Violin since 1820: Technique and performing practice
Violin since 1820: Technique and performing practice
Historical outline.
Giovanni Battista Viotti, the ‘father of modern violin playing’, was trained in the classical Italian tradition by Pugnani and first went to Paris in 1782. There he taught or inspired the founders of the French violin school (Baillot, Rode and Kreutzer), who exerted an immense influence on violin playing in the 19th century. Viotti's cantabile was based on Tartini's maxim ‘per ben suonare, bisogna ben cantare’. He was also one of the first to appreciate the specific beauties of the lowest (G) string, including its high positions; and his concertos unite the singing style, the brilliance of passage-work, and such specialized bowings as the ‘Viotti’ stroke (see §(f) below). In addition, Viotti persuaded the Parisians of the beauty of the Stradivari violins; and he may have assisted Tourte in creating the modern bow.
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Giovanni Battista Viotti |
The Italian school reached its final flowering in Nicolò Paganini, who aroused audiences to hysterical enthusiasm by the technical perfection and verve of his playing and by the intense projection of his hypnotic personality. His music uses practically all known technical devices in a grand, virtuoso and frequently novel manner, including glissandos, harmonics of all types, pizzicatos of both right and left hand, octave trills, the solo on the G string alone (a speciality of his), multiple stops, extensions and contractions of the hand, and the scordatura. Staccato, ricochet and mixed bowings of all sorts were also among his stock in trade. Paganini and Pierre Baillot set the technical standard of the early 19th century. A school of violin playing similar to the Paris school was founded in Brussels in 1843 by Charles-Auguste de Bériot, who, like the Parisians, was heavily indebted to Viotti. Among Bériot's illustrious successors were Hubert Léonard, Henry Vieuxtemps, Henryk Wieniawski and Eugène Ysaÿe; the latter's bowing facility, energetic personality and golden tone became legendary
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The Germans were generally more conservative in technique and more serious in musical attitude than the French, whose virtues included great technical facility, elegance and imagination. Spohr was astonished by the accuracy of intonation of Paganini and Ole Bull but was unimpressed with such virtuoso devices as their elaborate harmonics, intense vibrato, bounding bow and the air played solely on the G string. Spohr's pupil Ferdinand David made an important contribution to the violin repertory in his Hohe Schule des Violinspiels (1867–72). Among David's pupils was Joseph Joachim, whose editions of such works as the Mendelssohn and Beethoven violin concertos reveal much about the technique of the 19th century and the implied ideas of expression (including the deliberate portamento slide in shifting).
Sharp distinctions in schools of instruction became less clear in the course of the 19th century. There was a strong tendency to mix the teachings of various schools, to amalgamate their styles and, under outstanding teachers, to select the best from all methods. The old Italian training was grafted on to the newer precepts in France and Belgium, and the results, in turn, to various teachings in Vienna, Prague, Leipzig and Budapest. Leopold Auer upheld the Franco-Belgian tradition at the St Petersburg Conservatory, while in Prague, Kiev and Vienna Otakar ŠevÄík revolutionized and systematized basic technique, especially of the left hand, by a system of numberless exercises based on the semitone system (rather than the diatonic system, as previously). Among the most distinguished teachers to appear in the course of the 20th century were Carl Flesch, Max Rostal, Lucien Capet, Pyotr Stolyarsky, Louis Persinger and Ivan Galamian.
© Oxford University Press 2007
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