It would be hard today to point to the music of anyother Italian master which has endured through radical changes of style and taste and has lost nothing; or indeed to that of the masters of any nation. Yet no subsequent developments have made a single quality of these sonatas dim or stale. The reason may be found in the just proportion in them of all the elements of music. The forms are slight; but they are graceful and secure, and there is not in the emotional quality of Corelli’s music that which calls for wider expression than they afford. The treatment of the violin shows a knowledge of it and a love of its qualities, tempered always by a respect and love for music as an art of expression. Therefore there is no phrase which is not in accord with the spirit and the law of the piece in which it is written, nothing which, written then for the sake of display, may make a feeble show in the light of modern technique. There is no abandonment to melody at the cost of other qualities; nor even a momentary forgetfulness of the pleasure of the ear in the exercise of the mind. Nothing has come into music in the course of two hundred years which can stand between us and a full appreciation of their beauty.
It would be hard today to point to the music of anyother Italian master which has endured through radical changes of style and taste and has lost nothing; or indeed to that of the masters of any nation. Yet no subsequent developments have made a single quality of these sonatas dim or stale. The reason may be found in the just proportion in them of all the elements of music. The forms are slight; but they are graceful and secure, and there is not in the emotional quality of Corelli’s music that which calls for wider expression than they afford. The treatment of the violin shows a knowledge of it and a love of its qualities, tempered always by a respect and love for music as an art of expression. Therefore there is no phrase which is not in accord with the spirit and the law of the piece in which it is written, nothing which, written then for the sake of display, may make a feeble show in the light of modern technique. There is no abandonment to melody at the cost of other qualities; nor even a momentary forgetfulness of the pleasure of the ear in the exercise of the mind. Nothing has come into music in the course of two hundred years which can stand between us and a full appreciation of their beauty.
This can hardly be said of the music of his contemporaries, three of whom, however, have lived to the present day, and one in more than name. Tommaso Albinoni (1674-1745) and Giuseppe Torelli (d. 1708) were both important in the establishment of the form of solo concerto which J. S. Bach acquired from Vivaldi.[48]Albinoni was a Venetian dilettante and spent most of his life in Venice in connection with the opera. Besides the fifty-one operas which he wrote, there are several instrumental works, from some of which Bach appropriated themes. A beautiful sonata in D minor has been edited by Alfred Moffat and published in aKammer-Sonatenseries (B. Schott’s Söhne, Mainz). Notice the cadenza at the end of the slow movement. Torelliwas a native of Bologna, but he spent at one time a few years in Vienna and also a year or two in Ansbach.
Antonio Vivaldi, likewise a Venetian, is one of the most significant composers in the history of musical form, and was second only to Corelli as a composer for the violin and a player, if indeed he was not fully Corelli’s equal. Among his works are eighteen sonatas for solo violin and bass, opus 2 and opus 5, and a great number of concertos for a single violin and a varying number of accompanying instruments. Commonly it is said that much of Vivaldi’s music is touched with the falseness of virtuosity; and to this is laid the fact that his work has been forgotten while Corelli’s has lived. The fact itself cannot be denied. Yet there is a fine breadth and dignity in some of the concertos and in the sonatas, and warmth in the slow movements. He died in 1743 as director of a school for girls in Venice. On account of his red hair and his rank as priest he was known asil prete rosso.
From the time of Corelli to the time of Paganini there was an unbroken line of Italian violinists most of whom were composers. The violin was second only to the voice in the love of the Italians, which, it must not be forgotten, was, during the eighteenth century, the love of all Europe. The violinists rose to highest favor much as the great opera singers, but unlike the singers, composed their own music. This under their hands might move thousands to rapture, and still may work upon a crowd through a great player. Such is the power of the violin. But as a matter of fact most of this music has been allowed to sink out of sight, and the names of most of these composers have remainedbut the names of performers. With only a few are definite characteristics associated.
Among these whose activities fell within the first half of the century are two pupils of Corelli, Francesco Geminiani (1667-1762) and Pietro Locatelli (1693-1764). From 1714 Geminiani lived, with the exception of five or six years in Paris, in London and Ireland. He was highly respected as a teacher, and his book, ‘The Art of Playing on the Violin,’ is the first complete violin method. This was published first anonymously in 1731, but later went through many editions and was translated into French and German, and established Geminiani’s fame as the greatest of teachers. Besides this he wrote other works, on harmony, memory, good taste, and other subjects, founded a school for the guitar, and composed sonatas and concertos for violin, trios, quartets, and even clavecin pieces.
