The Violin

Footnote_12

The viol, less powerful and penetrating than its supplanter, the violin, was not without its recommendatory qualities. Hawkins speaks of “the sweet and delicate tone which distinguishes the viol species.” Old Thomas Mace, who wrote when the viol was declining in fashion, was emphatic in its praise. “Your best provision,” says he, “and most compleat, will be a good chest of viols; six in number, viz. 2 basses, 2 tenors, and 2 trebles; all truly and proportionally suited.”

Footnote_13

According to this loose diction of honest Anthony’s, it would appear as if Troylus and Achilles had exhibited a rivalry on the violin, like Lafont and Paganini!

Footnote_14

That the Italians (says M. Choron) have perfected every sort of vocal composition, is generally agreed; but a fact which is apt to be overlooked, is that they have been the instructors of all Europe in instrumental composition, and that to them we are indebted for the first and most esteemed models in that department of the art. It is the Italians who invented all the various kinds of instrumental music which we have called single pieces or solos, from the sonata to the concerto. In violin music, Corelli, Tartini, and their pupils, preceded the composers of all the other nations of Europe, to whom they have served as models. The same may be said with regard to the harpsichord, from Frescobaldi to Clementi. All other single pieces have been constructed on the model of the compositions for the two instruments just named.

Footnote_15

At the time of Corelli’s greatest reputation, Geminiani asked Scarlatti what he thought of him. The man of hard learning replied that “he found nothing greatly to admire in his composition, but was extremely struck with the manner in which he played his concertos, and his nice management of his band, the uncommon accuracy of whose performance gave the concertos an amazing effect, even to the eye, as well as to the ear; for (as Geminiani explained) Corelli regarded it as essential to a band that their bows should all move exactly together, all up, or all down; so that, at his rehearsal, which constantly preceded every public performance of his Concertos, he would immediately stop the band, if he saw an irregular bow.

We may smile a little at Scarlatti’s criticism; but the smile may extend at the same time to the quaint precision of the Corellian custom it notices: – a custom which suggests the idea of military mechanism, as well as military time; or rather, which reminds us, in a still more lively manner, of the old nursery pæan.

Here we go up, up, up, And here we go down, down, downy!

Scarlatti (it may be here observed) was the first who introduced into his airs, accompaniments for the violin, as well as bits of symphony; – thus both enriching the melody, and giving relief to the singer.

Footnote_16

The only English editions of the above-named works are those published by Messrs. Robert Cocks and Co.; one of which editions is printed from the original plates of copper, which formed part of the stock of Walsh, who printed for Handel.

Footnote_17

Burney has made the mistake of stating that the work dedicated to the Cardinal was the Opera Quinta; and, although this was obviously a mere slip of the pen, carrying with it its own contradiction, it is curious to observe with what easy acquiescence the successive English Compilers have reprinted the error.

Footnote_18

The overture is inserted in the printed collections of Handel’s Overtures; and it is conjectured that it was the first movement which appeared so difficult to Corelli.

Footnote_19

This must have happened about the year 1708; as it appears that Scarlatti was settled at Rome from 1709 to the time of his decease. Corelli’s Concertos therefore must have been composed many years before they were published.

Footnote_20

The coincidences suggested by this juxta-position are so inviting for an epigrammatic twist, that the indulgent reader will, perhaps, pardon the following attempt:

Each heading, in his art, the school of Rome, Painter and Fiddler here have found their tomb. Though dead in body, both in fame are quick – Fame wrought with hair appended to a stick! So Genius triumphs, and her sway extends, By means minute attaining greatest ends.

Footnote_21

Dr. Burney dates his birth 1666; but Sir John Hawkins, who assigns the date above given, is the more likely to be correct, as he was personally acquainted with Geminiani.

Footnote_22

According to Dr. Burney’s reckoning, his term of years would have been 96: the reason for supposing that authority erroneous has been already stated.

