Scan 34
Famous Violinists and Fine Violins: Historical Notes, Anecdotes, and …, 1903
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1and charming his friends with his violin in the evening.
3In this manner Viotti's taste for speculation utterly ruined him; it was not very long before he lost everything in this extraordinary undertaking by which he hoped, no doubt, to realise a fortune much more rapidly than by his violin. It is generally admitted that military men and musicians often make bad men of business. The tenor Garat, who came over to London about this time, has described a dinner-party given by Viotti after the commercial labours of the day had terminated. In the evening there was music. A young lady sang some beautiful songs by Cimarosa, and Viotti played one of his Concertos. "Never," says Garat, "was his bow more gifted or more sublime."
5It is not my object to give a dry, critical analysis of the writings of this great violinist, but those of my readers who may happen to be unacquainted with his compositions should look at his celebrated Six Duets and at some of his Concertos.¹ They will soon perceive that the influence of Corelli in these works comes out more clearly than that of Tartini; the latter being, like Paganini and De Bériot, to a great extent an outsider—that is, an original genius who created his own style, and did not implicitly follow the lines of any "school."
7¹ Ch. Dancla edited twelve of the finest (printed by Chalot, Paris), with the fingering and annotations
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