Amico: The Life of Giovanni Battista Viotti

Amico Frontispiece. Portrait of Viotti by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, 1805, from a reproduction in the Connoisseur, N...

Author: Warwick Lister

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Amico

Frontispiece. Portrait of Viotti by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, 1805, from a reproduction in the Connoisseur, November 1911. The present location of this painting, if it has survived, is unknown.

Amico The Life of Giovanni Battista Viotti

warwick lister

1 2009

1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright © 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lister, Warwick, 1940– Amico : the life of Giovanni Battista Viotti / Warwick Lister. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-537240-3 1. Viotti, Giovanni Battista, 1755–1824. 2. Composers—Italy—Biography. 3. Violinists—Italy—Biography. I. Title. ML410.V79L57 2009 787.2092—dc22 [B] 2008054692

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Dedicated to the memory of my parents

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Preface

HERE EXISTS NO FULL-SCALE BIOGRAPHY IN ENGLISH OF GIOVANNI

T

Battista Viotti, who was arguably the most influential violinist who ever lived. The monographs by Arthur Pougin (1888), in French, and Remo Giazotto (1956), in Italian, are inadequate, the first because much new information has come to light since its publication, the second because of its many errors and fabrications. Two more recent monographs are Rosy Moffa, “Vo triste tacito”: Le peregrinazioni di Giovanni Battista Viotti (Lucca, 2005), and Mariateresa Dellaborra, Giovanni Battista Viotti (Palermo, 2006), both in Italian. Denise Yim’s excellent Viotti and the Chinnerys: A Relationship Charted through Letters (Aldershot, 2004) concentrates on Viotti’s life after his move to England in 1792. It has two much-less detailed chapters on the preceding years, and, as Yim says in her introduction, it does “not discuss in any detail the entrepreneurial aspects of Viotti’s life.” The volume Giovanni Battista Viotti: A Composer between the Two Revolutions, edited by Massimiliano Sala (Bologna, 2006), is a collection of articles by various authors, not by any means a biography. Mention should be made of an important collection of research materials compiled by Hans-Jürgen Rydzyk in the 1980s and 1990s, held by the Music History Department of the Frei Universität Berlin. Rydzyk, whose (uncompleted) PhD dissertation was on the chamber works of Viotti, had begun work on a critical edition of the complete works of Viotti, but this was cut short by his untimely death. This is a “Life,” not a “Life and Works.” I have simply tried to tell all that is known about the life and career of Viotti, and to place his career in the context of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century musical life. There are no extended analyses of Viotti’s works, no music examples (other than two short occasional pieces that I thought to include since they are not only unpublished but also have hitherto been unremarked in the Viotti literature). The works are

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Preface

brought into the context of his life as it has seemed appropriate. I draw partly on articles I have already published in scholarly publications. There is much new material, however, some of it appearing for the first time in English, or based on newly uncovered documents, particularly regarding Viotti’s parents and siblings, his career in Turin, the whereabouts of Viotti and his teacher in Poland and Russia, and Viotti’s activities in Paris and London. All dates are given in New Style. Thus I have rendered as 20 March the date recorded in a Russian newspaper as 9 March 1781, to conform to the Gregorian calendar (New Style) in use in western Europe, which at this time was eleven days ahead of the Julian calendar (Old Style) in use in Poland and Russia. I have done this to render the chronology of Viotti and Pugnani’s trip more comprehensible. To avoid clutter, I have not always given note references for dictionary articles when it is clear which article is being referred to (for example, the Miel, Fétis, and New Grove articles on Viotti and others). Similarly, I have provided the original texts of translated passages only when the form of words seemed important or ambiguous. I gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint portions of the following articles (see the bibliography): Lister 2003 (in chapter 1); Lister 2002 (in chapter 2); Lister 2004 and Lister 2006 (in chapter 3). I am grateful to the RussianBaltic Information Center (BLITZ) research team in St. Petersburg, headed by Elena Tsvetkova, in connection with the Russian archival findings in chapter 2, and specifically the citations indicated in notes 63, 66, 82, 84, 87, 88, and 89 in chapter 2; note 48 in chapter 3; and note 155 in chapter 9. For help with the translation of Russian sources I am grateful to Igor Polesitsky; for Polish sources, to Urszula Szczepanska-Janowska and Agnieszka Jelewska; and for some of the thornier Italian passages, to Marco Chiarini. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from French, Italian, and German are mine. Every student of the life of Viotti owes an enormous debt to Denise Yim. It was she who brought under control the sprawling Chinnery-Viotti collections (The Chinnery Family Papers) in the Powerhouse Museum and the Fisher Library in Sydney, Australia, and in the Christ Church College Library, Oxford, and who, in masterly fashion, synthesized their contents, first in her two-volume doctoral dissertation, then in her book, mentioned above, which also draws upon the correspondence in the New York Public Library, uncovered by Frances Barulich. I personally am greatly indebted to Denise Yim, in particular for her help with the translation of several French sources, for her help with many problematic points, and for sharing her extensive knowledge of Viotti and the Viotti literature, all of which, I fear, has been inadequately acknowledged in the present book. More generally, her advice and the stimulation of her ideas and enthusiasm in all that concerns Viotti have been an inspiration to me, for which I am immensely grateful.

Preface

ix

I thank Clive Brown for his helpful comments on Viotti’s violin playing, its antecedents, and its influence. Any flaws or errors remaining in my treatment of this area are of course my responsibility entirely. I am also grateful to Professor Brown for generously sending me a copy of his article “Leopold Mozart’s Violinschule and the Performance of W. A. Mozart’s Violin Music,” which helped clarify my thinking on the context of Viotti’s style of violin playing. Others whose help I gratefully acknowledge include Don Guido Mazza of the parocchia di S. Martino Vescovo, Fontanetto Po and Don Natalino of the church of S. Bartolomeo, Trino, for their help with parochial archives; Romana Raina for generously sending me photocopies of documents from her thesis and sharing with me her knowledge of the archives of Fontanetto; Dr. Roland Folter for sharing his expertise on old auction catalogues and for his help in my efforts (in the end unsuccessful) to trace a letter quoted in Giazotto’s book (see chapter 2, n. 93); Jeffrey Eger, who found several auction catalogue entries pertaining to Viotti; Marie Françoise Lagadec, who shared with me several of her discoveries in the French national archives; Giovanni Caselli for his patience and expertise in creating the maps; the staff at the Harold Acton Library of the British Institute of Florence, Frances Barulich, Mary Flagler Curator of Music Manuscripts and Printed Music, the Pierpont Morgan Library, Kathryn Bosi, Music Librarian of the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence (Villa I Tatti), Mrs. Judith Curthoys, Archivist, Christ Church College, Oxford, and Dr. Peter Horton, Reference Librarian, Royal College of Music, for their many kind and helpful courtesies; Ms. Helen Yoxall and Ms. Jill Chapman, archivists at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, who kindly provided workspace in their offices, gave me free access to the Chinnery Family Papers, and cheerfully tolerated my frequent interruptions during my visit; and Michael Barbour and Alyson Price for reading my manuscript and for their valuable suggestions. To my wife, Susan, I extend my heartfelt gratitude for her patience, support, and advice, every step of the way. This book is intended for the curious music lover, and I hope will also be of interest to musicologists and scholars in related fields, such as the cultural history of the ancien régime, and the French Revolution. I would be gratified to learn that, for the reader, as for myself, a knowledge of Viotti’s life has sparked a sharper, less casual interest in his music, which sadly remains imprisoned in that oubliette of cultural history, “unjust neglect.”


Contents

Abbreviations List of Figures

xiii xv

1. Fontanetto and Turin, 1755–79 “Suonatore del Principe” “Pupil of the Celebrated Pugnani” Theater Musician Chapel and Chamber Musician

3 5 15 18 30

2. Grand Tour, 1780–81

40

3. Paris, 1782–92: Performer, Composer, Teacher “First Violinist of the Universe” Homecoming Courtier “The Pleasure of His Friends” Composer and Teacher The Concert Olympique

66 69 85 91 97 112 120

4. Paris, 1789–92: Entrepreneur The Théâtre de Monsieur “Une bien grande machine” Rue Feydeau Afterword

125 125 136 147 162

5. Viotti’s Achievement Thus Far

164

6. London, 1792–98, and Exile, 1798–ca. 1800 Hanover Square

174 177

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Contents

Incident on the Continent London and Bath The King’s Theatre The Wine Business, Gillwell, the King’s Theatre Exile

183 187 196 205 218

7. Gillwell, Paris, Oxford, London, ca. 1800–1812 Country Life St. Omer and Paris Music, Family, and Friends Tragedy

224 224 228 234 260

8. London and the Continent, 1812–19 Recovery The Philharmonic Society (1813, 1814) Paris, Brussels, Lille (1814–18); the Philharmonic Society (1815, 1816)

270 270 273 289

9. Paris and the Opéra, 1819–21

317

10. Last Years, Death, and Aftermath Epilogue

348 364

11. Viotti’s Achievement and Legacy

365

Appendices 1. Map of Europe Showing Viotti’s Places of Activity 2. G. B. Negri’s Biographical Note 3. “Précis of the Life of J. B. Viotti since His Entrance into the World until March 6, 1798” 4. Viotti’s Letter to the Prince della Cisterna 5. Viotti’s Will 6. Viotti’s Siblings 7. Viotti’s Places of Residence in Paris and London 8. Viotti’s Violins 9. Notes on Viotti’s Violin Method 10. A Selection of Withdrawals from William Chinnery’s Account at Drummonds Bank 11. A Mystery Letter

401 406

Notes Bibliography Index of Viotti’s Works General Index

409 489 509 511

375 376 380 385 387 389 391 394 398

Abbreviations

See also the Bibliography. AF CC GBV GRC MC WBC WGC WRS

Adolphus Frederick, Duke of Cambridge Caroline Chinnery Giovanni Battista Viotti George Robert Chinnery Margaret Chinnery William Bassett Chinnery Walter Grenfell Chinnery William Robert Spencer

FétisB

F.-J. Fétis, Biographie universelle des musicians et bibliographie générale de la musique, 2nd ed. 8 vols. Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1878. Journal of the American Musicological Society. Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Ed. Friedrich Blume. 17 vols. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1949–86. Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. 2nd ed. Ed. Ludwig Finscher. 27 vols. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1994–2008. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Ed. Stanley Sadie. 20 vols. London: Macmillan, 1980. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 2nd ed. Ed. Stanley Sadie. 29 vols. London: Macmillan, 2001.

JAMS MGG1 MGG2 NG1 NG2


List of Figures

Frontispiece 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 4.1 4.2 6.1 6.2 6.3

Portrait of Viotti by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun Detail of a map of Turin, 1796 Portrait of Gaetano Pugnani Seating plan of the orchestra of the Teatro Regio, ca. 1791 Architectural plan of the Cathedral of San Giovanni, the Chapel of the Holy Shroud and the Palazzo Reale, Turin Map of Paris, showing Viotti’s places of residence and professional activity in 1782–92 and 1819–22 The Palace of the Tuileries Marie Antoinette at the Palace of the Tuileries Plans of the Palace of the Tuileries The grand staircase leading to the Salle des Suisses The Salle des Suisses G. B. Viotti, Concerto no. 27: A page from the autograph manuscript Interior of the Comédie Française in the converted Salle des Machines, 1778 Architect’s plans for the queen’s private box in the Théâtre de Monsieur, 1788 Map of London, showing Viotti’s places of residence and professional activity Gillwell House Portrait of Viotti by an unknown artist

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List of Figures

7.1 7.2 8.1

Portrait of Mrs. Chinnery by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun G. B. Viotti, “Ariette avec l’accompagnement pour la Harpe, ou Clavecin” G. B. Viotti, “March for two violins to be played by one solo [violin]”

Amico


chapter one

Fontanetto and Turin, 1755–79

T

he village of fontanetto lies in the broad plain of the river Po. Here Giovanni Battista Viotti was born on 12 May 1755, the sixth of nineteen children, of whom probably only seven survived infancy. As a boy playing in the street in front of his house he could look up and see, shimmering to the north, the great chain of the Alps, which runs southwestward to embrace the city of Turin, some thirtyfive miles upstream, before turning south to meet the Mediterranean. Now, as in Viotti’s time, Fontanetto Po1 is surrounded, almost as far as the eye can see, by rice fields, for, since the Middle Ages, this part of Piedmont has been the largest rice producing area in Europe. In the tree-lined canal running through the main square of the village, hemp, the other local product, was brought from the nearby fields and macerated. Fontanetto Po has always been off the beaten track—to reach it one must make a detour from the main road between Turin to the west, and, twenty miles northeast of Fontanetto, Vercelli, the nearest large market town and provincial capital (see appendix 1). Giovan2 Battista’s father, Felice Antonio Viotto (10 September 1714–6 January 1784),3 was a blacksmith who plied his trade in the house belonging to the Viotto family since the late seventeenth century, when it had been acquired by the violinist’s great-grandfather.4 The house, on the former “contrada di mezzo,” now Via Viotti, no. 23, near the crossroads at the center of the village, still stands. On its facade is a marble plaque commemorating the birthplace of Fontanetto’s most illustrious son. Our only source of information about the first decade or so of Viotti’s life is a handwritten biographical note, 3½ pages long, dated 1810, by a certain Doctor Negri, deputy mayor of Fontanetto, who belonged to a prominent family of the 3

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village, with friendly ties to the Viotto family.5 We cannot improve upon Negri’s account: [Viotti’s] father, though a blacksmith by trade, this being his only source of income, was a cultured man, who appreciated genteel and cultivated company; and as he was witty and something of a wag, he was well liked by everyone, and the gentlemen of the area, laymen and clergy alike, delighted in gathering in front of his shop to have a talk with him, and at not too late an hour they would also come into his house to be of the company. Indeed, since several of them were amateur players of one or another instrument it was a rare evening that they didn’t gather at the Viotti home to make music, in which Master Felice himself also played the horn [corno da caccia] reasonably well. Of Viotti’s mother, Maria Maddalena, née Milano (b. 15 January 1728), we know almost nothing, other than that she was from a local family. She married Felice on 24 February 1746, aged eighteen; their first child was born in November. All told she bore her husband three sons and six daughters, three of whom survived: Anna Adelaide, born in 1748, Giovan Battista, born in 1755, and Giuseppe, born in 1763. She died 22 April 1763, aged thirty-five, quite possibly of septicemia resulting from the birth of Giuseppe two months earlier. Giovan Battista was three weeks short of his eighth birthday when he lost his mother; his sister Adelaide was fourteen years old. Within a few months, on 30 October, Felice, now forty-nine years old, took another wife, the twenty-one-year-old Teresa Maria Musetti, from the nearby town of Trino. Teresa was herself a widow, her first husband having died three years earlier.6 It is pleasant to imagine the blacksmith, in his best suit, riding the five miles to be married in Trino on a misty October morning, perhaps bringing his two older children with him. Lest the reader think Felice’s remarriage unduly hasty, consider his situation: though Adelaide, at fourteen, could no doubt help with the care of her two younger brothers, Felice could scarcely have managed without a wife and mother for his children. We do not know how Felice and his bride met, nor how well Giambattista and his sister knew their stepmother before they were thrown together. We may also wonder how difficult it was for Teresa, faced with the sudden responsibility of three children, one of them an infant. At the same time, as a widow, she may have considered herself fortunate to have found a well-established husband to support her. By this time, according to Negri, Viotti had learned to play the violin, though “the poor boy had only the feeble and inexpert instruction that his father was able to give him.” Fortunately, a traveling musician named “Signor Giovanni” (his surname was unknown to Negri), a very good lutenist, well grounded in music, turned up in Fontanetto and the local music lovers arranged for him to stay in the village and give lessons. The young Viotti flourished under his tutelage and after a little more than a year, when Signor Giovanni left to take up a position elsewhere, he was able to acquit himself in a “thoroughly praiseworthy


5

fashion.” All of this, Negri asserts, took place before 1764, which means that Giambattista, at the age of about nine,7 was thrown back upon his own musical resources, and those of his father, for upward of three years—until late in 1766, when the first of the great upheavals in his life occurred. To sum up Viotti’s musical background thus far: first, he would have heard music at home for as long as he could remember, indissolubly associated with the memory of his father gathering with his friends, of conversation, of music as a convivial experience. This circumstance goes some way toward explaining one of the mainsprings of Viotti’s behavior later in life, as we shall see. It would be interesting to know what sort of music Felice and his friends played (possibly with the participation of Signor Giovanni), and how expert their music making was. Presumably most or all of them belonged to the Fontanetto philharmonic society, which was good enough to have been invited to play in another town. Second, Giambattista had somehow learned to play the violin, with, as his instructors, only his father, an amateur horn player, and, for less than two years, a professional musician who was a lutenist! Third, if we are to believe another early biographer of Viotti’s,8 Signor Giovanni, before taking leave of his pupil, had encouraged him to study music theory from the theoretical works of Carlo Giovanni Testori, probably La musica ragionata espressa famigliarmente in dodici passeggiate a dialogo (Music Theory Explained Informally in Twelve Dialogue-Walks). This manual is in the typical master-pupil catechistic form of many eighteenthcentury didactic works. It was published in Vercelli in 1767, but may have been circulated in manuscript earlier, at least locally and among friends. It is just possible that a boy of Giambattista’s age could have understood this work, perhaps with some help from his father, especially since it is written in an accessible style, enlivened by anecdote, humor, and homely explanations. Viotti might well have learned the rudiments of music and the first elements of basso continuo composition from Testori’s theoretical works, if not as early as 1766, then in the 1770s.9 At any rate, as we shall see, Viotti had learned to read music by 1766. There is evidence that in these same years Giambattista’s general literacy was not being neglected. A register of the deliberations of the village council contains the following ordinance from the year 1763: “Decreed, the appointment of a public school teacher [maestro di scuola pub.(lic)a] in this locality for a three-year period, that is, beginning on the second of the coming month of November of the current year, and ending on the first of the same month of the year 1766.”10 This ordinance bodes well for the young Viotti’s early general education, though we have no details, nor do we know the degree of his father’s literacy—or for that matter, his mother’s.

“Suonatore del Principe” The next episode in Viotti’s life has all the elements of a fairy tale. As told by Negri, sometime in 1766, probably late in the year, Viotti was taken along to

6

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Ivrea, a large town forty miles northwest of Fontanetto, or to the village of Strambino, near Ivrea—Negri is not sure which—to play in the “philharmonic society” of Fontanetto (nowadays we would call these groups village bands, though they often included stringed instruments), which had been invited there to play for a church feast-day service. “It was not easy,” Negri tells us, “to persuade the young Viotti’s father to undertake this trip, but he finally agreed, convinced that it would not cost him anything and that it was in his interest for his son to be put to the test and to become known.” The bishop of Ivrea, Monsignor Francesco Rorà, was present at the ceremony, and afterward the entire orchestra, including the eleven-year-old Viotti, went to play dinner music for Monsignor the Bishop. Negri, with a palpable sense of the importance of the event, writes: From this moment we may say that Viotti’s fortune began, for that most worthy prelate, marveling at the grace with which the lad played his part, and charmed by his surpassing modesty and his pleasing appearance, told him in so many words that he could make his fortune for him if he was willing to go to Turin to a great house, where a young nobleman was looking for a companion with whom to study the violin. There was no need to return to Fontanetto to ask permission of his father, since the latter was at his side, so, thanking the bishop for his generous good offices, and after having been given a beautiful reliquary, they left immediately for Turin with letters of recommendation to the Marchesa [Marchioness] di Voghera. Negri may be forgiven for exaggerating—Viotti and his father would not, indeed could not, have left for Turin that same day. At the very least they would have spent the night in Strambino or Ivrea before setting out on the daylong ride to the great capital of the kingdom of Sardinia. Nor does it seem likely that they would have gone without first returning to Fontanetto to gather the boy’s belongings and to say good-bye to his stepmother and sister and brother. On the other hand, though the roads of Piedmont were among the best in Europe, returning to Fontanetto would have entailed a considerable detour, and Felice may have decided not to lose any time. We must now introduce two persons who, for the next several years, were to play such a decisive role in Viotti’s life and art: the Marchesa di Voghera (1723– 1802) and her only son, Alfonso, Prince Dal Pozzo della Cisterna (1748–1819), the eighteen-year-old scion of one of the richest and most prominent families of Turin. It was on the marchesa’s behalf that Monsignor Rorà had interceded, and Alfonso for whom a musical companion was desired. The marchesa was forty-three years old when Viotti came to her, and had been widowed for twelve years. She had four daughters, the three eldest all married; the youngest, Maria Anna, was thirteen or fourteen years old (b. 7 December 1752), unmarried, and living in the Palazzo della Cisterna with her mother and brother.


7

We may imagine the scene when Felice Viotto and his son arrived at their door, dusty (or mud-spattered, more likely, in the Piedmont autumn or winter) and tired from their long ride, quite probably on horseback. (As the son of a blacksmith, Giambattista would have long since been at ease with horses, and, by the age of eleven, quite able to ride. There is ample evidence later in his life that he was an accomplished and enthusiastic horseman.) If indeed Felice and his son had departed immediately for Turin, the Marchesa di Voghera would have had no advance notice of their arrival. Nonetheless, according to Negri, she and the prince welcomed the young musician into their household immediately—we may surmise that Bishop Rorà’s letters were persuasive. Other chroniclers11 have embroidered upon this scene in the Palazzo della Cisterna: the prince, seeing the young Viotti for the first time, did not believe that he could be capable of anything, and was about to give him some money and send him home. At that moment Celoniat, the prince’s violin teacher, walked in and persuaded the prince to listen to the boy play. A sonata by “Bezzusi”12 was placed before him, which he played with impressive aplomb, saying in the Vercelli dialect, “ben par susì a le niente” (that was nothing). In an attempt to discomfit the eleven-year-old boy (!), they asked him to play a difficult sonata by Ferrari,13 which he also played at sight with great energy (con molta forza). We may guess that Celoniat, or possibly Maria Anna, played the keyboard part for both works. Then, when Viotti admitted that he had never been to the theater, Celoniat took him along that evening to the opera house and placed him near his own chair in the orchestra, and Giambattista played through the entire opera at sight, to the amazement of the orchestra members. We are not told which opera it was, whether it was a performance or a rehearsal, or whether Viotti played the first or the second violin part. It would have been the first opera of the 1766–67 carnival season, F. G. Bertoni’s Tancredi, the rehearsals for which began around mid-December, or possibly one of the autumn opere buffe—Guglielmi’s Il ratto della sposa was given twenty-seven performances from 14 October to 26 November that year. Upon Viotti’s return to the palace, the prince asked him what he had played at the opera, whereupon the boy played the overture from memory. It was, as F.-J. Fétis observes in his article on Viotti, “an explosion of talent.”14 It is this incident, more even than the one with Bishop Rorà, that testifies to the precociousness of Viotti’s talent—that by the age of eleven he had achieved this level with such haphazard training. The prince was convinced, and the boy’s destiny was ordained. It was probably late in 1766, then, that this momentous event in Viotti’s life occurred.15 It was not unknown for musically talented boys from modest families to be “adopted” by wealthy benefactors, and since Fontanetto Po was scarcely more than a day’s ride away, it was perhaps not considered an especially disruptive step for a boy of his age—something akin to going to a boarding school nowadays. But we must not forget that Giambattista had lost his mother not four years earlier. We can only imagine how traumatic this had been, and to

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what extent his stepmother had succeeded in healing the wound. We shall see that, later in life, Viotti suffered from the anguish of separation from loved ones to an extraordinary degree, amounting almost to an obsession. Giovanni Battista, in an autobiographical note (“Précis”) that he wrote thirtytwo years later,16 remembered that his family had “intended another way of life for me, [but] in spite of them I chose the musical profession.” This assertion is perfectly reconcilable with the report of Felice’s initial reluctance to allow his son to go on the trip with the Fontanetto philharmonic society. The blacksmith, now in his fifties, may well have wished for his eldest son to join him at the forge and eventually to take his place—it was the natural way of things. But whatever doubts he had were presumably dispelled by his glimpse of the world his son was about to enter. He spent ten or twelve days in Turin, no doubt as a guest in the Palazzo della Cisterna, before bidding his son good-bye and returning to Fontanetto. What was this world to which the eleven-year-old Giambattista had been delivered? First of all, the city of Turin, with a population of a little over 50,000, was the capital of the kingdom of Sardinia, which included not only the Piedmont region in the northwestern corner of Italy but also, on the other side of the Alps, a considerable portion of present-day France, the Savoy region. The house of Savoy had provided the rulers of the region since the eleventh century. Charles Emmanuel III, a vigorous soldier king, had been on the throne since 1730, to be succeeded in 1773 by his mediocre son Victor Amadeus III (reigned 1773–96). The origins of the house of Savoy were French, and French remained the official language of the court long after Turin replaced Chambéry as the capital in the sixteenth century, indeed well into Viotti’s time. However, as one English traveler put it, “The Torinese in general speak French indifferently, and amongst themselves converse constantly in Piedmontese, which is [. . .] a wretched jargon.”17 Turin, on the upper Po, was the first important town in Italy reached by visitors from France by way of the Mount Cenis Pass. Its strict rectilinear plan, so different from the narrow winding streets of other Italian towns, seemed to be reflected in its atmosphere—sober, orderly, slightly dull. That at least was how many British travelers on the Grand Tour described Turin. The court was thought to be the “politest in Europe.”18 For about two months, from late December to February, the carnival festivities and entertainments enlivened the city for visitors as well as its inhabitants. Charles Burney, who visited Turin in July 1770, thought that “there is now a gloomy sameness at this court, in the daily repetition of state parade and prayers, which renders Turin a dull residence to strangers, except during the carnival.”19 As for the more intimate world of the Palazzo della Cisterna, we may count ourselves fortunate. From 1761 until 1768, when he attained his majority, the prince Alfonso was placed under his mother’s guardianship and his patrimony under her administration, for which detailed accounts were kept. These account


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registers, six in number,20 and other documents housed in the Archivio di Stato in Biella, Italy, afford us a precious glimpse into the daily workings of a princely Italian household of the ancien régime. The Palazzo della Cisterna21 was about a five-minute walk from the royal palace (Palazzo Reale), with its chapel, and from the Teatro Regio, the famous opera theater of Turin (see figure 1.1). As we shall see, these two institutions loomed large in the lives of both the prince and Viotti. In the 1760s and 1770s the Marchesa di Voghera and her children were attended by a retinue of twenty-five to thirty persons: the prince’s tutor, a “medico di casa,” a secretary, a majordomo, and kitchen, domestic, and stables staff. The prince, besides the instruction of his regular tutor (whose yearly salary of 360 lire [L.360] included “offerings for the Masses”), enjoyed an array of lessons in special subjects. The registers show payments of varying regularity throughout this period to maestri of writing ( piuma francese), dancing, drawing, fencing, horsemanship, German, and violin.22 Dancing and writing lessons were given to the prince’s sisters as well, but as the eldest were married off from 1762 to 1765 these payments decreased correspondingly, leaving only Maria Anna, who also received harpsichord lessons. The fee was the same (L.16 for a month’s lessons) for all the maestri except for the writing instructor (L.24) and the German instructor (L.20). The household boasted two harpsichords, the cost (L.250) of a new one with two registers “for the use of the children” having been entered on 1 January 1762;23 semiannual payments were made for tuning and maintenance. There are occasional payments for music copying and binding, and on 18 April 1763 and 21 February and 30 October 1767, “suonatore venuti ad un concerto in casa” (players come to the house for a concert) were paid L.24, L.84, and L.24, respectively. (Players were usually paid 5–10 lire for accompanying balls at court. Assuming a comparable fee for a private concert, we may conjecture that these concerts involved approximately three or four and ten or twelve paid musicians, respectively.) There are also yearly payments for seating rental ( fitto palchetti, L.100–150) at the Teatro Regio, two permanent tickets (biglietti perpetui, L.39 each) for the opera season, one for the marchesa, one for the prince, and numerous tickets for individual opera performances for the marchesa, her daughters, palace dependents (e.g., servants, and the secretary’s two daughters) and, very often, for the prince, usually with his tutor or his friends ( per il Sigr. Principe e sua compagnia), for as many as eight or ten performances of the two carnival operas, reminding us that in Turin, as elsewhere, going to the opera was a social as much as an aesthetic occasion. We must now try to picture Viotti, a boy of eleven, a small-town blacksmith’s son, entering this household. Our first glimpse of his presence in the palace comes with an entry of 29 April 1767 in one of the account registers, under the rubric Expenses: Clothing: “to the merchants Gajotti and Ferraris for cloth and muslin for a gift, namely for the wardrobe of the little musician [ piccolo suonatore]


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living in the home of His Excellency—L.19.”24 The secretary seems unsure of Viotti’s name—an indication, perhaps, of how recently the boy had arrived. There are four other similar entries for “il suonatore Viotto” in the clothing expenses section, all in 1768: for muslin for cuffs—L.3; for three handkerchiefs— L.3.2 (3 lire and 2 soldi, there being 20 soldi in the Piedmontese lira); for muslin for a shirt—L.2.10; and, on 1 July, “for an apron for the suonatore Viotto’s mother, ordered by the Prince”—L.4.5. (This, as we know, was Viotti’s stepmother, Teresa Maria.) Do we detect the hand of the marchesa behind this heartwarming gesture of the apron? By the time of Viotti’s arrival in the Palazzo della Cisterna, the prince had been studying the violin for more than five years. His teacher, Signor Celoniat, “suonatore di violino,” was also paid L.6 per pupil per month to accompany the dancing lessons of the prince and his sisters. Viotti first appears as a pupil with the entry for 1 August 1767: “to Signor Celoniat, violin player, for violin lessons to the Prince and to Vioto, the Esteemed Prince’s musician [suonatore del V(enerat) o Principe], including various commissions of copying of sonatas, as noted and received—80.10.”25 This figure probably indicates two months of lessons at L.16 per month per pupil (= L.64) plus L.16.10 paid to Celoniat for music copying, the unusually high figure for copying perhaps reflecting the need for new “suonate” for the newly arrived pupil, now twelve years old. We may therefore assume that Viotti began lessons with Celoniat sometime around early June 1767. If Viotti did arrive in the palace in 1766, it is not clear why he did not begin lessons until the following June. In any case, the prince did not have violin lessons during the first five months of 1767, though he did have lessons in other subjects, and Celoniat continued to accompany the dance lessons. Inexplicably, from this first entry in August until early in 1768 Viotti’s name does not appear, though the prince continues his lessons regularly. Viotti resumed lessons in January 1768 and continued more or less regularly, the last entry, on 30 July, showing L.56 for one month’s lessons for the two pupils plus two bows and strings. On his twentieth birthday, 8 October 1768, the prince came into his inheritance and the account registers kept for his mother were discontinued. Giambattista, then, took about twenty-four weekly lessons from Celoniat, from early June 1767 through July 1768, with a five-month hiatus August–December 1767. Though we have no record, he probably continued with Celoniat until he began having lessons from Gaetano Pugnani in late 1769 or 1770. The phrase “suonatore del Principe” is not to be understood as someone whose function it was to play for the prince but as a musician under the prince’s Figure 1.1. (opposite) Adaption of a detail of an “Explanatory map of Turin with numbers indicating all the owners of houses, identification of the churches with numbers and descriptions of the quarters, squares and principal places in 1796” (Turin, Biblioteca Reale; Incisione IV 70; by permission of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali; further reproduction prohibited). Key: 1, Palazzo Cisterna; 2, Teatro Regio; 3, Teatro Carignano; 4, Palazzo Reale and the Cathedral of San Giovanni, with the Chapel of the Holy Shroud.

