III
Paganini’s success was hardly less brilliant in Germany than it was elsewhere in Europe. At least Schumann and Mendelssohn submitted to the fascination of his incomparable skill. Yet on the whole violin playing in Germany remained less influenced by Paganini than it proved to be in France, Belgium and England. This was not only because of the influence of the great German classics, nor because the tendency of the German violinists was rather away from solo virtuosity and toward orchestral and quartet playing; but largely also because of the firm leadership of Ludwig Spohr, practically the one man about whom a definite German school of violin playing of international importance centres.
Spohr was born in the same year as Paganini (1784). His training on the violin was received from Franz Eck, a descendant of the famous Mannheim school. But according to his own account, the example of Rode, whom he heard in 1803, was of great importance in finally determining his style of playing. His numerous activities took him considerably beyond the field of playing and composing for the violin. He was famous as a conductor in Vienna, in Dresden and Berlin, and in London, whither he was frequently called to undertake the conducting of his own works. As a composer he was famous for his symphonies, his oratorios, and his operas. Yet he was not, in a sense, a great musician; and the only part of his great number of works which now seems at all likely to endure much longer in anything but name is made up of the compositions, chiefly the concertos, for violin.
Of these concertos there are seventeen in all. Among them the seventh, eighth, and ninth are often singled out as the best; and indeed these may be said to be the best of all his works. The eighth was written on the way to a concert tour in Italy, and was intended especially to please the Italians, and written in a confessedly dramatic style, in modo d’una scena cantante. None of the concertos is, strictly speaking, virtuoso music. Naturally all reveal an intimate knowledge of the peculiarities of the violin; but these hardly over-rule the claim of the music itself. He calls for a sort of solid playing, for a particularly broad, deep tone in the cantilena passages, for a heavy, rather than a light and piquant, bow. He was a big man in stature, and his hands were powerful and broad. Evidently he was more than usually confined within the limits of his own individuality; and his treatment of the violin in the concertos is peculiar to him in its demand for strength and for unusually wide stretches. Even the passage work, which, it must be said, is far more original than that with which even Rode and Viotti were willing to be content, hardly ever exhibits the quality of grace. He is at times sweet and pure, but he is almost never bewitching.
A great many will say of him that he deliberately avoids brilliant display, and they will say it with contentment and pride. But it may be asked if the avoidance of brilliancy for its own sake is a virtue in a great musician. This sort of musical chastity becomes perilously like a convenient apology in the hands of the prejudiced admirer. In the case of Brahms, for example, it daily becomes more so. And now we read of Spohr’s unlimited skill as a player and of the dignified restraint manifested in his compositions for the violin. But by all tokens the concertos are being reluctantly left behind.
Among his other works for violin the duets have enjoyed a wide popularity, greater probably than that once enjoyed by Viotti’s. His Violinschule, published in 1831, has remained one of the standard books on violin playing. Its remarks and historical comments are, however, now of greater significance than the exercises and examples for practice. These, indeed, are like everything Spohr touched, only a reflection of his own personality; so much so that the entire series hardly serves as more than a preparation for playing Spohr’s own works.
Spohr was typically German in his fondness for conducting, and for the string quartet. As quite a young man he was the very first to bring out Beethoven’s quartets opus 18, in Leipzig and Berlin. Paganini is said to have made a favorite of Beethoven’s quartet in F, the first of opus 59; but Spohr was positively dissatisfied with Beethoven’s work of this period. Yet Paganini was in no way a great quartet player, and Spohr was. We cannot but wonder which of these two great fiddlers will in fifty years be judged the more significant in the history of the art.
Certainly Spohr was hard and fast conservative, in spite of the fact that he recognized the greatness of Wagner, and brought out the ‘Flying Dutchman’ and Tannhäuser at the court of Cassel. And what can we point to now that has sprung from him? On the other hand, Paganini was a wizard in his day, half-charlatan, perhaps, but never found out. With the exception of Corelli and Vivaldi he is the only violinist who, specialist as he was, exerted a powerful influence upon the whole course of music. For he was like a charge of dynamite set off under an art that was in need of expanding, and his influence ran like a flame across the prairie, kindling on every hand. Look at Schumann and Liszt, at Chopin and even at Brahms. Stop for a moment to think of what Berlioz demanded of the orchestra, and then of what Liszt and Wagner demanded. All of music became virtuoso music, in a sense. It all sprang into life with a new glory of color. And who but Paganini let loose the foxes to run in the corn of the Philistines?
Among Spohr’s pupils Ferdinand David (1810-1873) was undoubtedly the greatest. He was an excellent performer, uniting with the solidity of Spohr’s style something of the more occasional fervor of the modern school, following the example of Paganini. His friendship with Mendelssohn has been perpetuated in music by the latter’s concerto for the violin, in E minor, which David not only performed for the first time in March, 1845, but every measure of which was submitted to his inspection and correction while the work was in process of being composed.
David has also won a place for himself in the esteem and gratitude of future generations by his painstaking editing of the works of the old Italian masters. Few of the great works for the violin but have passed through his discriminating touch for the benefit of the student and the public. And as a teacher his fame will live long in that of his two most famous pupils: Joseph Joachim (1831-1907) and August Wilhelmj (1845-1908).