Locatelli was a brilliant virtuoso and seems to have travelled widely over Europe. To him is owing an extension of the violin style, and a few effects in virtuosity, especially in chromatics. And he is said to have raised the pitch of the first string to bring new effects within his grasp. One notes in both his and Geminiani’s music the frequent use of thirds and sixths, the employment of high registers and of wide chords.
Another especially famous and influential in the development of violin music was Francesco Maria Veracini (1685-1750). He, too, was a wanderer and an astonishing virtuoso. In 1714 the young Tartini heard him play in Venice and was so struck by his brilliance that he himself decided to retire and practise in order to be able to compete with him.
Some time before 1717 Veracini was for two years in London, where he played violin solos between the acts at the Italian opera, as was the custom not only in England but in the continental countries as well. After this he was for some years in Dresden and in Prague.In 1736 he came back to London, but Geminiani was then at the height of his fame. Veracini could make little of his gifts there and consequently went to Pisa, near where he died. During his lifetime he published twelve sonatas for violin and figured bass. After his death symphonies and concertos were found in manuscript. One of the sonatas was republished by David, and one in B minor is included in the series ofKammer-Sonatenpreviously mentioned. The final rondo of this is exceedingly lively and brilliant, with a cadenza in modern style.
Other names of this period are Somis (1676-1763), Ruggeri and Giuseppe Valentini. Somis was a pupil of Corelli’s, and in turn the teacher of Pugnani, who was the teacher of Viotti, the founder of the modern school of violin playing.
The most brilliant name of the century is Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770). He was intended by his parents for the church, but opposed their wishes and went in 1710 to the university at Padua to study law. Evidently music was more attractive to him than law, and even more attractive than music was the art of fencing. In this he became a great master. A secret marriage and elopement with the daughter of Cardinal Carnaro involved him in serious troubles. He was forced to flee from the wrath of the churchly father-in-law, and took refuge in a cloister at Assisi. Here he lived in secret for two years, until the anger against him in Padua had cooled down. During these two years he worked constantly at his fiddle, and at composition as well. Later he chanced to hear Veracini at Venice. Whereupon, full of enthusiasm, he sent his wife back to his relatives in Pirano for the time being, and went himself again into retirement at Ancona. Finally in 1721 he acquired the position of solo violinist and leader of the orchestra in the cathedral of St. Anthony in Padua; and this place he held to the end of his life, refusing, withone exception, numerous invitations to other towns and countries. In 1728 he founded a school for violinists at Padua, of which Nardini was for many years a pupil.
Tartini was a man of brilliant though sometimes erratic mind. His book on bowing (L’arte del arco) laid down practically all the principles upon which the modern art of bowing rests. But his investigations into the theories of sounds and harmonies are sometimes ill-founded and without importance. Throughout his life he published sets of six sonatas for violin and bass or harpsichord, and concertos. Probably he is generally best known today by his sonata in G minor, called the ‘Devil’s Trill,’ which, however, was not published during his lifetime. The story that he dreamed the Devil appeared to him and played a piece of bewitching beauty, that he rose from his bed to play what he heard, and could not, that with these unearthly sounds still haunting him several days later he wrote this sonata, is well known.
Tartini’s playing was brilliant, but he played little in public, seeming to have an aversion for that sort of display similar to that felt later by the great Viotti. More than his contemporaries he had the power to make his violin sing.
Pietro Nardini is the most famous of Tartini’s pupils. He was a Tuscan by birth. During the years 1753-67 he was employed in the court chapel at Stuttgart. After this he returned to Tartini, and after 1770 was court chapel-master in Florence. His publications included solo sonatas, concertos and various other forms of chamber music. His playing was distinguished by softness and tenderness. In the words of a critic who heard him: Ice-cold princes and ladies of the court have been seen to weep when he played an adagio.