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“protection” or patronage. We may well suppose, however, that Viotti would have been expected to play an occasional sonata with Maria Anna, indeed that he would have been happy to, that he and the prince would have played duets together, and that he would have participated in house concerts such as the ones given in February and October 1767. None of the entries for Celoniat gives his first name or even an initial, which means that we cannot be certain of his identity. In the late 1760s there were at least six violinist-members of the Celoniat family active in Turin.26 Taking into account age and position in the musical establishment of the court, the choice as to which Celoniat it was narrows down to three: Ignazio, his cousin Carlo Lorenzo, and the latter’s brother, Carlo Antonio. All three were members of the first violin section of the Teatro Regio orchestra, though Carlo Antonio only from 1771. In the orchestra of the Royal Chapel Carlo Lorenzo was in the first violin section, the other two in the seconds. Ignazio had perhaps the widest reputation of the three, having composed two operas for the Teatro Regio, and he was often given the task of directing the orchestra for the carnival balls and extra concerts. On the other hand, Carlo Lorenzo was consistently placed ahead of him in the two orchestras; he had several published compositions to his name, and it was he who, on Ignazio’s death in 1785, replaced him in the important task of accompanying the royal family’s dancing lessons. Carlo Antonio does not seem to have distinguished himself particularly. We must content ourselves with knowing only that Viotti’s first proper violin teacher was one of these three men.27 It is regrettable that the complete registers for the years after 1768 have not survived. They would have told us much about the eighteen years during which, it now seems, Viotti enjoyed the prince’s protection:28 precisely when he began lessons with Pugnani, for example, and what fee Pugnani was paid (to judge by their respective salaries at court it would have been much higher than Celoniat’s); details about Viotti’s education, both musical (was he given lessons in composition by Pugnani? What about keyboard lessons?) and extramusical; and for how long Viotti remained resident in the Palazzo della Cisterna. Further, it is commonly thought that Viotti was influential in introducing Stradivari violins to Paris in the early 1780s. Though violins by Stradivari did not yet command the price that they would at the time of Viotti’s death in 1824 (he mentions his instrument in his will), it seems unlikely that he could have afforded one in the 1770s without the prince’s help. This purchase would certainly have been entered in the accounts. It is difficult to know what Viotti’s position was in the household hierarchy. The evidence is scarce and somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, we have a rather startling document in the Biella archive,29 which raises difficult questions. It is a hastily written, undated memorandum, probably for the palace secretary, or possibly for the marchioness or the prince: Money to be allocated each month to the servants of His Excellency the Prince della Cisterna for bread and wine


To the manservant SanGermano To the suonatore Viotto, and for him to the said manservant who serves him bread and wine To the footman Flambon To the cook To the scullion including his salary, bread, and wine To the coachman To the groom To the valet

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L.11.5.— 8.15.— 11.5.— 15.— 12.10— 15.— 15.— 15.—

The memorandum goes on to other categories of expenditure. This list appears to identify, for accounting purposes, those servants assigned specifically to the service of the prince, as distinct from the marchesa’s servants and the rest of the staff. The spelling “Viotto” points to an early date for this memorandum, certainly before 1772, by which time “Viotti” had been settled upon, as does the relatively small expenditure for Viotti, who, as a boy, would have consumed less wine, if not less bread than the others. The inclusion of Viotti’s name with the prince’s servants may simply represent a bookkeeping convenience, there being no existing register category for him. He may well have eaten with the servants, at least at this early stage, almost certainly not at the prince’s table, the provision for which is considered separately in the accounts. Similarly, we cannot tell from the existing eighteenth-century architectural plans whether Viotti was lodged on the piano nobile of the palace, where the marchesa and the prince had their apartments, or on the floor above, where the servants lived. All of this suggests that Viotti’s status was something less than that of a family member, as does the paucity of clothing purchases and the absence of other expenditures in his name in the accounts, in contrast to the abundant, often very expensive clothing purchases and other outlays for the family members, for example, pocket money, hairdressing costs, tips to coachmen, and the like.30 More significant still is the fact that he is not shown as receiving lessons from the tutor or from the teachers of subjects other than the violin, at least as of October 1768. On the other hand, we have Negri’s assurance that Viotti was assigned “courteous servants,” that he was looked upon as a son in the family, that he was “entrusted to Mr. D. Eno, formerly the tutor of the little Marquis,”31 that “there were no endearments that the little Marquis did not bestow upon him,” and that “such was the care taken of Viotti by that family that for all his youthful years he never came to his native town without being accompanied by a servant.” The truth is perhaps more subtle than either of these two apparently contradictory descriptions would suggest. Giambattista was probably given every material comfort he could have wished for, more in fact than he could possibly have been used to. It is clear from the memorandum just cited that there was at least one servant assigned to him, to serve him his bread and wine. He was given every opportunity to learn and to improve as a musician, he enjoyed the

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hospitality and even the affection of his benefactors, but he was not, could not be considered or treated as a member of a princely family of the ancien régime. The Biella archives, interesting though they are, do not give us a more precise picture than this. For the prince, violin lessons were a part of his grooming as a courtier in the Castiglionian mould. As early as 1771, he became a Gentleman of the Table ( gentiluomo di bocca) and second equerry to the king—the beginning of a distinguished court and cavalry career. For the blacksmith’s son from Fontanetto Po, the violin lessons were something else altogether. Whatever his position in the household, it was the marchesa and her son who enabled Viotti to participate, through Pugnani, in the great tradition of Italian violin playing stemming from Corelli. We have one other glimpse into Giambattista’s life in the Palazzo della Cisterna. “The students from Fontanetto who were in Turin,” says Negri, “on the insistence of that most amicable gentleman [the prince Alfonso], often went to visit their townsman.” Giambattista’s friends would have been suitably impressed by his good fortune, by the unaccustomed luxury of his surroundings, and surely their companionship would have assuaged the loneliness or homesickness he may have felt in his new situation. In the meantime, for Felice Viotto and his new wife, Teresa Maria, another cycle of births, and, implacably, deaths, had begun. Their firstborn, named Francesca Maddalena, no doubt in memory of Felice’s recently deceased first wife, was born 24 August 1764, and survived into adulthood. On 10 February 1767, the eleven-year-old Giambattista stood witness for the baptism of the second, another girl, Domenica Appolonia, who probably did not survive infancy.32 We may speculate that he had been informed of the impending birth by a messenger from Fontanetto, and that he would have ridden posthaste, accompanied by a servant, on horseback, or in a coach provided by the marchesa. He would then have returned to the Palazzo della Cisterna in time to hear or to participate in the house concert of 21 February. On 17 November 1767, Giambattista’s older sister, Adelaide, married one Giovan Battista Carbonero, a widower from the town of Montiglio. Felice provided her with a dowry.33 Naturally, the young suonatore del Principe would have attended the wedding in Fontanetto, though it is possible that he had gone to London, as we shall see shortly. As to Giambattista’s younger brother, Giuseppe, Negri informs us that he too had a bent for the violin, but he was so scatterbrained that Giambattista, “who with the blessing of his patrons had taken his brother Giuseppe under his wing to teach him, in the end was forced to send him away as incorrigible.” We saw that Giambattista had violin lessons with Celoniat until at least the end of July 1768; we may assume that he continued with Celoniat until his musical education was taken in hand by Gaetano Pugnani, who became Viotti’s principal teacher, and who was by far the most important influence on his early musical development.


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“Pupil of the Celebrated Pugnani” Gaetano Pugnani (1731–98) was the leading light of the musical establishment of Turin, which was centered around the court, and of which the two chief institutions were the Royal Chapel and the Teatro Regio, each with its complement of singers and instrumentalists. Pugnani had been a pupil of Giovanni Battista Somis’s (1686–1763), who, in turn, had studied for three years (1703–6) in Rome with Arcangelo Corelli. Founder of the Piedmontese school of violin playing, Somis had raised the level of the Chapel and Teatro orchestras to an international standard. Pugnani had played in both orchestras since boyhood, and his position as Somis’s eventual successor, the leading representative, with Giardini,34 of the Piedmontese school, was never in doubt. He became leader of the Teatro orchestra in the 1757–58 season (more than five years before Somis’s death), of the Chapel orchestra in 1770.35 Already he had performed one of his own concertos in 1754 in Paris at the Concert spirituel, to universal acclaim. His international reputation was enhanced by his numerous published compositions: orchestral and chamber works, violin sonatas, and, beginning in London in 1769, operas. One early biographer, Edme-François Miel, who is generally reliable, asserts that Viotti went to London with Pugnani at the age of twelve,36 which would provide a plausible explanation for the otherwise unmotivated hiatus in Giambattista’s lessons with Celoniat in August–December 1767. Pugnani had indeed gone to London in 1767, where he arrived probably in the second week of October, but there is no evidence that Viotti accompanied him.37 If he had, it would have meant, of course, that, by the beginning of 1768, the twelve-year-old Giambattista traveled back to Italy alone, or at any rate without Pugnani, who stayed in England, performing on the violin (he was a favorite at the musical parties of the Harris family in Salisbury),38 particularly as an orchestra leader, and producing his opera buffa, Nanetta e Lubino, at the King’s Theatre, London, the first performance of which took place on 8 April 1769. After leading the orchestra in concerts for the Salisbury Music Festival in August (when his portrait, shown in figure 1.2, was probably done), he returned to Turin in time to lead the orchestra of the Teatro Regio for the first carnival opera, the rehearsals for which began in mid-December. He probably took Viotti on as a pupil not long after returning to Turin, that is, late in 1769 or in 1770. We can only speculate as to the specifics of Viotti’s lessons under Pugnani— in his Précis of 1798, already referred to, he says that he passed his childhood in “heedless play [étourderies] and endless study.” We know that Viotti, later in life, placed paramount importance on the practicing of scales for the young violinist: “It is [the scale] that creates good intonation, a beautiful tone, that makes [. . .] the fingers supple [. . .], that gradually gives us confidence, helps us over obstacles.” Viotti also asserts that he hardly ever practiced a passage from a

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Figure 1.2. Crayon and chalk drawing of Pugnani by Coplestone Warre Bamphylde, 1769 (Hampshire Record Office; 9M73/G1009).

piece of music, but that he “never ceased” to practice scales, and that if he ever could play a scale perfectly, he would consider himself the first violinist in the world.39 He then lists seven ways in which the scale is to be practiced: 1) without inflections [. . .], the sound of each note should be begun, continued, and terminated at the same level of loudness 2) beginning forte and finishing piano 3) beginning piano, crescendo and diminuendo 4) the scale in a given key, but played in every possible position 5) in semitones [chromatic scale], with the same inflections as above 6) with a trill on each note, same inflections 7) finally, practice all of this in the different keys, in different positions, and at different speeds We may permit ourselves the assumption that Viotti, in enunciating these principles and methods, was speaking from his own experience as a pupil, that, at least to an extent, they had been part of his own violinistic formation. All the more so when we consider Viotti’s last, very revealing observation regarding


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scales: “That which lays the firmest foundation [raffermit] and which does the most good is the practicing of extremely long and sustained tones—it is those that sometimes vex me.”40 Viotti’s violinistic patrimony, the Piedmontese school, was celebrated above all for its broad bowing technique—its tone production. G. B. Somis, his teacher’s teacher, “was famed for possessing ‘the most majestic bow stroke in Europe,’ ” and Pugnani’s “ ‘arco magno’ (grand bowing) became proverbial.”41 It is more than likely, therefore, that Pugnani would have devoted a good part of his lesson time with Giambattista on long, sustained bow strokes, and scales are the most convenient, though not the only, and perhaps not the most interesting way of practicing such a technique. At all events, it was precisely a broad, powerful tone which was to become the hallmark of Viotti’s playing and of the “Viotti school.” As for other technical training, it is easy to forget that all of the staples of the young violinist of today, the studies of Kreutzer, Rode, Fiorillo, Gaviniès, and the myriad others coming afterward, lay very much in the future when Viotti was studying with Pugnani. L’arte del arco, attributed to Giuseppe Tartini, had been published in Paris in 1758, and Tartini’s Letter [. . .] to Signora Maddalena Lombardini was published in Venice in 1770, though it had been written in 1760. It seems reasonable to suppose that Pugnani would have been aware of these works, both of which stressed mastery of the bow. The Letter, however, reveals a fundamental difference between the Tartini and the Piedmontese schools: Tartini is at pains to stress lightness of bowing—literally lightness of wrist (leggerezza di polso), so as to avoid harshness or rawness—and flexibility and agility of the bow arm. There is no hint of the desirability of a broad, powerful tone. Several years later, an attempt was made, probably by Baillot, to distinguish the different characters possible on the violin: “simple and melodious under Corelli’s fingers; harmonious, touching, and graceful under Tartini’s bow; pleasing and suave under Gaviniès’s; noble and grandiose under Pugnani’s; full of fire, full of audacity, pathetic, sublime in Viotti’s hands.” Still later, Baillot, in his L’Art du violon (1835), wrote, “The sound that Tartini and Pugnani drew from their violins is remembered well enough to compare the differences and evoke the kind of expression which characterized their playing.”42 Giambattista had no doubt been taken to hear the concert of the celebrated Signora LombardiniSirmen (her violinist-husband was named Lodovico Sirmen) at the Teatro Carignano on 3 June 1768. She was a pupil of Tartini, and according to the maestro di cappella of the Turin cathedral, she “won the admiration of all Turin with her violin playing” and she “performs [Tartini’s] sonatas with such perfection that she proves herself to be his true and worthy descendant.”43 Pugnani and his gifted pupil did not have at their disposal the graded system of technical study that was to come. All the more reason, then, to suppose that scales may well have formed the backbone of Viotti’s early technical grounding. As for pieces, it seems likely that the sonatas of Corelli would have been part of Giambattista’s student repertory, as well as the sonatas and concertos of

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G. B. Somis and Pugnani, and, surely, the sonatas of Besozzi and Domenico Ferrari, two of which, as we have seen, had been Viotti’s triumphant pièces d’entrée. Indeed, Miel asserts that “in old music, Viotti prized particularly the sonatas of Ferrari, classics for the violin, and in which he was most practiced.”44 In the second half of January 1771, Leopold Mozart and his son visited Turin for two weeks. Leopold, as was his habit, made an entry in his travel diary consisting of a list of twenty or so names of persons they had met, mostly members of the Turinese nobility and musical luminaries of the court.45 It is the only known record of their sojourn in the capital of the kingdom of Sardinia; there are no relevant newspaper reports, diary entries, or documents in the archives of the Teatro Regio,46 where Wolfgang and his father surely heard a performance of Giovanni Paisiello’s Annibale in Torino,47 conducted by the composer, whose name is among those on Leopold’s list. Among the other names Leopold recorded were the Marchesa di Voghera, Pugnani, and Celoniat.48 He does not mention Viotti. We are thus denied an irresistibly attractive scenario of the two fifteen-year-olds (Wolfgang celebrated his birthday in Turin), brought together by the marchesa or by Pugnani, perhaps even in the Palazzo della Cisterna—the marchesa and her son would have had more reason than almost anyone else in Turin to welcome the Mozarts into their home for an informal accademia49—of the two gifted boys taking to each other, of Giovan Battista perhaps accompanying Wolfgang in a sonata (the honored guest would have been given the newer harpsichord, of course), or even, to amuse themselves, of their improvising something together . . . No, Leopold does not mention Viotti. That a memorable occasion was missed may be judged from Leopold’s warm account of his son’s meetings, only eight months earlier, in Florence, with the English violin prodigy, Thomas Linley, who also was Wolfgang’s contemporary. Leopold wrote that “the two boys performed one after the other throughout the whole evening, constantly embracing each other. On the following day the little Englishman, a most charming boy, had his violin brought to our rooms and played the whole afternoon, Wolfgang accompanying him on his own.”50 For about ten months, from October 1772 through July 1773, Pugnani was again away in London. Experienced teacher that he was, he would have left the seventeen-year-old Giambattista with a plan of study and repertory to cover, perhaps under the supervision of Celoniat. On the other hand, it is just possible that Viotti accompanied Pugnani on this trip—we shall return to this point shortly.

Theater Musician In 1773 Viotti entered the orchestra of the Teatro Regio. Founded in 1738, the Teatro Regio had a reputation as one of the finest opera houses of Europe.51 Its


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activities, as well as those of all the other theaters of the city, were controlled by a group of forty noblemen, the Nobile Società dei Cavalieri, which received an annual royal subsidy. The orchestra was comparable in size to the orchestras of other important European opera houses of the time, such as those of Naples and Paris, having about sixty players, with about twenty-eight violins. The main opera season, apart from productions for special occasions, took place during carnival and consisted of two serious operas (opere serie), one in late December– January, the other in January–February, each having a run of about twenty to twenty-five performances. There was, in addition, an autumn season of opera buffa in the smaller theater of Prince Carignano. A French opéra comique company would occasionally visit, and a season of French and Italian plays was held during the spring and summer. This, so far as we know, was Viotti’s first salaried position. But it must be doubted that it was the first time Viotti had sat in the midst of this orchestra. We may surmise that, in the years before he himself joined the orchestra, Viotti would have profited from the musicians’ practice, sometimes abused, of bringing nonplaying persons into the orchestra. The orchestra contracts for the 1760s and 1770s often have the following clause: None of the undersigned virtuosi may, for any reason whatsoever, introduce into the orchestra during the Operas and particularly the Ballets any person or persons who, with their whispering, cause a disturbance and a hindrance to the virtuosi in their playing; and for this inconvenience, and other particular reasons, it is not permitted to introduce them without authorization.52 Pugnani, we may be sure, would have obtained authorization for his prize pupil, secure in the knowledge that Giambattista was there to watch and to listen, not to whisper. The architectural plans of the Teatro Regio, a separate page for each level of the building, are given pride of place in the volume on theaters in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie of 1751–72.53 They repay careful study. In the plan showing the second rank of boxes is indicated the gallery “through which the court passes from the royal palace to the spectacle.” The king and his entourage could indeed reach the royal box directly through a series of rooms and corridors from the royal apartments. There is every reason to believe that the royal family took more than a merely official interest in the opera. On 4 January 1772, the Duke of Savoy, the future King Victor Amadeus III, wrote rather grumpily to his daughter, Josephine, the Comtesse de Provence, in Versailles: The opera is going along nicely, but as far as music is concerned great factions have arisen because of bad blood between Pugnani and the music director, Aprile, the leading man, and Guierini [Lucrezia Agujari], the leading woman. This last gets the approval of the

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groundlings and of us other ignoramuses, for whom, however, it makes no difference; but never mind—our side is the strongest.54 It is interesting that these conflicts reached the ear of the duke, and that they were still unresolved during the performances (Colla’s Andromeda had been premièred on 26 December). The Teatro Regio boasted a unique acoustical feature. Beneath the floor of the orchestra, there was a concave, basin-like space, a kind of resonating chamber, the purpose of which was to “augment the sound of the instruments considerably.”55 One of the cross-sectional plans in the Encyclopédie shows this quite clearly, labeled “Orchestra with a void beneath.”56 One visitor reported that two tubes led the sound from the ends of this chamber to the interior of the theater.57 It is odd that there seem to be no firsthand reports of the efficacy of this early acoustical experiment. Burney, who says he was “carried into every part” of the Teatro, seems not to have been shown it, else he surely would have mentioned it, nor did he hear a performance in the theater. The Encyclopédie plans afford us a glimpse into the working lives of an eighteenth-century theater musician. On the fourth level, behind and above the stage, is shown the musicians’ dressing room—not a very large one considering the size of the orchestra. A few minutes before each performance (which began at 5:30 P.M. when the court was present, otherwise at 6:15 P.M.), Viotti and his colleagues, powdered and bewigged, instruments in hand (excepting the double bassists, who surely had storage space for their instruments nearer the orchestra “pit”), descended the four flights of stairs to a point beneath the upstage area, from where they proceeded to a set of stairs leading up to their places in front of the stage.58 The dancers’ dressing rooms (considerably more of them than for the musicians!) were similarly situated, with access to the same stairs. Viotti’s position was third chair of the second violins, which in Francesco Galeazzi’s orchestra plan of 179159 (see figure 1.3) would place him quite near the watchful eye and the authoritative bow of Pugnani, the first violinist and direttore dell’orchestra. (In 1770, a week after being appointed first violinist of the Chapel and Chamber [Cappella e Camera], Pugnani had threatened to quit his post as leader of the theater orchestra unless he was given a raise in salary. The theater administrators immediately acquiesced.)60 After the orchestra had carefully tuned—the musicians’ contracts of this period are explicit on this point61—the performance began. We have an eyewitness report: [Pugnani] dominates the orchestra masterfully, like a stalwart general in the midst of his troops. Animated by the all-consuming fire of his talent, and intent upon his chief objective which is unity [of ensemble], he subjects, sometimes by a glance, sometimes by a signal, all the members of the orchestra to his every wish. His bow is the commander’s baton, which everyone obeys with utmost precision. With a single bow


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Figure 1.3. Seating plan of the orchestra of the Teatro Regio, ca. 1791, from Francesco Galeazzi, Elementi teorico-pratici di musica con un saggio sopra l’arte di suonare il violino (Turin, 1791–96). Key: A, the orchestra director (Pugnani), raised above the others; b, first violins; c, second violins; d, oboes; e, clarinets; f, horns; g, violas; h, bassoons; I, first cellos; L, first double basses; m, basses (that is, cellos and double basses); n, other horns; o, timpani; p, trumpets; q, first violinist for the ballets; r, harpsichords. Viotti’s position was third chair in the second violins. (By permission of the British Library; 1423.h.5.)

stroke, given at the right moment, he invigorates the orchestra, slows it down, or speeds it up at will; he indicates the subtlest of nuances to the singers, and brings [rappelle] everyone to that perfect unity which is the soul of a performance. Such is his musical preparedness that he is a master accompanist, just as he is in the conducting of a symphony. Imbued with what should be the chief object of every skilful accompanist, which is to support and bring out the essential parts, he never takes his eyes off the singers except for a quick glance at the music; with his remarkable intelligence he grasps so quickly and so profoundly [vivement] the harmony, the character, the tempo and the style [of the music], that he simultaneously stamps its imprint in the souls of the singers and of each member of the orchestra.62 With all due allowance for Rangoni’s perfervid prose, this remains an impressive testimonial to Pugnani’s qualities. In the late eighteenth century, the modern method of conducting an orchestra with a baton had not yet come into general use in Italy. Usually the first violinist led the orchestra from his chair, sometimes using his bow as a baton. In operas he shared the leadership with one or more harpsichord players, a situation that, as we have seen, sometimes created confusion or conflict, particularly when a dominating personality, such as Pugnani, was involved. The Galeazzi plan shows the second violins seated in a row with their backs to the stage. As any opera orchestra musician knows, it can be frustrating not to be able to see the action and the spectacle, except by craning one’s neck around

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for an occasional hasty glimpse, though by the same token there is less distraction. At any rate, there would have been distraction enough provided by the audience. Viotti, if he wished, could have looked up, during rests in the second violin part, or while playing undemanding passages, and discerned in the candlelight the royal family in their central box in the second tier, for example, or the Prince Dal Pozzo della Cisterna, with his friends, in his box. Present-day opera house employees will be interested to know that refreshments were provided by the administration for the singers and dancers, but not the orchestra members, at the dress rehearsals and all the performances. The caterer’s contract stipulated that each singer was to receive four “rinfreschi” (sweets and a drink), the prompter, two; the male dancers received a half-pint of wine and bread, the female dancers a quarter pint and bread, “all of it to be of the best quality.”63 On the other hand, safety standards were perhaps not as stringent as nowadays. Backstage employees were most at risk, especially from falling objects, but the orchestra members were also occasionally injured. In 1782 a member of the first violin section had his leg broken by a falling beam; whether or not he was at his post at the time is not revealed. Instruments were frequently damaged, sometimes during rehearsals. The theater administration duly compensated the victims of these accidents. In the 1766–67 season Gaetano Chiabrano was awarded L.189.6.8 for his broken cello, “because of the ballerino Armano having fallen into the orchestra.” There is no mention of damage to Armano.64 Below is the rehearsal schedule65 for the first opera of the 1773–74 carnival season in the Teatro Regio, J. Myslivecek’s Antigona: December

15 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 21, 22 23 24

staging music music and costumes dress rehearsal ballet dress rehearsal

The sixteenth, then, was the date of the eighteen-year-old Viotti’s first experience in an orchestra of even remotely the size and quality of this one, in fact, in one of the great orchestras of Europe.66 The first of twenty performances was on the twenty-sixth. In January 1774 the son of Victor Amadeus III, Carlo Emanuel, the Prince of Piedmont, and his sister, the princess Marianne, wrote to their two sisters, married to the brothers of Louis XVI of France.67 The prince to the Comtesse d’Artois: “The opera isn’t very good. [Elisabetta] Taiber sings well, the leading man also [. . .] either Marianne or I will send you the libretto.” Princess Marianne to the Comtesse de Provence: “They say that the second opera will be better [. . .] Razet will take the place of Martini, who is unable to dance because he is so old.” Viotti could not have helped noticing from the audience’s reaction, which was vociferous enough to come to the notice of the board of directors,


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that “the public was not pleased with the Ballerino Martini” in the first opera. The poor man was duly replaced in the second opera, as the princess Marianne had foretold, by one Rasetti, who presumably was younger.68 On 15 January the prince writes, “A week from today the second opera begins, called the Defeat of Darius. [. . .] How many camels, elephants, horses and asses will there be?” The prince was only half joking—he knew his ancient Greek history, but he also knew the Teatro Regio, renowned as it was for the lavishness of its productions, in which animals often played no small part. The plan of the ground floor of the theater in the Encyclopédie shows a monumentally large stair-ramp in one corner, beneath the stage, duly labeled “Ramp for bringing horses up to the stage.” The rehearsal schedule69 for the second opera, G. Masi’s La Disfatta di Dario, was recorded in greater detail, giving us some idea of what was in store for Viotti and his colleagues: January

14 18 19 20 21

extras and grooms at 3 o’clock after lunch and music rehearsal at 5:30 with extras extras as above. In the evening music rehearsal, and ballet in the Teatro Carignano staging and distribution of costumes to the grooms and extras dress rehearsal of music with extras, and ballet in the Teatro Carignano dress rehearsal of the ballet in the evening, and after lunch of the extras and horses

The first of twenty-two performances was on 22 January. The Prince of Piedmont had been at least partly right. Though there is no mention of elephants or camels, the horses certainly were there. The list of 152 (!) extras for this production includes thirteen for the Persian Cavalry, and thirteen for the Macedonian,70 which undoubtedly means that there were twenty-six horses onstage at once.71 Lady Mary Coke, who spent the months of February and March in Turin, and who attended the opera “constantly,” thought that the primo soprano for these two operas, the castrato Venanzio Rauzzini, and the prima donna, Elisabetta Taiber, were “very good.”72 Twenty years later Viotti would perform several times in Rauzzini’s concerts in Bath. Listed in table 1.1 are the operas Viotti played in his six seasons as a member of the orchestra of the Teatro Regio. All of these opere serie were composed for the Teatro Regio, most of them destined not to be performed elsewhere. Most of them, and their composers, are now forgotten, but opera seria held the stage through most of the century everywhere except in France. Spectacle and the high soprano voice, particularly the castrato, were the main attractions. A glance at their titles reveals their subjects—based mostly on mythology or classical history, around which elaborately artificial plots were constructed. With

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Table 1.1. Teatro Regio, 1773–79: Operas Performed Season

Opera

Composer(s)

1773–74

Antigona La Disfatto di Dario Merope L’Isola di Alcina ossia Alcina e Ruggiero L’Aurora Cleopatra Sicotenca Calipso Gengis-Kan Medonte Eumene

J. Myslivecˇek G. Masi P. Guglielmi F. Alessandri G. Pugnani C. Monza G. M. Rutini B. Ottani P. Anfossi G. F. Bertoni G. Insanguine, G. F. De Majo, and P. Errichelli M. Mortellari B. Ottani

1774–75 Autumn 1775 1775–76 1776–77 1777–78

1778–79

Lucio Silla Fatima

their emphasis on high heroic deeds, the magnanimity of kings and exalted love, they were ideal court entertainments, but by the 1770s opera seria was a dying genre, giving way to the increasing popularity of comic opera. Royal marriages afforded opportunities for the musicians of the Teatro Regio to earn extra money. On the occasion of the marriage of the Prince of Piedmont to the Princess Clothilde of France (the House of Savoy, as we have seen, was inclined to marry its sons and daughters into the Bourbon dynasty), there were eighteen days of festivities, beginning on 30 September 1775 with the “Entrée solomnelle de la Cour dans Turin” and including nine performances of Pugnani’s pastorale L’Aurora, two concerts and three balls, culminating in a “Chasse avec Bal à Stuping [Stupinigi, the superb royal lodge near Turin].”73 Viotti was paid L.60 to play in the opera; Pugnani was paid L.400, the others in proportion to their salaries at the Teatro Regio. The musicians who played in the concerts and for the balls are not listed by name. Viotti had not yet joined the Cappella e Camera, which normally provided the players for these events. However, extra players (non stipendiati da Sua Maesta) were often hired for court functions, including the carnival balls, and, indeed, an entry in one of the royal registers records a payment of L.527.10 to Ignazio Celionat, including L.60 for having composed “Arie di Balli,” payments for copying, binding, and the fees for “players not in the pay of His Majesty who had the honor of playing for the Great Ball in the Salone of the Royal Palace on 7 October 1775.” Viotti, who by the end of the year was to become a supernumerary in the orchestra of the Cappella e Camera, would have been a likely


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candidate for this honor. Present-day orchestral musicians may be interested to learn that, typically for these occasions, there were differences in the musicians’ fees according to instrument: the fourteen violinists, six oboists, two clarinetists, four bassoonists, and six cellists were paid L.8 each, whereas the two contrabassists and the six horn players were paid L.10, and the timpanist, L.15. Instructive as well is the entry for an extra cellist who was hired, for L.18, to substitute in the three rehearsals (it would seem that it was only for the rehearsals!) for one of the regular players who had fallen ill.74 The musicians’ contract for this marriage opera, with the signatures of Viotti and his colleagues affixed, is preserved in the civic archives of Turin.75 It is typical of the Teatro Regio orchestra contracts of this period. The musicians are required to “be present in this city on 15 September to be ready for whatever instructions are given them” and there are clauses regarding promptness and absences. The players must be equipped with “instruments of the highest [ottimo] quality, with the understanding that they will be inspected carefully at the first rehearsal, and second-rate ones will be rejected. As regards violins and violas, the players must see to it that they are strung with thick strings [che siano montati di grosso, cioé armati di corde grosse].” (The directors of the Teatro Regio are to be commended for their scrupulous attention to detail; one is tempted to see here the influence of the commanding personality of Pugnani, who is known to have used unusually thick strings, though the Italian predilection for thicker strings predates him.76 Thicker strings, with the greater bow pressure required to make them vibrate, produced a more robust, more substantial sound; for this reason Leopold Mozart urged their use in his treatise on violin playing of 1756. Did he admire the sound of the violins and violas of the Teatro Regio orchestra in 1771?)77 Lastly, “excepting those who play the harpsichord, the first violinist [Pugnani], the principal of the second violins, the first cellist, and the first contrabassist and Sig. Secco [the first oboist] expressly, all the players are required to play the ballet music, with attentiveness and without carelessness.” This last clause occurs often enough in these Teatro Regio contracts to suggest that it was, or had been, a point of contention, and that the playing of ballet music was viewed by the players with something less than enthusiasm. Viotti’s beginning salary at the Teatro Regio was L.120, raised to L.150 two years later, and to L.200 for the 1777–78 season (Pugnani’s salary during this period was L.800).78 Viotti continued in this orchestra for six years, remaining in the same chair, his last season being that of 1778–79. The seeds of Viotti’s lifelong, albeit sporadic involvement with the theater were sown here. As a theater musician he would have learned valuable lessons about the inner workings of operatic production, and his close association with Pugnani, an internationally known opera composer,79 would have been a stimulus and an education. The opere serie in the Teatro Regio were the most prestigious, the most expensive productions, the only ones the royal family attended.

