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Scan 353
Grove's dictionary of music and musicians;, 1904
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1respects, they have advanced the technique of the violin. The advent of Viotti (1753–1824) marks a new era in French violin-playing. His enormous success, both as player and composer, gave him an influence over his contemporaries which has no parallel, except in the cases of Corelli and Tartini before him, and in that of Spohr at a later period.
3In Germany the art of Corelli and Tartini was spread by numerous pupils of their school, who entered the service of German princes. In Berlin we find J. G. Graun (1698–1771), a direct pupil of Tartini, and F. Benda (1709–1786), both excellent players, and eminent musicians. In the south, the school of Mannheim numbered among its representatives Johann Carl Stamitz (1719–1761), and his two sons Carl and Anton — (the latter settled in Paris; and was the teacher of R. Kreutzer); Chr. Cannabich (1731–1798), well known as the intimate friend of Mozart; Wilhelm Cramer (1745–1799), member of a very distinguished musical family, and for many years the leading violinist in London; Ignaz Franzl (born 1736) and his son Ferdinand (1770–1833). The Mannheim masters, however, did not contribute anything lasting to the literature of the violin. On the whole, the Sonata, as cultivated by Tartini, remained the favourite form of violin compositions. At the same time, the Concerto (in the modern sense) came more and more into prominence. The fact that W. A. Mozart, who from early childhood practised almost every form of composition then in use, wrote so many concertos for violin and orchestra, is a clear indication of the growing popularity of the new form. Mozart in his younger years was hardly less great as a violinist than a piano-player, and his Violin Concertos, some of which have been successfully revived of late, are the most valuable compositions in that form anterior to Beethoven and Spohr. While they certainly do not rank with his Pianoforte Concertos, which date from a much later period, they stand very much in the same relation to the violin-playing of the period, as his Pianoforte Concertos stand to contemporary pianoforte-playing. Here, as there, the composer does not disdain to give due prominence to the solo instrument, but the musical interest stands in the first rank. The scoring, although of great simplicity — the orchestra generally consisting of the stringed quartet, two oboes, and two horns only — is full of interest and delicate touches. On the other hand, the Concertos of Tartini and his immediate successors are decidedly inferior to their Solo Sonatas. The Concerto was then in a state of transition: it had lost the character of the Concerto grosso, and its new form had not yet been found, although the germ of it was contained in Vivaldi's Concertos. On the other hand, the Solo Sonata had for a long time already attained its full proportions, and the capabilities of the form seemed wellnigh exhausted. Meanwhile the Sonata-form, in the modern sense of the word, had been fully developed by composers for the pianoforte, had been applied with the greatest success to orchestral composition, and now took hold of the Concerto. Mozart and Viotti produced the first Violin Concertos, in the modern sense, which have lasted to our day. Mozart, however, in his later years gave up violin-playing altogether, and although, like Haydn, he has shown in his chamber-music how thoroughly in sympathy he was with the nature of the violin, he did not contribute to the literature of the instrument any works wherein he availed himself of the technical proficiency attained by the best violinists of his time. In this respect it is significant that Spohr, whose unbounded admiration for Mozart is well known, seems never to have played his Violin Concertos in public. Viotti and Rode were Spohr's models for his earlier Concertos.
5Towards the end of the 17th century Paris became the undisputed centre of violin-playing, and the Paris school, represented by Viotti, as depository of the traditions of the classical Italian school; by Kreutzer (1766–1831), who, though born at Versailles, was of German parentage, and a pupil of Anton Stamitz; and by Rode (1774–1830), and Baillot (1771–1842), both Frenchmen, assumed a truly international character. The single circumstance that four violinists of such eminence lived and worked together at the same place, and nearly the same time, would be sufficient to account for their essential influence on the taste and style of this period. Differing much in artistic temperament, they all took the same serious view of their art, and shared that musical earnestness which is averse to mere technical display for its own sake, and looks on execution as the means of interpreting musical ideas and emotions. As teachers at the newly founded Conservatoire, Rode, Kreutzer, and Baillot formally laid down the principles of violin-playing as they prevail to this day. It is to Germany that we have to look for their true successors, apparently because their style, founded on a broad and truly musical basis, irrespective of national peculiarities, found its most congenial soil in the country of the great composers, who in their works are truly international, as all art of the very first rank must be; while the strongly pronounced national character of French violinists was bound sooner or later to assert itself, and to return to a characteristically French style of playing. Baillot, in his 'L'Art du Violon,' points out as the chief distinction between the old and the modern style of violin-playing, the absence of the dramatic element in the former, and its predominance in the latter. In so far as this means that the modern style better enables the player to bring out those
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