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He was not only one of the greatest violinists of all time, and an eminent composer, but he was a scientific writer on musical physics, and was the first to discover the fact that, in playing double stops, their accuracy can be determined by the production of a third sound.
The latter half of Spohr's life was mostly devoted to the higher musical ambition of creating, but not until he had established himself as one of the greatest of virtuosos, and founded a school of violin-playing which is, beyond all others, the most scientific, exhaustive, and satisfactory. All of the great contemporary violinists are disciples of the Spohr school of execution.
To hear Mischa Elman on the concert platform, to listen to him play, "with all that wealth of tone, emotion and impulse which places him in the very foremost rank of living violinists," should be joy enough for any music lover.
The interest of the public on this particular occasion was centred in the new Opera, which had only been given three times before, and in which the little dancer, Pequita, played the part of a child-heroine. The libretto was the work of Paul Zouche, and the music by one of the greatest violinists in the world, Louis Valdor.
Farther on was a picturesque group of street-musicians, violinists and harpers; a brother and four sisters, by their looks, who afforded almost the only unpractical amusement to be enjoyed on the Common, though not far from them was a blind old negro, playing upon an accordion, and singing to it in the faintest and thinnest of black voices, who could hardly have profited any listener.
Even the headings appealed to his imagination and intoxicated him with their suggestions, On Scraping, Splitting, and Repairing Violins, Violin Players, Great Violinists, Solo Playing, etc.; and at the very end a Treatise on the Construction, Preservation, Repair, and Improvement of the Violin, by Jacob Augustus Friedheim, Instrument Maker to the Court of the Archduke of Weimar.
In regard to his playing, his technical proficiency was such as very few violinists have ever attained to. His double stopping was perfect, his staccato, both upward and downward, of the utmost brilliancy, and though he cannot be considered a serious musician in the highest sense of the word, he played with warm and poetical, if somewhat sentimental, feeling.
This he bequeathed to Sir Patrick Blake of Bury St. Edmunds. Giovanni Baptiste Viotti has been called the last great representative of the classical Italian school, and it is also stated that with Viotti began the modern school of the violin. In whatever light he may be regarded, he was undoubtedly one of the greatest violinists of all.
Two celebrated violinists were born in the year 1630, Thomas Baltzar, and John Banister, the former in Germany, at Lubec, and the latter in London. Baltzar was esteemed the finest performer of his time, and is said to have been the first to have introduced the practice of "shifting."
His powers were, however, failing, and other violinists had brought new and perhaps higher interest to American audiences.
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