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But it was the Italian opere buffe in the Teatro Carignano that were to tell more decisively on the future career of Viotti. The season lasted from the beginning of September to the end of November (occasionally there was a shorter season in the spring), and consisted of three or four operas, with a performance every evening except Friday, for a total of seventy-odd performances— altogether a busier schedule than that of the Teatro Regio. The season ended with three or four performances of a pasticcio. We have very little information about these opera buffa performances, in contrast with the relatively vast documentation that has survived regarding the Teatro Regio.80 It is certain, however, that the orchestra of the Teatro Regio provided the players for the opere buffe, for which a relatively small group of about twenty-five players sufficed, namely a harpsichord, a cello, and a double bass for the recitatives, ten to fifteen violins, one or two violas, two or three cellos, one or two double basses, two oboes, and two horns. Most of the musicians were paid a sum equivalent to about twothirds of their Teatro Regio salaries for playing the opere buffe. Visiting soloists who gave concerts at the Teatro Carignano were also probably accompanied by musicians selected from the Teatro Regio orchestra.81 It seems likely, though there is no direct proof, that Viotti played for the opere buffe in the Teatro Carignano. The available evidence suggests that the membership of the orchestra was fixed, rather than on a rotation system, as one might expect, since fewer players were required.82 Listed in table 1.2 are the opere buffe performed in the Teatro Carignano during Viotti’s permanency in the Teatro Regio orchestra. It was these works, surely, that were fundamental in forming the taste of the future director of the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau in Paris beginning in 1789—an invaluable experience when he was faced with the responsibility of selecting its (exclusively) buffa repertory. The 1773 season has been included in the table, though we do not know when in that year Viotti’s contract with the Nobile Società dei Cavalieri began. Similarly, it seems at least possible that he (and Pugnani) played in the autumn season of 1779—the last performance was on 27 November, leaving time enough before their departure from Italy. It will be seen that Paisiello was the most often performed composer, just as he was to be at the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau, followed closely by Pasquale Anfossi. Almost all of these operas had been composed within the last two or three years; some had been premièred elsewhere in Italy only a few months before the Turin production. We have no reason to suppose that Viotti’s situation in the Palazzo di Cisterna was in any way affected by his having obtained a salaried post. In a later chapter we shall see that Viotti was enjoying Prince Alfonso’s munificence as late as the year 1784. A document from the family archive in Biella suggests that, in the meantime, Prince Alfonso’s patronage continued undiminished: “Statement of Expenditures made in the years 1772 and 1773 for the household of His Excellency the Prince della Cisterna.”83 This two-page summary divides expenses into


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Table 1.2. Teatro Carignano, 1773–79: Operas Performed Season

Opera

Composer

1773

I filosofi immaginari L’innocente fortunata La contessa di Bimpimpoli Il principe ipocondriaco La cameriera per amore (première) La pupilla scaltra *Il geloso [in cimento] La discordia fortunata *La frascatana L’incognita perseguitata L’avaro La vera costanza L’amor[e] artigiano La fiera di Venezia La virtuosa alla moda (La virtuosa moderna?) La finta giardiniera *Il tamburo notturno (Il tamburo) La costanza in amore L’idolo cinese La frascatana Il curioso indiscreto *Le gelosie villane *La vendemmia Le due contesse Il francese bizzarro (première) Il matrimonio per vendetta *L’italiana in Londra Il militare bizzarro

? Not Paisiello’s (1779) Paisiello Astaritta Astaritta Alessandri ? Not Guglielmi’s (1795) Anfossi Paisiello Paisiello Anfossi Anfossi Anfossi Gassmann Salieri Franchini

1774

1775

1776

1777 (spring)

(autumn)

1778

1779

Anfossi Paisiello ? (G. Valentini?)a Paisiello Paisiello Anfossi Sarti Gazzaniga Paisiello Gresnick ?b Cimarosa Sarti

a

Valentini’s La costanza in amore was so outdated (première in 1715) as to be extremely unlikely, but I was unable to find a more recent opera with that title. b Anfossi’s Il matrimonio per inganno was premièred in Florence in the spring of 1779. ASCT, Collezione IX, Conti, 58:2; 59:7–8; 60:7–8; 61:7–8; 62:3–4, 7–8; 63:7–8; 64:7–8. These lists do not name the composers. In cases of doubt or of duplication I have chosen, where possible, the most likely names on the basis of chronological proximity of the first performance to the Carignano performances. Sources: Caselli 1969; Loewenberg 1943. An asterisk indicates an opera that was performed in Viotti’s Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau in 1789–92.

five categories, the second of which is “Personal [Particolare] Expenditures for the Prince,” consisting of “money allocated to the Prince for the maintenance of his house in supplies, for his clothing, purchase of horses, payments to workmen for the carriages and equipment reserved for his use, and expenditures made for Viotti.” Since there is no itemization within the categories, it is impossible to know how much was spent on Viotti. But the fact that the “expenditures made

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for Viotti” appear to be equivalent in importance to these other expenditures allows us to infer that they were not inconsiderable. We have seen that Prince Alfonso received his first important court appointment in 1771, on 2 July, to be exact. In 1775 his honorarium as Second Equerry and Gentleman of the Table was L.325 annually (L.81.5 quarterly), as shown in the same court registers listing the salaries of the musicians.84 He would inevitably be spending less and less time at home, as would Viotti, as their careers went their separate ways. On the other hand, the difference in their ages, an impediment to intimacy in 1766 when the prince was eighteen and the violinist eleven, may have become sufficiently unimportant by 1773, when their ages were twenty-five and eighteen, respectively, to permit a real friendship to develop. On 20 October 1771 Maria Anna, aged eighteen, was married to a nobleman, a marquis; she was the last to leave the Palazzo della Cisterna. Perhaps Giambattista played at the celebrations that undoubtedly were held in the palace, though there is no record of expenses for them in the family archive.85 In 1773 Prince Alfonso began major renovations of his palace, including a complete refurbishment of his own apartments and those of his mother. On 6 August Viotti signed, as one of the witnesses, the contract between the prince and the chief builder.86 Other than this, there is no record as to how Viotti’s daily life might have been disrupted by this extensive work, which lasted several years. On 12 February 1774 Pugnani and Viotti were present at a masked ball in the theater of the prince Carignano, one of several balls usually given during the carnival period.87 Shortly afterward, a booklet was published that raises intriguing questions about Viotti’s activities in the 1770s.88 The booklet contains poems presented in homage to various persons attending the ball. Pugnani, “who is no less admirable for his goodness than for the charms of his violin,” is among the recipients of a poem, as is Viotti, “who one day will be without contradiction one of the first violinists of Italy.” But what is extraordinary about this seemingly trivial publication is the beginning of the laudatory dedication just quoted: “to young Viotti, [Pugnani’s] disciple, who has already shone in London and in Paris by the sweetness of his playing, as well as for his composing.” Viotti’s earliest biographers mention a trip to London and Paris in the company of Pugnani, just before Viotti’s Paris sojourn of 1782–92.89 We have already encountered the unverifiable suggestion that Giambattista went to London as early as 1767, when he was twelve years old. This later possibility, too, is not supported by any documentary evidence, with one tantalizing exception: in the Public Advertiser of 13 May 1773 there is an advertisement for a benefit concert for the cellist Janson to be given that evening in Hickford’s Room, London. Included in the program is a trio to be played by Pugnani, “Viot,” and Janson.90 It is a mystery. There is no other evidence that Viotti had accompanied his teacher on this, Pugnani’s second trip to London. Again, in October 1772, Pugnani had presented his letter of recommendation from the foreign minister of the Turin court to the Torinese ambassador in London.91 Again, the ambassador makes no mention of Viotti in


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his dispatch. But it seems unlikely that the author of this booklet, a man apparently on terms of easy familiarity with the recipients of the poems, would have invented from whole cloth such an important and such a recent event. At any rate, Pugnani had almost certainly returned to Turin by the end of July 1773, after a two-week stopover in Paris, in time for Viotti, had he been in the company of his teacher, to have signed the builder’s contract on 6 August. Extraordinary too is the reference to Viotti’s composition(s). We have no certain knowledge of Viotti’s youthful compositions, though Miel asserts that he composed his first violin concerto (no. 3) at the age of fourteen, that is, in 1769 or 1770.92 That Viotti’s compositions (a violin duet or a string trio seems more likely than a concerto) had apparently been heard in Paris and in London as early as 1774 is news indeed. Later that same year, in November, the violinist Maddalena LombardiniSirmen again visited Turin; apparently she remained for several months. Since her previous visit she had performed to wide acclaim in Paris and London. This time the nineteen-year-old Giambattista might have listened to her with a more critical ear: he may have detected distinct differences between her style of playing and that of the Piedmontese school. Two contemporary reports help us to focus on these differences. First, Burney, who heard another Tartini pupil in Florence two months after hearing Pugnani in Turin: [Pietro Nardini’s] tone is even and sweet; not very loud, but clear and certain; he has a great deal of expression in his slow movements, which it is said, he has happily caught from his master Tartini. [. . .] his stile is delicate, judicious, and highly finished. Whoever has heard the polished performance of the celebrated Signora Sirmen, may form a pretty just idea of Signor Nardini’s manner of playing.93 Second is Samuel Sharp, who heard Pugnani play at chapel in May 1766, and who does not mince words: It is said that Pugnani draws out a louder tone from the upper part of the fiddle than Giardini does, and this, it must be granted, is his forte; but with submission to Italian ears, mine were a little shocked in several parts of his solo. I wished he had been a little more sweet, though he had been less forte; and, from this example of so excellent a performer, it may be suspected that a string, at a certain shortness, will not admit of sweetness beyond such a degree of loudness. His taste and elegance I thought by no means comparable to Giardini’s.94 In a nutshell, then, the tradition of violin playing inherited by Viotti stressed a powerful tone, even to the point of sacrificing delicacy and finish. It was precisely these characteristics that were noticed by at least one critic at Viotti’s Paris début in 1782, and later recalled by his disciple Baillot, as we shall see in a later chapter.

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Chapel and Chamber Musician The next milestone in Viotti’s career was his appointment, late in 1775, to the orchestra of the King’s Music, the Cappella e Camera. The maestro di cappella was Francesco Saverio Giay (fl. 1764–92), a prolific composer of sacred music for the court, whose father had been the maestro di cappella before him. In the 1770s this organization had about ten singers, including a male soprano (castrato). The orchestra was roughly half the size of that of the Teatro Regio (about thirty players: an organist, thirteen–fifteen violins, one or two violas, four cellos, two double basses, at least four oboes, including one or two “bass oboes,”95 and two horns), though their memberships overlapped considerably. On 7 May 1770 Pugnani had been appointed “Primo Suonatore di violino” of the Cappella e Camera, with a raise in salary from L.500 to L.1200.96 Two months later, Charles Burney visited; his account merits extended quotation: [T]he service is made very easy to them [i.e., the two Besozzis and Pugnani], as they only perform solos there, and those just when they please. The Maestro di Capella is Don Quirico Gasparini. In the [royal] chapel there is commonly a symphony played every morning, between 11 and 12 o’clock, by the King’s band, which is divided into three orchestras and placed in three different galleries; and though far separated from each other, the performers know their business so well that there is no want of a person to beat time. [. . .] On festivals Signor Pugnani plays a solo, or the Bezozzis a duet, and sometimes motets are performed with voices. The organ is in the gallery which faces the king, and in this stands the principal first violin. [. . .] Signor Pugnani played a concerto this morning [Saturday, 14 July] at the King’s chapel, which was crowded on the occasion. It is an elegant rotund, built of black marble, and happily constructed for music, being very high, and terminated by a dome. I need say nothing of the performance of Signor Pugnani, his talents being too well known in England to require it. I shall only observe, that he did not appear to exert himself: and it is not to be wondered at, as neither his Sardinian majesty, nor any one of the numerous royal family, seem at present, to pay much attention to music.97 The inimitable Burney’s description is, as always, wonderfully sharp-eyed, but it is misleading in several ways. Gasparini was the maestro di cappella not of the Royal Chapel but of the cathedral of Turin, San Giovanni.98 And Burney seems to be describing two different spaces, though without saying so. (In his journal he says that he “saw the King 3 times at chapel where his attendance is very constant.”99) “The gallery which faces the king,” would appear to be the gallery or balcony, not in a chapel, but in the right transept of the cathedral, still


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containing the organ, which faces the royal tribune in the left transept, in which the king sometimes heard Mass or other services on occasions when it was deemed appropriate to combine the ceremonies of the Royal Chapel with those of the cathedral (see figure 1.4). But, in that case, where were the other two galleries? There now seems to be a gallery directly above the king’s tribune, and the third gallery was possibly in the balustrade on the edge of the floor of the Chapel of the Holy Shroud, overlooking the choir of the cathedral.100 However, it is all but impossible to reconcile this description with the “elegant rotund, built of black marble,” which can only be the Chapel of the Holy Shroud itself. This darkly sumptuous room, where the famous relic had been enshrined since 1694, is behind the main altar of San Giovanni and abuts onto the royal palace, so that the king had direct access to it by way of a corridor. This chapel does have three balconies overlooking the interior, one or possibly two of which contained an organ,101 but it is difficult to see how one of them could have faced the king. Moreover, the king presumably made use of still another space, the much less imposing private royal chapel within the Palazzo Reale. This room had only one gallery (over the entrance) for the organ and the musicians, a small one at that, with space for no more than twelve or fifteen players, which means that only about half of the orchestra could have played at any given time. Regrettably, these apparent contradictions and gaps in our knowledge persist. A tentative solution: The king, Charles Emmanuel III, who was known for his piety, heard a simple form of Mass, or devotions, probably early in the morning in the private chapel in the palace, with a reduced musical component. Then, at eleven o’clock, he attended the more elaborate ceremony in the Chapel of the Shroud (or, occasionally, in the cathedral), at which, according to Burney, “commonly” the Messa Bassa (Low Mass) was spoken in a low voice during the symphony, or, on festive occasions, a solo by Pugnani or a duet by the Besozzis was heard. According to the French traveler Lalande, the king heard mass in the Chapel of the Holy Shroud in summer, in the private chapel in winter,102 which, if true, raises as many questions as it answers. Another question arises, of interest to us because it concerns Viotti’s daily professional routine for four years: how was the orchestra divided into three groups? There can be no question of this division somehow reflecting the repertory of the orchestra. Much of the music performed in the Royal Chapel and in the cathedral was composed by Giay and Gasparini, respectively. Their music (a great deal of it has been preserved in manuscript form in the cathedral archives)103—masses, motets, settings of psalms, various ceremonial works such as Te Deum and Miserere—shows considerable variety in its vocal and instrumental combinations,104 but does not seem to have exploited to any great extent the antiphonal technique of chorus against chorus or instrumental groups answering each other in the cori spezzati style formerly fashionable in Venice and Rome. Was there then a more or less established arrangement by which the musicians were dispersed in the three balconies? For example: 1) the leader (Pugnani, who

Figure 1.4. Architectural plan of the Cathedral of San Giovanni, the Chapel of the Holy Shroud and the Palazzo Reale, Turin. Adapted from the volume Palazzo Reale with the kind permission of Daniela Piazza Editore. Key: 1, nave of the cathedral; 2, royal tribune; 3, organ loft with musicians’ gallery; 4, Chapel of the Holy Shroud, with three balconies; 5, royal chapel; 6, rooms and corridor leading to the Teatro Regio.


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stood, as presumably the other violinists and the violists did), the organ, and the continuo instruments, probably a cello, a double bass, and a bassoon; 2) the violins (If so, this balcony would have been crowded—possibly a few of them stood with the leader. Or were the first and second violins in separate galleries?); 3) the violas, two or three cellos, a double bass, oboes, and horns. As for the “motets performed with voices,” Giay and Gasparini composed several motets, most of them with orchestral accompaniment. Did the singers also stand in the balconies? Of course, not all the musicians performed every piece. For example, Pugnani’s concerto probably required only string accompaniment, possibly with pairs of oboes and horns. Then too, Burney’s understanding of the term symphony may not correspond precisely to ours. Thirty-four of Haydn’s symphonies, ranging from no. 1 to no. 89, are listed in the catalogue of the Royal Chapel.105 That all of these manuscript sets of parts date from the mid-nineteenth century does not exclude the possibility that some of them are copies of earlier sets of parts, some perhaps acquired by 1776, so that they could have formed part of the repertory that Viotti played. Pugnani’s symphonies, of which seven survive, may have been among those performed every morning. Stylistically they resembled those of the contemporary Mannheim and Vienna composers and often included a minuet as the third movement.106 Was Gasparini shocked at the inclusion of a dance movement in such a sacred context? At any rate, this vocal-orchestral repertory constituted Viotti’s first sustained ensemble experience outside of opera. We must doubt that Pugnani and the Bezozzis performed only solos in the chapel services—on special occasions, perhaps, but surely in the normal services Pugnani would have been expected to lead the orchestra, small though it was. Finally, we have seen that some members of the royal family did at least take a lively interest in the opera, something that Burney could not have observed in July. It seems likely that the fifteen-year-old Viotti, who had been studying with Pugnani for only a few months, had attended this same festive ceremony to hear his master play. Indeed we may well suppose that such events were a regular part of Viotti’s musical education.107 The redoubtable Englishman would perhaps not have noticed him, but, as a foreigner of some renown, he himself would have been relatively easy to distinguish in the crowded chapel. Burney, of course, was not to know that twenty-four years later, he would be attending a concert in London at which Pugnani’s pupil was one of the star attractions.108 On 27 December 1775 Viotti was taken on as a supernumerary: “Council of the Royal Household. On the information received concerning the abilities of Giovanni Battista Viotti, we are graciously pleased to appoint him as a supernumerary violinist in Our Chapel and Chamber; we therefore decree that he be so designated in the accounts.”109 Despite this mention of the accounts, a

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supernumerary musician was normally hired for a trial period during which he received no pay; when a vacancy occurred he become eligible for the permanent post. Only five days earlier, on 22 December, Pugnani and five other musicians in the Capella e Camera had been granted substantial increases in their salaries, in the case of Pugnani, from L.1200 to L.1500 annually.110 And on 19 January 1776 Pugnani and Alessandro Besozzi, the first oboist of the Royal Chapel, were both granted the title of Primo Virtuoso della Camera e Direttore Generale della Musica Istrumentale.111 On 5 March 1776 Viotti became a full-fledged member of the orchestra of the Royal Chapel. The fact is duly recorded in the Royal Household accounts;112 there is a related document, in the State Archive in Biella,113 that powerfully evokes the status of a court musician as, in the first instance, a servant of the Crown. It is the Act of Appointment of Viotti to the king’s Capella e Camera, dated 5 March 1776. With it is the printed text of the oath that Viotti was twice required to pronounce, once for the Camera on 28 March, “before noon,” and again for the Cappella, after considerable delay, on 3 December, “after noon.” (The presence of this document in the Cisterna family archive suggests that Viotti was still living in the prince’s palace in 1776.) The text of the oath, too long to quote in its entirety, is primarily a detailed undertaking of fealty and submission to the king—uncompromising, even alarming in its severity: with all my ability, vigilance, and loyalty to fulfil my assigned duties, and to execute all that is required of me by my superiors in the service of His Majesty, and to have my subordinates perform likewise, even at peril of life, indeed to lose it rather than ever to conduct myself, or to consent directly or indirectly in any way to anything against the interests of the Person, the House, the Territories, the honor or the Administration of His Majesty. Viotti took the oath for the Cappella “in Torino in a room of the residence of His Excellency Monsgr. Francesco Rorà, archbishop of Torino.” This was none other than the “discoverer” of Viotti, the man who, as bishop of Ivrea, had interceded on Viotti’s behalf with the Marchesa di Voghera ten years earlier after being charmed by the boy’s playing and demeanor at a dinner concert. On both occasions Viotti’s oath taking was certified in the hand of the presiding court official as follows: “Having personally presented himself, Sigr. Gio. Batta. Viotti, who, with head bared, his right hand on the Sacred Evangelists, without sword [this phrase is omitted for the Capella], and kneeling, has sworn. . .” Rarely have the dusty archives of eighteenth-century institutions yielded up such a vivid vignette. We see the violinist in our mind’s eye, a shaft of the wan winter afternoon light on his blond hair, as he kneels before the


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prelate, who holds the sacred text. We may presume that the archbishop had maintained a personal interest in the twenty-one-year-old musician, who had come so far. Could he have imagined how much further he would go?114 Viotti almost certainly played the viola during his first year in the orchestra of the royal Chapel and Chamber. The Act of Appointment refers to him as a “suonatore di violino” but stipulates that “he must play those other instruments at which he is proficient when ordered to by those in authority.” The man whom Viotti replaced, one Giovanni Toso, though also referred to as a violinist in the same document, played the viola in the orchestra. All four of the quarterly orchestra stipend lists for 1776 in the registers of the Administration of the Royal Household clearly show Viotti as one of two players in the viola section.115 Toso played until 5 March, when Viotti took his place; the first quarterly payment was divided between them proportionately. Beginning in the first quarter of 1777, Viotti appears in the last (seventh) chair of the first violins, which place he occupied until he left Italy in December 1779. Pugnani, who enjoyed unchallenged sway over the orchestra, certainly over the strings, may have wished to give Viotti the benefit of a year’s experience as a violist. In any case the balance of numbers among the string sections was sufficiently flexible to allow Viotti to play the viola some of the time, the violin other times, as the repertory demanded, and as Pugnani deemed appropriate. This is perhaps the most likely possibility. Indeed, in the 1770s the viola “section” varied between one and two players (in all of 1781 and the first three quarters of 1782 there were none listed). The “neglect” of the viola section was characteristic of Italian and French orchestras, and reflects the prevailing musical style of the period, particularly the Italian style, which emphasized the melody, the bass providing the harmonic foundation, and the middle or inner parts, normally played by the violas, given less importance. In Viotti’s own first nineteen violin concertos, for Paris, the violas are confined almost entirely to the tuttis; in the accompanying passages the orchestra is typically reduced to the first and second violins and bass (cellos and double basses). Viotti’s salary remained at L.200, by far one of the two or three lowest in the orchestra. Perhaps not too much significance should be attached to this fact. It is difficult to know the basis for the rather considerable differences among the salaries of the orchestral musicians both of the Royal Chapel and Chamber and of the Teatro Regio. Criteria neither of merit nor of seniority seem to have been applied with consistency. To take one example, the violinist Carlo Antonio Celoniat’s salary at the Teatro Regio, as a member of the first violin section, remained at L.130 from 1765 until 1780. Viotti, in the second violins, entered at L.120, but, as we have seen, after two years went to L.150 and after another two years, to L.200. But in the chapel orchestra Celoniat’s salary was L.250, while Viotti’s remained at L.200, though he was in the first violin section and Celoniat was in the second violins. However, in the four years that Viotti was a member of the chapel orchestra, only one player, a double bassist, was given a raise. It is

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possible that if Viotti had remained longer his salary would have been brought up to the level of most of the other section violinists. We have seen that balls were a regular feature of the carnival festivities. In Viotti’s time about ten carnival balls were normally held in the Palazzo Reale. Balls were also held at various times of the year in the royal palaces outside the city—Venaria, Moncalieri, and Stupinigi—and as part of the celebrations for royal births and marriages. These performances would have been a regular part of the Royal Chapel and Chamber musicians’ workload. The only relevant references in the Chapel and Chamber accounts consist of lists of ten to twelve extra (straordinari ) players, most of them drawn from the orchestra of the Teatro Regio, sometimes named, sometimes listed only by instrument: four or five violins, who were paid L.5 per ball, four or five cellos, and sometimes an oboe and/or a double bass, who were paid L.6.116 They were presumably brought in to augment the Chapel and Chamber orchestra, which suggests that, if most of the members played, the orchestra for these balls contained upward of thirty musicians. Viotti’s name is not to be found on these orchestra lists for the years 1774 and 1775, when he was a member of the Teatro Regio orchestra but not yet of the Royal Chapel and Chamber. But there is every reason to believe that he participated when he was a member of the latter group. There were also twelve to fifteen masked balls in the Teatro Carignano during carnival time, usually with an orchestra of eighteen musicians, paid by the Teatro Regio and presumably drawn from its orchestra. The Teatro records do not reveal the instrumentation of this orchestra (which probably included at least eight violins), nor the names of the players, nor whether it was a fixed group from year to year, or organized on a rotation basis.117 We cannot know whether Viotti participated, though it is entirely possible that he did. Was he a member of the orchestra for the masked ball on 12 February 1774 when he and Pugnani were each presented with a poem? Concerts were also occasionally given at various times throughout the year at court, again by members of the Chapel and Chamber orchestra. We have very few details, but the available evidence suggests that these were not very frequent, perhaps five or six in a year. One concert we know of was given at Venaria on 24 May 1776, the birthday of the Prince of Piedmont.118 We can only guess as to the programs of these concerts; surely they included works of composer-members of the orchestra—Pugnani, Ignazio Celoniat, and others. And Viotti? Would he have been given the honor of playing a concerto? On 4 March 1779 the copyist of the chapel orchestra was paid L.41.10 to copy eighty-three pages of music (orchestral parts)—fifty-three pages of minuets and contradanze for court balls, and thirty pages for two sinfonie concertante.119 These last were to “remain in the collection” (che restano in fondo) of the Royal Chapel. Whether or not they were sinfonie concertante in the now-accepted meaning of this term, that is, concertos for two or more solo instruments with orchestra, these two works are no longer to be found in the Royal Chapel collection, nor are any


