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).
IV
How great an influence the group of French violinists exercised upon violin music and playing in the first quarter of the nineteenth century is revealed in the training and the characteristics of the famous Viennese players of the time. Vienna had always proved fertile ground for the growth of Italian ideas, and the French style recommended itself to the Viennese not only by the prevalence of French ideas in the city, owing to political conditions, but also because this style was in no small measure a continuance of the Italian style of Viotti.
Among the Viennese violinists may be mentioned Franz Clement (1780-1842), who, even as a boy of eleven, was making successful concert tours over Europe. In the years 1791 and 1792 he played in London in concerts directed by Haydn and Salomon. Here as elsewhere his playing was admired for its delicacy as well as for its sureness and clarity, qualities which ever recalled to the public of that day the playing of Viotti and Rode. He was not above the tricks of the virtuoso; yet there can be no better proof that he knew how to use his great technique with the worthiest aim than that Beethoven dedicated to him his concerto for violin. He was a thorough musician. They told a story in Vienna, according to Spohr, of how, after hearing Haydn’s ‘Creation’ only a few times, he was able, using only the text-book alone, to arrange all the music for the pianoforte so completely and so accurately that when he showed his copy to old Haydn the master thought his score must have been stolen and copied. Another proof of his musicianship is that he was appointed the first konzertmeister at the Theater an der Wien.
Schuppanzigh’s pupil, Joseph Mayseder (1789-1864), was among the brilliant and pleasing players of the time. In spite of the fact that he was at one time a member of his master’s famous quartet, his tastes seem to have run to a light and more or less frivolous style of music. The tendency showed itself not only in his playing, but in his compositions. These included concertos and brilliant salon pieces; and also string quartets and quintets and other pieces of chamber music, all now quite out of date.
Perhaps the two most influential of the Viennese violinists were Joseph Boehm and Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst. Boehm (1798-1867) was a pupil of Rode, whose acquaintance he made in Poland. Later he visited Italy, and afterwards was appointed a teacher of the violin in the Conservatory at Vienna. Though he was famous in his day as a player who possessed the necessary skill in fingering and bowing, he was above all a teacher. The list of his pupils includes Ernst, G. Hellmesberger (b. 1800), Joachim, Ludwig Strauss (b. 1835), Rappoldi (b. 1831) and Grün. Also Reményi, at one time an associate with Brahms on concert tours, belongs among them.
Ernst was less a teacher than a virtuoso, whose skill was so extraordinary as to pique Paganini. It is even said that he used to follow the astounding Italian on his concert tours that he might discover some of the secrets of his playing. His own variations on the ‘Carnival of Venice’ are a brilliant imitation of the style of Paganini. He spent most of his life in concert tours; and, though he was known to be a fine, if not a deep, musician, the virtuoso shows in most of his compositions, which are of little more than secondary merit. He died on October 8, 1865, having enjoyed a fame as a player second only to that of Paganini and de Bériot.