Other violinists associated with the school at Padua founded by Tartini are Pasqualini Bini (b. 1720),Emanuele Barbella (d. 1773), G. M. Lucchesi, Thomas Linley, Filippo Manfreli, a friend and associate of Boccherini’s, and Domenico Ferrari. Finally mention should be made of the Signora Maddalena Lombardini, among the first of the women violinists, who was a pupil of Tartini’s and won brilliant success at theConcerts Spirituelsin Paris. She was, moreover, famous as a singer in the Paris opera and later in the court opera at Dresden.
Two of the most famous violinists of the latter half of the century, Felice Giardini and Gaëtano Pugnani, received their training in Turin under Somis, the pupil of Corelli, who is commonly accepted as the founder of a distinct Piedmont school. Giardini settled in London about the middle of the century, after wanderings in Italy and Germany; and here endured a changing fortune as player, teacher, composer, conductor and even impresario. Luck was against him in almost every venture. In 1791 he left London forever, with an opera troupe which he led into Russia. He died at Moscow in 1796.
Pugnani’s life was happier. He was a pupil not only of Somis but of Tartini as well, and though between 1750 and 1770 he gave himself up to concert tours and made himself famous in London and Paris as a player, he was greatest and most influential as a teacher in Turin between 1770 and 1803, the year of his death. Only a few of his compositions, which included operas and church music as well as music for the violin, were published. A great part of the money won by these and his teaching was given over to the poor, and he was not only one of the greatest violinists of his age but one of the most beloved of men. His compositions are noteworthy for a soft charm, rather than for fervor or strength.
Giambattista Viotti, the greatest of his pupils, stands with Corelli and Tartini as one of the three violinistsof Italy who have had the greatest influence upon the development of violin music. Through Pugnani he received directly the traditions of the two great men whom he was destined so worthily to follow.
Though it is nearly impossible sharply to differentiate the styles of the host of violinists Italy gave to the world in the eighteenth century, two tendencies show in the total of their work. One of these was towards a noble and restrained style, the model for which Corelli gave to all his successors. The other was towards the surface brilliance of pure virtuosity, which comes out astonishingly in the works of Locatelli. Viotti was a musician of highest ideals, and chiefly through him the traditions that had been inherited from Corelli were brought over into the violin music of a new era.
The time of Viotti is the time of the symphony and the sonata. He is the contemporary of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, and of (among his own people) Clementi and Cherubini. As a composer he gave up writing what had so long been the chief work of the violinist-composers—the sonata with figured bass or simple accompaniment. Only a few sonatas are numbered among his compositions; but he wrote no less than twenty-nine violin concertos with full orchestral accompaniment, all of which show the breadth of the new form of sonata and symphony, which had come out of Italy, through Mannheim to Paris.
Before considering Viotti’s work in detail something must be said about the condition of violin music in France during the eighteenth century, and the violinists in Paris, with the assistance of whom he was able to found a school of violin playing the traditions of whichstill endure. With but one or two conspicuous exceptions, the most significant violinists of the eighteenth century in France came directly under the influence of the Italian masters. This did not always contribute to their material successes; for throughout the century there was a well-organized hostility to Italian influences in one branch and another of music. Nevertheless most of what is good in French violin music of the time owes a great deal to the Italians.
Such men as Rébel and Francœur (d. 1787), who were closely connected with theAcadémiefounded by Lully, may be passed with only slight mention. Both were significant in the field of opera rather than in that of violin music. Their training was wholly French and their activities were joined in writing for the stage. The latter composed little without the former, except two sets of sonatas for violin, which belong to an early period in his life. Francœur advised the use of the thumb on the fingerboard in certain chords, a manner which, according to Wasielewski,[49]is without another example in violin music.
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 theConservatoire. 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 werepublished 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 calledLe 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 theConcerts 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 Francegrows 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 ParisConservatoire de Musiquein 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 theConservatoire. 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 asLe tombeau de Gaviniès), the once famousRomance 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 AlexandreGuénin (d. 1819), François Hippolite Barthélémon (d. 1808), Leblanc (b. ca. 1750), and Isidore Berthaume (d. 1820).
Little by little the French had developed the art of playing the violin and composing for it. The time was ripe in the last quarter of the eighteenth century for the founding of that great school of French art which was to exert a powerful and lasting influence upon the growth of violin music. And now the influence of Viotti comes into play.