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works by Pugnani or Viotti.120 Viotti’s two known symphonies concertantes, for two violins and orchestra, were performed in 1787 in Paris. In 1772, the indefatigable Ignazio Celoniat was given permission by the Nobile Società dei Cavalieri to organize a series of summer concerts in the Teatro Carignano, consisting of both instrumental and vocal pieces.121 There is no record of this having been repeated in any subsequent year, nor do we know which musicians participated. Could the seventeen-year-old Viotti have been among them? We have no knowledge, throughout this period, of how often Viotti was able to visit his native village, to see his father and stepmother and their growing family. His only documented visit has already been noted—when he was a witness at the baptism of his half-sister Domenica Appolonia on 10 February 1767, as recorded in the register of births of Fontanetto. But we must suppose that he found time to return to Fontanetto occasionally. If, as Negri asserts, he was always accompanied by a servant, Giambattista’s visits would not have gone unnoticed. As for Felice Viotto, only one notice of him in this period has surfaced. On 15 June 1774, he paid L.9 to the authorities of the Church of Santa Maria in Fontanetto for “four old pieces of furniture.”122 Did the blacksmith want them for his house, or did he resell them at a profit? We come now to the second great upheaval in Viotti’s life and career. He and his teacher are about to embark on a two-year-long European tour. It is December 1779—Viotti is twenty-four years old. So far as we know, he is still living in the Palazzo della Cisterna. Since 1773 he has been a member of the orchestra of the Teatro Regio, since 1776, that of the Royal Chapel. With the sole exception of the 1774 masked ball booklet, the existing documentation of Viotti’s Turin years might well lead one to believe that he was destined for an unremarkable career as a rank-and-file orchestral violinist. And yet, within a month of his leaving Italy Viotti was reliably reported to be a better player than his teacher, and within another three or four years he had established himself as the first violinist of Europe. It is highly unlikely that Viotti could have sprung thus fully armed without some previous solo experience.123 It is safe to assume that in the 1770s he had played concertos and sonatas in and around Turin, in churches and in private concerts in palaces such as those of the Prince Carignano, the Archbishop Rorà, and the Prince della Cisterna.124 At the same time, Viotti, unlike his teacher, has not moved up in the ranks. There is no sign that he was being groomed as Pugnani’s eventual successor, or that he considered himself a candidate for this honor. But there can be no doubt that he was fully aware that he stood head and shoulders above his colleagues—we shall see that false modesty was not in his character. How then to fulfill his extraordinary talent? It may come as a surprise to some readers to learn that in the eighteenth century all of the prominent violin soloists of Europe, without exception, were

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also orchestral players. The situation was quite unlike that of today, in which there is a separate, elite class of famous soloists, who might occasionally play chamber music in public, in addition to their solo appearances, but who never play, and never have played, professionally in an orchestra. The age in which a performer could sustain his career exclusively as a touring virtuoso lay in the future; it was Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840), in the nineteenth century, who was the first to do so. Leopold Mozart, after inveighing in his treatise against the ignorance and pretentiousness of would-be soloists, and their inferiority as musicians to good orchestral players, is careful to add, albeit in a footnote, “I speak here nowise of those great virtuosi who, besides their extraordinary art in the playing of concertos, are also good orchestral violinists. These are the people who truly deserve the greatest esteem.”125 Mozart mentions no names, but Pugnani certainly comes to mind. Viotti, then, could not have envisaged a purely solo career, except for a relatively brief period, as an interlude or as a prelude to a post as an orchestral leader in some court or city other than Turin. And yet, the letter in the Turin court archives quoted below shows clearly that he went on this trip having every intention, or at least showing every intention, of returning. Pugnani and Viotti were granted a paid leave of absence of one-and-a-half years to make this voyage. Eighteen years later, looking back on this period of his life, in his autobiographical Précis of 1798, Viotti wrote that “having reached the age when I believed myself to be capable of something, I left that city [Turin]126 with the intention of traveling and of gradually developing my talent.” Viotti does not mention Pugnani, but it was the latter who, if indeed the tour was not his idea, at the very least was instrumental in making it possible, through his influence at court and through his prestige abroad. On 5 December 1779 Pugnani obtained from the foreign minister a letter of recommendation addressed to the Torinese ambassador to Prussia, in the flawlessly elegant hand of the ministry secretary, and in the ornate language of all these court missives: The Comte de Perron to the Comte Fontana, 5 December 1779. Letter handed to Mr. Pugnani the same day. Mr. Pugnan, First Violin of the King’s Chapel, having wished to go on a tour in various States of Germany, and even to cross into Russia, accompanied by Mr. Viot, also a violinist of the Chapel, His Majesty has graciously granted them a leave of absence of one and a half years for this trip. Mr Pugnan has already traveled in parts of these countries, and his musical talents are well enough known there that he will enjoy approbation such as may satisfy those who, as he, so distinguish themselves. However, since it is a matter of two persons in the service of His Majesty, He has permitted me to send with them this letter to obtain the honor of presenting themselves to you, and of placing themselves under


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your protection. I hope that you will graciously accord to them what is proper and suitable, and that you will help them, so far as it is within your power, to gain from their trip the benefits they expect. Of course, it is understood that they will comport themselves, as I have no doubt they will, in a manner to merit the kindnesses that you might bestow upon them, and to enable you to report well of them.127 Sometime later that month they set out for Geneva, their first destination. Surely, before leaving, Viotti visited Fontanetto to say good-bye and to see the latest addition to his father’s and stepmother’s family, Giovanni Maria, born on 27 November, who survived into manhood.

chapter two

Grand Tour, 1780–81

A

lmost certainly the two musicians went by way of the Mont Cenis Pass, which by the second half of the eighteenth century was no longer an especially hazardous undertaking, even in the winter.1 Travelers were carried in purpose-built sedan chairs by the sure-footed mountaineers, who for generations had specialized in this line of work. We may imagine Pugnani and Viotti, bundled in their warmest overcoats, clutching their instruments (the rest of their baggage they would have entrusted to the carriers), jostled along the snowy Alpine precipices. Pugnani, who was approaching his fiftieth birthday, had made the trip at least three times before. For that matter, it may not have been the first time for Viotti. Several of the early accounts assert that Pugnani and Viotti visited Voltaire in Ferney, near Geneva, at the beginning of their grand tour. Since Voltaire left Ferney on 5 February 1778, and died in Paris on 30 May, the story has been dismissed as a canard. But the earliest account, that by Edme Miel,2 also states that Viotti was about twenty-two years old, which would place the tour, and the Voltaire visit, closer to 1777. Is it possible that Miel has conflated two or more trips, during one of which the two violinists did visit Voltaire? Miel says that “l’académicien Chabanon [ . . . ] grand amateur de violon” was with Voltaire when he received the two Italians and that it was he who introduced them to the philosopher. Michel Paul Gui de Chabanon was indeed a close friend and frequent correspondent of Voltaire’s, besides being an amateur violinist who had appeared with the Parisian Concert des Amateurs in 1775.3 In 1786 he and Viotti were fellow subscribing members of the Masonic Société olympique in Paris.4 Chabanon was with Voltaire at Ferney from 1 May to 4 November 1767.5 This period overlaps with the hiatus in Viotti’s music lessons, August–December 1767, during which, as we have seen, there is a possibility that the twelve-year-old Giambattista 40


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accompanied Pugnani to England. The only other known sojourn of Chabanon’s at Ferney, relevant to our inquiries, was in the summer of 1775 (exact dates unknown—he was definitely there on 1 July, and had returned to Paris by 29 July).6 We know that Viotti and his colleagues were required to be in Turin on 15 September 1775 for the rehearsals of the wedding opera of that autumn;7 it is possible that, sometime in the preceding summer, Pugnani took his prize pupil on a trip abroad, including a visit to play for Voltaire. All of which, circumstantial and inconclusive as it is, at least leaves open the possibility that Miel did not invent the story. Pugnani and Viotti would have arrived at the very gates of Geneva without leaving the territory of the kingdom of Sardinia. Miel tells us that their arrival was unexpected, and that the local concert series, poised to begin under the leadership of the French violinist Jean-Jérôme Imbault, was hastily revised to accommodate Viotti.8 It scarcely seems credible that they arrived in Geneva unannounced—cultural ties between Turin and Geneva were close. At any rate they would surely have known of the Geneva concert series, which was longstanding, and which featured foreign musicians as a matter of course. In fact, we may conjecture that Pugnani brought his pupil to Geneva with the express purpose of placing him in the concert series, an act of generosity not inconsistent with what we know of Pugnani’s character. On 10 January 1780 the Reverend Thomas Brand, in Geneva on the Grand Tour with his charge, James Hall (later president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh), wrote to his friend the Reverend Robert Wharton, in Durham. Brand, a music lover and a keen amateur violist and chamber music player, was a discriminating observer of the musical scene on his travels throughout Europe in the 1780s and 1790s. He reports: I will first give you an account of the state of Music in Geneva. [ . . . ] The weekly concerts are begun and we subscribe to both. They are exactly the same except that the Maison de Ville has a better room and better company than the Rue Basse. The bill is as follows. Act I. Symphonie. Song Madame Fallotico. Concerto on the Violin one week Viotty [sic] the other Imbaud [i.e., Imbault]. Italian Song Mr. Beauvalet. Concerto on the Hautboy Mr. Demachi and the Bassoon Mr. Faure each his week. French Song Mr. Frenay or Duet Mr. and Madame Fallotico. Act II. Symphonie. Song Beauvalet. Concerto Violoncello alternately Mr. Triklir or Mr. Scherer. Ariette Mr. Frenay. Solo Violin Viotti. Quatuor in the Olympiade or the Belle Arsene or some other chorus, Falloticos, Frenay, Beauvalet. First this for Mr. Viotty. He is a scholar of Pugnani and I think one of the best players I ever heard. His tone and execution are equally great and he is besides a well made handsome man and plays with wonderful ease and grace. This winter is his first appearance at the head of a concert. I prophesy he will visit London if this diabolical war does not sink the Thermometer of English

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Generosity as much below the freezing point as Réamur is at this present writing at Geneva, that is 10 degrees [ . . . ]. Next comes Mr. Imbaud a very good player but feeble, just equal to the whistlings and tricks of a concerto of Davaux and Jarnowick. [Giovanni Giornovichi; Brand goes on to evaluate, in some cases mercilessly, the other players and the singers.] Tomorrow and the Monday following comes forward in the front of the orchestra the largest of all the human noses that have appeared in the world since that memorable cool evening in which the courteous stranger enter’d Strasburg. Need I mention which body belongs to it. You must have seen Pugnani. Tuesday morn. I have heard Pugnani. The whole Concert was of his own music. Viotti is the best player of the two.9 We can only envy the Reverend Wharton his spirited and candid correspondent. The mysterious “courteous stranger” in Strasburg must have been a personal allusion; its meaning would have been understood by Wharton. As for Pugnani’s nose, it was indeed worthy of mention, monumentally so. For the rest, thanks to the keenly observant Brand, we now know much more than previously about Viotti’s changing relationship with his teacher, and we are able to make certain tentative deductions about his repertory during this early period of his career, about the chronology of his early works, and above all about the timing of Viotti’s emergence as a world-class player.10 Brand’s remarks about Viotti’s playing and presence confirm the existing reports from the high tide of his fame, years later, but are especially valuable because they represent the considered opinion of a judicious, indeed highly critical listener, for whom Viotti was an unknown quantity. It is of particular interest that Viotti’s “great” tone was already a distinguishing feature of his playing. Nonetheless, for Brand, Viotti’s bearing and attractiveness evidently contributed to the impression made by his playing. We may pause to consider Viotti’s appearance and physical presence, described in terms extraordinarily similar to those of Brand by three persons who knew him. Giovanni Battista Negri referred to the “grace with which the lad [aged eleven] played his part,” “his surpassing modesty” (echoed in a report of Viotti’s playing sixteen years later), and “his pleasing appearance.” Ange Marie d’Eymar, in 1792, describes his friend’s “pleasing face, his gentle (douce) and sensitive look, his slender figure, his dress always elegant, his thick blond hair.”11 The portrait of Viotti painted in 1783 by an unknown artist, now in the Museum of the Cité de la Musique, Paris, shows him wearing a wig covering his hair, but his eyes are unmistakably blue. It is not unusual to find blueeyed, blond-haired natives of Piedmont. Miel (1775–1842), who was personally acquainted with Viotti, possibly as early as 1802,12 writes: Viotti was one of those men who are most favored by nature. His head was of an extraordinary shape and size. His features, full of character


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rather than regular, were pleasing. His countenance was open, expressive and unfailingly cheerful. His bearing was natural, his figure wellmade. In all, his appearance was very distinguished. His long-lashed eyes shone with a lively intelligence. His smooth brow was prominent, indicative of genius.13 These descriptions cannot be dismissed as exaggerations borne of friendship— they are too consistent for that, and they are substantiated to an extent by Brand. Miel thought that the portrait by G. Trossarelli, now known only by an engraving by H. Meyer, bore the closest resemblance to Viotti of all his portraits, though the one by Vigée-Lebrun (1805) is surely a close likeness (see frontispiece).14 On the basis of the Brand letter it would appear that Viotti’s professional relationship with Pugnani was undergoing a dramatic change. It has long been thought that Viotti was riding the coattails of his illustrious teacher. After all, on the title page of his first known published work, the Concerto no. 3 (Berlin, 1781), he was identified as “élève du célèbre Pugnani,” and the St. Petersburg court calendar announced the appearance of “the recently arrived Italian musicians, Puniani and his pupil” on 14 February 1781 without mention of Viotti’s name. But the present letter suggests convincingly that, though he had not yet acquired the European-wide fame of his teacher, Viotti’s career had already become in some sense quite independent of Pugnani, who does not figure in the Geneva weekly concerts except, it would seem, as a guest. Viotti is clearly the star performer, “at the head of the concert.” Brand’s peremptory “Viotti is the best player of the two” merely drives home the point.15 In his next letter to Wharton, dated 20 January 1780, Brand writes, “I am just come from a Concert of Amateurs & Amatrices with Pugnani, Viotti & Triquelir [i.e., the “Mr. Triklir,” cellist of the previous letter] at their head, chez Mons. Le Syndic [the Mayor] Turretin. There I heard Son regina very well sung & the 1st Quintett of Boccherini very well play’d except the Tenor. Don’t fancy that I am modest I did not play it.”16 Many of the early accounts of Viotti assert (Miel, once again, was the first) that Viotti enjoyed playing the chamber works of Boccherini above all others. Brand confirms with these lines that Viotti was already playing Boccherini in public in 1780. Viotti played a concerto every other week and a violin solo every week, but what concertos, what solos? We are forced to conjecture. Pugnani’s five known violin concertos (there may have been others) come to mind, although Pugnani surely would have wanted to play them himself on this tour. Chappell White, the leading expert on the music of Viotti, has considered the question of how many of Viotti’s own concertos antedated his arrival in Paris, where he made his début on 17 March 1782, “almost certainly” with the Concerto no. 1 in C Major.17 Viotti’s first known concerto, now known as no. 3 (first published in Berlin, announced 8 March 1781), was, according to White, probably written in Turin

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for use on the forthcoming tour. White, with some reservations, considered it possible, on stylistic grounds, that nos. 2, 4, and 5, though not published until 1782 in Paris, were written previous to Viotti’s arrival in Paris. The Brand letter of 10 January supports such a hypothesis. Viotti, as the chief soloist in the series, would surely have been expected to play his own compositions for at least some of his appearances. At any rate, if the statement of which we learned in the preceding chapter, that Viotti’s compositions had been heard as early as 1774, is true, and even if Miel was exaggerating by a few years in asserting that Viotti composed his Concerto no. 3 when he was only fourteen (that is, in 1769 or 1770), it does not seem credible that in the succeeding years preceding his departure from Italy he did not compose several more works, including concertos. As to the solo that Viotti played in the second half of the concerts, there was a large repertory of sonatas with bass, including the some eighteen published sonatas of his teacher. Viotti’s first known violin solos (that is, sonatas with accompaniment, which, almost certainly, is what Brand would have meant by the term “Solo Violin”) were first published in Paris in about 1788, though again this is only a terminus ad quem for date of composition. There are other possibilities, however. Since the six trios by Viotti published in Paris in 1783–86 as op. 2 (two violins and cello) feature a soloistic first violin, it is possible that Brand was referring to some of these works. The third movement of one of these trios (White catalogue WIII:3, iii) is based on the second movement of the Violin Concerto no. 5. Indeed, there seems to be no reason why the order of composition could not have been the other way round. The melody upon which these two movements are based was later arranged by the pianist Daniel Steibelt as a “Mountain Air” with variations, for piano (WVIa:29). If this melody is indeed a genuine Swiss mountain air, it is tempting to suppose that Viotti was inspired by it on this trip.18 Moreover, five of these trios were published ca. 1785–86, arranged, presumably by Viotti himself, as sonatas for pianoforte, the first two with violin and cello accompaniment, the last three with violin accompaniment (WVIa:1–2, 4–6). The third sonata (WVIa:3, with violin and cello accompaniment) has as its second movement an arrangement of the polacca-finale of the Violin Concerto no. 2, which may well have been composed for performance in Poland in 1780 or 1781.19 It is entirely possible that Viotti played some of these same works or movements from them in Geneva, and elsewhere on this tour, in similar, ad hoc transcriptions for one ( prominent) violin and keyboard, with or without cello. It would simply be a matter of reversing the relative roles of the violin and piano—the first violin part of the trios to be played as a violin solo, accompanied by the second violin and cello parts transcribed for piano. It need hardly be added that such adaptability was a commonplace of eighteenth-century performance practice. Such pieces, as well as the trios in their original form, would also have been appropriate vehicles for Viotti in a “Concert of Amateurs and Amatrices” such as the one Brand describes.


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A salutary reminder of the fragility of historical evidence is the notice appearing in the Giornale di Torino e delle Province of 12 February 1780: “Geneva, 12 February 1780. Signor Pugnani, first violinist of the Chapel of His Majesty the King of Sardinia, gave here his first concert on the tenth of this month at the City Hall. He played several of his own newly composed pieces to general applause.” Thanks to Brand’s letter of 20 January, we now know that this newspaper notice is inaccurate—Pugnani had already presented a concert of his own music in the second week of January. So much for the reliability of printed sources. There are no other notices in this newspaper about either Pugnani or Viotti, no mention of Viotti as “head of the concert,” no mention of how long they remained in Geneva, nor of their movements thereafter.20 But it is interesting that Pugnani seems to have given at least two public concerts of his own music in Geneva. Sometime during this period Viotti quite probably met Hans Henrik Plötz, a Danish resident of Geneva. The little knowledge we have of the Viotti-Plötz connection we owe to Madame de Genlis (1746–1830), the writer and educator who was to become a friend of Viotti’s at least as early as 1802, probably earlier. She writes in her Mémoires: Around this time [1798–99, in Berlin] I made the acquaintance of a man who was truly remarkable for the diversity of his talents. His name was Mr Ploetz; he was both first enamel painter and first mechanician to the king of Denmark and he was an excellent musician as well— he played the viol d’amour to perfection. He had invented, with the famous Viotti, a new method of notating music, infinitely simpler and more convenient than the traditional one; with this method one could learn to read music much more easily and quickly.21 Madame de Genlis was an accomplished musician, the harp being her main instrument, and the warmth of her description suggests that she had seen and tested the new method of notation at first hand. New systems of musical notation were, of course, not unknown to eighteenth-century rationalism. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his Confessions, describes ruefully his vain attempts to convince the Academy of Sciences of the efficacy of his system of notation by numbers, by which he hoped to make his fortune.22 But Jean Philippe Rameau pointed out to him the banal yet vital defect of the method, which was that it lacked the visual element of traditional notation—high notes are high and low notes are low. A system by numbers, lacking this, was doomed to failure, however ingenious. As to the Viotti-Plotz method, Madame de Genlis, as is her wont, does not favor us with details. But of Viotti’s interest in things scientific we shall have ample testimony in due course. Viotti was an early user of Johann Maelzel’s metronome, for example, and he is thought to have consulted with François Tourte in the 1780s on the development of the modern bow. Miel also relates

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that in his youth Viotti had derived pleasure above all from the works of Rousseau.23 It is not revealed whether this lecture de jeunesse included the Confessions ( published in 1781) or the Dissertation sur la musique moderne (1743) in which Rousseau expounds his notational system. We can only conjecture as to when Viotti’s collaboration with Plötz took place—Madame de Genlis does not say. Hans Henrik Plötz (1748–1830), who is given an entire page in the Dictionary of Danish [National] Biography,24 had been living in Geneva for several years. Given his musical proclivities—he had played the flute in the Danish royal orchestra—he would surely have heard Viotti play and it seems reasonable to suppose that they became acquainted then. We do not know whether their acquaintance was subsequently renewed, but it is possible that, eighteen years later, the bitterness of Viotti’s exile from England, in Schönfeld, near Hamburg (he arrived there in March 1798), was briefly sweetened by a visit from his old Geneva acquaintance. They would have pored over signs, ciphers, tables, perhaps discussed Rousseau, and Viotti would have played through passages, pointing out deficiencies, offering suggestions. Then Plötz would have gone on to Berlin, there to meet Madame de Genlis, with the new method fresh in his mind. In 1799 the remarkable Mr. Plötz returned to his native Denmark. Of the fruit of his collaboration with Viotti we hear no more. From Geneva Pugnani and Viotti proceeded to Berne and Dresden. We have almost no information about their stay in these two cities, except what Viotti tells us in his Précis, that thanks to “the encouragement I received [in Geneva], I resolved to continue my travels,” and, preceded by “une petite célèbrité,” he was welcomed in Berne, and his taste for travel “became stronger and stronger.” Despite the impression these remarks might give, the fact is that Pugnani and Viotti had set out from Turin already resolved to continue their tour as far as Russia, as we have seen. Viotti relates that in Dresden he was received by the Elector of Saxony, Frederick Augustus III, who “had the goodness to applaud my talent.” Dresden, in mid-century, had boasted perhaps the most brilliant musical court of any in Europe, but it had suffered grievously from the Seven Years’ War (1756–63), including the bombardment of the city by Frederick the Great’s forces in 1760. Now it was making a gradual economic and cultural recovery under the elector, who had acceded to power in 1768. Frederick Augustus III was a “distinguished connoisseur of music and an excellent keyboard player capable of playing from a full score.”25 On 3 April 1780, an entry in the court journal reveals that, in the evening, “several virtuosos played for Her Highness the Electress.”26 This is the only relevant entry during this period. The electress was Marie Amalie of Pfalz-Zweibrucken, Frederick’s wife. The all-too-laconic entry gives no clue as to who the virtuosos were. If Pugnani and Viotti were among the performers on that evening, we may wonder why they played for Frederick’s wife and not for the elector himself, as Viotti asserts. Further, a question is raised about


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their timetable: if the twelve weekly concerts in Geneva began in the first week of January, as they seem to have, Pugnani and Viotti would have left that city around 25 March, which leaves scarcely a week for Berne and for travel—not enough time. They would have had to have left Geneva a week earlier, say around 18 March. All of this, of course, is guesswork. The Kapellmeister at the Dresden court was Johann Gottlieb Naumann. In 1779 a series of public concerts, conducted by Naumann, had been founded; it is possible that Viotti and Pugnani were guest soloists. Other possible venues were the “Donnerstag-Concerte,” founded in 1775, and still another series, the Grosse Konzerte. There was also a lively tradition of music in the homes of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. One musician in Dresden whom Pugnani and Viotti would surely have sought out (I take it as given that musicians visiting foreign centers tend to seek out their counterparts) was Bartolomeo Campagnoli (1751–1827), the Bolognese violinist, pupil of Nardini’s in Florence, and, later, author of several popular violin manuals. Campagnoli had become director of music for the Duke of Courland in Dresden in 1779, after completing an extended concert tour through Poland, north Germany, and Scandinavia in 1778. Still in his twenties, he would certainly have heard of Pugnani, and would have been eager to take the measure of the only slightly younger Viotti, and to “trade notes” with the two visitors—the latest news on bows (this was a period when the structure of the bow was undergoing fundamental changes, from a basically convex shape to concave), talk of violins (did any of them own a Stradivarius at this point?), their latest compositions, the professional situation in Dresden and elsewhere— in sum, shoptalk. Another Italian, Carlo Besozzi, grandnephew of Alessandro, Pugnani’s fellow Primo Virtuoso in Turin, had been an oboist at the Dresden court since 1755. Though Pugnani may not have known him personally, he and Viotti would have wanted to meet this relative of their high-ranking colleague in the Turin cappella. Viotti and his master may have arrived in Dresden in time for an important musical occasion: the court Italian opera theater, closed for almost two years at the time of the War of Bavarian Succession (March 1778–May 1779), reopened on 8 April with a performance of Piccinni’s intermezzo La Schiava.27 Their next stop was Berlin and the court of Frederick the Great. Count Carlo Fontana, the ambassador of the king of Sardinia to the Prussian court, in his weekly dispatch to the foreign ministry in Turin, reported on 22 April 1780 that Pugnani had arrived the day before with “Viot,” and had submitted the letter of recommendation given to him on 5 December by the foreign minister. Again, this date of arrival is slightly earlier than might have been expected, if we allow twelve weeks in Geneva for our two violinists. A possible explanation lies in the fact that Maria Antonia of Saxony, the mother of Frederick Augustus III, herself a redoubtable patroness of the arts ( J. G. Naumann was one of her protegés), died on 23 April in Dresden. Perhaps Pugnani and Viotti, learning

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that her death was imminent, and foreseeing the period of mourning during which there would have been a curtailment of entertainments, had thought it best to move on to Berlin. Fontana goes on to say that he has known Pugnani well for a long time, and undertakes to do everything in his power to assist his two compatriots “aussi distingués [ . . . ] par leur talens dans la Musique.”28 Viotti, in his Précis, tells us that Count Fontana “had the goodness to receive me and to lodge me in his home.” It seems likely that Pugnani, being an old acquaintance of Fontana, would also have been the ambassador’s houseguest. Fontana was also an acquaintance of the Prince Dal Pozzo della Cisterna. Two letters from him to the prince in the della Cisterna family archive attest to their warm friendship.29 Both letters, however, predate Viotti’s arrival in Berlin, and they give no indication that he even knew of Viotti’s existence before meeting him in April of 1780. We do know that Fontana was a music lover; in his dispatch of 24 August 1781 he mentions seven or eight “big meals, both dinners and suppers, with concerts for the nobility at my home” ( grands repas entre dinés et soupés avec Concerti chez moi à la Noblesse) that he intends to give, and later in the year he mentions a concert in his home given on 5 November 1781 by the celebrated mezzo-soprano Luiza Rosa Todi.30 Viotti says in his Précis that at Berlin he “had the pleasure of meeting Mr Liston, now one of His Britannic Majesty’s ministers, who has since always manifested a sincere interest in me.” Robert Liston (later Sir Robert) (1742–1836) was the private secretary of Sir Hugh Elliot, the British envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to the court of Prussia. Fontana often mentions Liston in his dispatches; the two clearly were on friendly terms. Within a few years Liston was indeed to become a diplomat in his own right, as Viotti says, with posts in Madrid (1783–88), Stockholm (1788–93), Constantinople (1793–96), and, when Viotti wrote his Précis, Washington (1796–1802). There is no record of their acquaintance having been renewed, but opportunities could have presented themselves between Liston’s postings, and (as we shall see in a later chapter), during his temporary retirement in 1804–11. The court of Frederick the Great had been resplendent in its music, graced by such names as Johann Joachim Quantz (Frederick’s flute teacher), C. P. E. Bach, Franz Benda, and Karl Heinrich Graun. Of these, only Benda remained. Graun and Quantz had long since died; Bach had left for Hamburg in 1767. Frederick had been an accomplished flautist, and he had surrounded himself with a smooth-running musical establishment, upon which he imposed his musical taste, as if issuing commands to his generals. Every evening, when he was in residence in Berlin or Potsdam, that is, when he was not at war or at maneuvers, there was a concert at six o’clock; the king himself usually played. Of all his musical subalterns, the one who had rendered the longest, most faithful service, was his concertmaster, Franz Benda. Benda, the most distinguished of a large musical family, had been in Frederick’s service since 1733. In his autobiography of 1763 he claims to have accompanied his master in flute concertos


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at least 10,000 times. Franz Benda was seventy-one years old in 1780. The ubiquitous Burney had heard him play a solo in 1772, and admired his cantabile style, though remarking that “the gout has long since enfeebled his fingers.” Viotti says, “Frederick the Great paid me the honor of listening to me, and I had the honor of often making music with the last, deceased King [Frederick’s nephew, Frederick William II, who succeeded him (1786–1797)].” Though we have no reason to doubt Viotti’s word, we may wonder what Viotti would have played for the king. Frederick was sixty-eight years old in 1780, well past his prime, toothless and gout-ridden both in his hands and his legs, and suffering the agonies of chronic hemorrhoids. He had long since given up playing regularly or seriously; in early 1779, as he packed his flute to leave winter quarters for Potsdam, he said to Franz Benda, “My dear Benda, I have lost my best friend.”31 To judge from the dispatches of Fontana, Liston, and Eliot, it would seem that the king enjoyed a brief period of relatively good health precisely during the sojourn of Pugnani and Viotti at the Prussian court, though his moods were unpredictable.32 It is unlikely that he would have taken much pleasure in the young Italian’s music. The king’s taste was as rigid as his fingers; the long outdated style of Hasse and Graun was all he could countenance. “New music,” he wrote, “has degenerated to mere noise, which bludgeons the ear instead of caressing it.”33 At his evening concerts, Frederick had played only his own and Quantz’s flute compositions—about 300 concertos, four of them by Frederick, which he performed with his orchestra in strict rotation, and nearly as many sonatas, almost half of them by Frederick. Viotti, out of deference to his royal host’s taste, may have elected to play something in the older manner, a sonata or a concerto by Quantz or Franz Benda, for example. Or, perhaps he ventured something Italian, but not avant-garde, such as one of the thirty-six sonatas of Domenico Ferrari, dating from around 1760, which, as we have learned, were the works Viotti had most under his fingers. And, of course, he and Pugnani could have played a trio sonata or a duet by Graun or Quantz, or Pugnani himself. The king would have granted Pugnani and his pupil a hearing as part of the regular six o’clock concert—unthinkable that he would have interrupted his daily routine in any other way. We may imagine the scene: the two Italians are ushered into the concert room of the Sans Souci palace34 at Potsdam, one of the great creations of Rococo fantasy, its large mirrors set in niches, ornately framed with rocaille foliage, alternating with delicately sensual wall paintings depicting scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. A pianoforte by Silbermann sits in one corner; nearby is Frederick’s music stand, inlaid with tortoise-shell, ivory, and motherof-pearl, open to the last page of a Quantz flute concerto ( perhaps on this occasion the king had felt well enough to play). The court musicians, still warm from their exertions, are curious to hear the visitors; Frederick is seated on a sofa, aware of Pugnani’s reputation, perhaps slightly dubious of the younger man’s credentials. The two violinists play; the court musicians, the venerable Benda at

