But this he soon resigned in order to take a post in the Ministère des Finances, a step which is said to have been necessitated by the "worst storms of the Revolution." During this period he continued to play the violin in his leisure hours, and even occasionally appeared in public. On withdrawing from his official appointment in 1795, and having served for nearly two years in the army, he returned to Paris, and was appointed to the professorship of the violin at the newly organised Conservatoire. He still continued his studies, and took lessons in harmony from Catel, and in composition from Cherubini and Reicha.
3In 1802, he became solo-violinist to the First Consul, Napoleon, in whose private band he also appeared; and immediately afterwards he began to travel, first with the violoncellist, Lamarre, in Russia, where he reaped a full harvest of laurels and gold. In 1812-15-16, he made tours in the south of France, the Netherlands and England, but he scrupulously avoided Germany apparently so that he should not be compelled to compete against Spohr. The real reason, however, was more probably a political one.
5While in England Baillot was heard at a Philharmonic Concert, and was in fact, an ordinary member of that
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