Footnote_23

It is a somewhat curious circumstance that the descendant of Carbonelli, with an i less than his progenitor, is at this day exercising that very liquid calling which finally prevailed with the man of music. Whether, besides selling superlative wine, he makes any pretension to support the ancestral honors on the violin, is a point I am unable to determine.

Footnote_24

There is another account of this love episode in Tartini’s life, which does not conduct it so far as matrimony, but represents that, when all the arguments of his friends against the match were found to be without effect, his father was compelled to confine him to his room; and that, in order to engage his attention, he furnished him with books and musical instruments, by means of which he soon overcame his passion! This statement, so opposed to the general experience of such matters, will easily be discredited by all youthful hearts. Cure a young gentleman’s passion, his first love, by locking him up in a study! Preposterous. Let us cling to the more current account, and confide in probability and Dr. Burney.

Footnote_25

Of several treatises which Tartini has written, the one most celebrated, his “Trattato di Musica, secondo in vera scienza dell’ Armonia,” is that in which he unfolds the nature of this discovery, and deduces many observations tending to explain the musical scale, and, in the opinion of some persons, to correct several of the intervals of which it is composed.

Footnote_26

For Tartini’s judicious letter of elementary hints, addressed to Madame Sirmen, see the chapter on Female Violinists.

Footnote_27

Query, Solo? – Printer’s Imp.

Footnote_28

See the reference to the old sacerdotal habit of fiddling, at page 55.

Footnote_29

In his “Sonate Accademiche,” opera seconda, published in London, 1744, we meet (observes Mr. G. F. Graham), on the page immediately preceding the music, with the first example we have noticed in Sonate of that time, of an explanation of marks of bowing and expression that occur in the course of the work. His marks for crescendo-diminuendo, and for diminuendo, and for crescendo, are of the same form as the modern ones – only black throughout. – His mark for an up-bow consists of a vertical line drawn from the interior of a semi-circle placed beneath it. His mark for a down-bow is the same figure reversed in position; – Mr. for mordente, &c. These are things worth noticing in old music. In pages 67-9, of the same work, Veracini gives the Scottish air of Tweedside, with variations; the first instance we know, of Scottish music being so honored by an old Italian violinist.

Footnote_30

“I cannot understand how Arts and Sciences should be subject unto any such fantastical, giddy, or inconsiderate toyish conceits, as ever to be said to be in fashion, or out of fashion.” —Mace’s Music’s Monument.

Footnote_31

It was remarked, while he was in England, that his execution was astonishing, but that he dealt occasionally in such tricks as tended to excite the risible faculty, rather than the admiration, of his auditors.

Footnote_32

Voltaire’s contempt for bad playing seems to have equalled his indifference towards good, as may be evidenced in the following lines from his caustic pen: —

toi, dont le violon Sous un archêt maudit par Apollon D’un ton si dur a ráclé, &c.

Footnote_33

Michael Kelly, who heard this artist at Vienna, on his return from Russia, makes the following mention of him: —

Footnote_34

Apropos of this deficiency of English, I find an anecdote in the book of Parke, the oboist. He is describing the return from a dinner-party. – “When we arrived at Tottenham-court Road, there being several coaches on the stand, one was called for Jarnovicki, to convey him home; but, on its coming up, although he had been in London several years, he could not muster up English enough to name the street in which he lived; and, none of the party knowing his residence, it produced a dilemma, in which he participated, till, suddenly recollecting himself, he broke out singing, Marlbrouk s’en va-t-en guerre, which enabled his English friends to direct the coachman to Marlborough Street.”

Footnote_35

Parke, also, mentions the occurrence of this dispute, and the challenge – stating, as the occasion, that Shaw had refused to leave his proper station in the orchestra, to accompany Giornovichi.

Footnote_36

Authentic editions of these charming productions will be found in the Catalogue of the Messrs. Robert Cocks and Co. who are the sole publishers of Viotti’s Duos and Trios.

Footnote_37

It has been asserted that the wire of his fourth string was particularly fine and close, to ensure greater smoothness of surface, and facilitate the sliding of the fingers.