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their head, listen respectfully—do they prefer the playing of one over the other? And the king, is he pleased? This was not the first time that Frederick the Great had heard an exponent of the Piedmontese school of violin playing. No doubt he remembered the visit, some thirty years earlier, of the Torinese violinist Felice Giardini, who, like Pugnani, had been a pupil of Giovanni Battista Somis’s, and who, beginning in 1751, enjoyed a long and illustrious career in England. It is reported that Giardini played with Frederick in the late 1740s, when the violinist was approaching the height of his powers, the king in the high noon of his musical interests and patronage. Pugnani would surely have met Giardini during his sojourns in London of 1767–69 and 1772–73 (and possibly earlier, in Turin), giving him and the king a mutual acquaintance. Pugnani, if not Viotti, was able to interest the king in at least one of his compositions. After the two violinists had left Prussia, Count Fontana wrote on 12 September that he had informed Pugnani that “the cantata composed by him is at this moment in the hands of the King.”35 The identity of this cantata remains a mystery, as does the king’s reaction to it. However, a cantata by Pugnani, La scomessa, for two sopranos, dedicated not to the king but to his nephew, the Prince of Prussia, now resides in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturebesitz.36 It is possible that this is the same cantata. Could Pugnani have first tried to dedicate it to the king? On 2 May 1780 Fontana writes that “His Royal Highness [Frederick William, Prince of Prussia] and Madame the Princess of Prussia [ his wife] have conveyed to me their satisfaction at having had the pleasure of listening to the Srs Pugnani and Viot, who have been at Potsdam at their command for eight days.” Fontana makes no mention in his dispatches of Viotti or Pugnani playing for the king. It would appear, then, from the testimony both of Fontana and of Viotti himself, that it was not Frederick the Great who showed a particular interest in the two Italian musicians, so much as his nephew, and perhaps even more, his nephew’s (second) wife, Princess Frederika Louisa of Hesse-Darmstadt (1751–1805). Frederick William (1744–97) played the cello; he was a pupil of JeanPierre Duport’s, who had been the first cellist of Frederick the Great’s court since 1773. It is not known whether the princess was musically accomplished. There is an interesting sidelight to Fontana’s report: on 1 May the princess “was safely delivered of a Princess at Potsdam”37 (Augusta, the fourth of her six children). It is pleasant to think that Pugnani and Viotti eased the last few days of her confinement with their playing. The prince’s musical taste, and, presumably, that of the princess, was more liberal, more up to date than that of the king. It is quite likely that among the pieces of music that gave such pleasure were one or more of Viotti’s concertos, which he would have played with the prince’s private orchestra.38 Frederick William subsequently distinguished himself as a musical patron. Several of the most illustrious composers of the late eighteenth century—Haydn,


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Mozart,39 and Beethoven among them—wrote works for him. But the cello-playing prince had a special affection for the music of one composer in particular. In a letter of 1 October 1783 to Luigi Boccherini, Frederick William expressed an interest in Boccherini’s music, “just at a time when I have begun to perform your instrumental work. It alone gives me full satisfaction and every day I enjoy that pleasure.”40 Surely it was Viotti and Pugnani who had kindled Frederick William’s passion for this composer’s music. We recall that they had played at least one of Boccherini’s quintets in Geneva. It seems likely that the two Italians would have played these quintets at Potsdam, with the prince and Duport playing the two cello parts—Viotti explicitly refers in his Précis to his “often making music” with the prince. In 1786, the year Frederick succeeded to the throne as Frederick William II on the death of his uncle, he appointed Boccherini “compositeur de notre chambre” with an annual salary for which Boccherini, who lived in Spain, sent him annual consignments of quartets and quintets. Viotti was one of the first of the distinguished group of musicians whose relationships with the Prussian court were expressed as dedications,41 though in his case, there was a difference. The title page of his op. 1, a set of six string quartets (WII:1–6), published in Paris in ca. 1783–85, bears the inscription “Dediés A Son Altesse Royale, Madame la Princesse de Prusse.” Composers usually dedicated their works to illustrious persons either in the hope of receiving favors or in appreciation of favors received. Normally we would expect Viotti to have expressed his gratitude for the interest shown in him by the royal couple with a dedication to them both, or possibly to Frederick William—the works in question were string quartets, after all, and the cello parts are certainly worthy of the royal cellist’s interest, with many melodies in the tenor clef, reaching as high as E-flat5 (e flat'' ) in the second movement of the fifth quartet, for example. It is not clear why Viotti singled out the princess, of whose musical tastes we also know that, nine years later, when living separately from her husband in the Berlin palace of Monbijou, she asked to hear Mozart play.42 A clue is perhaps to be found in Frederick William’s character, pace Dr. John Moore. He was self-indulgent to the point of debauchery, despised by his uncle, and became notorious for his domestic arrangements: two wives “of the left hand” in addition to the princess (he was openly polygamous), two official mistresses, and numerous concubines. Neither would his leanings to the occult (he was admitted into the Rosicrucian Order on 8 August 1781) have appealed to the devout and straightforward Viotti. None of this, however, seems to have deterred Viotti from often making music with him, nor did it deter Mozart or Beethoven, both of whom apparently were presented to Frederick William. But it is perhaps not too far-fetched to suppose that Viotti, with this dedication, was somehow “making a statement” of solidarity with the princess, whose flagrant humiliation by her husband was common knowledge.43 Did the princess hear these string quartets, played by their composer, with Pugnani, Duport, and a court violist? We have earlier considered the possibility

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that Viotti had composed, or was composing his Trios, op. 2 early in 1780, in Geneva. Similarly, the impulse for the dedication of these quartets may have come from Viotti’s first contact with the princess; then, during the long months in Poland and Russia, he could have completed the six works, or at least some of them, to play before the princess in December 1781, when the two Italians revisited the Prussian court. Several years later, Viotti also dedicated a set of six violin duets (WIV:7–12, published ca. 1789–90) to “sa majesté la Reine de Prusse,” which suggests that Viotti kept up some connection with this lady through the 1780s, despite their geographical separation. Did Viotti entertain the idea of joining his good friend Jean-Louis Duport, who went to Berlin in 1790 to join his brother as a cellist in Frederick William’s musical establishment (by then become one of the largest and most renowned in Europe)? Or was this dedication simply a gesture of esteem and friendship, maintained over the years?44 Like Dresden, Berlin had its Liebhaberkonzerte, founded in 1770 by J. F. Benda, a nephew of Franz Benda’s, and Carl Bachmann, a violist in the royal chapel. This was a possible venue for our two violinists. Viotti also states in his Précis that “no opportunity was missed to have entrance to the respectable houses” of Berlin. Another possibility, though Viotti doesn’t mention it, is that he and Pugnani visited the court of Prince Heinrich (Henry) of Prussia, Frederick the Great’s younger brother, either at his palace of Rheinsberg, north of Berlin, or at his palace on Unter den Linden, “one of the most magnificent buildings in Berlin.”45 The violinist Johann Peter Salomon, a former pupil of Franz Benda’s, was Prince Henry’s music director, in charge of an orchestra that by 1782 numbered some fourteen players.46 Salomon was later to play an important role in Viotti’s career. Probably in 1780 he left his position with Prince Henry and went by way of Paris to London, where his first public appearance was at Covent Garden on 23 March 1781. It is possible, then, that his and Viotti’s paths crossed in 1780. Prince Henry, a highly intelligent and cultured Francophile, was himself a violinist who, a few years later, played string quartets with Viotti at the Paris salon of Madame Vigée-Lebrun. Undoubtedly, he would have wanted to meet and hear the two Italians, and possibly to make music with them. In 1775, Dr. John Moore had attended a concert and supper at Prince Henry’s Berlin palace (at which the Prince and Princess of Prussia were present). “The entertainment on this occasion was remarkably splendid.”47 Pugnani and Viotti stayed in Berlin and Potsdam for upward of four months. “Their conduct,” wrote the Count Fontana to the Turin Foreign Ministry, “both in Saxony, where they were signally honored, and in this country, is proper [régulière] in the highest degree, and fully meets the expectations you have of them.”48 A letter from Fontana’s secretary of 25 July 1780 makes it clear that Pugnani and Viotti did not by any means arrive unannounced at their next port of call. He reports that the court at Warsaw has already prepared lodgings, horse and


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carriage, and “various other things that they may need for all the time that they might wish to stay.”49 It may have been only a coincidence, but Frederick William, the Prince of Prussia, left Potsdam on an official trip to St. Petersburg on 6 August, which was very near the date on which the two Italians must have departed for Warsaw. There is no record of the prince having taken any musicians in his entourage, or of Pugnani and Viotti accompanying him for the first part of his journey. At any rate, his departure deprived the two musicians of what clearly was one of their chief reasons for staying at the Prussian court. By mid-August Pugnani and Viotti had arrived in the Polish capital, “armed,” says Viotti in his Précis, “with letters of recommendation.” These, we may presume, were provided by Count Fontana and Robert Liston, and possibly by the Torinese Foreign Ministry, though the kingdom of Sardinia apparently had no representative in Poland at the time. A Polish newspaper of 18 August50 reports: “Maestro Pugnani, the most celebrated violinist in the world, has recently arrived from Italy with his pupil, who seems to give even more pleasure than he. They play in the homes of noblemen, but they have no wish to give public concerts, not even for money. They say they have all the money they need to maintain their social standing and way of life.”51 The first sentence would seem to substantiate the Reverend Brand’s opinion of Viotti’s playing as compared to Pugnani’s. Would Pugnani have learned of this newspaper report? We can only imagine his feelings as he saw his pupil improving and gaining assurance almost by the day, as he responded to new audiences, new musical stimuli, new performing challenges. By now he must have seen that Viotti, who had celebrated his twenty-fifth birthday in Prussia, was overtaking him, indeed had overtaken him. More puzzling is the two Italians’ alleged unwillingness to play in public concerts and their seeming indifference to money. One would have thought that Viotti in particular would have been eager to gain as much varied performing experience as possible. Public concerts were a quite different thing from private concerts in aristocratic homes. The venue, the audience, the accompanying group—all tended to be on a larger scale, requiring a broader, more expansive style of playing. Besides, both Viotti and Pugnani had played in public concerts in Geneva, as we have seen, and in Russia Pugnani played in one public concert that we know of. As to their finances, Pugnani’s salaries at Turin, particularly in the previous five years, were substantial. What with his savings and the fact that he was on a paid leave of absence, he was probably not hard-pressed financially. Viotti, in addition to his salary, was still receiving material assistance from his patron, the Prince Dal Pozzo della Cisterna, and, in fact, would apparently continue to do so for another three or four years.52 Nevertheless, it seems odd that the two musicians would have divulged such privileged information, and that it found its way into print. Strangely, in 1789, when it was rumored that Viotti was

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about to leave France for England, and again in 1792, after he had arrived in England, two London newspapers made very similar observations about Viotti’s finances.53 All the early sources affirm that Pugnani and Viotti were generously rewarded at the courts they visited on this tour. The Vercellese historian DeGregori goes so far as to say that Viotti was able to send gifts and money home to his family in Fontanetto.54 Musicians who played for royalty or the nobility were given gifts at least as often as money—usually precious objects such as rings; snuffboxes made of precious materials or elaborately inlaid were a favorite gift, appreciated all the more if they contained money. In his will, written in 1822, Viotti mentions among his possessions two or three gold snuffboxes and a gold watch. The king of Poland, Stanislaw Augustus Poniatowski, as a patron of music and musicians has been given short shrift by his biographers, who refer to his “extraordinary indifference to music,”55 or insist that “he had no ear for music.”56 But a recent, more specialized study concludes that, though Stanislaw Augustus “was not exactly a music lover but a theater lover (he was very fond of ballet and Italian opera),” he was “an eminent patron of music,” and that during his reign Warsaw was one of “the outstanding centers of European musical activities of the Enlightenment.”57 Miel asserts that the king took Viotti with him on his hunting parties.58 He certainly seems to have taken a more than usual interest in the two Italians. For their entire sojourn of about five months he paid their daily expenses— room and board, candles, fuel, laundry, and coach expenses, amounting to 40 to 80 ducats per month. The extraordinarily detailed court archives specify that Pugnani usually ate with four other persons ( presumably including Viotti—it is not revealed who the others were), who drank two to four bottles of wine at dinner. The costs of such incidentals as broken glasses were covered by the royal house.59 On 5 November 1780, Pugnani and Viotti each received presents valued at 180 ducats from the royal treasury for concerts probably given in the royal castle; on 16 November Pugnani received an additional 300 ducats “for concerts.” It is difficult to say how many concerts these payments represent. Visiting performers were paid anything from 10 to more than 50 ducats for a concert, depending on their prestige; the king’s largesse may be judged from the figure of 40–80 ducats that covered Pugnani’s and Viotti’s monthly living expenses. Pugnani also received 200 ducats for the scores of his ballet Zémir et Azor and his opera Annette et Lubin, which was performed in Warsaw in 1780,60 almost certainly under the composer’s direction. Clearly the newspaper report cited above was accurate. Pugnani and his pupil had no pressing financial need to perform publicly.61 The two Italians may well have met an eighteen-year-old Polish violinist, named Feliks Janiewicz, who, since 1777 had played in the court orchestra of Stanislaw Augustus. Beginning in late 1787, and continuing well into the nineteenth century, he was to have an international career as a violinist and


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composer, a career that intersected in various ways with that of Viotti in Paris and in England. Apparently Pugnani and Viotti stayed in Warsaw until mid-January 1781.62 Viotti says in his Précis that he departed from Warsaw for St. Petersburg, implying that he and Pugnani made no extended stops along the way. At this time of year, it is probable that there was snow on the ground, and that the rivers were frozen over, so that travel by sleigh was relatively quick. Viotti reports that “the Prince Potemkin presented me to the Empress [Catherine II, ‘the Great’], she deigned to hear me, and the present Emperor [her son, the Grand Duke Paul, who became tsar on his mother’s death in 1796] also honored me with his esteem.” The entry for 14 February (3 February Old Style) in the court journal describes this occasion: At about 6 P.M., His Imperial Highness [the Grand Duke Paul] came once again to Her Imperial Majesty [the empress]. Shortly afterwards [they] went out from the inner apartments [of the empress, in the Winter Palace] into the room with diamond objects, where the Hofmarschall [Chamberlain] Prince Fedor Sergevich Bariatinsky presented two Italian musicians, Puniani and his pupil, recently arrived in Russia from Italy, to Her Imperial Majesty. They played the violin in the presence of Her Imperial Majesty and His Imperial Highness. Then Her Imperial Majesty deigned to retire to her inner apartments, and His Imperial Highness to his apartments, after which the two musicians were convened by Their Imperial Highnesses [the grand duke and his wife, Maria Fyodorovna, formerly Sophia of Wurttemberg] to their apartments, and they played the violin again for them there. Her Imperial Majesty, as usual, played cards with her noble generals in her inner apartments until 9 P.M.63 The “room with diamond objects” was filled with display cases containing precious jewels, including the imperial crown and scepter. Two years earlier, Gertrude Harris, the sister of James Harris, the English ambassador to the St. Petersburg court, described a similar event in the same rooms: 19th January. We were presented yesterday. I cannot conceive any thing more splendid or magnificent than this Court. The apartment is vast & and well lighted, & the dresses rich & brilliant even to an Arabian Tale. The Empress is preceded by all the officers of state, which form no contemptible procession [ . . . ]. We were presented in the outward room, the usual place [ presumably the “room with diamond objects”]; we kissed her hand & and she saluted us, & continued her march into the grand room—Music immediately struck up & minuets began [ . . . ]; she continued at the lower end of the room having her hand kissed by the officers she had promoted, foreign ministers & and other foreigners.

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In about half an hour she goes to cards in an adjoining room & plays either whist or macao. The dancing continues, minuets, polonaises, & English country dances [ . . . ]. This sport lasted till after nine when the supper was announced.64 What would we not give to have had a Gertrude Harris present when our two Italian violinists played for the empress! We must be content with supposing that their presentation took place under similar circumstances, even to the empress absenting herself (not during the concert, we hope) to play cards. Catherine was tone deaf, by her own admission,65 though she used music, particularly opera, as an adornment to her court. Viotti and Pugnani will encounter the Grand Duke Paul and his wife again within the year, and, still later, Viotti will play for them in the presence of the Queen of France. It would appear that Viotti’s memory failed him on one point. It was the Court Chamberlain, not Prince Potemkin, who introduced the two musicians to Catherine II. But this does not preclude the possibility that Viotti had some sort of contact with Potemkin, who was an active patron of musicians. Potemkin, by virtue of his influence and intimacy with the empress, may well have arranged for the presentation to take place, though almost certainly he was not present that evening.66 Other than “command performances” for the imperial family, there were several possibilities available to performing artists in St. Petersburg. We note in passing that, under Catherine II there apparently was a decree making it compulsory for the aristocracy to attend musical and theatrical entertainments!67 It would appear that, in St. Petersburg, the line between private and public concerts was not so finely drawn as, for example, in Paris and London. By the 1780s the practice of giving commercial concerts in aristocratic houses was already established. Prince Potemkin, for example, like several other noble music lovers, had a private musical establishment including an orchestra (consisting of both serf musicians and foreign players), but he also lent or hired out his concert room to musicians wishing to give paying concerts.68 Concerts could be given in public theaters as well. There was also a music club, founded in 1772 by amateurs, by 1778 also including professionals, which sponsored concerts. In the issue of 20 March of the St. Petersburg Gazette (Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti ) the following notice appears: This March 22nd and 25th in the Hall of Spectacles of the ‘Petits comédiens français,’69 near the Red Bridge [Krasnyi Most] in house #70, the Court singers will sing various arias and duos from Roland, by Piccinni, from Tsefal i Procris,70 from the opera La Rosière de Salency,71 and others. The celebrated performer on the violin, Mr. Pulliani, as well as Mr. Bachmann72 and Mr. Bullant73 will play new pieces. “Mr. Pulliani” was, of course, Pugnani. This announcement, along with the account of their playing in the Winter Palace, is the only evidence that has come


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down to us of Pugnani or Viotti playing the violin in Russia. Viotti’s name does not appear, which does not necessarily mean that he did not participate in the concert. Pugnani’s name was still the bigger drawing card, and it may not have been considered good business to encumber the announcement with the name of a relatively unknown artist. In Russia, as in other countries, theatrical performances were banned during Lent, and concerts often proliferated, as if to compensate. For example, one of Pugnani’s co-performers, Antoine Bullant, a virtuoso bassoonist, had played his own compositions in a concert in St. Petersburg on 4 March, as did the mandolinist Zaneboni on 14 March. Similarly, in Moscow, on 9 March the violinist Sartori played in a concert shared with the German harpsichordist JohannChristian Firnhaber. All of these concerts were announced in the St. Petersburg Gazette or the Moscow Gazette,74 but neither of these periodicals records any other appearance by Pugnani or Viotti. We must conclude then, that whatever performing they did was in truly private concerts in noble houses, for which there would be no newspaper announcements. It is true that the two violinists had considerable competition for the attention of music lovers in both cities, above all in the formidable presence of Antonio Lolli (ca. 1730–1802), “the most sensational technician among all violinists of the late eighteenth century.”75 Lolli had been based in St. Petersburg since 1774; he enjoyed the powerful protection of Prince Potemkin, and in 1778 he was appointed “violinist for the concerts of Her Majesty.” Though often away on concert tours, he had been resident in the Russian capital since 1780. On 6 and 8 April 1781 he gave concerts in Moscow, announced in the Moscow Gazette,76 in which he played some of his recent compositions. There were at least two other noteworthy violinists active in St. Petersburg in 1781, though neither of them was as eminent as Lolli—Louis-Henry Paisible (1748–82) and Carlo Canobbio (?1741–1822). Carlo Canobbio had been engaged in 1779 as first violin of the court orchestra, conductor of court opera productions, and composer of ballets. In 1781 his ballet Don Juan was produced in St. Petersburg several times throughout the year, to wide acclaim. Though he was not Piedmontese (he probably was of Venetian origin), it is likely that Pugnani and Viotti would have sought out this prominent court musician. Paisible had arrived in St. Petersburg in 1778 after a successful career in Paris. He gave many public concerts in St. Petersburg, as well as in Moscow in 1780 and 1781,77 and, earlier, had participated in one described by Gertrude Harris, who provides a vivid insight into St. Petersburg concert life: I went to a subscription concert a few nights ago [2 March 1779] [ . . . ]. Twas the poor Stabat Mater [ presumably that by Pergolesi], & and more murder’d than anything I ever heard; the orchestra was chiefly composed of Princes, Counts & Captains, and the whole was

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interrupted in the middle by a solo on the violin, which was however very neatly played by Paisible, the only non virtuosi of the sett I believe.78 Worthy of note is the mingling of a professional musician with gentlemen amateurs (“virtuosi”), an arrangement perhaps not as unusual in this period as commonly thought—we recall the concert of “amateurs and amatrices” in Geneva in which at least three professionals participated. At the same time, though the concert was under the “protection” of Madame Nelidinsky79 and the vast majority of the players were amateurs, it was a subscription concert. The interruption of the Stabat Mater with a violin solo would not have been regarded as the shocking breach of concert decorum it would nowadays, though Miss Harris considered it worthy of remark. By far the most distinguished musician in St. Petersburg at this time was Giovanni Paisiello, who had been maestro di cappella for Catherine II since 1776. She renewed his contract in September 1779 at the immense salary of 4,000 roubles (more than twice the salary of a provincial governor), for which he composed music required by the court and conducted the court and theater orchestras. Among his piano pupils was Maria Fyodorovna, the wife of the Grand Duke Paul. He and Pugnani, of course, would remember each other from their collaboration nine years earlier, when he met the Mozarts and conducted the first few performances of his opera Annibale in Torino in the Teatro Regio (though the extent to which the first violinist participated in the leadership of operas when the composer himself was at the keyboard is still an unresolved musicological problem). As for Viotti, if Paisiello remembered him at all, it would have been as Pugnani’s precocious fifteen-year-old pupil. Viotti could not have imagined now, in 1781, the role Paisiello’s music was to play in his career within another eight or nine years. We saw that Pugnani was announced in the St. Petersburg Gazette to play in concerts on 22 and 25 March; in the meantime, in the issues of 16, 20, and 23 March of the same newspaper we read: “Departing persons. Puniani and Viotti, musicians, with the servant Lafler; they reside near the Blue [Sinii] Bridge in the house of His Excellency Count Ivan Grigorievich Chernyshev.” There is an explanation for this announcement: persons leaving Russia were apparently required to give about one month’s notice in the official court insert of the newspaper, to allow time for any outstanding debts to be collected.80 We shall see in due course what their destination was. It is difficult to know whether the servant Lafler was a St. Petersburg acquisition, or whether he had accompanied the two violinists all the way from Turin. A little more than three years earlier, on 26 December 1777, it was announced in the same newspaper that “the virtuoso Lolli is departing with his two servants.”81 Whether this tells us more about Lolli’s financial situation vis-à-vis that of the two Piedmontese, or about his amour propre, is hard to say.


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We learn from the announcement that Pugnani and Viotti were the guests of the Count Chernyshev, whose home near the Blue Bridge was in the aristocratic quarter of the city, on the innermost canal, not far from the Winter Palace. The address of his palace was Isaakievskaia Square, no. 6, later demolished to make way for the Mariinski Palace, now the seat of the St. Petersburg City Administration.82 The Count Ivan Grigorievich Chernyshev (1726–97), vice president of the Admiralty College, had been, since the days of the Empress Elizabeth, Catherine II’s predecessor, one of the most highly placed men in the imperial court, a trusted and faithful courtier to the end of his days in 1797, three months after the death of Catherine. He had enjoyed a long and varied court career, including an assignment as ambassador in London, from November 176883 until early 1770 (when, it will be remembered, Pugnani had been in England). The count was often abroad, not only on his missions, but also to take rest cures or treatment, sometimes in Italy, for his frequent periods of illness. Culturally he was thoroughly European; there is evidence that he kept a private orchestra: in July of 1773 he wrote from Paris asking about his musicians—how many of them there were, which instruments they played, how they were received (apparently they were performing somewhere), and how they were behaving.84 His fondness for music may have prompted him to open his home to the two Italians; it seems at least possible as well that he had previously become acquainted with Pugnani, for which, however, no evidence has yet come to light. (Perhaps they had frequented each other when Pugnani was in Paris in late June 1773, on his way home from his second trip to London, possibly accompanied by the eighteen-year-old Viotti. Pugnani prolonged his stay for more than two weeks, before departing for Turin on 12 July.)85 Chernyshev was a Freemason;86 he served in the administration of the imperial theaters and, in the event, perhaps of most importance for his two houseguests, he was a founding father and “honored philanthropist” of the Moscow Orphanage.87 A recently uncovered letter, unfortunately fragmentary, throws some light on Pugnani’s and Viotti’s movements at this time. It was written on behalf of the chairman of the board of trustees of the St. Petersburg and Moscow orphanages to the “ober-director” of the Moscow Orphanage: My dear Grigori Grigorievich, His Excellency Ivan Ivanovich has deigned to instruct me to write these [ . . . ][lines?] concerning the European-renowned musician Puniani, who, with his pupil Viotti, has departed for Moscow and wishes to visit the Orphanage. Then he [ . . . ][expects/hopes] to be received in Moscow [ . . . ] with courtesy [ . . . ] With my respects to you, my dear Sir 27 March, 1781.88

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It would appear, then, that Pugnani and Viotti left for Moscow immediately after the concert of 25 March. They presumably arrived in time, by the way, to hear Antonio Lolli’s concerts on 6 and 8 April. Their trip may have been in some way connected with the debate among the trustees of the St. Petersburg Orphanage and those of the Moscow Orphanage regarding the proposal, submitted in late 1780 by a certain Italian widow, Angela Oreksia (Orekia), to build a theater on land owned by the Moscow Orphanage. (Since 1763, by decree, one-quarter of the proceeds from theater performances was required to be given over to the support of the orphanage.) In the event, her proposal was rejected on 15 May 1781, and the English entrepreneur Michael Maddox was allowed to continue operating his theater, called the Petrovsky Theater, constructed in 1780 on the site of the present-day Bolshoy Theater, itself in close relation with the orphanage.89 (The first of Lolli’s two concerts was in this theater.) It is possible that Pugnani, a distinguished and impartial observer, had been asked, perhaps by the Count Chernyshev, to give his opinion on this affair, or even to throw his weight on the side of the Italian widow. In this orphanage, or foundling hospital, as in similar institutions in Italy, the children were given serious music instruction, and stage works, including operas were produced, the pupils regularly participating in performances of the theater. The orphans also played chamber music. An inventory (1774) of their music library includes (as well as symphonies by Mannheim composers) chamber works by C. P. E. Bach, Carl Friedrich Abel, Felice Giardini, and others, and quartets and quintets by Johann Baptist Wanhal and Pugnani.90 As part of the courtesy extended to Pugnani, perhaps a few of the more gifted pupils played one of his quartets or quintets, several sets of both of which had been published in London, for the delectation of the composer and his companion. There is one other, frustratingly incomplete piece of information that may throw light on the whereabouts of Pugnani, though not necessarily of Viotti. In the summer of 1781 a comic opera, Jealousy in Vain, or The Boatman from Kuskovo was performed in the private outdoor theater at Kuskovo, one of the palaces of the Sheremetev family, on the southern outskirts of Moscow. The music for this specially commissioned opera was for the most part drawn from various French comic operas, set to Russian words, but the overture and the entr’acte were composed by Pugnani.91 Whether Pugnani composed this music for the occasion or whether he had it ready in his portfolio (he had published at least a dozen orchestral overtures) is hardly important for our purposes—he was asked, no doubt by Count Nicolai Petrovich Sheremetev, to provide it. This means that he may well have gone to Kuskovo to oversee its preparation and performance. At the very least he would have been invited to a performance. It is possible, in fact, that he was asked to rehearse and direct the entire production, though there was another composer involved, Iosif Kerzelli, a Moscow theater conductor, who wrote the finale of this pastiche.