Viotti was by all tokens one of the greatest of the world’s violinists. He was born May 23, 1753, at Fontanetto, in Piedmont, and when hardly more than a boy, came under the care of Pugnani. In 1780 he started out with his master on an extended concert tour, which took him through Germany, Poland, Russia and England. Everywhere he met with brilliant success. Finally he came to Paris and made his first appearance at theConcerts Spirituelsin 1782. His success was enormous, not only as a player but as a composer. Unhappily subsequent appearances were not so successful, and Viotti determined to withdraw from the concert stage. Except for a short visit to his home in 1783, he remained in Paris until the outbreak of the Revolution, variously occupied in teaching, composing, leading private orchestras, and managing in part the Italian opera. The Revolution ruined his fortunes and he went to London. Here he renewed his public playing, appearing at the famous Salomon concerts, in connection with which he saw something of Haydn. But, suspected of political intrigues, he was sent away from London. He lived a year or two in retirement in Hamburg and then returned to London. He was conductor in some of the Haydn benefit concerts in 1794 and 1795, and he was a director in other series of concerts until his success once more waned. Then like Clementi he entered into commerce. The remainder of his lifewas spent between London and Paris, and he died in London on March 10, 1824.
The most famous of his compositions are the twenty-nine concertos previously referred to; and of these the twenty-second, in A minor, is commonly acceded to be the best. The treatment of the violin is free and brilliant, and some of his themes are happily conceived. Yet on the whole his music now sounds old-fashioned, probably because we have come to associate a more positive and a richer sort of music with the broad symphonic forms which he was among the first to employ in the violin concertos. It was rumored at one time and another that the orchestral parts of these concertos were arranged by Cherubini, with whom Viotti was associated during his first years at the Italian opera in Paris; but the only foundation for such a report seems to be that it was not uncommon for violinist composers of that period to enlist the aid of their friends in writing for the orchestra. Viotti was a broadly educated musician, whose experience with orchestras was wide.
Second in importance to the concertos are the duets for two violins written during his stay in Hamburg. These are considered second in musical charm only to Spohr’s pieces in the same manner. That Viotti was somewhat low in spirit when he was at work on them, exiled as he was from London and Paris, is shown by the few words prefixed to one of the sets, ‘This work is fruit of the leisure which misfortune has brought me. Some pieces came to me in grief, others in hope.’
Viotti had a brilliant and unrestricted technique. He was among the greatest of virtuosi. But little of this appears in his music. That is distinguished by a dignity and a relative simplicity, well in keeping with the noble traditions inherited from a country great in more ways than one in the musical history of the eighteenth century. But as far as form and style go he is modern.He undoubtedly owes something to Haydn. Moreover, Wasielewski makes the point that there is no trace in his music of the somewhat churchly dignity one feels in the sonatas of Corelli and Tartini. Viotti’s is a thoroughly worldly style, in melody and in the fiery but always musical passage work. He is at once the last of the classic Italians and the first of the moderns, standing between Corelli and Tartini on the one hand and Spohr, David, and Vieuxtemps on the other.
The list of the men who came to him for instruction while he was in Paris contains names that even today have an imposing ring. Most prominent among them are Rode, Cartier, and Durand. And among those who were not actually his pupils but who accepted him as their ideal and modelled themselves after him were Rodolphe Kreutzer and Pierre Baillot. These men are the very fountain head of most violin music and playing of the nineteenth century. They set the standard of excellence in style and technique by which Spohr and later Vieuxtemps ruled themselves.
Before considering their work, the development of violin music in Germany during the eighteenth century must be noticed. The influence of the Italians was not less strong here than in France. Both Biber and Strungk had come under it in the late seventeenth century, Strungk being, as we know, personally acquainted with Corelli and at one time associating closely with him in Rome. The German violinists of the eighteenth century either went to Italy to study, or came under the influence of various Italians who passed through the chief German cities on concert tours.
The most conspicuous of them are associated with courts or cities here and there. For instance, earlyin the century there is Telemann in Hamburg; a little later Pisendel in Dresden; J. G. Graun in Berlin; Leopold Mozart in Salzburg; the gifted Stamitz and his associates Richter, Cannabich and Fränzl in Mannheim; and the most amiable if not the most gifted of all, Franz Benda, here and there in Bohemia, Austria and Saxony. Though these and many more were widely famous in their day as players, and Mozart was influential as a teacher, little of their music has survived the centuries that have passed since they wrote it. The eighteenth century was in violin music and likewise in opera, the era of Italian supremacy; and in violin music we meet with little except copies outside of Italy.
