As a composer of violin music and as a performer on the instrument Spohr exercised influence which is still felt. His pupils were Hubert Ries, St. Lubin, David, Bott, Blagrove, Kömpel and C. L. Bargheer, all players of note. David was the teacher of Wilhelmj, whose Doric style preserved all forcible simplicity and repose of the Spohr manner. Spohr's playing was based on the solid principles of the Mannheim school, modified somewhat by the style of Rode, for whom Spohr had a great and well-grounded admiration. But, as we should expect, Spohr in his maturity arrived at the possession of a style which was wholly the product of his own individuality. The fundamental and vital characteristic of his playing was his treatment of the violin as a singing voice. He played with immense breadth and purity of tone, with subtle delicacy of touch, and with exquisite refinement of phrasing. He had no taste for the free style of bowing cultivated by Paganini and was opposed to anything approaching the _saltato_. He had a large hand and was thus enabled to execute difficult passages of double stopping with accuracy. Violin technics have been developed so much since Spohr's time that his compositions do not present alarming difficulties to contemporaneous performers. Nevertheless, they were sufficiently difficult at the time of their production, and they remain among the acceptable works for violin. His concertos--at any rate, the best of them--are heard occasionally in concert rooms to-day, not without pleasure, though they are open to those objections which have been made against his operatic and orchestral music. His earlier concertos show the immediate influence of Viotti and Rode, but his later works were the most valuable contribution that had been made to the literature of the violin, except the Beethoven concerto up to the time when Spohr ceased to compose them. Indeed Spohr must be credited with fully as earnest an endeavor to raise the violin concerto from the level of a mere show piece to that of a serious and artistic composition as either Beethoven or Mendelssohn. Paul David has rightly said: "It was mainly owing to the sterling musical worth of Spohr's violin compositions that the great qualities of the classical Italian and the Paris schools have been preserved to the present day, and have prevented the degeneration of violin-playing.... He set a great example of purity of style and legitimate treatment of the instrument--an example which has lost none of its force in the lapse of more than half a century." [Illustration: Signature] [Illustration: FRESCO IN VIENNA OPERA HOUSE. Illustrating Spohr's Opera "Jessonda."] [Illustration: CARL MARIA VON WEBER _Reproduction of a portrait at the British Museum drawn by C. Vogel, Dresden, 1823, and engraved by C. A. Schwerdgeburth. Weber in his thirty-seventh year._] [Illustration] CARL MARIA VON WEBER