Books › The violin : some account of that leading instrument and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time : with hints to amateurs, anecdotes, etc., 1852 › scan 194
Scan 194
The violin : some account of that leading instrument and its most eminent professors, from its earliest date to the present time : with hints to amateurs, anecdotes, etc., 1852
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 178. See the scan on archive.org.
1sions that have overthrown Kings, and scattered Courts. It still retains, albeit, much of its old, hard idiosyncrasy. French music is still, for the most part, "caviare to the general." It lacks cosmopolitan character. To ensure it a full and hearty welcome, it needs a French education. If these observations be just, it follows that our lively neighbours, in dealing with stringed instruments, as well as with others, would not attain first-rate success in the way of composition for them—and such has been (I submit) the fact. Their real forte lies in exposition—in giving outward manifestation and effect to the ideas of others.
3It is the remark of one of their own countrymen (the able Mons. Choron), that the principal merit of the French School of Music, taken altogether, lies in the various branches of execution. And, with reference always to this quality, execution, he adds, "the style in which the French have real and undisputed merit, and indeed, in many respects, have a marked superiority, is the instrumental in general, and especially that of the violin. On this point, the French have always had great pretensions, and often founded in justice." After alluding to the alleged excellence of early French violinists, and, in particular, of the twenty-four petits violons of Louis XIV, formed by Lully, M. Choron has the candour to acknowledge that he knows not how to reconcile this with the following statement, given by Corette (a furious partisan, by the way, of the French School of Music), in the Preface to his Méthode d'Accompannement, published at Paris about 1750.—"At the commencement of this century," says that author, "music was very dull and slow, &c. …. When Corelli's Sonatas were first brought from Rome (about 1715), nobody in Paris could play them. The Duke of Orleans,
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