Scan 89
The American history and encyclopedia of music .., 1908
8 lines. Read by computer on 7 September 2026. Printed page 67. See the scan on archive.org.
1Bériot
2and profiting by everything, but imitating no one. Viotti also advised him to enter the Conservatory, which he did, becoming a pupil of Baillot, then at the head of the violin department. He remained here only a few months, however, as he preferred to do his studying and work alone. He soon began to appear publicly in concerts and was brilliantly successful from the beginning. In 1826 he visited England, appearing with the greatest success at the Philharmonic Society. On returning to Belgium he was appointed solo violinist to William I., King of the Netherlands, and this position he held until he lost it through the Revolution of 1830. He now formed a concert company with Malibran, the famous contralto and Lablache, the celebrated and magnificent basso, and for the next five years they traveled and gave concerts in France, Italy, Belgium and England, meeting with great success. In 1836, when Madam Malibran secured her divorce from her former husband, she married De Bériot, who was devotedly attached to her. This marriage, which was a very happy and congenial one, ended in a few months, when Malibran died of injuries, received from a fall from her horse. De Bériot retired to Brussels and did not appear for more than a year. In 1840 he made a concert tour through Germany, where he married Marie Huber. In this year he also became identified with the Royal Conservatory of Music at Brussels and, in 1843, was appointed professor of violin-playing, which position he held until 1852, when his eyesight failed. In 1858 he became totally blind. Many of his pupils became distinguished players, Vieuxtemps being the most noted. De Bériot's works consist of seven violin concertos; eleven sets of variations; several books of studies; some sonatas; and four trios for the piano, violin and cello. His book of instruction for the violin is one of the best ever written. De Bériot is considered the founder of the Franco-Belgium School of violinists, as distinguished from the Classical French School founded by Viotti. He was noted for his deft and easy bowing and his playing was remarkable for grace and elegance and for accuracy of tone.
4Berlioz
5Berlioz (bär-li-ōs), Hector. 1803-1869.
6Indomitable is the word which should be emphasized in any review of the life of Hector Berlioz. In the adoption of music, as a profession, Berlioz had to go against the dearest wish of his father, and deep-rooted prejudices of his mother, and give up a life of comfort and ease for a Bohemian existence, whose freedom was rather dearly bought at times. And as leader in a new movement, Berlioz followed during his entire life the rock-strewn path of the reformer. Hector Berlioz was born Dec. 11, 1803, at Côte-Saint-André, France, a little town near Grenoble. His father was a country doctor of very considerable reputation and a well-established practice, and what more natural than that the son should be expected to follow where the father had been so successful? "Never, perhaps, was there a more unfortunate milieu for a man of genius. Handel, who was also a doctor's son, found one staunch supporter at home; Schiller, after a long struggle succeeded in conciliating his mother's antagonism; but Berlioz had both battles to fight at the same time. No opportune ally came to carry him off, as Frankh carried off Haydn; no Crown Prince surrounded his early efforts with the splendors of imperial patronage; alone and unaided he had to scale an immovable earthwork of argument under a galling fire of appeal and invective."
7But there was a pleasant, sunny childhood, though mention might be made of the precocious sad love affair; the lad of eleven enamored with the maid of eighteen, Estelle of the "shining eyes" and "pink shoes." And mention might be made of the fact that a half-century later, Estelle, a half-century older, still had power to move the heart of Hector Berlioz. Some little instruction in music Berlioz received as a boy, learning to play on the flageolet, flute and guitar, his father believing in music as an accomplishment if not as an vocation. By himself, he made some study of harmony, and certain fragments of composition mark this period. Enthusiasm for the great world of music was fired by the reading of the biographies of musicians, and the discovery in his father's library of some bits of Gluck's Orfeo. It was with anxiety that the father noticed this
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