Scan 358
Grove's dictionary of music and musicians ed. by J. A. Fuller Maitland, 1910
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 324. See the scan on archive.org.
1and the presence of such a master as Spohr, were powerful enough to keep the influence within bounds. The growing importance and popularity of chamber-music for the violin, especially of the String Quartet, since Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, were another barrier against the predominance of an exclusive virtuoso style of violin-playing in Germany. French violinists, especially Baillot, were certainly anxious enough to attack these highest tasks of the violinist, but there can be no doubt that in their hands the works of the German classics assumed an aspect which was too frequently more in accordance with the French character of the performers than with the intentions of the composers. In this respect the minute directions which Baillot gives for the performance of a great number of passages extracted from the works of most eminent composers is extremely curious and instructive. It was but natural that Paganini should have a number of imitators, who copied with more or less success his harmonics and double-harmonics, his long and quick staccatos, pizzicatos with the left hand—in fact, all those technical feats which, though not invented by him, he brought to the highest pitch of perfection. The style of the man, which had its source in his genius and originality, was inimitable. He could not, and did not start a school. Sivori (born 1817) claimed to be his only actual pupil. But, pupils or no pupils, Paganini caused nothing short of a revolution in the technique of the French school. The striking change which the general style of violin-playing underwent in France during the third decade of the 19th century has, however, other and deeper causes, and finds its explanation in the complete revolution in musical taste which took place at that period. The Classical Paris school was in reality the school of Italy, which for the time being had made Paris, as it were, its headquarters. Founded by Viotti, the Italian, at a time when German instrumental music, in the persons of Haydn and Mozart, was occupying the attention of the whole musical world, this School hardly reflected the salient points of the French national character, although it harmonised well with the classical tendencies of the sister arts in that country. In Baillot's 'L'Art du Violon' we cannot fail to recognise already a leaning towards a style which was more in harmony with the genius of the French nation—a style brilliant, showy, full of shrewdly calculated effects, elegant, and graceful, aiming chiefly at a highly polished execution, and distinguished by what they themselves untranslatably call élan. At the same time, the French school gained, in what might be termed its classical period, a basis and a systematic method for the technical training of violinists, the advantages of which are still so apparent in the highly finished technique of a large number of French violin-players of the present day.
3It is only within the last seventy years that instrumental composition, apart from the stage, has gained any great importance in France. As in Italy, so there, the operatic style of the period determined the general musical style. Thus we find the chaste and graceful style of Méhul and Boieldieu reflected in Rode and the best of his contemporaries. The success of Rossini threw everything else for a time into the shade, and brought about a complete revulsion of musical taste in France; but if Rossini's sparkling and graceful style appealed to one prominent feature of the national character, it was Meyerbeer, with his supreme command of theatrical effect, who took hold of another. The most eminent native opera composers, Adam, Auber, Hérold, and Halévy, while no doubt strongly French in character, did not escape the powerful influence of these two masters; and it is but natural that, in common with all other branches of musical art, violin-playing and composition for the violin had to submit to it. While in Germany the spirit of instrumental music was almost as dominant on the stage as in the concert-room, and delayed the formation of a truly dramatic style of music, in France the operatic style was as supreme in the concert-room as on the stage; and in that sense Baillot's characterisation of the modern style of violin-playing as the dramatic style is quite correct.
5The two most eminent representatives of the modern French school, De Bériot (1802–70) and H. Vieuxtemps (1820–81), were of Belgian nationality. The Belgian school of violin-playing is, however, in reality but a branch, though a most important one, of the Paris school. De Bériot's style as a composer for the violin seems to have been formed under the influence of the modern Italian opera composers, especially of Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini; and his Concertos and Airs variés, which attained an immense popularity all over the world, share the strong and weak points of modern Italian music. They have plenty of melody, though of a somewhat sentimental kind, and their general style, without affording much difficulty to the player, is most brilliant and effective. If De Bériot's ideas are on the whole superficial and often not free from triviality, they are also unpretentious and unaffected. The same can hardly be said of Vieuxtemps. He certainly was a great violinist, and as a musician decidedly superior to De Bériot. His compositions contain ideas of great beauty and are often cleverly worked out, but at the same time there is in them too frequently an element of theatrical bombast and pretension which is analogous to Meyerbeer's grand-opera style, just as De Bériot's is to the spontaneous melody of Italian opera. De Bériot's treatment of the instrument,
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