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The Sheremetevs were the richest landowners in Russia—they owned over 100,000 serfs. One of the attractions of the Kuskovo estate, besides its manmade lake in which mock sea battles were staged, its English park with pavilions and grottoes, and its large picture gallery, was its serf horn band, in which each player had learned to play only one note. In common with those of several other noblemen’s estates, the opera troupe at Kuskovo, including its singers and orchestra musicians, consisted mostly of serfs, many of whom Nikolai Petrovich had sent abroad to be trained. It was the most important troupe of its kind in Russia, considered to be the equal of the court opera in St. Petersburg, surely an interesting proposition for Pugnani. Count Sheremetev played the cello and was keenly interested in chamber music.92 As for Viotti, it seems likely that he was with Pugnani in this period, and that he may have played some ancillary role, perhaps playing in the orchestra. Perhaps, as well, the two Italians played chamber music with Sheremetev. According to Miel, Viotti left Pugnani in St. Petersburg and went to Moscow, visited several other Russian towns, “and after this tour, which was lucrative, he rejoined Pugnani. Upon his return he was stricken with a grave illness, which confined him to bed for a year.” If we reject the parts of Miel’s report that we know to be inaccurate, we are left with Viotti’s alleged illness, for which there is no evidence for or against, except that it could not have lasted for a year, since we know that he was in Warsaw by early September 1781. After about seven months in Russia, then, they were back in Poland.93 Was their presence in Warsaw at that moment fortuitous? Or had King Stanislaw invited the two Italians to add lustre to an important royal occasion? The king had just completed work on the Great Hall in the State Apartments in Warsaw, opened, no doubt with a festive ceremony, on 7 September, the seventeenth anniversary of his election as king of Poland. It is a “magnificent and highly individualistic room,” with a “vast frescoed ceiling.”94 On 10 September the royal treasury accounts show a payment of 800 ducats and one of 300 ducats for gifts to Pugnani and Viotti, respectively, probably for concerts at court.95 Two English guests of the king were almost certainly present at these festivities. Sir Gilbert Elliot (the elder brother of the English ambassador in Berlin, Hugh Elliot), escorting Sir James Harris’s wife, Harriet (whose sister was Sir Gilbert’s wife), had stopped over in Warsaw on the way home to England from St. Petersburg. On 11 September Harris reported that Harriet “has been royally received at Warsaw.”96 On 14 September King Stanislaw wrote an extremely cordial and charming letter, in English, to Harris, regretting that Warsaw is so “void of people, nay, quite desert in this moment,” and that his two guests will be leaving on the morrow.97 It seems likely that Pugnani and Viotti had contributed to the royal welcome given to the distinguished Englishman and his colleague’s wife. On 22 September the two Italians both played in a concert in the house of Count Carlo Tomatis, at Królikarnia, near Warsaw.98 Tomatis was an Italian

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theater entrepreneur, and the king’s cultural advisor and director of royal spectacles. His wife was one of Stanislaw’s mistresses, and according to one recent biographer, he “pimped for the king and others, and his villa at Królikarnia was little more than a high-class brothel.”99 We venture to suppose that the concert was well attended. On 9 October 1781 King Stanislaw set out from Warsaw for the town of Wisniowiec, on the Russian frontier, to greet the Grand Duke Paul and his wife, who were beginning an extended tour of the European courts under the names “Comte et Comtesse du Nord.” In the Polish king’s entourage were members of his court orchestra and Pugnani and Viotti. They arrived in Wisniowiec on the sixteenth, the Russians on the thirty-first. The grand duke was the guest of Michal Mniszech, a powerful Lithuanian magnate whose wife, Urszula, was Stanislaw’s favorite niece. Mniszech had probably asked that the king bring the musicians, as he had no orchestra of his own. For twenty days, until 5 November, when the grand duke continued on his journey to Vienna, Italy, and France, Stanislaw provided constant entertainments at the Mniszech establishment—not a day passed without music. There were sixteen concerts, five balls, and at least one magnificent fireworks display.100 We have no details as to these concerts, except that Pugnani and Viotti participated,101 probably several times, and that, again, they were given a royal cachet, this time amounting to 650 ducats. It seems likely that they would have played concertos of their own composition with the king’s orchestra (it would have been a small group, only a part of the orchestra’s full membership of no more than thirty players). An anecdote from these concerts, whose provenance is perhaps more trustworthy than that of many anecdotes, is told by Adam Naruszewicz, bishop of Smolensk, a friend and ally of Stanislaw’s, and the author of a monumental History of the Polish Nation. Naruszewicz was one of the company gathered by the king to honor the Russian guests—the story comes from his diary of the trip. At one of the concerts, on 24 October, he writes, a Lithuanian princess, Sophie Radziwill (who, two or three years later, allegedly ran off from her husband with the pianist Jan Ladislav Dussek), laughed uproariously at Pugnani’s nose. Pugnani, for his part, noticed nothing because he was stamping his foot to mark time.102 Apart from its value as a glimpse into Russian concert mores, this incident may be of interest to the student of eighteenth-century performance practice. It shows that even an orchestral leader of Pugnani’s caliber sometimes felt obliged to resort to this expedient, particularly, it may be supposed, if the standard of the ensemble was not high. Pugnani and Viotti cannot have accompanied the Polish king back to Warsaw, because they had arrived in Berlin, their next port of call, by the time Stanislaw returned to his capital on 8 December.103 If we allow ten days for travel from Wisniowiec to Berlin, about three weeks remain unaccounted for— time enough, we may suppose, for Viotti (and Pugnani?) to accompany the king on a hunting party or two.


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On 8 December Ambassador Fontana reports in his dispatch to Turin that “Pugnani and Viotti have been back since a few days ago. They have once again been very well received by Monseigneur and Madame the Princess of Prussia, and by virtue of their conduct they have won the good will of the entire court of Petersburg and of the King of Poland, who even engaged them to accompany him to Vuniovies, which somewhat prolonged their journey.”104 No doubt Fontana was once again the two musicians’ host; they, in turn, may well have participated in one or more of his house concerts. And, as we have suggested earlier, it may have been on this occasion that Viotti played for the princess one or more of the six quartets that he later published in Paris, dedicated to her. As it happened, the princess was again lying in, or very nearly; her third son, Henry, was born on 30 December. Pugnani and Viotti arrived in Berlin in time for the carnival festivities, which, as in Turin, consisted of two operas, balls, masquerades, and banquets. That December the opera was Graun’s opera seria, I fratelli nemici, the plot of which had been sketched by Frederick himself for the first performance in late 1755, the heyday of his musical patronage. But the exertions of the Seven Years’ War and the War of the Bavarian Succession had drained the king of his enthusiasm for opera. The two operas of this 1781–82 season were the last he saw in the opera house he had built in 1742. As for Pugnani and Viotti, there is nothing to suggest that Frederick the Great was even aware of their presence in Berlin or Potsdam this time round. On 8 March 1781, while Pugnani and Viotti had been in Russia, the younger man’s first published work, a violin concerto, was announced by the publisher Hummel in the Amsterdamsche Courant. (Hummel was based in Berlin and Amsterdam.) On the title page of this edition, Viotti is identified as “élève du célèbre Pugnani.” No doubt Viotti had prepared this work for publication during his previous sojourn in Berlin, April–August 1780.105 It was later published in Paris as Concerto no. 3. We have already noted Miel’s assertion that Viotti was fourteen years old when he wrote this concerto. According to White, Concerto no. 3, whenever it was composed, shows that the young composer was already aware of the latest stylistic developments emanating from Paris in the 1770s. This work may be firmly aligned with what White calls the “cosmopolitan” type of concerto that emerged in the 1770s—charming, brilliant but not excessively so, simple in texture, in a word, fashionably and internationally galant in style.106 As such it does not especially reflect the compositional style of Pugnani (it may be conjectured that Pugnani gave Viotti composition lessons, but we have no record). Pugnani’s last surviving concerto, in A major, published by the Parisian publisher Sieber in about 1783, contains two or three formal and stylistic details that are strikingly reminiscent of the Parisian concertos of Viotti.107 One would normally suppose that the teacher influenced the pupil, but by 1783 Viotti had published at least six of his own concertos, and it was he, not Pugnani, who was spearheading the stylistic development of the violin concerto.

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The Concerto no. 3 is the simplest, musically and technically, of all of Viotti’s known concertos. If, as has been argued above, Viotti may already have had other concertos (nos. 2, 4, 5) in his portfolio as early as January–March 1780, it is not clear why he chose this work for publication, rather than the more brilliant no. 2, for example. Miel provides another piece of evidence that bears upon this question of the time of composition of Viotti’s early works. The leader of the Prince of Prussia’s orchestra, since late in 1779, was Giovanni Mane Giornovichi ( Jarnowick). Giornovichi (1747–1804) had been the most popular violinist in Paris since his début there in 1773. At least six of his violin concertos had been published. He had reportedly left Paris under a cloud, apparently due to his quarrelsome character. It is highly likely that Pugnani and Viotti met this brilliant, eccentric musician at the Prussian court. Miel reports a clash in Berlin between Viotti and Giornovichi, which Miel implies occurred during the former’s second sojourn in that city. According to the story, at a concert for the prince at which each played one of his own compositions—Viotti, a concerto that he had just completed, Giornovichi, a rondo—Viotti paid Giornovichi in kind for the latter’s ironically complimentary comments.108 If Viotti’s concerto was just completed, it could not have been no. 3, published eight months earlier. By now almost two years had passed since the Geneva concerts. Surely Viotti had composed (and probably performed) new concertos, as well as chamber works, during this time; if he had not composed nos. 2, 4, or 5 by early 1780, or even by the time of his first visit to Berlin, then he may well have done so by December 1781. Even no. 1, which he almost certainly played at his Paris début only three months later, could have been the one he played for the prince on this occasion, with the ink scarcely dry. Pugnani and Viotti overstayed their leave of absence by six months.109 It was not the first time for Pugnani. As early as 1767 he had acquired a certain notoriety in this regard, which the restraint of diplomatic language could scarcely conceal. In the letter of recommendation that Pugnani presented to the Torinese ambassador in London, dated 5 September 1767, the foreign minister had written: No doubt, sir, you are already acquainted with Mr Pugnan, and you perhaps are not unaware that along with a great skill in his profession and many other qualities, he has a certain turn of mind that makes him prone to accept engagements easily [il a une certaine tournure d’esprit qui le rend susceptible de prendre aisément des engagements]. It is for this that he will have particular need of your good advice to guide him and to avoid those difficulties which the little acquaintance he has of the country he is entering could bring upon him.110 In the event the minister’s fears were proved all too accurate. Pugnani remained in England not one year, as had been agreed, but two years.


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Viotti is about to separate from his mentor. We do not know whether they ever saw each other again. Viotti probably visited Pugnani when he returned to Piedmont in 1782 or in the summer of 1783111 (the Negri biographical sketch says that Viotti went to Turin on his way back to France on the latter trip), but almost certainly not after that. From the age of fifteen, Viotti has been learning from his celebrated teacher. He had been welcomed into Pugnani’s home. For two long years they have shared coaches, inns, the hospitality of noble houses; they have played together, been presented to royalty together, supped together. In short, they have shared an intimacy extraordinarily close by any standard, the more so by virtue of their master-pupil relationship. Did Pugnani continue to teach Viotti on this trip? That the pupil by now may have been the better player is hardly relevant. He would still have had much to learn from Pugnani about violin playing, about performing, about music, about life. Their relationship seems to have survived the tour intact, indeed seems to have flourished, though only a letter from Pugnani to Viotti has survived, written in 1793, five years before Pugnani’s death. In it his fatherly affection and esteem for his former pupil, now world-famous, is unmistakable.112 Fontana writes in his dispatch of 8 December 1781, “Pugnani intends to return to Turin after having paid his respects to the Duchess of Saxony.113 Viotti is going to spend six months in Paris.”114

chapter three

Paris, 1782–92 Performer, Composer, Teacher

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e do not know by what route, or precisely when, the twenty-six-year-old musician, now presumably traveling alone, arrived in the French capital. We may surmise that it was sometime in the second half of December 1781, and that the journey took at least a week.1 Paris of the 1780s (see figure 3.1) was a city of some 500,000 inhabitants, the largest in continental Europe, notorious for its frenetically busy, muddy streets, in which pedestrians were at high risk from carriage traffic. But open countryside was within walking distance—the Champs Élysées, to the west beyond the gardens of the Palace of the Tuileries, were only beginning to be invaded by the city. On the present site of the Arc de Triomphe there was open land. The “Boulevard,” not the gigantic thoroughfares of Baron Haussmann built in 1850–70, but the elegant, tree-lined avenue comprising the present Boulevard des Capucines and Boulevard des Italiens, had become fashionable. A little over a year after Viotti’s arrival, the Salle Favart, housing the Opéra Comique (Théâtre Italien), would be built just off the Italiens on the site of the present Opéra Comique. At a considerable distance further along the boulevard, at the Porte Saint-Martin, stood the Opéra (from 1781 to 1794). What would Viotti have done in the first few days, besides exploring the city, and practicing? Certainly he would have sought out any acquaintances or friends of friends, including Pugnani’s circle of acquaintances. For example, the oboist Gaetano Besozzi, another relative (nephew) of Alessandro’s, Pugnani’s colleague in Turin, had been a musician in the Royal Chapel at Versailles since 1765, and was a regular soloist at the Concert spirituel. No doubt there were other contacts from such sources as the music-loving diplomats Count Fontana 66

Figure 3.1. Adaption of a detail of “Plan de la ville et Faubourg de Paris avec tous ses accroissemens . . . 1788” (Map of the City and Outskirts of Paris with the latest additions . . . 1788), showing Viotti’s places of residence and professional activity in 1782–92 and 1819–22. Streets and other elements referred to in the text are highlighted. Key: 1, Hôtel de Chartres; 2, Tuileries palace; 3, future site of the Théâtre Feydeau; 4, future sites of the Opéra and the Théâtre Italien (Théâtre de la rue de la Loi and the Salle Louvois); 5, Théâtre Favart; 6, future site of the Théâtre de la rue Le Peletier; 7, future site of the Conservatoire. The Foire St. Germain is just off the map, below the Q[uai] des 4. Nat[ions]. (By permission of the British Library; Maps cc.5.a.113.)

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and Count Chernyshev. One well-placed Parisian was the violinist-composeracademician Michel Paul Gui de Chabanon, who, according to Miel, had introduced Viotti to Voltaire. High on the list of persons to look up would have been Jean-Jérôme Imbault, Viotti’s erstwhile colleague in the Geneva concerts, who, again according to Miel, remained a close friend, and who later became one of Viotti’s publishers. Early in the new year the city of Paris gave itself over to a magnificent celebration. A son, France’s long-awaited Dauphin, had been born to the King and Queen of France on 22 October 1781. France was also still basking in the glow of the American victory over the British at Yorktown on 19 October, in which French troops had participated. On the morning of 21 January 1782 the royal mother took part in the ceremony of “churching” (purification and thanksgiving after childbirth) in the cathedral of Notre Dame. Jubilant crowds cheered her entrance into Paris and her progress across the city. Money was distributed to the people, orchestras played in the streets, and wine flowed freely. Later, there was a reception and banquet at the Hôtel de Ville, after which Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and their guests were seated at gaming tables; the public was permitted to mingle and observe. At the end of the day there was a magnificent fireworks display. If Giambattista was in Paris by this time, which he surely was, he would have, must have witnessed some of these events, which seem to have engulfed the entire city. Did he stop to listen critically to the outdoor orchestras on this cold dry day? Did he glimpse Marie Antoinette in her coach as she passed through the city? Did he manage to squeeze through the crowds into Notre Dame to see her kneeling humbly on the cold stone floor? This would have been his first glimpse of the woman who, in four months’ time, he was to see in different circumstances altogether. Viotti may well have arrived in Paris in time to attend the Christmas Eve concert of the Concert spirituel. This was the most important Parisian concert series, founded in 1725. It owed its name to the fact that its original purpose had been to provide sacred music during Lent and feast days when the theaters and opera houses were closed by law. But its some twenty-six concerts each year had long since outgrown this mandate—its programs usually contained one sacred piece, but the rest of its repertory, both vocal and instrumental, was thoroughly eclectic. Haydn’s symphonies were becoming increasingly popular at the Concert spirituel; a success at this prestigious venue was a sine qua non for composers and performers, both French and foreign. On 24 December 1781 the program included a new cello concerto composed and played by Jean-Baptiste Bréval, and a violin concerto by Giornovichi, played by one Quéru. On Christmas Day J. A. Fodor played a violin concerto of his own composition. The next Concert spirituel, on 2 February 1782, included a violin concerto composed and played by the fourteen-year-old Friedrich Johann Eck. Viotti was thus probably able to take the measure of these three violinists;

Paris, 1782–92: Performer, Composer, Teacher

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nothing we know of the first two (and, at this stage, Eck) suggests that they were in the class either of Lolli, at least technically, or of Giornovichi, both of whom Viotti had almost certainly heard recently.

“First Violinist of the Universe” Viotti was not long in throwing down the gauntlet: “M[onsieur] Viotti, a foreign violinist, who has never performed here, who made himself known by chance for the first time in a little private concert with a rare modesty, and caused all our grand masters to drop their bows, is to make his début at the Concert spirituel this fortnight; there are connoisseurs who place him above all those we have heard until now.”2 This is our first notice of Viotti in Paris. It is an entry in the Mémoires secrets, dated 13 March 1782. (The Mémoires secrets, published in the form of a daily journal, is a most useful source for all kinds of information, political and cultural, as well as gossip, in Paris in the period 1762 to 1789.) We have already alluded to private concerts elsewhere; in Paris the aristocratic salons were de rigueur for a musician wishing to make his way. Several salons specialized in music, and in many others music formed a regular part. We are not told who the host or hostess of this private concert was, but it may well have been the Baron de Bagge, the well-known amateur violinist and composer, whose concerts were held every Friday during the winter in his house on the rue de la Feuillade, at the Place des Victoires. The Friday preceding the 13 March entry in Mémoires secrets fell on 8 March—we may surmise that the private concert at which Viotti performed, if it was at the Bagge salon, took place on that date. Less than a month earlier, in the entry of 20 February, Mémoires secrets informs us that “no virtuoso comes to Paris whom [Bagge] does not wish to see and hear, whatever the cost [quelque prix que se soit]. It is usually at his home that one performs first before appearing at the Concert spirituel.” The colorful phrase in Mémoires secrets describing Viotti’s effect on other violinists (“fit tomber l’archet des mains de tous nos grands maitres”) brings to mind Bagge’s soirées more than those of anyone else, as he was unique in his propensity to gather violinists around him. The earliest biographers of Viotti do not mention Bagge.3 However, as early as 1801, an article in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung (AMZ ), the respected and widely read German music journal, reported that Bagge not only gave formal lessons to Viotti but also provided him with lodging in his house.4 The wealthy, eccentric baron was notorious for giving “lessons” to well-known violin virtuosos, for which he paid them. It is not inconceivable, though our source provides no evidence, that Viotti accepted the baron’s hospitality for a time before finding lodgings of his own. At all events, by 8 April 1782 Viotti had found lodgings of his own. In his advertisement of that date in the Journal de Paris for his forthcoming benefit concerts he gives his address as the rue du Doyenné.

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Within a few days, on 17 March, Easter Sunday, Viotti made his début at the Concert spirituel, which, since 1777, had been administered by Joseph Legros, the celebrated tenor. When did Legros first make contact with Viotti? If Viotti was preceded by his fame in aristocratic and particularly in diplomatic circles as a result of his sojourns in several of the most important courts in Europe, then probably word would have filtered down to Legros, who had connections at Versailles. We know nothing of Legros’s hiring methods, or how far in advance he planned the programs of the Concert spirituel, but since performers sometimes made repeat performances by popular demand, within a few days or weeks of an appearance, it is clear that there was a degree of flexibility. Legros, then, could have contracted Viotti after the latter’s arrival in Paris. It has been claimed that Viotti was paid 100 francs for each performance, though no evidence has been adduced; the fees of other performers were probably comparable. The same source informs us that Niccolò Paganini, at the height of his career, around 1830, was paid 15,000 francs per concert!5 Even allowing for inflation, there is little doubt that by Paganini’s time the earning power of performing artists had increased enormously, mirroring the socioeconomic upheaval in the aftermath of the French Revolution. The venue of the Concert spirituel, since its inception, was the Salle des (Cent) Suisses in the Palace of the Tuileries. It is a remarkable fact that two, possibly three distinct phases of Giovanni Battista Viotti’s career—one might almost say different careers—in Paris, in the 1780s, were played out within the confines of this building, a building that, moreover, played a supremely important role, both real and symbolic, in the social and political life of Paris and of France. Let us therefore devote a moment to this extraordinary ambience. The map in figure 3.1 shows the palace and its surroundings as they were in Viotti’s time.6 The Garden of the Tuileries looked much the same as it does now, at least in its basic structure, with the actual garden at the eastern end, the wooded zone to the west, its wide central alley leading the eye to the Champs Elysèes. The most striking difference between then and now was in the area of the Place du Carrousel, just to the west of the Louvre, where a whole teeming urban quarter had grown up: private residences, apartments, stables, gardens, warehouses and temporary structures (in the midst of which was the rue du Doyenné, now no longer in existence). The northern extension from the Louvre had not yet been built—it was Napoleon who began its construction. But the other extension was there, connecting the Louvre to the Palace of the Tuileries, of which the painting in figure 3.2 shows the west façade, facing the garden. The symmetrical structure is clear: a central pavilion, with a pavilion at each end, and on either side of the central pavilion a narrower section, each with a terrace. The palace was about 359 yards long, compared with, for example, the façade of Buckingham Palace, which is about 113 yards long.


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Figure 3.2. The Palace of the Tuileries, west façade, facing the garden, seen from the Quay d’Orsay (detail). Painting by Nicolas Raguenet, 1757. Musée Carnavalet (RogerViollet/Archivi Alinari).

Construction of the palace had been begun by Catherine de’ Medici in 1564, and the palace was gradually extended and embellished during the course of the seventeenth century. It was intended to be, and actually was, the royal residence until Louis XIV moved his court to Versailles in 1671. Figure 3.3 shows in wonderful detail the architecture of the palace (again the west façade, the garden on the right), which almost seems itself to be the protagonist of the scene. Clearly visible is the arcaded open gallery above which is the terrace. On the balcony is the seventeen-year-old Marie Antoinette (born in the same year as Viotti, by the way), newly wed to the future Louis XVI, on the occasion of her first appearance in Paris, on 8 June 1773. Less than a year later she became the Queen of France. This allegorical representation (its iconography surely derived from pictures of the Assumption: putti, swirling clouds of incense, and the adoring multitude below) conveys vividly the aura of sovereignty that surrounded the palace. In the lower left corner is a group of Swiss Guards. In the plan of the main floor in figure 3.4, Marie Antoinette’s balcony can be seen immediately to the south of the central pavilion. The southern wing contained the royal apartments: ceremonial rooms and living quarters, which, however, were largely abandoned by the monarchy from 1671 until 1789. But the palace was far from unoccupied all those years. Indeed there was a whole colony of residents within its walls. Several of these lived there on graceand-favor terms—royal dependents, dignitaries, pensioners, and their servants. There were also sixty or so functionaries, from the Governor of the Palace down

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Figure 3.3. “The Dauphine [Marie Antoinette] at the palace of the Tuileries, the day of her entrance in Paris, 8 June 1773” (detail). Drawing by Guillaume Desprez (HotelMuseum Arthur Merghelynck, Ypres).

to porters, concierges, sweepers, polishers, lamplighters, and a detachment of Swiss Guards to keep order during spectacles and concerts. But many of the occupants were hardly more than squatters, who had turned the palace, or at least parts of it, and several buildings in the Place du Carrousel into a rabbit warren, replete with improvised partitions, annexes, mezzanines, stairways, cupboards—an extremely chaotic situation, as well as a fire hazard. All of this is only hinted at in the official plans in figure 3.4. The Palace of the Tuileries, in its vastness, also contained no fewer than three different spaces used at various times for public or semi-public musical performances in the eighteenth century: (1) the Salle des Suisses (or Salle des Cents Suisses), in the central pavilion, on the main floor; (2) the Salle des Gardes, next to it, to the south; (3) the Salle des Machines, the immense space in the northern wing. These three rooms were the respective venues for the successive phases of Viotti’s career mentioned earlier. It was in the Salle des Suisses that Mozart, four years earlier, in 1778, heard the first performance of his Symphony no. 31 in D Major, K. 297, which he had composed for the orchestra of the Concert spirituel. And it was in this room, with the same orchestra, on 17 March 1782, that Giovan Battista Viotti made his historic Paris début, playing his Concerto no. 1.

Figure 3.4. Plans of the Palace of the Tuileries (probably 1789), ground floor (below) and main floor (above). Key: 1, Grand Staircase; 2, Salle des Suisses; 3, Salle des Gardes; 4, Antichamber du Roi; 5, Chambre “du Lit”; 6, Salle des Machines; 7, stairs in the gallery under the south terrace; 8, passage from the Cour du Carrousel to the south gallery; 9, service door used for the flight to Varennes; 10, Chapel; 11, Pavillon de Flore; 12, Pavillon de Marsan (Archives nationales, Paris; CP VA 59. Cliché Atelier photographique des Archives nationales).

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Let us now, in our mind’s eye, join the throng of concertgoers as they make their way to the Salle des Suisses to attend the Concert spirituel on that March evening of 1782. We have enjoyed a stroll in the Tuileries garden, weather permitting, and now we approach the palace. It is about half past five—the concert begins at six. The setting sun is giving the grey stone of the palace a warm golden glow. A number of descriptions have come down to us of the beauty of the palace at sunset. In the Place du Carrousel and the Cour Royale, we can hear the clatter of horses’ hooves as coaches, both private and hired, let off their charges, the banter of coachmen as they drive off to await their clients at the end of the concert. And now we find ourselves in the spacious vestibule directly beneath the Salle des Suisses. It was open to the elements on both the garden and carrousel sides; we are told that the prevailing westerly breeze from the garden wafted pleasantly through this space in warm weather, but on this evening in March we may not wish to linger. From here we ascend the Grand Staircase. A single flight of steps leads up to a landing. The plans in figure 3.4 show this staircase, and the landing, from which a double flight of stairs ascends to the entrance of the Salle des Suisses. Figure 3.5 shows the landing, looking up the double flight of stairs. But instead of the tumult of battle (the available images of the interior of the palace date mostly from the Revolutionary period), we must imagine the rustle of silk dresses of ladies on the arms of gentlemen in perukes, as they make clever conversation about the latest scandal at Versailles, the latest bankruptcy, the latest bon mot of Benjamin Franklin, or the latest, deliciously irreverent play by Beaumarchais, titled Le Mariage de Figaro. The door on the left leads into the Salle des Suisses, of which figure 3.6 shows the plan (image A). Here we are facing in the same direction as in figure 3.5; we have just entered by the door (“1”) in the lower left corner of the plan. Perhaps the first thing that strikes us as we enter this majestic room is its great height: more than two full stories, very high stories at that—reaching almost sixty feet—surmounted by an imposing ribbed vault, made of wood.7 We may also pause to admire the ingeniously constructed wooden structure that provides the seating arrangements for the audience and the stage for the orchestra. The Salle des Suisses was of course intended as the hall of the Swiss Guards, not as a concert hall. The plan in figure 3.6 shows how the audience was seated around three sides of the room, with the stage at the southern end. The whole structure could be dismantled in twenty-four hours, so that if need be the king could use this room, but this seems to have been necessary on only one occasion. The room is almost square—about 63 feet by 56 feet,8 but this rather uncompromising shape is made up for in a way by the great height of the ceiling. Image B in figure 3.6 shows the boxes, viewed as if from the center of the room. The boxes are supported by elegantly slender pillars, with benches beneath and the more expensive boxes above. The boxes and the front of the


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Figure 3.5. The grand staircase leading to the Salle des Suisses, revolutionaries fighting with loyalists, 28 February 1791. Drawing and engraving by Jourdain. Musée Carnavalet (Roger-Viollet/Archivi Alinari).

stage are sumptuously embossed and gilded, in contrast with the austerity of the room itself, which apparently was undecorated. Image C is a sectional view. There is a corridor giving access to each of the boxes, running all the way around the three sides of the room. The seating in the boxes appears to be built-in, with the back row slightly higher than the front row. A few years earlier, these seats had had their stuffing changed from hay to horsehair. There is also an upper level of seating, above and behind the boxes, which also has two rows of seats—a kind of gallery, no doubt less luxuriously appointed than the boxes, and more difficult of access, since there is no corridor behind it. Then of course there were the floor-level (parquet) seats, beneath the boxes and filling the floor area. These were the cheapest seats—there was less privacy.9 Young, aspiring musicians would be seated here, eager to hear the latest virtuoso. The audience would have had access to both terraces by way of a few steps from two doorways (“3” and “4” in image A; see also figure 3.4), so that they could promenade in the open air during the interval. Image D shows the stage, with the organ. The stage is raised about six feet above floor level, with several levels; it could accommodate sixty persons, and there is a small set of stairs (visible in image A) at each side for the musicians.

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3

D 1

4

A

C

B

Figure 3.6. Salle des Suisses, anonymous drawings: A, plan (door “2” would have been the artists’ entrance to the stage from the Salle des Gardes); B, frontal view of boxes; C, sectional view of boxes; D, stage (Bibliothèque musée de l’Opéra; RES–2341).

