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).