Georg Philipp Telemann, it is true, wrote that he followed the French model in his music; but as Wasielewski says, this applies evidently only to his vocal works and overtures, for his violin compositions are very clearly imitations of Corelli’s. All his music, and he wrote enormous quantities in various branches, is essentially commonplace. Between 1708 and 1721 Telemann occupied a position at the court of Eisenach. It was chiefly during these years that he gave himself to the violin and violin music. Afterwards he went to Hamburg and there worked until his death in 1767.
Johann Georg Pisendel is a far more distinguished figure. He was born on the twenty-sixth of December, 1687, at Carlsburg in Franconia, and died in Dresden, after many years’ service there, in November, 1755. While still a boy the Marquis of Anspach attached him to his chapel, on account of his beautiful voice. In the service of the same prince at that time was Torelli, the great Italian composer for the violin; and Pisendel was his pupil for a considerable period. Later in life he was able to journey in Italy and France, and was apparently at one time a pupil of Vivaldi’s in Venice. From 1728 to the time of his death he was first violinin the royal opera house at Dresden. His playing was distinguished by care in shading, and in his conducting he was said to have laid great importance upon ‘loud and soft.’ As a composer he is without significance, though some of his works—concertos and sonatas—have been preserved. But his influence served to educate violinists in that part of Germany, so that little by little Germans came to supplant the Italians in that branch of music, and to find occupation in connection with the opera house orchestra, which had been up to that time almost entirely made up of Italians.
Most conspicuous among those who were actually his pupils was Johann Gottlieb Graun, brother of the still familiar Carl Heinrich. But Graun was not content with instruction in Germany alone, and betook himself to Tartini in Padua. After his return to his native land, he eventually found his place at the court of Frederick the Great, who was still crown prince. With him at this time were Quantz, the flute player, and Franz Benda. After the accession of Frederick to the throne of Prussia, Graun was made first violin and concert master in the royal orchestra; and he held this place until his death in 1771. His compositions, like all others for the violin at this period, are hardly more than imitations of the Italian masterpieces. And like Pisendel, his importance is in the improvement of the state of instrumental music in Germany, and especially of the orchestra at Berlin.
His successor in this royal orchestra was Franz Benda, who, not only by reason of the romantic wanderings of his life, is one of the most interesting figures in the history of music in Germany during the eighteenth century. His father, Hans Georg, had been a sort of wandering player, as well as a weaver; and his brothers, Johann, Georg, and Joseph, were all musicians who won a high place in their day. Georg was perhaps the most distinguished of the family, but inthe history of violin-music Franz occupies a more important place.
The Bendas were Bohemians, but most of them settled in Germany and accepted German ideals and training. Franz Benda, after a changing career as a boy singer in various places, finally came under the influence of Graun and Quantz in the crown prince’s orchestra, at Rheinsberg. The principal instruction he received upon the violin came from Graun, who was himself a pupil of Tartini’s; so, although Benda shows the marks of an independent and self-sufficient development, not a little of Italian influence came close to him. He remained in the service of the Prussian court from 1733, when Quantz befriended him, until his death as an old man in 1786.
His playing was admired for its warm, singing quality, which showed to such advantages in all slow movements that musicians would come long distances to hear him play an adagio. Burney heard him in 1772 and was impressed by the true feeling in his playing. Burney, too, mentioned that in all Benda’s compositions for the violin there were no passages which should not be played in a singing and expressive manner. He went on to say that Benda’s playing was distinguished in this quality from that of Tartini, Somis, and Veracini, and that it was something all his own which he had acquired in his early association with singers.
He had indeed been a great singer, and he gave up public singing only because after singing he was subject to violent headache. He trained his two daughters to be distinguished singers of the next generation.
His works for the violin are numerous, but only a small part of them was published, and this posthumously. In spite of the often lovely melodies in the slow movements they have not been able to outlive their own day. Wasielewski calls attention to the general use of conventional arpeggio figures in the longmovements, which, characteristic of a great deal of contemporary music for the violin, may have been written with the idea of offering good technical exercise in the art of bowing.
