Much of it is now old-fashioned, but it still makes interesting reading, partly because he was far-seeing enough to seize upon fundamental principles that have remained unchanged in playing any instrument, partly because the style is concise and the method clear, partly because of the numerous examples it contains of both good and bad music. Evidently his standard of excellence is Tartini, so that we still find violin music in Germany strongly under the influence of the Italians. But the great emphasis he lays upon simplicity and expressiveness recalls Benda and his ideals, so that it would appear that some wise men in Germany were at least shrewd enough to choose only what was best in the Italian art. Among the many interesting points he makes is that it takes a better-trained and a more skillful violinist to play in an orchestra than to make a success as a soloist. Evidently many of the German musicians distrusted the virtuoso. Emanuel Bach, it will be remembered, cared nothing for show music on the keyboard. C. F. D. Schubart, author of the words of Schubert’s Die Forelle, said that an orchestra made up of virtuosi was like a world of queens without a ruler. He had the orchestra at Stuttgart in mind.
V
Meanwhile about the orchestra at Mannheim there was a band of gifted young men whose importance in the development of the symphony and other allied forms has been but recently recognized, and now, it seems, can hardly be overestimated. The most remarkable of these was J. C. Stamitz, a Bohemian born in 1719, who died when less than forty years old. His great accomplishments in the domains of orchestral music have been explained elsewhere in this series. In the matter of violin music he can hardly be said to show any unusual independence of the Italians, but in the meagre accounts of his life there is enough to show that he was a great violinist. He was the teacher of his two sons, Carl (1746-1801) and Anton (b. 1753), the latter of whom apparently grew up in Paris, where the father, by the way, had been well known at the house of La Pouplinière. Anton, as we shall see, was the teacher of Rodolphe Kreutzer, already mentioned as one of the great teachers at the Paris Conservatory in the first of the nineteenth century.
Christian Cannabich, a disciple if not a pupil of Stamitz, was likewise a famous violinist, but again like his master, was more influential in what he accomplished with the famous orchestra at Mannheim than in his playing or composing for the violin. He seems to have spent some years in Naples to study with Jomelli, and the Italian influence is evident in all he wrote for the violin. Wilhelm Cramer, the father of the now more famous J. B. Cramer, was another violinist associated with the Mannheim school, until in 1773 he went to London on the advice of Christian Bach. Here he lost one place after another as conductor, owing now to the arrival of Salomon, now to that of Viotti. He died in 1799 in great poverty.
Others connected with the orchestra at Mannheim are Ignaz Fränzl, whose pupil, F. W. Pixis, became the teacher of Kalliwoda and Laub, and whose son Ferdinand (1770-1833) was a distinguished violinist in the next century; and Johann Friedrich Eck (b. 1766) and his brother Franz. Their father was, like Stamitz, a Bohemian. Indeed Stamitz seems to have induced Eck the elder to leave Bohemia and come to Mannheim. Franz Eck is most famous today as one of the teachers of Ludwig Spohr.
In Vienna the Italian influence was supreme down to nearly the end of the century. The first of the Viennese violinists to win an international and a lasting renown was Karl Ditters von Dittersdorf (b. 1739), the friend of Haydn and Gluck. Though two of his teachers, König and Ziegler, were Austrians, a third, who perfected him, was an Italian, Trani. Through Trani Dittersdorf became familiar with the works of Corelli, Tartini, and Ferrari, after which he formed his own style. Practically the first German to draw a circle of pupils about him was Anton Wranitzky (b. 1761). Among his pupils the most distinguished was Ignaz Schuppanzigh, who, as the leader of the Schuppanzigh quartet, won for himself an immortal fame, and really set the model for most quartet playing throughout the nineteenth century. He was the son of a professor at the Realschule in Vienna. From boyhood he showed a zeal for music, at first making himself a master of the viola. At the time Beethoven was studying counterpoint with Albrechtsberger he was taking lessons on the viola with Schuppanzigh. Later, however, Schuppanzigh gave up the viola for the violin. His most distinguished work was as a quartet leader, but he won fame as a solo player as well; and when the palace of Prince Rasoumowsky was burned in 1815, he went off on a concert tour through Germany, Poland and Russia which lasted many years. He was a friend not only of Beethoven, but of Haydn, Mozart, and of Schubert as well; and was the principal means of bringing the quartet music of these masters to the knowledge of the Viennese public. He died of paralysis, March 2, 1830. Among his pupils the most famous was Mayseder, at one time a member of the quartet.
What is noteworthy about the German violinist-composers of the eighteenth century is not so much the commonness with which they submitted to the influence of the Italians, but the direction their art as players took as soon as they began to show signs of a national independence. Few were the match of the Italians or even the French players in solo work. None was a phenomenal virtuoso. The greatest were most successful as orchestral or quartet players; and their most influential work was that done in connection with some orchestra. This is most evident in the case of the Mannheim composers. Both Stamitz and Cannabich were primarily conductors, who had a special gift in organizing and developing the orchestra. Their most significant compositions were their symphonies, in the new style, in which they not only gave a strong impetus to the development of symphonic forms, but brought about new effects in the combination of wood-wind and brass instruments with the strings. Leopold Mozart’s opinion that a man who could play well in an orchestra was a better player and a better musician than he who could make a success playing solos, is indicative of the purely German idea of violin music during the century. And it cannot be denied that great as Franz Benda and Johann Graun may have been as players, they contributed little of lasting worth to the literature of the violin, and made practically no advance in the art of playing it. But both were great organizers and concert masters, and as such left an indelible impression on the development of music, especially orchestral music, in Germany.
VI
Before concluding this chapter and passing on to a discussion of the development of violin music in the nineteenth century a few words must be said of the compositions for the violin by those great masters who were not first and foremost violinists. Among these, four may claim our attention: Handel, Bach, Haydn, and Mozart.
Handel is not known to have given much time to the violin, but it is said that when he chose to play on it, his tone was both strong and beautiful. He wrote relatively little music for it. Twelve so-called solo sonatas with figured bass (harpsichord or viol) were published in 1732 as opus 1. Of these only three are for the violin: the third, tenth, and twelfth. The others are for flute. Apart from a few characteristic violin figures, chiefly of the rocking variety, these solo sonatas might very well do for clavier with equal effect. There is the sane, broad mood in them all which one associates with Handel. In the edition of Handel’s works by the German Handel Society, there are three additional sonatas for violin—in D major, A major, and E major. These seem to be of somewhat later origin than the others, but they are in the same form, beginning with a slow movement, followed by allegro, largo, and final allegro, as in most of the cyclical compositions of that time. One cannot deny to these sonatas a manly dignity and charm. They are in every way plausible as only Handel knows how to be; yet they have neither the grace of Corelli, nor the deep feeling of Bach. One may suspect them of being, like the pieces for clavier, tossed off easily from his pen to make a little money. What is remarkable is that sure as one might be of this, one would yet pay to hear them.