Footnote_38

It is right to add here, that M. Guhr has subsequently reduced to a system the results of his investigation into the peculiarities of Paganini’s playing, and, illustrating the whole with copious examples, has published it in a special work, of which an English version, under the title of “Paganini’s Method of Playing the Violin,” has been put forth by Messrs. Cocks and Co. The work is a curiosity in its kind, and lays open, perhaps, as many of the great Artist’s labyrinthine recesses, as could well be traced upon paper, for the guidance of those who would toil in his track. Many of the difficulties thus exhibited to view, are truly astounding – difficulties that look as inexpugnable as the fortifications of Gibraltar! The simultaneous four A’s flat, do “puzzle the will,” while the artificial double harmonics, and other eagle-flights, cause an aching of “the mind’s eye,” in the attempt to follow them. Ordinary students, in beholding such things, may well experience a double shake of apprehension; but those of more energetic fibre, and devoted patience, should by no means despair of attaining, at least, a partial success in the undertaking.

Among the mechanical resources employed by Paganini, as essential for the production of his extraordinary effects, M. Guhr mentions the peculiar smallness or thinness of his strings – a quality the reverse of advantageous, as regards the usual course of playing, – and his frequent habit of screwing up his G string to B flat, through which device certain passages, otherwise unmanageable, were brought within the scope of possibility. Ordinary strings would resent this freedom of treatment by a snap; but those of Paganini were, it seems, expressly fitted and prepared for their higher duty, in a way which M. Guhr minutely explains.

Footnote_39

When Paganini was afterwards in England, it was observed by a rigid time-keeper, who happened to attend one of his Concerts (at Winchester), that his own portion of the performance, for which the requital was the sum of £200, occupied just twenty-eight minutes.

Footnote_40

Duranowski, the Pole.

Footnote_41

M. Fétis, in his Notice Biographique, enters into a defence of Paganini in this matter – explains the advantages of the contract system, as liberating the artist from the petty cares that pertain to concert-giving – and clears Paganini from the imputation of sordid motives.

Footnote_42

Some enlightenment on this point may be derived from a scrutiny of M. Guhr’s Work, already referred to.

Footnote_43

Dr. Bennati read, before the Royal Academy of Sciences, at Paris, a physiological notice of this extraordinary man, in which he gave it as his opinion, that his prodigious talent was mainly to be attributed to the peculiar conformation which enabled him to bring his elbows close together, and place them one over the other, to the elevation of his left shoulder, which was an inch higher than the right; to the slackening of the ligaments of the wrist, and the mobility of his phalanges, which he could move in a lateral direction at pleasure. Dr. Bennati also alluded to the excessive development of the cerebellum, as connected with the extraordinary acuteness of his organs of hearing, which enabled him to hear conversations carried on in a low tone, at considerable distance. – M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire remarked that he had been particularly struck with the prominence of the artist’s forehead, which hung over his deeply-seated eyes like a pent-house.

Footnote_44

“De l’Opéra en France.”

Footnote_45

Of harmony, or of fine melody, or of the higher relations between poetry and music, the ostentatious Louis appears to have had no conception. In a case of rivalry, wherein Battista, a scholar of Corelli’s, played against one of the French band who was an ordinary performer, he (the royal Auditor) preferred an air in “Cadmus” (an opera of Lully’s, and not one of his best), as given by the Frenchman, to a solo (probably of Corelli’s) by the Italian, – saying, “Voila mon gout, à moi; Voila mon gout!”

Footnote_46

“Jamais homme n’à porté si haut l’art de jouer du violon: et cet instrument était plus agréable entre ses mains qu’aucun autre de ceux qui plaisent le plus.” —Moreri, Dict. Historique.

Footnote_47

The above anecdote suggests another, of a somewhat similar cast, pertaining to the great Musical Commemoration at Westminster Abbey, in 1791. A person falling upon a double bass, as it lay on its side, immediately disappeared – nothing being seen of him, except his legs protruding out of the instrument; and for some time no one could assist him, owing to the laughter occasioned by his predicament!

