Books › Famous violinists and fine violins : historical notes, anecdotes, and reminiscences, 1896 › scan 59
Scan 59
Famous violinists and fine violins : historical notes, anecdotes, and reminiscences, 1896
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1pure, soft, yet brilliant tone; and the boy's naturally musical ears were, doubtless, pleased by the sound, even such as it was yielded by his own rough and inexperienced handling of the instrument. It is certain that he must have persevered, though who taught him we know not, unless it were his clever father.
3But the fact is preserved that, although the violin is justly considered to be a most difficult instrument to learn, young Cherubini in less than two years was able, one evening, when a violinist was absent from the orchestra, to accompany his father to the theatre, and take the place of the missing man. It is even recorded that he played his part throughout so well that Nardini, the conductor, could find no fault save "a certain timidity and hesitation," only natural under the circumstances of a first appearance in public.
5We hear no more of Cherubini as a performer on the violin until many years later, after he had quitted his native Italy and paid one or two visits to London as a composer on the highway to fame, and had finally fixed his residence at Paris. It was at the time of the great French Revolution; and the fact of his having learnt to play the violin when a child was the means of saving his life in the hour of danger.
7His compositions, though far too learned for the light French taste, had by the year 1790, when he
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