A Lesson from

T
Viotti by John A. Thomson

he year 2005 marked the 250th anniversary of the birth of one of the world’s greatest violinists, Giovanni
Battista Viotti (1755–1824). Today, if you mention the name of Viotti, many violinists find you have
evoked unpleasant childhood memories—memories similar to those of having to take unpleasant-tasting
medicine that is, nonetheless, good for you! Nowadays, Viotti’s music is, unfortunately, used mainly
for teaching purposes, and we have become accustomed to associating his music with the defects of the student
performers. The successful performance of his music requires the exact qualities that Viotti’s contemporaries found
so engaging in his own performances: beautiful tone production, accurate intonation, and musical imagination—the
very qualities most students are only just developing at the time they are assigned his works!
Yet in several ways, Viotti has dramatically influenced the way in which we play the violin through the example
he set with his playing, his compositions, and through his teaching passed on through his students and followers. It
is also interesting to learn that Viotti even started work on a treatise concerning violin playing. Had he been able to
Violin Forum

complete it, it would have undoubtedly provided us with much greater insight into the man who has been called the
“Father of Modern Violin Playing.”
Viotti’s name is also linked with the emergence of a newer tonal ideal illustrated by his favoring Stradivari violins
and Tourte bows. Many of our modern bow strokes are associated with the development of the Tourte bow and
the bowing style employed by Viotti. These bowing techniques often have French names (détaché, martelé, sautillé)
because these strokes were named by Viotti’s Parisian disciples.
We can gather from the accounts of Viotti’s time that he was most
highly regarded as a performer, composer, teacher, and as a gentle human
being. The attitude of Viotti’s acquaintances and disciples amounted to
actual reverence. When the Paris Conservatoire was established in 1795,
one of its stated aims was to preserve the style of Viotti’s playing. Indeed,
Carl Flesch writing of his studies at the Paris Conservatoire in the 1890s
regarded this continued reverence of the older professors for Viotti’s music
and performing style, combined with their lack of openness to newer
trends, as a trait holding the French school back at this time.
Viotti composed 29 concertos that enjoyed tremendous popularity at
the time of composition and well into the 19th century. One can read of
Brahms’s great enthusiasm for the Concerto No. 22 in A Minor, a piece
performed by many of great virtuosi until the middle of the 20th century.
Mozart was so taken with Viotti’s Concerto No. 16 in E Minor that he
planned a performance of it at one of his subscription concerts in Vienna
around 1786. Although this projected performance never materialized,
Mozart did compose additional parts for trumpet and timpani (now
catalogued as K. 470a). Surely he would not have done this had he
Viotti’s music was immensely popular during his
considered the music unworthy. lifetime. Pictured is a piano arrangement of his
Violin Concerto No. 23, signed by Viotti in 1810.