Footnote_48

“Paris est le foyer musical de la France: les astres les plus brillans roulent dans cette région préférée; mais hélas! leurs rayons ne portent pas la lumière une grande distance. A peine sommes nous sortis des portes de cette capitale, que nous tombons soudain dans une obscurité profonde.” – (Castil-Blaze, de l’Opéra en France.)

Footnote_49

“Equisse de l’Histoire du Violon.”

Footnote_50

The universal diffusion of musical tendencies among the Germans has been often made the subject of remark. A late traveller, visiting the Theatre at Cassel, says that the orchestra there was half filled with officers, who fiddled in their regimental uniform, without considering the practice as at all derogatory from their dignity.

Footnote_51

Dr. Burney remarks that Geminiani used to claim the invention of the half-shift on the violin, and that he probably first brought it to England; but that the Italians ascribed it to Vivaldi, and others to the elder Matteis, who came hither in King William’s time.

Footnote_52

Of Tassenberg, a fine player, who came over to England with William Cramer, little can be said. As he fell speedily into obscurity, I place him here below in a note. With capacity for achieving a position, but with no prudence for its retention, he endured much misery through his own reckless follies. To some one who was once enquiring where he lived, the reply was, “In and about the brick-kilns at Tothill-Fields.”

Footnote_53

Apropos of the violoncello – let us here bestow a passing glance on the name of Merk, distinguished more recently than that of Bernard Romberg, in connection with the larger instrument. Merk seems to have made a closer approach to our eminent Robert Lindley, in quality of taste, than in firmness of hand, or brilliancy of tone. Mr. Novello, who has rated him higher than any of our players, except Lindley, adds a remark with reference to the double basses used in Germany – that they have frequently, instead of three strings, a complement of four, thinner than those in use with us, and descending to E below the usual scale – and that, when mixed with other instruments of the same class, the depth and richness they produce are very fine.

Footnote_54

Life of Anthony à Wood, Oxford, 1772, p. 88, &c.

Footnote_55

In process of time, these compositions likewise were supplanted by Martini’s Concertos and Sonatas, which, in their turn, were abandoned for the Symphonies of Van Malder, and the sonatas of the elder Stamitz. Afterwards, the trios of Campioni, Zanetti, and Abel came into play, and then the symphonies of Stamitz, Canabich, Holtzbauer, and other Germans, with those of Abel, Bach, and Giardini; which, having done their duty, “slept with their fathers,” and gave way to those of Vanhall, Pleyel, and Boccherini; and all have now gradually sunk into insignificance, eclipsed by the superior brightness and grandeur of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Cherubini, and some others, whose symphonies are the delight and wonder of the existing generation. So runs the changeful course of musical success!

Footnote_56

As a grandson of the individual here recorded, the writer of these pages may perhaps find licence to mention that there is extant in his family a fine portrait of Dubourg, by the Dutch painter Vander Smissen, interesting for the qualities of intelligence and good-humour that are blended in its expression.

Footnote_57

Vide “Records of a Stage Veteran,” in the New Monthly Magazine.

Footnote_58

As to this asserted advantage of resorting to chemical agency, the joke is somewhat of the oldest – so we may as well turn its coat, and it will then wear the aspect of the following

HINT TO PURCHASERS.

To buy a fiddle when about,

Your way unto a Chemist’s win,

Where, if but twelve-pence you lay out,

You’re sure to get a vial “in.”

Footnote_59

Should there be any to whom the foregoing estimate (which aims at being a candid one) may seem to render imperfect justice to the claims it deals with, I can only remind them that they have the same freedom as myself to indulge their opinion, and to assert it. Nay, I will even furnish them with four measured lines, by way of a text from which to expand their own more propitious adjudication; provided only, that they will accept them as conceived in any other spirit than that of ill-nature, which is hereby wholly disavowed: —

Ask not how long shall flourish yet his fame,

Nor when shall cease the record of his glory!

