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Updated: September 20, 2025
"In the days of Viotti and Rode the harmonic possibilities were more limited they had only a few chords, and hardly any chords of the ninth. But now harmonic material for the development of a new violin technic is there: I have some violin studies, in ms., which I may publish some day, devoted to that end.
They approached the spot whence the extraordinary tones issued, and saw a poor blind man standing near a miserable-looking candle and playing upon a violin but the latter was an instrument made of tin-plate. "Fancy!" exclaimed Viotti, "it is a violin, but a violin of tin-plate!
Viotti is playing, for it interrupts him in the execution of his fine performance. "Gluck composed his Armida in compliment to the personal charms of Marie Antoinette. I never saw Her Majesty more interested about anything than she was for its success. She became a perfect slave to it.
The first thing he gave me to study was, not a brilliant virtuoso piece, but the Bach concerto in E major, and then the Viotti concerto. In the beginning, until Kneisel showed me, I did not know what to do with them. This was music whose notes in themselves were easy, and whose difficulties were all of an individual order. But intellectual analysis, interpretation, are Kneisel's great points.
Attention to business did not keep him from losing a large share of his fortune, however, in this mercantile venture, and for a while he was so completely lost in the London Babel as to have passed out of sight and mind of his old admirers. The French singer, Garat, tells an amusing story of his discovery of Viotti in London, when none of his Continental friends knew what had become of him.
Viotti was one of the first to use the Tourté bow, that indispensable adjunct to the perfect manipulation of the violin. The value of this advantage over his predecessors cannot be too highly estimated. The bows used before the time of François Tourté, who lived in the latter years of the last century in Paris, were of imperfect shape and make.
In the very zenith of his powers and height of his reputation, the founder of a violin school which remains celebrated to this day, Viotti had quitted Paris suddenly, and since his departure no one had received, either directly or indirectly, any news of him. At last, one morning he went to a large export house for wine.
Arriving at Paris, and believing probably that the classical style of Robrechts, from whom he had had instruction in Brussels, did not lead him swiftly forward enough in the path he would travel, he sought Viotti, as we have related above, and by his advice entered himself in the violin class of the Conservatoire, which was directed by Baillot, an eminent player of the Viotti school, though never a direct pupil of the latter master.
Eight weeks was little enough time to give to such a piece of music. It was the 24th Concerto in B Minor for violin by Viotti. Besides being a work of great difficulty it began with one short note followed by a longer one. They must all get that place right, if nothing else. The jury would not forgive them if they slighted the first note in the piece. How they did try over that one passage.
At last he raised his head, and, recognizing his old friend, seized him by the hand, and led him into an adjoining room, where he gave him a hearty welcome. Garat could not believe his senses, and stood motionless with surprise. "I see you are astonished at the metamorphosis," said Viotti; "it is certainly drôle unexpected; but what could you expect?
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