The Violin and Old Violin Makers / Being a Historical & Biographical Account of the Violin, with Facsimiles of Labels of the Old Makers

by A. Mason Clarke

III.—FRANCE.

We will now direct our attention to France.

Towards the latter end of the sixteenth century the lute was a very favourite and general instrument. About the year 1577 the violin was introduced by Baltazarini, a then celebrated performer, who was sent at the head of a band of performers by Marshal Brissac to Catherine de Medicis, and was appointed valet de chambre to the Princess. Beyond this little appears to be known of him.

We have elsewhere had occasion to refer to the band of twenty-four violins of Louis XIV. The leader of this band was a Florentine named Lully, who was instrumental in introducing the Italian music into France, thus giving to that country a new musical existence. The high standard then prevailing in Italy, he, however, failed to maintain, but be this as it may, the French seemed to have acquired a kind of distinctive reputation as performers, for M. Choron says: “With respect to 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.... The excellence of the twenty-four violins of Louis XIV formed by Lully and of other violinists, was highly spoken of so far back as the seventeenth century,” and he adds, “I do not, however, know how to reconcile these facts with the following remark of Corette^[5] in the preface to his “Method of Accompaniment,” published at Paris about the year 1750. ‘At the commencement of this century’ (says Corette) ‘music was very dull and slow,’ etc.... When Corelli’s sonatas were first brought from Rome (about 1715), nobody in Paris could play them. The Duke of Orleans, then Regent, being a great amateur of music, and wishing to hear them, was obliged to have them sung by three voices. The violinists then begun to study them, and, at the expiration of some years, three were found who could play them. Baptiste, one of these, went to Rome to study them under Corelli himself,” and M. Choron continuing, says: “Be this as it may, since that period, instrumental music has been studied with ardour by the French, and they have made astonishing progress in it. France has now an excellent school for the violin, founded upon that of Italy.”

It seems rather astonishing to believe that singers could be found to sing that which took a violinist years of practice to perform, especially in view of the fact that France at that period almost neglected the vocal art, and we must regard Corette’s criticism as somewhat biased, notwithstanding he was “a furious partisan of the French school of music.”

No doubt the French had to supply their repertoires of chamber music (when they required it) from the Italian composers, the music of France in Lully’s time being mostly composed for the lyric drama, which was then greatly in vogue.

The first to call into existence a French school was Jean Marie Leclair, who received his instructions from Somis, an Italian. He does not, however, appear to have formed any great performers, owing, probably, to the European fame of the great Italian masters. According to one historian the real founder of the French school was Pierre Gavinies, born at Bordeaux in 1726. Be this so or not, he certainly produced some fine masters. Indeed, during the eighteenth century, France was productive of the finest violinists that had been heard. We have only to mention such names as Lahousaye, Barthélémon, Rode, Kreutzer, Lafont, Baillot, Habeneck and De Beriot, in proof of this assertion.

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The early records of violin making in France, like those of other countries, seem buried in obscurity. Its literature offers but scant information of a reliable character, and we are therefore compelled to make the most of such evidence as is afforded by the slender testimony of paintings and ecclesiastical monuments.

We are told that Baltazarini was the first to introduce the violin (or rather the performance of it) into France, in the year 1577, so that it is safe to assume no maker of any note existed anterior to this period. One authority tells us that, in the year 1566, the name of Tywersus of Nancy appears as a lute and violin maker, and is reported to have assisted Andreas Amati to finish certain instruments made for the chapel of Charles IX. Soon after this period several names of makers are recorded, but little seems to be known of them, or of their work.