III
Before considering Viotti’s work in detail something must be said about the condition of violin music in France during the eighteenth century, and the violinists in Paris, with the assistance of whom he was able to found a school of violin playing the traditions of which still endure. With but one or two conspicuous exceptions, the most significant violinists of the eighteenth century in France came directly under the influence of the Italian masters. This did not always contribute to their material successes; for throughout the century there was a well-organized hostility to Italian influences in one branch and another of music. Nevertheless most of what is good in French violin music of the time owes a great deal to the Italians.
Such men as Rébel and Francœur (d. 1787), who were closely connected with the Académie founded by Lully, may be passed with only slight mention. Both were significant in the field of opera rather than in that of violin music. Their training was wholly French and their activities were joined in writing for the stage. The latter composed little without the former, except two sets of sonatas for violin, which belong to an early period in his life. Francœur advised the use of the thumb on the fingerboard in certain chords, a manner which, according to Wasielewski,[49] is without another example in violin music.
On the other hand, Batiste Anet, J. B. Senaillé and Jean Marie Leclair, all trained in Italy, are important precursors of the great violinists at the end of the century who gathered about Viotti and the Conservatoire. Anet, who is also known merely by his Christian name, was a pupil of Corelli’s for four years. Upon his return to Paris, about 1700, he made a profound impression upon the public; but the great King Louis refused him his favor, and he was forced to seek occupation in Poland. It was largely owing to his influence that Senaillé (d. 1730), after having studied in Paris with one of the famous twenty-four violins of the king, betook himself to Italy. He returned to Paris about 1719 and passed the remainder of his life in the service of the Duc d’Orleans. Five sets of his sonatas were published in Paris, and one of them was included in J. B. Cartier’s famous collection, L’art du violon.
Jean Marie Leclair is more conspicuous than either Batiste or Senaillé. He was for some time a pupil of Somis in Turin. After troubles in Paris on his return, he retired from public life and gave himself up to teaching. Towards the end of his life he sought lessons of Locatelli in Amsterdam. He was murdered in the streets of Paris one night in October, 1764. After his death his wife had his compositions engraved and printed. Among them are sonatas for violin and figured bass, concertos with string accompaniment, trios, and even one opera, Glaucus et Scylla, which had been performed in Paris on October 4, 1747.
In spite of the Italian influences evident in his work, Leclair may be taken as one of the main founders of the French school of violinists. Form and style of his works for the instrument are Italian; but the spirit of them, their piquant rhythms, their preciseness, their sparkling grace, is wholly French. The best known of his compositions today is probably a sonata in C minor (from opus 5), which, on account of a seriousness not usual with him, has been called Le tombeau.
None of his pupils was more famous than Le Chevalier de St. Georges, the events of whose life, however, are more startling than his music. He was the son of a certain de Boulogne and a negress, born on Christmas day, 1745, in Guadaloupe. He came as a child to Paris, and was trained by Leclair to be one of the most famous violinists in France. For several years he was associated with Gossec in conducting the Concerts des amateurs; but subsequently misfortune overtook him. He was a soldier of fortune in the wars accompanying the Revolution; and he escaped the guillotine only to drag on a miserable existence until he died on the 12th of June, 1799.
Following Leclair the list of violinists in France grows steadily greater and more brilliant. A. N. Pagin and Pierre Lahoussaye were of great influence. The former was born in 1721 in Paris, and went as a young man to study with Tartini. The prejudice against Italian music destroyed his public career on his return to Paris, so that he retired from the concert stage and like Leclair gave himself up to teaching. Burney heard him in private in 1770, and was struck by his technique and the sweetness of his tone. He often played at the house of a Count Senneterre in Paris, where such men as Giardini and Pugnani were heard. It was here that he heard Lahoussaye, still a boy, play the ‘Devil’s Trill’ by Tartini, which he had learned only by ear. He promptly took the young fellow under his care and thus his influence passed on into the foundation of the violin school in the Paris Conservatoire de Musique in 1795.
For Lahoussaye proved to be one of the greatest violinists France has produced, and was appointed, together with Gaviniès, Guènin, and Kreutzer, to be one of the original professors of the violin at the Conservatoire. Owing largely to the influence of Pagin he was filled as a young man with the longing to study with Tartini himself, and this longing came in time to be gratified. So that Lahoussaye forms one of the most direct links between the classical Italian school, represented by Corelli and Tartini, and the new French school soon to be founded after the model of the Italian under the powerful influence of Viotti.
The most brilliant of the French violinists toward the end of the century was Pierre Gaviniès. Neither the exact date of his birth (1726 or 1728) nor his birthplace (Bordeaux or Paris) is known. From whom he received instruction remains wholly in the dark. But when Viotti came to Paris in 1782 Gaviniès was considered one of the greatest of living violinists. The great Italian is said to have called him the French Tartini; from which one may infer that in his playing he had copied somewhat the manner of the Italian players who, one after the other, made themselves heard in all the great cities of Europe. But, judging from his compositions, he was more given to brilliancy and effectiveness than Tartini; and though he may not be ranked among violinists like Lolli who had nothing but astonishing technique at their command, he was undoubtedly influential in giving to the French school its shining brilliance whereby it passed beyond the older classical traditions.