Oblivion dares not to efface his name,

Since e’en the tomb cries out “Memento Mori!”

Footnote_60

“Diffuse the tuneful lenitives of pain.” —Johnson.

Footnote_61

It must be borne in mind, that the three Quartett Concerts had been given, with Mr. Dando as Leader, at the Horn Tavern; and the four “Concerti da Camera,” at the Hanover Square Rooms; – that both parties had advertised their forthcoming series; – and that it was pretty extensively rumoured that the Blagrove, Gattie, Dando, and Lucas party had combined to try their fortune in the new field.

Footnote_62

In the getting-up of Concertos for the annual Concours in Paris, the Violin students exercise a perseverance and length of labour truly surprising; and, in the result, such is the perfect manner in which the same Concerto is executed successively by sometimes a dozen candidates, that it would puzzle the most skilful judges to discriminate the individual to whom the prize should be awarded. In such cases, were it not for the subsequent resource – the safe and certain test of sight-playing, which brings into operation the intellect as well as the hand – it would perhaps be impossible to give a single decision that should not be open to dispute. Thus great is the power of execution which practice confers – and thus rigorous, the need of that practice!

Footnote_63

If an Amateur, who is capable of murdering time, should yet have the grace of a disposition to offer some apology for the act, I would suggest his quoting, for that purpose, the subjoined rhyming octave: —

“Cease, cease this fiddling,” cried Sir John,

To Ned, his tune-perplexing son —

“You lose your time, you idle lout.”

“No, sir, my time I keep, throughout.”

“Psha! keep time! no, kill time, you mean,”

Mutter’d the father, full of spleen.

“Kill him! well, sure, sir, I’m no zany,

For killing him who has killed so many.”

Footnote_64

The injurious and disqualifying effect of musical vanity, complained of in France as well as here, is thus noticed by M. Castil-Blaze: – “Although music is every where taught to our youth, and is an art cultivated by a very considerable number of Amateurs, we find very few amongst them who are really useful with regard to playing in concert. And this proceeds, partly, from the fact of each individual desiring to occupy the first place. I have known violin-players renounce their instrument, because of finding themselves restricted to the second part. As for your tenor, it is a department not to be mentioned, and is left in the hands of those good elderly dullards who have already forgotten the half of what they never very well knew.”

Footnote_65

As it is neither hoped nor intended that this chapter should constitute a gradus, or complete code of instruction for the young student, I do but hint at a few of the streams of information that Footnote: are open to him. A more extended view of these would result to him from a reference to the printed catalogues of those very diligent purveyors of pabulum for auricular purposes, Messrs. Cocks and Co.; but, should he look upon a copious Catalogue as little better than a strange road without a guide, or a labyrinth without a clue– and should he have no live preceptor at hand, to consult – I would point his attention to an available help from the same quarter, namely, “Hamilton’s Catechism for the Violin,” small in compass as in cost, wherein he will find, briefly indicated, the various steps by which, with due regard to continuous advancement, he should make his way.

Footnote_66

It is noticeable, as among the advantages due to this enterprise, that the text of the great Master, whose name it borrows, has been rescued (so far as relates to his Quartetts) from the numerous errors wherewith all the editions were chargeable; and that a new edition, edited by Monsieur Rousselot (through whose labours that purification was mainly accomplished) has been submitted to the public by Messrs. Cocks & Co.

Footnote_67

Among the meritorious doings of provincial Amateurs (albeit not in the way of Quartetts), I would here take occasion to mention the Brighton “Choral Society,” commenced in 1835, under the zealous management of Mr. H. Woledge, whose funds, as well as his time and talent, were liberally contributed to the undertaking. That social combination, although not continued beyond its third season, has been followed by the Brighton “Amateur Symphony Society,” which, with Mr. B. Thom for its Leader, and Mr. Woledge as its Secretary, is at this time pursuing its career of recreative euphony. Such Societies as this last, though they do not form quartett-players, can qualify their members to supply, with creditable effect, some of the demands of an orchestra.