Among Benda’s many pupils the two most significant are his own son, Carl, and Friedrich Wilhelm Rust. The former seems to have inherited a great part of his father’s skill and style. The sonatas of the latter are among the best compositions written in Germany for the violin in the second half of the eighteenth century. Rust died in February, 1798. His name is remembered as much for his sonatas for pianoforte as for his violin compositions. Another pupil, Carl Haack, lived until September, 1819, and thus was able to carry the Benda tradition over into the nineteenth century. On the whole Franz Benda may be said to have founded a school of violin playing in Berlin which has influenced the growth of music for that instrument in Germany. Its chief characteristic was the care given to simplicity and straightforwardness, especially in the playing of slow movements and melodies, which stands out quite distinctly against the current of more or less specious virtuosity running across the century.
Johann Peter Salomon (1745-1815) has been associated with the Berlin group, though his youth was spent in and about Bonn, and his greatest activity was displayed as an orchestral conductor in London. It was he who engaged Haydn to come to London and to compose symphonies specially for a London audience; and he occupies an important place in the history of music in England as one of the founders (1813) of the Philharmonic Society. He published but little music, and that is without significance.
One of the outstanding figures in the history of violin music in Germany is Leopold Mozart, the father of Wolfgang. He is hardly important as a composer, though many of his works were fairly well known inand about Salzburg where the greatest part of his life was spent; but his instruction book on playing the violin marks the beginning of a new epoch in his own country. This was first published in Augsburg in 1756, was reprinted again in 1770, 1785, and in Vienna in 1791 and 1804. It was for many years the only book on the subject in Germany.
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’sDie 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.
Meanwhile about the orchestra at Mannheim there was a band of gifted young men whose importance in the development of the symphony and other alliedforms 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, aBohemian. 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.
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 thecompositions 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.
There are besides these solo sonatas for violin or flute and figured bass, nine sonatas for two violins, or violin and flute with figured bass, and seven sonatas, opus 5, for two instruments, probably intended for two violins.
Among the most remarkable of J. S. Bach’s compositionsare the six sonatas for violin without any accompaniment, written in Cöthen, about 1720. These works remain, and probably always will remain, unique in musical literature, not only because of their form, but because of the profound beauty of the music in them. Just how much of a violinist Bach himself was, no one knows. He was fond of playing the viola in the court band at Cöthen. It can hardly be pretended that these sonatas for violin alone are perfectly adapted to the violin. They resemble in style the organ music which was truly the whole foundation of Bach’s technique. In that same organ style, he wrote for groups of instruments, for groups of voices, for clavier and for all other combinations.
On the other hand no activity of Bach’s is more interesting, and perhaps none is more significant, than his assiduous copying and transcribing again and again of the violin works of Vivaldi, Torelli, and Albinoni. Especially his study of Vivaldi is striking. He used themes of the Italian violinists as themes for organ fugues; he transcribed the concertos of Vivaldi into concertos for one, two, three, or four harpsichords. And not only that, practically all his concertos for a solo clavier are transcriptions of his own concertos for violin.
But the polyphonic style of the sonatas for violin alone is peculiarly a German inheritance. Walter and Biber were conspicuous for the use of double stops and an approach to polyphonic style. Most remarkable of all was a pupil of the old Danish organist, Buxtehude, Nikolaus Bruhns (1665-1697), who was able to play two parts on his violin and at the same time add one or two more with his feet on the organ pedals. Though Corelli touched gently upon the polyphonic style in the movements of the first six of his solo sonatas, the polyphonic style was maintained mostly by the Germans. As Bach would write chorus,fugue, or concerto in this style, so did he write for the violin alone.
Of the six works the first three are sonatas, in the sense of thesonate da chiesaof Corelli, serious and not conspicuously rhythmical. The last three are properly suites, for they consist of dance movements. The most astonishing of all the pieces is theChaconne, at the end of the second suite. Here Bach has woven a series of variations over a simple, yet beautiful, ground, which finds an equal only in the greatPassacagliafor the organ.
The three sonatas of this set can be found transcribed, at least in part, by Bach into various other forms. The fugue from the first, in G minor, was transposed into D minor and arranged for the organ. The whole of the second sonata, in A minor, was rearranged for the harpsichord. The fugue in the third sonata for violin alone exists also as a fugue for the organ.
