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Updated: May 8, 2025
Dancla, in his recollections, says: "I had noticed in Paganini his large, dry hand, of an astonishing elasticity; his fingers long and pointed, which enabled him to make enormous stretches, and double and triple extensions, with the utmost facility.
William Lewis of Chicago gave me a splendid start. Then I studied in turn with Schradieck in Leipsic Schradieck himself was a pupil of Ferdinand David and of Léonard Joachim in Berlin, and Charles Dancla in Paris. I might say that I owe most, in a way, to William Lewis, a born fiddler.
Yet Joachim was a far greater violinist than teacher. His method was a cramping one, owing to his insistence on pouring all his pupils into the same mold, so to speak, of forming them all on the Joachim lathe. But Dancla was inspiring. He taught me De Bériot's wonderful method of attack; he showed me how to develop purity of style.
Among noted exponents of the French school may be mentioned Alard and his pupil Sarasate, Dancla and Sauret. Among his famous pupils are Dr. Joseph Joachim, known as one of the musical giants of the nineteenth century; August Wilhelmj, the favorite of Wagner, and Carl Gaertner, who, with his violin has done so much to cultivate a taste for classical music in Philadelphia.
Jacob Dont, of Vienna, and Jean Dancla, a French violinist, both belong to this period, and were teachers of reputation. "A typical Norseman, erect of bearing, with a commanding presence and mobile, kindly face, from which the eyes shone clear and fearless as the spirits of old Norway hovering over his native mountains.
Of my three European masters Dancla was unquestionably the greatest as a teacher of course I am speaking for myself. It was no doubt an advantage, a decided advantage for me in my artistic development, which was slow a family trait to enjoy the broadening experience of three entirely different styles of teaching, and to be able to assimilate the best of each.
Alard, Dancla, and Maurin were exponents of the French school, while in that of Belgium we have De Bériot, Massart, Vieuxtemps, Léonard, Wieniawski.
'Ah, he said, 'Mlle. studied that movement for six months; and in comparison, you, with only three lessons, play it better! Dancla switched me right over in his teaching from German to French methods, and taught me how to become an artist, just as I had learned in Germany to become a musician.
Dancla's method of teaching gave his pupils a technical equipment which carried bowing right along, 'neck and neck' with the finger work of the left hand, while the Germans are apt to stress finger development at the expense of the bow. And without ever neglecting technical means, Dancla always put the purely musical before the purely virtuoso side of playing.
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