The use of so much wood, combined with the high wooden ceiling, would have given the room resonant, if not ideal, acoustics. As for Viotti, I doubt that he and the other musicians would have come into the Salle des Suisses following the same route as we have—it would have meant an awkward passage through the auditorium to get backstage. It is more likely that they entered by the stairs under the south terrace, which were also accessible from the carrousel side via a passageway (see figure 3.4). Then, having ascended the stairs they could make their way to the Salle des Gardes, which must have been used as a kind of green room for the musicians—a place to


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leave their instrument cases and where they could warm up. Here Viotti would have waited his turn. From this room he could look out on to the Place du Carrousel and beyond to the Louvre. It would be quite dark now, getting on for eight o’clock—Viotti’s piece is the penultimate on the program. Or, he might have preferred to step out through the French windows onto the terrace for a breath of fresh air. This of course is the very terrace on which Marie Antoinette had appeared nine years earlier. From here, given a reasonably clear sky and a little moonlight (the moon was in a crescent phase that night), he could look out onto the superb Garden of the Tuileries and beyond to the Champs Élysées, which were not much more than a wooded meadow, with a tree-lined central path sloping up into the open countryside. Now Viotti is about to make his entrance into the Salle des Suisses, where the soprano, who immediately precedes him in the program, has finished her performance of an Italian Air. There is an expectant hush—many in the audience would have heard of the sensation created by this young Piedmontese violinist at a private concert a week or so earlier. (A few violinists in the fiftyodd–member orchestra may even have been among those who dropped their bows in astonishment on that occasion.) His moment has come. He strides through the doors into this superb, stately room, glittering in the candlelight of nine Bohemian crystal chandeliers. He mounts the steps, he acknowledges the applause of the most elegant audience of Europe. A moment, perhaps, to tune; a nod to the leader of the orchestra, Pierre La Houssaye (the same violinist who had led Mozart’s symphony four years earlier), and the first movement of Viotti’s Concerto no. 1 in C Major begins. The program10 on the evening of 17 March 1782 was typical of the Concert spirituel: vocal and instrumental pieces in alternation, all of them written within the last few years: Symphony Oratorio L’Arche d’alliance Mlle Gazet, M. Legros, M. Chéron Concerto for violoncello M. Bréval Motet M. Chenard Concerto for horn M. Punto Air Italien Mlle Buret l’aînée Concerto for violin M. Viotti Ode sacrée Mlle Buret, M. Chéron

Rosetti Gossec Bréval Candeille Punto

Viotti Méhul (text by J. B. Rousseau)

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Viotti’s performance established him, almost overnight, as the leading violinist of the day. On 23 March the Journal de Paris reported, “No violinist as powerful as M. Viotti has appeared since the famous Lolli.” There was one dissenting voice. The Mercure de France wrote on 20 April: “Some connoisseurs claim that [Viotti’s] playing is sometimes brusque and harsh, and that he often sacrifices the expression and the spirit of the music in an attempt to draw unusual sounds from his instrument; and lastly, that his style of composition is inferior to that of Jarnowick and other well known virtuosos.” There may have been some truth in this criticism of Viotti’s playing—we have already noted a similar complaint about Pugnani’s tone production. Pierre Baillot, later to become Viotti’s close friend and admirer, and one of the foremost violinists of his time, wrote in his Notice on Viotti shortly after the latter’s death that these early performances of Viotti in Paris, while full of brilliance and virtuosity, lacked the polish, the simplicity, that he acquired later.11 But, in general, Viotti’s triumph was complete. The Almanach musicale, summing up the 1782 season of the Concert spirituel, wrote: “MM. Fodor, Eck, Viotti and Berthaume played various violin concertos of their own composition and of other French composers. [ . . . ] From the first day that we heard M. Viotti, it was universally agreed to place him ahead of all his rivals.”12 After his début Viotti proceeded to consolidate his position as the greatest living violinist. He played again a week later in the Concert spirituel, and in the following two months he played nine more times (the last on 30 May), each time with a concerto of his own composition. The concert of 6 April was “extraordinaire,” the public having asked to hear Viotti again.13 On 17 April he played at a benefit concert for Madame Mara, the celebrated soprano (who had made her Paris début at the Concert spirituel two days after Viotti’s); on 24 April he gave his own benefit concert, both concerts in the Salle des Suisses. In the 1770s the practice of benefit concerts had arisen in Paris. Prominent artists would invite other performers to donate their services in a concert to which tickets were sold for his or her “benefit.” In the 1780s such concerts became a vogue—the performers willingly reciprocated in their colleagues’ concerts, and the public attended enthusiastically. The Mémoires secrets, however, reports a contretemps: Madame Mara, piqued at the mediocre takings from her benefit concert, refused to sing at Viotti’s a week later.14 The program of Viotti’s benefit concert included a symphony by Haydn, an Italian air by Sarti and one by Piccinni, sung by the Buret sisters, respectively, an air from Piccinni’s Roland, sung by Legros, and concertos by the cellist JeanLouis Duport, the hornist Punto, and Viotti himself, who also played airs with variations of his own composition.15 A measure of Viotti’s success is the fact that within little more than a week after his début, on 25 March, an announcement of the publication, by the editor Jean-Georges Sieber (who was a horn player in the orchestra of the Concert


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spirituel), of his Concerto no. 1 appeared in the Parisian press. This was followed in rapid succession by the publication of nos. 2–6, including an edition of no. 3, first published by Hummel in 1781. It was these six concertos that probably served Viotti for his performances at the Concert spirituel in 1782. Most of the commentators singled out Viotti’s tone. Three days after Viotti’s début, for example, the Mémoires secrets praised “the admirable quality of his tone in the adagio.” Almost thirty years later the essence of the Pugnani-Viotti school was admirably encapsulated in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung: It is well known that the most outstanding characteristics of this school derive from the following principles: a big, strong, full tone is the first; the combination of this with a powerful, penetrating, beautiful singing legato [schön verbundenem Gesang] is the second; as the third, variety, charm, shadow and light must be brought into play through the greatest diversity of bowings.16 It is possible that what struck listeners was due not only to Viotti’s bowing technique, inherited from his teacher and exalted by Viotti, but also in part to the violin he played, which may well have been made by Antonio Stradivari, the great Cremonese luthier. There is a long-held tradition that Viotti was influential in popularizing the violins of Stradivari in France.17 It must be admitted that there is no specific evidence to support this tradition. It rests on the assumption that as the most acclaimed violinist of the time, Viotti played a key role in the gradual ascendancy in esteem and popularity, complete by around 1800, of Stradivari’s instruments over all others.18 Certainly the tonal qualities of Stradivari violins, their bigger, more massive sound, as compared with the sweet, but less powerful tone of the previously preferred violins of Stainer and Amati, were precisely those that responded most perfectly to the Piedmontese style of bowing and tone production, in particular Viotti’s, almost as if they had been made for this purpose. We do not know when Viotti acquired the Stradivari he is thought to have used in Paris. Several Stradivari violins are associated with his name—the one he mentions in his will he almost certainly did not acquire until 1810.19 Turin was well placed for the acquisition of violins. Count Cozio di Salabue (1755–1840), the first great collector and connoisseur of fine Italian violins, who systematically tried to track down all the existing violins of Stradivari, maintained an agent near Turin who bought and sold violins from all over northern Italy, including Cremonese instruments. Cozio was the patron of the violin maker Giuseppe Guadagnini, who, in his sixties, settled in Turin in 1771. They entered into a contract, which lasted from December 1773 until May 1777, whereby Cozio acquired most of the some fifty violins made by Guadagnini. Guadagnini also repaired and modernized violins, including many of the Stradivari instruments in Cozio’s collection. His workshop would have been much frequented, as such locales are today, by string players, in particular those

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employed in the Royal Chapel and the Teatro Regio. Pugnani and Viotti may well have seen the precious collection of Stradivari’s violins and workshop tools and drawings bought by Cozio from the great luthier’s son in 1775–76, Cozio’s agent and Guadagnini acting as intermediaries. Though he kept those he considered the most valuable in his collection, Cozio sold many instruments, for which he used a silk merchant’s shop in Turin as a depository and retail outlet. It is not impossible that before embarking on the tour of 1780–81 (or possibly on his return to Piedmont in 1782 or 1783), Viotti bought one of Cozio’s Stradivari violins with the financial help of the Prince della Cisterna. For that matter, Viotti was ideally placed to acquire one of Guadagnini’s powerfully toned violins, now among the most highly prized of old Italian violins, but which were, and still are, much less expensive than Stradivari’s instruments. In 1776 several of Guadagnini’s recently made violins on sale at Cozio’s retail outlet in Turin were listed at prices ranging from L.60 to L.90 each, whereas four Stradivari violins were priced at from L.260 to L.400 each.20 Viotti’s two annual base salaries in 1776 together amounted to L.350. Cozio himself wrote in 1816 that Viotti had “generally used and dealt in the violins of [Gioffredo] Cappa [1644–1717], and at not disadvantageous terms.”21 It is difficult to judge the credibility of this assertion. Cozio was not well informed as to Viotti’s career and activities,22 and here he is not clear as to when Viotti’s playing and dealing in Cappa violins were supposed to have taken place. At any rate, the Cappa family of violin makers were disciples of the Amati school, not the more modern Stradivari-Guarneri school, so that it is difficult to accommodate Cozio’s assertion to the testimony, if not of Viotti’s remarkably powerful tone, then at least of his having favored Stradivari violins. It happens that, as early as the 1770s, important structural changes were beginning to be made to the violin. Previously the neck of the instrument extended straight out from the body, which necessitated the insertion of a rather thick wedge under the fingerboard to incline it at the required angle for the strings to reach the height of the bridge. This made for a thicker neck, which on the older models was also slightly wider; this in turn was an impediment to ease of shifting to the higher positions, particularly on the G string. In the last two or three decades of the eighteenth century violin makers began tilting the neck at a slight angle from the body of the violin, thus removing the need for the wedge, the neck was made thinner, and shifting to the higher positions was facilitated. It has been pointed out that in Viotti’s Concertos nos. 7, 8, and 9 there is a noticeable increase in the frequency and extent of passages exploiting the higher range of the G string. These concertos are probably the first that Viotti composed for the 1783 season. It is possible then that they reflect the “modernization” of his violin after his 1782 season of concerts.23 Another modification made to the violin around this time was the lengthening of the finger board, which increased the number of notes available to the player in the highest range of the instrument. Also, by around 1800 the standard pitch had risen considerably


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since Stradivari’s time. The “A” to which the orchestral instruments tuned was almost a full tone higher. This necessitated the thickening of the bass bar (the strip of wood glued to the inside of the top of the violin) to enable the top, or table of the violin, to withstand the increased pressure of the strings, which in turn increased the volume of the instrument. All of these changes were both a response to and a stimulus for the increased technical and sonoric demands and capabilities of the leading violinists. Viotti is thought to have consulted with the great bow maker François Tourte, who in the 1780s was arriving at the final development of the modern bow, with its distinctly concave silhouette, and its screw mechanism for increasing the tension of the hair. F.-J. Fétis asserts that it was as a result of Viotti’s observations that Tourte began using a ferrule to keep the bow hair flat, which previously had tended to bunch up.24 Again, these developments at once stimulated and responded to the tendency, the desire, of the leading violinists to produce a more continuous, more powerful singing legato bow stroke, as well as to produce heavier accents both at the frog and at the tip of the bow. These changes to the bow were of a piece with the increasing popularity of Stradivari violins, and with the structural changes being made to the violin, and for that matter, with the gradual eclipse of the harpsichord by the pianoforte. Given Viotti’s interest in “technological” developments in general (see below, pp. 119), and the fact that one of the hallmarks, if not the chief hallmark of his playing was his broad, powerful tone, and that Tourte might well have depended on the patient, time-consuming process of trying out different bows for comparison, of making a minute adjustment, then another tryout, then another correction, and so on—given all of this, we can easily imagine that Viotti spent a considerable amount of time in this collaboration. Besides his appearances in the Concert spirituel and in benefit concerts (his own and those of others), Viotti also made the rounds of the aristocratic salons. It may have been the Baron Bagge who opened some of these doors for Viotti— the salons of Madame d’Étioles, Madame de Richelieu, and the Comtesse de Polignac have been suggested, though there is no concrete evidence.25 Jacques François Halévy, a pupil of Luigi Cherubini’s, asserts in his study of Cherubini of 1845 that Cherubini was a great success at several homes, including those of Mme d’Étioles and the Maréchale de Richelieu.26 Halévy does not explicitly say it was Viotti who introduced Cherubini to these salons, but it is in the context of their friendship that he mentions it. Viotti is commonly supposed to have been the leader of the private orchestra of the Prince de Guémené27 and that of the Prince de Soubise. According to one impartial and expert witness, the visiting composer Anton Rossler (Rosetti), Guémené’s orchestra was composed of the foremost players of Paris.28 (A symphony by Rosetti was the opening number on the program of the Concert spirituel at which Viotti made his début.) Let us examine the rather slender evidence for Viotti’s participation in this prince’s salon. First, Viotti dedicated

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his Concerto no. 2, published in Paris in 1782, to “Msgr. Le Prince RohanGuéménée, Grand Chambellan [Chamberlain] de France.”29 Viotti’s dedication implies a connection between him and the prince, but it is impossible to be more precise than this. Second is the story, told by Pierre-Louis Ginguené, the man of letters, diplomat, and biographer of the composer Niccolò Piccinni, of an incident during a concert of the prince’s orchestra, which, according to Ginguené, “Viotti conducted” (conduisait).30 (Earlier in the same anecdote, however, the author says that Piccinni directed [dirigeait] the prince’s concerts.) Ginguené places the event in 1778, which appears to be exact since in that year Edward Dillon,31 who was also present at the concert, returned from St. Petersburg, as Ginguené says he did. But obviously Viotti could not have been present. This casts doubt on Ginguené’s account, without entirely invalidating it. He may well have been acquainted with Viotti at the time, and his displacement of Viotti to an earlier date is a not uncommon form of memory slip. Third, Miel refers to Viotti and the Prince de Guémené in a slightly ambiguous way, which I believe has been the cause of confusion. He writes that numerous “grands seigneurs” had private orchestras, and continues: “Among other concerts, that of the Prince de Guéméné has been mentioned. A competition took place between Viotti and Bertheaume [a prominent Parisian violinist and orchestral player] for the position of first violinist at the hôtel Soubise; the title of orchestra conductor was sought after [ . . . ]; Viotti carried the day.”32 Beginning with Fétis,33 this passage has been interpreted to refer to the orchestra of Prince Soubise. But Guémené, who was Soubise’s son-in-law, had apartments in the Hôtel Soubise, and in fact was the owner of the building since his marriage in 1761.34 Miel is clearly speaking of this competition in the context of Guémené’s orchestra, with which he began the account. The Prince de Guémené’s concert was moveable: In the winter in Paris, in the apartment in the Tuileries palace [at the northern extremity, in the Pavillon de Marsan] which his wife’s position [as governess to the children of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette] made available to him, in a theater he had had constructed there, he gave charming productions played by the most distinguished actors and singers of the three main Parisian theaters, preceded by a concert, and followed by an excellent supper, and a kind of open house where everyone who was anyone came.35 Viotti may well have performed at these exquisite soirées early in 1782—another occasion on which his career would have taken him to the Palace of the Tuileries. In the summer the prince repaired to Hautefontaine, a few miles northeast of Paris, near Soissons, to pursue the hunt, and he “brought down the famous virtuosi of the day; excellent concerts were given, plays were acted, and every kind of distraction was pursued.”36


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At all events, if Viotti was connected with the Prince de Guémené’s concert, it cannot have been for more than eight or nine months at most, because in late September 1782, the prince went spectacularly bankrupt and was banished to his uncle’s country estates in Navarre.37 Furthermore, the prince’s mistress, Madame Dillon, the wife of Arthur Dillon (Edward’s cousin), around April 1782 began spitting blood violently;38 on 7 September she died of tuberculosis, aged thirty-one. The prince’s deep and loyal affection for his mistress was well known: “The attachment felt by M. de Guémené for Madame Dillon was extreme; he lived only for her, and never left her.”39 It is not likely that he would have been inclined to entertainments during this period, except perhaps as a solace. In the summer of 1782 Guémené was with the dying Madame Dillon at Spa, where she had been sent by her doctor to take the waters, accompanied by her twelveyear-old daughter, Henriette-Lucie, later the Marquise de La Tour du Pin.40 It is possible that he had musicians in his entourage; in 1780 he apparently took his orchestra, including the violinist Dieudonné-Pascal Pieltain and his brother, a horn player, with him to Liège, and the two brothers gave concerts in Spa (about twenty miles distant) in September.41 A notice in the Journal de Paris of 8 April 1782 reads in part, “M. Viotti advises those who have taken tickets for the four concerts he was to give in the Hôtel de Soubise, that these concerts will not take place, but that he will give them in the room of the Concert spirituel, where the same tickets will be honored.” From this we cannot be sure whether Viotti’s concerts were to be sponsored by Soubise or by Guémené, nor why the plans were changed. A strikingly similar incident occurred five years earlier, involving another eminent violinist: The benefit concert of Sr. Jarnowick [Giornovichi] took place yesterday, but not in the room of the Concert des amateurs [in the Soubise palace], because the Prince de Soubise was opposed to it, claiming that it did not suit him to have a paying concert given in his home. It was M. the Prince de Guemenée, living in the same palace, who lent his concert room, which is attractive, but too small.42 If Soubise really did make this change for this reason, it seems odd that he would have made a similar last-minute volte-face five years later, if indeed it was his, not Guémené’s, room in which Viotti’s concerts were to have been given. On balance, it seems most likely that it was Guémené’s room in which Viotti was to have given his four concerts, and that the change may have been made on account of Madame Dillon’s illness. It is true that these concerts were intended from the beginning to be benefit concerts, not private salon concerts, though for Guémené the distinction between the two may not have been very great with regard to both Giornovichi and Viotti. There seems to be no record of these four concerts actually taking place—perhaps they were reduced to one (the benefit concert Viotti gave in the Salle des Suisses on 24 April).

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We may conclude from the available evidence that Viotti probably participated in Guémené’s concert early in 1782, and that he was sufficiently encouraged to dedicate his Violin Concerto no. 2 to the prince, but that their connection was interrupted by the events described above. As for Viotti leading the orchestra of the Prince de Soubise, no evidence has come to light that Soubise had a private orchestra. Is it possible that the numerous references to the concerts of the orchestra of the Concert des amateurs in the Hôtel Soubise have misled commentators into thinking it was the prince’s private orchestra? The prince was known to be a devotee of the ballet at the Opéra, in particular of a prima ballerina, Mademoiselle Guimard. However, there is no trace in the account books in the family archives of payments to musicians, though there are, for example, regular annual payments in the 1780s for a box at the Comédie Française and at the Opéra, as well as payments to sculptors and painters. Nor is there any mention of an orchestra, or of musicians, in the prince’s voluminous personal correspondence.43 Viotti continued to participate in salons almost up to the time of his departure from France in 1792. But there were differences, which we shall examine in due course. In the meantime, on 20 May 1782, Viotti played at Versailles, in the presence of the queen. A register from the Maison du roi records a payment of 600 livres on 13 June to “Sr Viotti, musicien, pour le concert [dans la] Gallerie.”44 Another document from the Maison du roi records this payment as follows: “to Mr Viotty, the sum of 600 [livres], for having sung [sic] at the concert in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles for the arrival of the Comte et Comtesse du Nord.”45 (We may forgive the royal bookkeeper his error; Viotti would surely have smiled at it.) The Comte and Comtesse du Nord, we recall, were the Grand Duke Paul of Russia, and his wife, the grand duchess, for whom Viotti and Pugnani had played in the Winter Palace, St. Petersburg, on 14 February 1781, and again in Wisniowiec, Poland, in early November. The royal couple had then spent six weeks in Vienna, where they visited Gluck,46 heard Mozart and Muzio Clementi engage in a contest of keyboard playing, and, on Christmas Day, applauded a performance of one of Haydn’s quartets, probably from the newly completed op. 33, a set of six later dedicated to the grand duke.47 On 22 April 1782, they arrived in Turin, where they attended operas, plays, concerts, and balls, made contact with Pugnani, or at least members of their entourage did, and heard Pugnani play more than once.48 Now, in May–June 1782, they were in France. A harpsichord and a “forté piano anglois” were placed in the rooms of the grand duchess at Versailles49—before leaving Russia, she had promised her teacher, Paisiello, that she would practice.50 Louis XVI and particularly Marie Antoinette gave several entertainments at Versailles for their guests, including this “grand concert” on 20 May, in the Salon de Paix, a corner room in the queen’s apartments that opened onto


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one end of the Hall of Mirrors (Galerie des Glaces). The Baronne d’Oberkirch described this gala event: “The orchestra was placed on tiers. Nothing can give an idea of such splendor, such richness [ . . . ]. Monsieur Legros, of the Opéra, sang some admirable selections, as did the celebrated Madame Mara.”51 The baroness does not mention Viotti (for her, as for the royal bookkeeper, and, indeed, for many Parisian concertgoers, music was vocal music; instrumental music was a poor relation, scarcely worth noticing), but clearly the two singers were not the only soloists.52 The orchestra was placed on tiers; the Salle de Paix is rather small to contain an orchestra (even a small one) and soloists, as well as an audience. It may be conjectured that the orchestra and the soloists were placed in the Hall of Mirrors (“la galerie”), where Oberkirch says the overflow audience, who did not have invitations, were seated on folding chairs. From another document in the archives,53 we learn that there had been a rehearsal for this concert. Viotti probably participated, perhaps not so much for his sake as for that of the orchestra of the King’s Music, which is not likely to have played Viotti’s music before. By 20 May Viotti had performed ten times in the Concert spirituel, the tenth having been on 19 May. It is tempting to suppose that he played the same concerto on the twentieth in Versailles as on the evening before. It would probably have been one of his first six concertos, published in 1782.54 The Russian ambassador to the court of Louis XVI, Prince Ivan Seergevich Bariatinsky, was present at this concert at Versailles.55 Bariatinsky was the brother of the Hofmarschall at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, who had introduced Viotti and Pugnani to the Russian court fourteen months earlier. A little over twenty years later, his son, Prince Ivan Ivanovich Bariatinsky, will encounter Viotti.56 Both the grand duke and the duchess were known for their amiable characters (at least when free of the political and matriarchal intrigue at the St. Petersburg court). They may have spoken to Viotti; they shared recent memories with the Italian and they brought fresh news of the Turin court, above all, of Pugnani. It seems almost invidious to mention it, but was the royal couple struck by any differences between the playing of the master and that of the pupil, both of whom they had now heard on three separate occasions? On their way back to Russia the Comte and Comtesse du Nord stopped in Spa, where they watched and applauded the twelve-year-old Henriette-Lucie Dillon, the future Madame de La Tour du Pin, as she danced the minuet and gavotte,57 probably in the presence of her mother, Madame Dillon, possibly in the presence of the Prince de Guémené, hence, not impossibly in the presence of Viotti.

Homecoming Viotti’s last known appearance in Paris in 1782 was on 30 May. He is now twenty-seven years old. In the space of three months he has conquered Paris.

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At this point Viotti must have taken stock. He is still on the roster of the Cappella orchestra in Turin (but not of the Teatro Regio). He has overstayed his leave of absence by one year. Did he consider returning to his former positions in Turin? Our next notice of Viotti in Paris is in April of 1783—almost a year away. Our only inkling of his whereabouts during these ten months is an entry in the Fontanetto register of births: on 13 December 1782, “Joannes Baptista Viotti” was one of the witnesses at the baptism of Teresa Margarita Domenica,58 the nineteenth and last child of Felice Viotto’s. This was the tenth offspring of the sixty-seven-year-old blacksmith by his second wife, Maria Teresa, herself now aged forty. Giovan Battista, then, has returned to his birthplace. We do not know when he embarked on this trip, nor how long he spent in Italy, but he may well have left Paris in the summer—travel was easier and there does not seem to have been anything in particular to keep him in Paris. There were no Concerts spirituels between 30 May and 1 November 1782. His next appearance in the Concert spirituel was not until 6 April 1783; there were concerts on 1 November 1782; 9, 24, and 25 December 1782; and on 2 February and 25 March of the new year, in none of which did Viotti play. There seems to be no reason, if he was in Paris, why he would not have played in at least one or two of these concerts. According to the Negri biographical sketch, Viotti bought a new house in Fontanetto for his family,59 which he furnished with aristocratic refinement (signorilmente). On 31 August, the feast day of Saint Bononio, a patron saint of the village, he received various friends and gave a ball in the evening, and he organized a few hunting expeditions. He played the violin whenever he was asked, and he went to the market fair in Alessandria (about thirty miles away), where he was received and handsomely treated by the Ghillini family.60 Viotti also bought a farmhouse (which, according to DeGregori, he gave to his father)61 near the town of Salussola, a few miles northwest of Fontanetto Po.62 We must now pause to consider a question of chronology. According to Negri’s biographical sketch, which he wrote in 1810, some twenty-seven years after the event, this visit of Viotti took place in the summer of 1783. Now, Viotti played in the Concert spirituel on 29 May, 8 June, 19 June, 15 August, and 8 September of 1783. Although it would have been possible between 19 June and 15 August, it is doubtful that between 15 August and 8 September he could have traveled to and from Italy, with all that he is supposed to have done on this visit. This means that, in 1783, he would not have been in Fontanetto on 31 August for the feast of Saint Bononio, an important event that Negri would surely remember.63 It is very likely that Negri mistook the year, and that it was in the summer of 1782, when Viotti evidently had much more time, that he returned to his birthplace for the feast of Saint Bononio. He would then have stayed on in Piedmont until the baptism of his half-sister in December, and


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possibly for a time thereafter. Of course, he may have made the trip again in June–July of 1783. It has been two and a half event-filled years since Viotti has seen his family and friends in Fontanetto. He left Italy as a promising, but untried musician of hardly more than local fame (though we must always consider the possibility that he had indeed been abroad earlier); he returned to his native village internationally celebrated, having created a sensation in Paris, seen several of his works published, played for the sovereigns of Europe, and, it would appear, amassed a considerable fortune. What a hero’s welcome he must have received! How must all the old familiar sights have seemed to him now: the childhood haunts, the forge, the modest house? To greet him, besides his father and his stepmother, were his half-sisters Francesca Maddalena, eighteen years old, who stood witness with the violinist at the baptism of Teresa Margarita Domenica on 13 December 1782, and probably Anna Margarita, thirteen, and his halfbrothers Francesco Giovanni Andrea, five, in adulthood known as André, and Giovanni Maria (Giorgio), three. Giambattista’s brother-german Giuseppe, now nineteen years old, seems to have still been living in Fontanetto, perhaps in the same house. Giambattista may well have witnessed the induction of Giuseppe and their two half-brothers into one of the religious confraternities of Fontanetto in 1782, probably in the summer, which is when new members (confratelli and consorelli) usually seem to have been inducted.64 As a matter of fact Giambattista’s own name appears on the membership list as an insertion, out of chronological order: “Viotto, Gio Battista, son of Felice, aged about twenty, by virtue of being a violin virtuoso, was admitted into the royal chapel as first violinist and declared a virtuoso of His Majesty Vittorio Amadeus. 1776.”65 In the same list appears the entry “Viotto, Giuseppe, son of Felice, he also a violin virtuoso, and eminently successful under the protection of his brother, though only about fifteen years old. 1776.”66 This confirms Negri’s remarks about the musical talents of Giambattista’s younger brother, who, however, was thirteen, not fifteen years old in the summer of 1776. Following are the entries for the members of the Viotti family who joined the Confraternity: Consorelli 1759. @luglio: Viotto Adelaide Margarita di Felice. [This must be Anna Caterina Adelaide]. 1776. @luglio: Viotto Maria Teresa di Trino moglie di Felice Viotto. 1779. Viotto Margarita di Felice. Confratelli 1782. Viotti Gio[vanni] Andrea Viotti di Felice. Viotti Gio[vanni] Maria di Felice. Viotti Giuseppe Giacinto.

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It will be seen that Giuseppe and his two half-brothers, but not Giambattista, are shown as joining the confraternity in 1782. Probably, then, the two notices of Giambattista and Giuseppe as violinists were just that, and not entries of induction. But it is entirely possible that Giambattista witnessed his brothers’ induction. This is the last we shall be seeing of several of these relatives of Viotti. Things did not go well for Adelaide and Giuseppe, Giambattista’s two blood siblings. Adelaide was forced by economic necessity to resign from the Società di Suffragio in 1793. She apparently could not afford the normal contribution required of members for the celebration of Mass for deceased fellow members.67 And by 1803, at the age of fifty-four, as we learn from a letter to Giambattista from André, she had become so reduced in circumstances and health that “she was constrained to take refuge in the home of a school rector, where, to put it plainly, she is a servant.” It would appear from this that she no longer had a husband to support her. We do not know how much longer she lived. André also reports, alarmingly and ambiguously, that Adelaide is “the cause of so many troubles, and the loss of Giorgio, if one can call it a loss.” Giorgio (baptised Giovanni Maria), the youngest brother, “has no little talent, writes Italian well, French passably, has a fine physique, [circa] 5’ 11” [“42 oncie”] tall.”68 (Would that such a precious detail about Viotti the musician had come down to us!) But he too, by 1803, aged twenty-three, had fallen on hard times, and had decided to enlist in a French Expeditionary Force headed for Bengal. Six years later, Giorgio was killed at the Battle of Wagram (5–6 July 1809).69 As for Giuseppe, Viotti’s musically talented but feckless brother-german, things seem to have gone from bad to worse. By 1803, aged forty, he was not only destitute, unable to pay for his lodging, but also suffering from an advanced case of tuberculosis such that he was given only three months to live by his doctor. André begs his illustrious brother to send money (L.25 per month) to enable Giuseppe to stay with a “new” brother-in-law, named Gavino, who apparently lived near Vercelli (“Coliavagno”).70 This man would have been the husband of one of Viotti’s two half-sisters, probably Anna Margarita (b. 16 January 1769), who, according to Negri, survived their mother, and who married outside of Fontanetto. Negri, however, asserts that Giuseppe “ended his days living with a married sister in Montiglio” (presumably Adelaide), which is difficult to reconcile with what we have just learned of Adelaide’s situation. Giuseppe apparently survived his illness, at least for a time (he was given asses’s milk, the traditional remedy for tuberculosis), for in 1807 and again in 1810 he sold parcels of land that had belonged to his father.71 The other surviving half-sister, Francesca Maddalena (b. 24 August 1764), married “the Surgeon Pietro Antonio Franzolio” on 5 September 1786.72 We know nothing more about Viotti’s siblings and half-siblings, except for André, who, many years later, probably in Paris, in 1814, will be reunited with Giovanni Battista, and the two half-brothers will enjoy a close and affectionate friendship, until André’s death in 1822.