His compositions are numerous, and they exerted no little influence upon the development of the art. Besides two sets of sonatas for violin and figured bass he published six concertos, three sonatas for violin alone (among them that known as Le tombeau de Gaviniès), the once famous Romance de Gaviniès, written while he was serving a sentence in prison after a more or less scandalous escapade, and finally the best known of his works, Les vingt-quatre Matinées.
There were twenty-four studies, written after he was seventy years old, as if to show to what an extent the mastery of technical difficulties of fingering could be developed. Consequently they lack very deep feeling and meaning, and unhappily the difficulties in them are presented so irregularly that they are hardly of use as studies to any but the most advanced students. They have been re-edited by David since his death and published once again. The sonatas and concertos have failed to survive.
Leclair, Pagin, Lahoussaye, and Gaviniès represent together the best accomplishment of the French violinists before the arrival of Viotti. Among others neither so famous nor so influential may be mentioned Joseph Touchemoulin (d. 1801), Guillemain (d. 1770), Antoine Dauvergne (d. 1797), L’Abbé Robineau, who published several pieces for violin about 1770, Marie Alexandre Guénin (d. 1819), François Hippolite Barthélémon (d. 1808), Leblanc (b. ca. 1750), and Isidore Berthaume (d. 1820).
Little by little the French had developed the art of playing the violin and composing for it. The time was ripe in the last quarter of the eighteenth century for the founding of that great school of French art which was to exert a powerful and lasting influence upon the growth of violin music. And now the influence of Viotti comes into play.
Viotti was by all tokens one of the greatest of the world’s violinists. He was born May 23, 1753, at Fontanetto, in Piedmont, and when hardly more than a boy, came under the care of Pugnani. In 1780 he started out with his master on an extended concert tour, which took him through Germany, Poland, Russia and England. Everywhere he met with brilliant success. Finally he came to Paris and made his first appearance at the Concerts Spirituels in 1782. His success was enormous, not only as a player but as a composer. Unhappily subsequent appearances were not so successful, and Viotti determined to withdraw from the concert stage. Except for a short visit to his home in 1783, he remained in Paris until the outbreak of the Revolution, variously occupied in teaching, composing, leading private orchestras, and managing in part the Italian opera. The Revolution ruined his fortunes and he went to London. Here he renewed his public playing, appearing at the famous Salomon concerts, in connection with which he saw something of Haydn. But, suspected of political intrigues, he was sent away from London. He lived a year or two in retirement in Hamburg and then returned to London. He was conductor in some of the Haydn benefit concerts in 1794 and 1795, and he was a director in other series of concerts until his success once more waned. Then like Clementi he entered into commerce. The remainder of his life was spent between London and Paris, and he died in London on March 10, 1824.
The most famous of his compositions are the twenty-nine concertos previously referred to; and of these the twenty-second, in A minor, is commonly acceded to be the best. The treatment of the violin is free and brilliant, and some of his themes are happily conceived. Yet on the whole his music now sounds old-fashioned, probably because we have come to associate a more positive and a richer sort of music with the broad symphonic forms which he was among the first to employ in the violin concertos. It was rumored at one time and another that the orchestral parts of these concertos were arranged by Cherubini, with whom Viotti was associated during his first years at the Italian opera in Paris; but the only foundation for such a report seems to be that it was not uncommon for violinist composers of that period to enlist the aid of their friends in writing for the orchestra. Viotti was a broadly educated musician, whose experience with orchestras was wide.
Second in importance to the concertos are the duets for two violins written during his stay in Hamburg. These are considered second in musical charm only to Spohr’s pieces in the same manner. That Viotti was somewhat low in spirit when he was at work on them, exiled as he was from London and Paris, is shown by the few words prefixed to one of the sets, ‘This work is fruit of the leisure which misfortune has brought me. Some pieces came to me in grief, others in hope.’
Viotti had a brilliant and unrestricted technique. He was among the greatest of virtuosi. But little of this appears in his music. That is distinguished by a dignity and a relative simplicity, well in keeping with the noble traditions inherited from a country great in more ways than one in the musical history of the eighteenth century. But as far as form and style go he is modern. He undoubtedly owes something to Haydn. Moreover, Wasielewski makes the point that there is no trace in his music of the somewhat churchly dignity one feels in the sonatas of Corelli and Tartini. Viotti’s is a thoroughly worldly style, in melody and in the fiery but always musical passage work. He is at once the last of the classic Italians and the first of the moderns, standing between Corelli and Tartini on the one hand and Spohr, David, and Vieuxtemps on the other.
The list of the men who came to him for instruction while he was in Paris contains names that even today have an imposing ring. Most prominent among them are Rode, Cartier, and Durand. And among those who were not actually his pupils but who accepted him as their ideal and modelled themselves after him were Rodolphe Kreutzer and Pierre Baillot. These men are the very fountain head of most violin music and playing of the nineteenth century. They set the standard of excellence in style and technique by which Spohr and later Vieuxtemps ruled themselves.