The Violin: Some Account of That Leading Instrument and Its Most Eminent Professors, from Its Earliest Date to the Present Time; with Hints to Amateurs, Anecdotes, etc.Dubourg, George
History
The Violin: Some Account of That Leading Instrument and Its Most Eminent Professors, from Its Earliest Date to the Present Time; with Hints to Amateurs, Anecdotes, etc.
Dubourg, George
Violin; Violinists -- Biography
The successors of Benda and Stamitz, still adding some improvements to
the precepts or the practice inculcated by those eminent directors, may
be said to have created a school of their own, at the head of which we
should place Leopold Mozart (author of “_Der Violinschule_”), Fraenzl,
and Cramer, who made some approach to Tartini, his contemporary, and
flourished long in England, as a concerto-performer and leader. Of the
first and the last of these three professors, some account shall here be
subjoined.
LEOPOLD MOZART, father of him who, in the fullest sense permitted to
sublunary credit, may be called, “The Undying One,” was born at Augsburg
in 1719. After having completed his studies, and particularly a course
of jurisprudence, at Salzburg, young Leopold entered the family of the
Count of Thurn, in the somewhat odd quality of _Valet-de-Chambre
Musicien_. The situation of a violinist having become vacant in the
chapel of the Prince Bishop of Salzburg, he obtained it in 1743. His
compositions made him favourably known in Germany but his reputation was
extended principally by the _Method_ for the Violin, which he published
in 1756, and which, for half a century, was considered as the best work
of the kind.
In 1762, Leopold Mozart obtained the post of Second Chapel-Master at the
Court of Salzburg. Of seven children whom he had by his marriage, there
remained to him only the son, afterwards so famous, and a daughter,
whose success in childhood promised a talent which was never realized.
The musical education of the children occupied all the time which his
duties and his works left to the father. A little while after his
nomination as Second Chapel-master, he commenced long tours with his son
and daughter, visiting the principal courts of Germany, Holland, England
and France, and passed many years in Italy. Returning to Salzburg, rich
in the hopes that centered on his son,—but with an exchequer nearly
exhausted by the charges attendant on so much itinerancy—he did not
again quit the residence of his Prince till 1775. Anxiously careful
about ameliorating the condition of his family, he failed to secure that
object, and became more and more impoverished. The forms and practices
of a scrupulous devotion furnished him, however, with some consolation
in his griefs, and alleviated his sense of suffering from the gout. He
died at Salzburg, in 1787.
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