There are besides these sonatas for violin alone, six sonatas for harpsichord and violin, which are among the most beautiful of his compositions; and a sonata in E minor and a fugue in G minor for violin with figured bass. It is interesting to note that the six sonatas for harpsichord and violin differ from similar works by Corelli and by Handel. Here there is no affair with the figured bass; but the part for the harpsichord is elaborately constructed, and truly, from the point of view of texture, more important than that for the violin.
Bach wrote at least five concertos for one or two violins during his stay at Cöthen. One of these is included among the six concertos dedicated to the Margrave of Brandenburg. All of these have been rearranged for harpsichord, and apparently among the harpsichord concertos there are three which were originally for violin but have not survived in that shape.The concertos, even more than the sonatas, are not essentially violin music, but are really organ music. The style is constantly polyphonic and the violin solos hardly stand out sufficiently to add a contrasting spot of color to the whole. Bach’s great work for the violin was the set of six solo sonatas. These must indeed be reckoned, wholly apart from the instrument, as among the great masterpieces in the musical literature of the world.
Haydn’s compositions for violin, including concertos and sonatas, are hardly of considerable importance. His associations with violinists in the band at Esterhazy, and later in Vienna with amateurs such as Tost and professionals like Schuppanzigh, gave him a complete idea of the nature and the possibilities of the instrument. But the knowledge so acquired shows to best advantage in his treatment of the first and second violin parts in his string quartets, in many of which the first violin is given almost the importance of a solo instrument. Eight sonatas for harpsichord and violin have been published, but of these only four were originally conceived in the form.
The young Mozart was hardly less proficient on the violin than he was on the harpsichord, a fact not surprising in view of his father’s recognized skill as a teacher in this special branch of music. But he seems to have treated his violin with indifference and after his departure from Salzburg for Paris to have quite neglected his practice, much to his father’s concern. The most important of his compositions for the violin are the five concertos written in Salzburg in 1775. They were probably written for his own use, but just how closely in conjunction with the visit of the Archduke Maximilian to Salzburg in April of that year cannot be stated positively. Several serenades and the little opera,Il re pastore, were written for the fêtes given in honor of the same young prince. The concertosbelong to the same period. In Köchel’s Index they are numbers 207, 211, 216, 218, and 219. A sixth, belonging to a somewhat later date, bears the number 268. Of these the first in B-flat was completed on April 14, 1775, the second, in D, June 14, the third, in G, September 12, the fourth, in D, in October, and the fifth, in A, quite at the end of the year.
The sixth concerto, in E-flat, is considered both by Jahn and Köchel to belong to the Salzburg period. It was not published, however, until long after Mozart’s death; and recently the scholarly writers, Messrs. de Wyzewa and de St. Foix, have thrown considerable doubt upon the authenticity of large parts of it. According to their theory[50]the openingtuttiand the orchestral portion at the beginning of the development section are undoubtedly the work of Mozart, but of the mature Mozart of 1783 and 1784. Likewise the solo passages in all the movements seem to bear the stamp of his genius. But apart from these measures, the development of the solo ideas and the orchestral accompaniment were completed either by André, who published the work, or by Süssmayer, who was also said by Mozart’s widow to be the composer of a mass in B-flat, published by C. F. Peters as a composition of Mozart’s.
In addition mention should be made of the concertos introduced between the first and second movements of various serenades, according to the custom of the day. Most of these are of small proportions; but one, in G major (K. 250), written in Salzburg some time in July, 1776, has the plan of an independent composition.
It was the custom for a master like Schobert in Paris, or Mozart in Vienna, to ‘accompany’ the young ladies who played pianoforte or harpsichord sonatas of hiscomposition and under his instruction with music on the violin. There are many sonatas for harpsichord published by Schobert, with a violin partad libitum. This in the main but reinforces the chief melodic lines of the part for harpsichord or pianoforte; and works with such a violin part,ad libitum, are not at all violin sonatas in the sense of the term accepted today, i.e., sonatas in which violin and piano are woven inextricably together. They are frankly pianoforte or harpsichord sonatas with the ‘accompaniment’ of a violin.