58 | American String Teacher | May 2006


The influence of the technical innovations found in
Viotti’s concertos may be seen in the great music of his time,
notably the Beethoven Violin Concerto. His final concerto,
No. 29 in E Minor, shows several features that surely
influenced the compositional form of Mendelssohn’s concerto.
Besides the key of E minor, the second movement (just as in
Mendelssohn’s concerto) is in C major and is connected to
the finale by a brief connecting recitative-like section. It is
very likely that Mendelssohn was familiar with this concerto,
as his friend and the dedicatee of his concerto, the violinist
Ferdinand David, played this final concerto of Viotti.
Viotti made his sensational debut in Paris in 1782, where
he resided happily for 10 years, performing, composing, and
gathering around him an admiring group of students and
disciples. He also gained the patronage of many aristocratic
figures, and it was probably because of this patronage that
Viotti thought it wise to leave Paris and reestablish himself in
London in 1792 following the French Revolution.
The influence Viotti exerted during his Paris years was
enormous. Looking at this, one can view Paris as a Garden
of Eden, where the creation of the modern world of violin
playing was taking place. Certainly, this was the beginning
of the modern French school of playing, and considering the
influence of Viotti’s students and followers, it was arguably
the beginning of all modern schools of violin playing. One of
Viotti’s students was Pierre Rode, who, along with Rodolphe
Kreutzer and Pierre Baillot, became a professor at the Paris
Conservatoire. While it is not recorded that Kreutzer and
Baillot took many lessons with Viotti, they both spent much
time with him, playing under his direction, and absorbing his
style. The touching respect and, indeed, the love they all felt
for Viotti are most evident in their writings and compositions.
Viotti’s style was quickly promoted throughout all of
Europe through his students and compositions. Rode spent
the years 1804 through 1808 attached to the Czar’s court in
Saint Petersburg. When Rode left Russia, his countryman
Charles Phillipe Lafont, who was a student of Kreutzer, took
his place and remained from 1808 until 1815. The violinist
André Robberechts (1797–1860) studied with Viotti and
Baillot before returning to Brussels, where he taught and
laid the foundations for the Belgian school of playing. Viotti
lived in Germany between 1798 and 1801, where one of
his students was Wilhelm Friedrich Pixis (1786–1842), a
brilliant violinist from Mannheim who was to go on to teach
at the Prague Conservatoire when it opened in 1811, and
help to establish the Bohemian school of playing. Ludwig
Spohr (1784–1859) regretted that he was unable to study
with Viotti, but modeled his own style on that of Rode and
maintained that there was no greater repertoire for cultivating
good technique and fine taste than the concertos of Viotti.
Even Paganini, who must have represented a vastly
different approach to playing, clearly held his compatriot in
high esteem, as he occasionally performed Viotti’s music. His
Second Concerto in B Minor, La Campanella, contains what
must be a salute to Viotti with two clear thematic quotes from
Viotti’s Concerto No. 24 in the same key. The second themes
of the first movements in both works are strikingly similar,
and the openings to the second movements are identical.
Violin Forum
Yet another direct quotation appears in the second movement
of Paganini’s Sonata No. 4, Opus 3 in A Minor, which uses the
opening theme of the finale to Viotti’s Concerto No. 25. That he
was clearly impressed by the orchestra of the Paris Conservatoire
is evident from a quote in a letter dated April 28, 1831: “Only in
Paris did I find the best orchestra in Europe—one that presented
my music in the way I imagined it should sound—an orchestra
that knew how to accompany me perfectly.” This letter was
addressed to the conductor of the orchestra, Francois Antoine
Habeneck (1781–1849). Habeneck had been a violin student of
Baillot and was very much a follower of Viotti’s musical values.
Around 1840 Habeneck published a treatise: Méthode
théorique et pratique de violon. Before the 19th century, there
had not been many such works, but several valuable treatises
appeared around this time by such violinists as Spohr, Mazas,
and Baillot. In Habeneck’s Méthode, there are many references
indicating his admiration and reverence for Viotti, but most
touching is the inclusion in facsimile of Viotti’s attempt at a
treatise. Evidently Viotti’s followers had urged him to write
a treatise. Viotti had mentioned the work to Baillot during
their final meeting in 1823, but he was to abandon writing
after completing only four pages. One suspects that after
beginning work on this treatise, the aging master realized it
was simply beyond his powers. It is likely he did not have a
literary background, and his use of French suggests he was
not completely comfortable with the language. The fact that
Habeneck included the treatise in facsimile indicates the
reverential attitude toward Viotti that is born out by so many
charming anecdotes. Evidently, the manuscript of Viotti was
esteemed as a precious relic from the master himself.
Today, Viotti’s treatise is little known, and I have been
unable to find a complete English translation of the work. I
have tried to approximate the style of Viotti’s language. Some
sentences are a little awkward, but this is how they appear in
his original French. One must remember that this is merely
a fragment. Viotti refers to sections of the treatise that were
never written, and the layout and order of the sections had not
been established. The treatise is not particularly valuable as a
comprehensive pedagogical work, but it is a fascinating glimpse
of Viotti the teacher, and of his priorities in the teaching of
beginners. Teachers will be gratified to know that he obviously
considered the teaching of beginners to be a serious and
important art that not every violinist is competent to undertake.
His recommendation to practice long, sustained bow strokes is
something advanced artists still use to improve bowing. There is a
legend that Viotti could hold a single stroke for 15 minutes. This
is surely unbelievable, but the fact that his bowing could inspire
such a legend tells of a remarkable technique. And every advocate
of scales will love his sentence: “I will only add, that I who have
hardly ever practiced a passage have never ceased practicing scales
in order to make my playing the least disagreeable possible; and
that if I could arrive at the point of playing the perfect scale, as
perfect as I envisage it, I would believe myself to be the greatest
violinist in the world.” Surely this sentence reveals not only
the extent to which the maestro valued scales, but also gives us
something of a taste of the modest charm that so enchanted his
acquaintances.
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