On the other hand, we have found the violin masters like Corelli and Tartini writing sonatas for violin, with figured bass for harpsichord, lute, or even viol. Such sonatas were often called solo sonatas, as in the case of those of Handel, recently mentioned. The accompanying instrument had no function but to add harmonies, and a touch of imitation in the written bass part, here and there.
Between these two extremes lies the sonata with harpsichordobbligato, that is to say, with a harpsichord part which was not an accompaniment but an essential part of the whole. In these cases the music was generally polyphonic in character. The violin might carry one or two parts of the music, the harpsichord two or three. Very frequently, if the instruments played together no more than three parts, the composition was called a Trio. The sonatas by J. S. Bach for harpsichord and violin are of this character. Though the harpsichord carries on more of the music than the violin, both instruments are necessary to the complete rendering of the music.
Mozart must have frequently added improvised parts for the violin to many of his sonatas written expressly for the keyboard instrument. Among his earliest works one finds sonatas for clavecin with a free part for violin, for violin or flute, for violin or flute and'cello. Oftenest the added part does little more than duplicate the melody of the part for clavecin, with here and there an imitation or a progression of thirds or sixths. But among his later works are sonatas for pianoforte with added accompaniment for violin in which the two instruments contribute something like an equal share to the music, which are the ancestors of the sonatas for violin and piano by Beethoven, Brahms, and César Franck. Among the most important of these are six published in November, 1781, as opus 2. In Köchel’s Index they bear the numbers 376, 296, 377, 378, 379, and 380. The greatest of them is that in C major, K. 296, with its serious and rich opening adagio, its first allegro in Mozart’s favorite G minor, and the beautiful variations forming the last movement. Four more sonatas, of equal musical value, were published respectively in 1784, 1785, 1787, and 1788.
Looking back over the eighteenth century one cannot but be impressed by the independent growth of violin music. The Italians contributed far more than all the other nationalities to this steady growth, partly because of their native love for melody and for sheer, simple beauty of sound. The intellectual broadening of forms, the intensifying of emotional expressiveness by means of rich and poignant harmonies, concerned them far less than the perfecting of a suave and wholly beautiful style which might give to the most singing of all instruments a chance to reveal its precious and almost unique qualities. This accounts for the calm, classic beauty of their music, which especially in the case of Corelli and Tartini does not suffer by changes that have since come in style and the technique of structure.
The success of the Italian violinists in every court of Europe, both as performers and as composers, was second only to the success of the great singers and the popular opera composers of the day. Their progress in their art was so steadfast and secure that other nations could hardly do more than follow their example. Hence in France and Germany one finds with few exceptions an imitation of Italian styles and forms, with a slight admixture of national characteristics, as in the piquancy of Cartier’s, the warm sentiment of Benda’s music. What one might call the pure art of violin playing and violin music, abstract in a large measure from all other branches of music, was developed to perfection by the Italian violinist-composers of the eighteenth century. Its noble traditions were brought over into more modern forms by Viotti, henceforth to blend and undergo change in a more general course of development.
Perhaps only in the case of Chopin can one point to such a pure and in a sense isolated ideal in the development of music for a single instrument, unless the organ works of Bach offer another exception. And already in the course of the eighteenth century one finds here and there violin music that has more than a special significance. The sonatas for unaccompanied violin by Bach must be regarded first as music, then as music for the violin. The style in which they were written is not a style which has grown out of the nature of the instrument. They have not served and perhaps cannot serve as a model for perfect adaptation of means to an end. Bach himself was willing to regard the ideas in them as fit for expression through other instruments. But the works of Corelli, Tartini, Nardini and Viotti are works which no other instrument than that for which they were written may pretend to present. And so beautiful is the line of melody in them, so warm the tones which they call upon, thatthere is scarcely need of even the harmonies of the figured bass to make them complete.
In turning to the nineteenth century we shall find little or no more of this sort of pure music. Apart from a few brilliant concert or salon pieces which have little beyond brilliance or charm to recommend them, the considerable literature for the violin consists of sonatas and concertos in which the accompaniment is like the traditional half, almost greater than the whole. In other words we have no longer to do with music for which the violin is the supreme justification, but with music which represents a combination of the violin with other instruments. Glorious and unmatched as is its contribution in this combination, it remains incomplete of itself.