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Viotti’s father had little more than a year left to him—not very long to enjoy the new houses that his eldest son bought for him and his family. We do not know what the state of his health was at the time of Giambattista’s visit. His wife, Maria Teresa, died in 1793, according to Viotti’s Précis, though there is no corroborative evidence. Unfortunately, the relevant death register in the Fontanetto archives is missing. In 1793, Andrea (André) was about sixteen years old, Giorgio about fourteen. Their married sister, Francesca Maddalena, could have taken them in.73 Almost certainly Viotti would have visited Turin, to see, among others, the Prince Dal Pozzo della Cisterna and his mother, the Marchesa di Voghera. The prince’s life had not been uneventful. In September of 1780 he had been appointed first equerry and gentleman of the chamber to the Prince of Piedmont. In December of the same year he had married; his bride, Beatrice, daughter of the Prince Alberico Barbiano di Belgioioso, died within eighteen months, in May of 1782. The prince’s pleasure at seeing his protégé would have been tempered by this recent loss. There is convincing evidence that the prince continued to patronise Viotti for several years after the violinist had left Italy. In the della Cisterna family archives there is a “Summary of Account Register 1784,” a rather detailed twopage statement of income and expenditures, which at the same time is a table of contents, or a copy thereof, for a complete account register, now lost, with a page number indicated for each item.74 The final item on the list of expenditures is “Expenditures for extra persons [Spese per Terze persone] Viotti etc.—page 225—L.3281.0.6.” This is a large sum of money—more than eight times Viotti’s last combined Capella and Teatro annual salaries. The page number suggests a fuller description in the register itself, in the absence of which we may surmise that there were other “terze persone” enjoying the prince’s philanthropy, indicated by the secretary’s hieroglyph for “etc.” after Viotti’s name. However, the fact that Viotti’s is the only name mentioned may indicate that his was the lion’s share. The prince is known to have been the patron of the painter Giorgio Agostino Robotti, who executed several decorative commissions for the prince in the 1780s, and the Biella archive contains a letter from Domenico Cimarosa, dated 21 January 1785, thanking the prince for a favor.75 Two or three other yearly summaries contain references to “terze persone,” which, while not giving Viotti’s name, probably indicate his presence. The date of this document indicates, surprisingly, that Viotti was still receiving disbursements from the prince, or at least material assistance of some kind, five years after he had left Italy, and more than two years after he had established himself as the first violinist of Europe. We may conjecture that he was helped by the prince in such major expenditures as the two houses he bought while in Piedmont. The “Summary” for 1785 does not contain “terze persone”; perhaps the prince learned of Viotti’s having obtained the patronage of the Queen of France in 1784, rendering further disbursements inappropriate. Years

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later, “the excellent old Prince” (he died in 1819) told the Vercellese historian Gaspare DeGregori that he had spent more than 20,000 francs on Viotti.76 We may be certain that Viotti also saw Pugnani, who, after a sojourn in Naples in October– November 1782, was back in Turin by mid-December, in time for the rehearsals for the first carnival opera.77 Word would have reached him of his pupil’s successes in Paris, including his performance for the Comte and Comtesse du Nord, for whom Pugnani had performed in Turin in April. Giambattista would have brought his latest concertos and other pieces to show his much-esteemed mentor, or, better, he would have played them with Pugnani. Taking pride of place among these works, surely, would have been his op. 2, the set of six trios (two violins plus bass) first published in Paris about 1783–86, which were dedicated to “il célèbre Pugnani,” and which, as we have seen, may have been underway as early as 1780. Viotti may have made another visit at this time—to the workshop of Guadagnini, possibly to have his violin modernized, if he had not already done so. The illiterate but supremely skilled craftsman, now over seventy years of age, had a mutual acquaintance with Viotti—Pierre La Houssaye, whom Guadagnini had known in Parma when the Frenchman had been chamber violinist of the ducal court from 1760 to 1766. Around the year 1770 Guadagnini had sent some of his violins to La Houssaye in Paris.78 Undoubtedly, while in Piedmont, Viotti needed to settle his affairs with his employer. His name remained on the orchestra roster of the Cappella for more than six years after he had left Italy—until 1786. Clearly he was granted an extension of his leave of absence, with pay. He was officially released from his service to the king, and his salary terminated, at the end of May 1786.79 How to account for this apparent munificence toward a court musician? In a sense it is the other side of the coin from the oath Viotti was required to take when he joined the chapel orchestra. There are occasional signs in the court records of a paternally benign concern for the welfare of court employees and their dependents.80 But did the administration of the Cappella e Camera, did Pugnani, continue to hope for all those years that the now celebrated violinist would return to the fold? It is true that others before Viotti, not least Pugnani, had done so. When did Viotti himself finally decide to make the break? Surely it was before 1786, although we shall see later in this chapter that his situation in Paris in the mid-1780s may not have been as firmly established as has been thought. At all events, no record has come to light of a communication from Viotti submitting his resignation, or from the administration informing him of his dismissal. It seems almost too much of a coincidence that, on 20 June 1786, less than a month after the termination of Viotti’s contract, Gaetano Pugnani was rewarded for his “zeal and faithful service [attacamento] in Our employ” (is the choice of words a veiled reference to Viotti’s less faithful service?) with an annual raise of L.300. On the same date, moreover, no fewer than eighteen of Pugnani’s colleagues were given raises of from L.100 to L.300, “on account of several stipends


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having become vacant from the budget of Our Chapel and Chamber.”81 There does seem to have been a very slight, albeit inconsistent reduction in the orchestra roster in the mid-1780s. Viotti would no doubt have been pleased that his release from service had contributed to the pecuniary comfort of his former colleagues. Beginning with the first quarter of 1780, and continuing for all of 1780, 1781, and the first two quarters of 1782, Viotti’s quarterly salaries had been paid, by hand, to his father. Each quarter, in the Royal Household register appear the words, “Gio. Battà Viotti, with a receipt from his father, Felice—50.”82 We may imagine the blacksmith, now in his late sixties, riding to Turin four times a year to wait in an anteroom of the Ministry of the Royal Treasury, signing a receipt, and taking in his rough hands the L.50 of his eldest son. He did this for the last time in July 1782; after that date Felice’s name no longer appears. There seems to be no good reason for this other than that Giambattista had arrived in Piedmont in time to collect personally his third quarterly salary, which came due on 1 October. He would also have been able to receive in person his last salary of 1782, due on 1 January 1783. We may surmise that afterward Felice may have been too ill, or too old, to perform this service. At any rate, Viotti made other arrangements for the future delivery of his salary. Felice died on 4 January 1784, aged “sixty-nine and about four months,” as was so carefully noted on his death certificate in the parish archive of Fontanetto.

Courtier Viotti was back in Paris by 2 April 1783—on that date he was enrolled as a “frère à talent” in the Masonic lodge Saint-Jean d’Écosse du Contrat Social.83 The entry in the register recording the ceremony indicates that he was already a Mason (“affiliated” as opposed to “initiated”), but we do not know where or when he had been initiated, nor when he may have first been exposed to Freemasonry. We need look no further, however, than to Gaetano Pugnani, who, as early as 1768, had belonged to the Torinese lodge La Mystèrieuse.84 As a celebrated musician, Pugnani would have been an honored guest at lodges on the tour of 1780–81. Perhaps Viotti was initiated in one of these lodges. “Talented brothers” were artists, mostly musicians, who received a special category of membership within the Masonic hierarchy in return for their contribution to musical events. The musical activities of the lodge Contrat Social are sparsely documented, and there is no record of Viotti’s participation; it is safe to assume that he, like the fifty-odd other musician-members,85 had joined partly as a means of making professionally useful contacts among other musicians and among the aristocracy. By 1782, over 72 percent of the membership of the lodge Contrat Social was of the nobility. Among the talented brothers

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were Legros and La Houssaye, already known to Viotti from the Concert spirituel, the cellist Jean-Louis Duport, and Jean-Jérôme Imbault.86 They may have had a part in Viotti’s joining this particular lodge, as opposed to the several others in Paris. Four days after affiliating with the lodge Contrat Social, Viotti performed at the Concert spirituel, again on Easter Sunday, and his schedule of engagements at that institution was even more intense than in the previous year: sixteen performances, plus a benefit concert in May, in all of which he played a concerto of his own composition. It has been plausibly conjectured that Concertos nos. 7–10 were composed for the 1783 season; they were published by Sieber, between 1783 and 1786.87 It may be wondered that Viotti played only ten concertos in the twenty-seven performances he gave at the Concert spirituel, as well as several benefit concerts, in 1782–83. We know that performers often repeated their repertory, indeed often did so by popular demand, but to this extent? The evidence suggests that it was indeed the case. It has been surmised, for example, on the basis of the recurrence of a “new concerto” in the programs of the Concert spirituel, that the cellist-composer Jean-Baptiste Bréval probably performed a concerto “two or three [times] within a two-month period, followed by a ‘new’ concerto and its subsequent repetition.”88 If Viotti repeated his concertos as much as Bréval did, then his first ten concertos would have (just) sufficed for his thirty-odd performances of 1782–83. The critical comments in 1783 were, if anything, more favorable than those of the previous year. According to the Journal de Paris, “M. Viotti seems to have acquired the highest degree of perfection on the violin,”89 and the Mercure de France asserted that Viotti’s skills had improved, that his compositions were more agreeable, and, hinting at resentment of the Italian’s success, that “artists are beginning to forgive him for not having been born in France.”90 But then, abruptly, Viotti stopped playing in public. His last known public performance in Paris was at the Concert spirituel on 8 September 1783, a yearand-a-half after his début. He was at the peak of his powers, he had carried all before him, and—he gave it all up. Here is how he describes this extraordinary turn of events: I had lived [in Paris] for two years when Her Majesty the Queen of France desired to hear me. She honored me with her approbation, and from then on I decided not to play in public again, and to devote myself entirely to the service of that sovereign, who recompensed me by obtaining for me, when Monsieur de Calonne was the minister [of Finance], a pension of 150 pounds, which I was not able to enjoy for long.91 To take him at his word, then, Viotti first played for Marie Antoinette very late in 1783 or early in 1784, and entered her service shortly thereafter. This is


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the received version of events, and Charles Alexandre de Calonne, indeed, was contrôleur-général des finances from 2 November 1783 until 8 April 1787. But it is not that simple. In the first place, it will be recalled that Viotti had already played in the presence of the queen on 20 May 1782, as recorded in a register from the Maison du roi. One would expect to find other entries for Viotti in this volume, which covers the period from 1781 to the end of July 1787; in fact there are none, though there are numerous entries for other musicians, composers and performers, both those on the queen’s payroll (e.g., “Sr Piccinni pour des appointments de janvier et fevrier 1782— 1000 [livres]” and “Sr Amantini, musicien de la Reine, pour son quartier d’Octobre 1782—750”) and guest performers, such as “Mme Mara cantatrice” (several times) and “Sr LeBrun cors de chasse—240” and “Sr Duport, violoncelle—240” (entries of 10 January 1787).92 Furthermore, the relevant files in the (admittedly vast and labyrinthine) national archives in Paris (Maison du roi, Maison de la reine, lists of royal pensioners)93 have thus far failed to reveal Viotti’s name among the queen’s (or the king’s) pensioners, or the record of any other payments to him, or, indeed, any other mention of him whatsoever until his name begins to appear in March 1789 in connection with the Opéra.94 Among these files, for example, is the register of letters from the Ministre de la Maison du roi of 1784,95 including those to Papillon de la Ferté, intendant of the Menus-Plaisirs. A letter of 27 January confirms a pension of L.6,000 to be awarded to the composer Antonio Sacchini; another, on the same date, a pension of 800 livres to “Sr Martini compositeur de Musique,” and there are others, but there is no letter regarding Viotti. It is commonly supposed that Viotti’s name was included in the notorious Livre rouge, containing the names of royal pensioners, first published in April 1790. Miel, again, seems to have been the first to make this assertion. But Viotti’s name is not to be found in the several editions, or rather, versions of this book consulted by the present author, both official (the first edition of 7 April 1790, published by Comité des Pensions, and a second version “brought forward by the deputies of the administrative corps of Versailles on 28 February 1792,” published a year later by order of the National Convention), and unofficial. One of the unofficial editions96 does contain the names of several other musicians, including that of the popular composer of opéra comique, much favored by Marie Antoinette, André Ernest Modeste Grétry, as well as that of Viotti’s acquaintance Alexandre de Lameth. So much for the negative evidence for Viotti’s engagement by the queen. Some positive evidence, besides Viotti’s own words quoted above, is the title page of Viotti’s first symphonie concertante, published 1787, which states that he and Imbault had played both this work and the second symphonie concertante in the concerts of the queen. This, of course, tells us nothing precise about the nature of either violinist’s professional relationship with the court.

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We also have the testimonies of two men who were personally acquainted with Viotti. Giacomo Ferrari, the Italian composer and pianist who was hired in 1788 as a répétiteur and house composer at the Théâtre de Monsieur, relates in his memoirs having been done a favor, in the autumn of 1787, by Viotti, “primo violino della regina.”97 Ferrari’s reminiscences are generally reliable—it seems unlikely that he would have been mistaken in this detail. Another, perhaps more revealing testimony is a letter, dated 26 May 1786, from Antonio Filistri, a poet and man of letters, visiting Paris, to his patron in Turin, the Prince Dal Pozzo della Cisterna. Filistri writes that he has been to have a “souper” with “il celebre Viotti,” who “is in fine fettle, and told me that he is awaiting a position [impiego] by the queen’s favor, and that in the meantime, until this materializes, he enjoys a pension of three thousand French lire per year.”98 What are we to make of this? Viotti is supposed to have entered the queen’s service early in 1784, and in May 1786 he still has no duties to perform in this capacity. The pension, then, was a sinecure. Perhaps Viotti was waiting for the retirement, or resignation, or death of a previous incumbent in the queen’s pay. Filistri implies that Viotti was receiving payments. Viotti says in his Précis that he did not enjoy his pension for long; Miel goes so far as to say that Viotti did not even receive the first payment of his pension. Perhaps he did eventually (in 1787?) become Marie Antoinette’s “primo violino” (or “accompagnateur,” as Fétis has it) in fact as well as in name, though there is no documentary evidence to this effect of which I am aware. On the other hand, on 9 August 1787, and again on 13 October, severe economies were made in the expenditures of the Royal Household, including cuts in state pensions and Household sinecures (Maison du roi and Maison de la reine). Was Viotti’s pension a casualty? To judge by his Précis, it probably was. Certainly it was not a propitious time for holders of royal pensions. Most confusing of all, Jean Baptiste Cartier, who became a pupil of Viotti’s in 1783, apparently obtained the post of accompanist to the queen in 1785 on the recommendation of Viotti!99 Fétis seems to be the earliest source of this information; in his article on Cartier he uses the same term, “accompagnateur,” that he gives to Viotti, and he asserts that Cartier held the post until the Revolution. I have found no trace of Cartier in the archives. We have the testimony of a well-placed eyewitness that the queen held Viotti’s art in high esteem. This was none other than the Princess de Lamballe, Marie Antoinette’s loyal, ill-fated friend, herself Piedmontese (of the house of Savoy-Carignan). She relates: Her majesty was the great patroness of the celebrated Viotti, who was also attached to her private musical parties. Before Viotti began to perform his concertos, her majesty, with the most amiable condescension,


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would go round the music saloon, and say, “Ladies and gentlemen, I request you will be silent, and very attentive, and not enter into conversation, while Mr. Viotti is playing, for it interrupts him in the execution of his fine performance.”100 As to the reliability of this account, it can only be affirmed that the many other musical details to be found in the book from which it is taken seem to be true and accurate. The author, Marchioness Govion Broglio Solari, was a protégée of Princess de Lamballe’s; she apparently came into possession of the princess’s private journal, from which the cited passage comes, and she was a voice pupil of Sacchini’s, one of Marie Antoinette’s teachers. The princess specifies concertos. One would have thought a sonata or other chamber work would have been more suitable at these intimate gatherings of the queen, though it is arguable that a concerto was better able to make itself heard over conversation and card playing, if the queen’s guests failed to heed her injunction. At any rate, we know that later, in England, it was not unusual for Viotti’s concertos to be played at private concerts, both by Viotti himself and in arrangements for piano. Luigi Cherubini asserted many years later that he was presented to the queen in 1785 and in 1786, and that he was admitted to her private concerts at Versailles, “chez M.me la princesse de Polignac.”101 The Duchesse de Polignac was Marie Antoinette’s favorite—in the autumn of 1782 she replaced the Princess de Guémené as the royal governess. The queen’s private concerts, as Cherubini implies, were given as a matter of course in the apartments of the Duchesse de Polignac in the Versailles palace. This would confirm, to an extent, the assertion of Pougin, mentioned above, that Viotti was an habitué of her salon. Probably it was there that the violinist performed in Princess de Lamballe’s description. Polignac was the mistress of the Comte de Vaudreuil, who acted the host in her salon,102 and who was a member of the queen’s intimate circle. We know that later, in England, Viotti was on friendly terms with Vaudreuil—the Chinnerys received the comte and his wife several times. It seems reasonable to suppose that their friendship began in the Duchesse de Polignac’s salon, though it is equally possible that they met through Madame Vigée-Lebrun, since Vaudreuil was a friend and patron of the painter and attended her soirées. Vaudreuil’s sinecure as Grand Falconer was one of those abolished in the economies of 1787. The queen’s taste was more for vocal than for instrumental music, though she apparently took harp lessons every day, at least for a time,103 as well as piano lessons (one of her piano teachers was an acquaintance of Viotti’s, JohannDavid Hermann). Of the more than 200 volumes in her personal collection of music books, the overwhelming majority is operas and collections of operatic arias. A very few volumes are collections of pieces for clavecin or harp, and there is a copy of Hermann’s Piano Concerto no. 3; apparently there are no

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sonatas for pianoforte with violin accompaniment, for example.104 Viotti, if he was the queen’s accompanist, could have provided the music, of course, but it might be expected that if he had had regular appointments with his royal patroness, he would have prepared an appropriate volume of keyboard pieces with violin accompaniment, bound and dedicated to her. Nothing of the sort seems to have come down to us. Sometime in the first half of 1788 Marie Antoinette had a piano installed in the Palace of the Tuileries. In an abstract of expenditures at the Trianon and at the Palace of the Tuileries, for the years 1787–88, by order of the queen, amidst the payments “for 30 bottles of table wine,” “4 half-bottles of Malaga wine, 2 of Muscat and 8 of Bordeaux,” payments to laundry girls, to porters and drivers for trips to Paris, “to the orchestra musicians for the Indoor Ball and that in the Avenue of 9 August [1787],” and “for the Edition en Brochure in 8° of the works of Voltaire”—amidst these there is an undated payment of 600 livres for “un forté piano anglois aux Thuilleries.”105 The queen kept a pied-à-terre in the south wing of the Palace of the Tuileries, so that she could avoid the trip back to Versailles after evenings out in Paris. It is not known to what use she put this instrument. Beginning in October 1789, when the royal family was forcibly removed to the Tuileries palace, she would have had more occasion, if not more inclination, to play on this instrument. At any rate, the image of Viotti, playing a Stradivarius violin, accompanying Marie Antoinette, playing an English fortepiano, in a sonata in the queen’s pied-à-terre in the vastness of the Palace of the Tuileries, must, until further evidence is unearthed, remain a pleasant fantasy. To sum up what we know of Viotti’s service to the Queen of France: The “positive evidence,” as brought forward here, is frustratingly counterbalanced by the “negative evidence.” Though we have only Viotti’s own word and that of his acquaintance Filistri as primary evidence—documentation is conspicuously absent from the archives—we must suppose that he did have a pension, beginning sometime before May 1786, but that it was withdrawn as a result of the economies to the royal household in 1787. His duties, if and when he was assigned any, after May 1786, apparently consisted of performing for the queen’s private gatherings, rather than for larger, more formal occasions, and possibly accompanying the queen in pieces for keyboard and violin. But it is difficult to believe that, after that date, his performances at court suddenly became very frequent. Marie-Joséphine of Savoy, Comtesse de Provence, the wife of the Comte de Provence, the elder of Louis XVI’s two brothers, was fond of music, and played the harpsichord and guitar. In 1784 she had a music pavilion built in her jardin anglais in Montreuil, near Versailles, which still stands.106 She had come to France in 1771 upon her marriage and therefore would probably not have known of Viotti in Turin; still, one supposes that, as a fellow Piedmontese, she might have shown an interest in the violinist when he came to Paris. However,


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there is no record of either her or her sister, Marie-Thérèse, Comtesse d’Artois, the wife of the other brother of the king, having done so. Marie-Joséphine wrote to her family in Turin that she was fond of the Comédie-Français and the Opéra Comique (she enjoyed the spectacle at the Opéra but was bored by the music).107 Unfortunately, the collection of her correspondence and that of her sister ends in 1774.

“The Pleasure of His Friends” There remains the question of why Viotti chose to give up his career as a violin virtuoso. A great deal of ink has been spilled over Viotti’s motives, psychological, economic, and social, for this seemingly inexplicable decision. Viotti asserts in his Précis that he gave up playing in public to “devote myself entirely to the service of [the queen].” We have seen that this was simply not true, at least as of May 1786. Two or three anecdotes have been given in explanation. The usually reliable Miel attributes Viotti’s renunciation to his offended artistic pride in the face of a slight by the Parisian public, which, during Holy Week, presumably in 1783, preferred a mediocre player to Viotti. Miel specifies that the violinist, “whose name has not even survived,” played on the day after Viotti’s performance, which was coldly received. It so happens that, the day after Viotti’s performance at the Concert spirituel on 13 April, a certain Michault, of whom, indeed, nothing more is known, played a violin concerto by Chartrain.108 But there is no concrete evidence to support Miel’s anecdote, which is repeated by Fétis. Chappell White has pointed out that there was no violinist who appeared at the Concert spirituel in that period who received anything like the favor from the Parisians that Viotti did.109 This is true in general, to judge from the reviews of the period, but it is not inconceivable that, on this one occasion, the notoriously fickle Parisian public showed greater enthusiasm for the mediocre violinist than it had for Viotti the evening before. But would this have been sufficient cause for Viotti to renounce his career? At all events, Viotti continued to play in the Concert spirituel for several months after Holy Week of 1783, and there is no hint of a decline in his popularity. Equally unverifiable is the story, first told by Viotti’s friend A. M. d’Eymar,110 of Viotti walking out in the middle of his performance of a new concerto at Versailles because of the rudely disruptive entrance of the Comte d’Artois. Certainly the various reports of the concert at Versailles on 22 May 1782, in which Viotti performed, make no mention of such an incident. A more plausible motive for Viotti’s renunciation is the socioeconomic one: though Viotti could expect to stay at the summit of his profession for a few more years, he also knew that a career as a soloist was not in itself sufficient to support him—we have seen that his fee for an appearance at the Concert spirituel was apparently only 100 francs. Even in London, in the 1790s, where again he was

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the most acclaimed instrumentalist, he felt it necessary to take on the positions of acting manager of the King’s Theatre and leader of the opera orchestra, and, within four or five years, to enter the wine trading business. No other violinist managed to survive in Paris purely as a soloist; they all, whether French or foreign—Guénin, Lolli, Giornovichi, and the others—were constrained to take orchestral positions, to enter the service of a patron or a court, or to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Viotti could have traveled to the various courts and cities of Europe, but he had already spent two years on the road, and this way of life may have lost some of its attractiveness for him. In any case, even the most acclaimed artist could expect his welcome as a visiting soloist in any given place to wear thin unless spaced with several years between consecutive appearances. After his experience with the Prince de Guémené, Viotti may have been wary of entering the musical establishment of a wealthy patron. But what surer prospect in 1784, what more prestigious cachet, than a pension and the offer of a position from the music-loving queen of the most brilliant court of Europe? This argument is more persuasive, but it does not tell the whole story. It explains why Viotti accepted a pension from the queen but it does not explain why he gave up playing in public. There is no evidence that the recipients of royal pensions, or of the queen’s patronage, were required to renounce or curtail their professional activities outside the court. The answer, in the present author’s opinion, is revealed in the pattern of Viotti’s participation in private salons. In what follows I have tried to give a complete account of Viotti’s salon appearances in Paris, which were much more frequent, and seemed to have loomed much larger as a creative outlet for Viotti in the 1780s, than is commonly thought. Furthermore, the evidence, such as it is, suggests that his motives changed as time went on. Let us pick up the thread of Viotti’s participation in the salons of Paris. According to Miel, Viotti was accepted into the salon of Madame Helvétius, the “Société d’Auteuil” on the outskirts of Paris. This was a literary, scientific, and philosophical salon, not particularly musical. Denis Diderot, Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Jean François Marmontel, Abbé André Morellet, André Chénier, and Dominique-Joseph Garat were regularly in attendance at her Tuesday meetings, which her neighbor and ardent admirer, Benjamin Franklin, also frequented. Most of these men were members of the Masonic lodge Les Neuf Soeurs, which also numbered among its members Piccinni and his biographer Ginguené, as well as the anatomist Sue, possibly the same man whom, according to Miel, Viotti assisted by demonstrating the movements of his wrist while playing the violin.111 This lodge became affiliated in 1781 with the lodge Contrat Social,112 of which Viotti became a member in April 1783. It is difficult to say whether Viotti played at Madame Helvétius’s salon, or whether he simply attended. It is extraordinary to think that he could have held his own in conversation with these distinguished philosophes and hommes de lettres. In particular, we may wonder what the Piedmontese violinist, in his late twenties, might


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have discussed with the Philadelphia sage, then in his seventies. We shall learn, however, that Madame de Genlis, for example, not long after meeting Viotti in 1802, was enchanted by his conversation as much as by his playing, and that Lord Glenbervie, who was not quick to praise, was impressed by Viotti’s agreeableness and urbanity. One of Madame Helvétius’s closest friends, the Abbé Morellet, who was also a close friend of Benjamin Franklin’s until the latter’s departure from France in July 1785, held his own salon in the rue Saint-Honoré in the 1780s. This was an especially musical salon, to which, he says in his memoirs, he invited friends for lunch on Sundays to “chat agreeably, read prose or verse, and make music.” Viotti, the pianist Nicolas-Joseph Hüllmandel, and Piccinni were at his home “constantly,” and Viotti, in particular, was fond of playing his music, “full of verve and elegance,” with the abbé’s niece, Catherine Henriette Belz, who lived with her uncle from October 1783, and who “had a prodigious talent for the harpsichord” (clavecin).113 Regarding “clavecin,” we are reliably informed that, as early as 1770, Morellet had an English “piano forte” in his home.114 One of his acquaintances relates that the abbé, who played the cello, enjoyed accompanying his niece.115 Viotti’s sonatas for violin and bass would have been appropriate for this purpose, assuming that Mademoiselle Belz was capable of realizing the (unfigured) basses of these works. Though all of Viotti’s known compositions written expressly for the piano were published with the accompaniment of violin and cello, most of them postdate Viotti’s Paris years, or at least their publication does. However, many of his string compositions— violin concertos, quartets, trios, and violin duets—were published in arrangements, most of them presumably by Viotti himself, for piano, again with the accompaniment of violin or violin and cello. (There was a large market in the late eighteenth century for works written for this combination of instruments, to satisfy the demand of amateur musicians, the pianists usually being female, the violinists and cellists, male. Often the violin and cello parts were optional.) The earliest of these arrangements seems to have been those of the first set of string trios (op. 2, WIII:1–6), published as sonatas for piano with string accompaniment in ca. 1785–86 (WVIa:1–3, 4–6) (which Viotti may have played in Geneva in 1780), and, possibly, the similar arrangements of the first three string quartets of op. 1 (WII:1–3) as trios for harpsichord or piano, violin and bass (cello) (WVIa:31–33), published ca. 1782–92. Another possibility is Viotti’s Concerto no. 6, arranged as a piano concerto by Madame de Montgéroult (1786, WIa:1), for which Viotti could have written a violin obbligato part to play with Mademoiselle Belz. (The first and third movements of the Concerto no. 9 were published in an arrangement as a piano concerto with violin obbligato in 1788–89.) Viotti may well have taken the opportunity to try out some of these arrangements before publication, with a pianist who was probably less expert than his friend Madame de Montgéroult, and, possibly, with the occasional participation of the abbé.

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Another salon in which Viotti may have participated, though we have no record, is that of Giovanni Luigi de Ponte, Count d’Albaret. Albaret was “fou de musique,”116 and kept a small orchestra in his house. But I venture to single him out from the many salonnières in Paris in the 1780s who may have invited Viotti, only for the fact that he was Piedmontese—may not the two countrymen have sought each other out? Albaret and Morellet were on friendly terms—two letters from the abbé reveal that they observed, amicably but perhaps not always carefully, an etiquette regarding their “sharing” of musicians, including such luminaries as Pierre Gaviniès and Giornovichi, for their respective concerts.117 According to Michael Kelly (whose Reminiscences are colorful but admittedly not always precise), the duc d’Aiguillon (1761–1800) was a close friend of Viotti’s in London and had been his pupil.118 He became a deputy of the nobles in the States General in 1789, and was one of those who renounced his privileges. Denounced by the Legislative Assembly in August 1792 because he had moderated his previous Jacobin leanings, he was obliged to emigrate (to London), within a month or two of Viotti’s flight. Kelly’s phrasing (“had been a scholar of Viotti”) suggests that Aiguillon had taken lessons from Viotti in Paris. Aiguillon’s father (1720–88), a prominent minister of Louis XV’s, was a wealthy patron of the arts who maintained a private orchestra. Very few details about the concert of Aiguillon père have come down to us;119 according to Kelly, the younger Aiguillon “in former days had an immense fortune, was a great patron of the arts . . . [and] was particularly fond of music.” It may well have been through Viotti’s participation in the Aiguillon musical establishment (father and/or son) that he became the younger Aiguillon’s teacher and friend. Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (1755–1842), the gifted artist who painted some thirty portraits of Marie Antoinette, held frequent musical soirées in the 1780s in her house in the rue de Cléry. Madame Vigée-Lebrun emigrated in October 1789; her husband, Jean Baptiste Pierre Le Brun, published in 1793 a spirited defense of his wife against the calumnies that had been published as to her character and her alleged abuse of the queen’s patronage. From this pamphlet we learn that her concerts seem to have begun before the date of Calonne’s appointment as Minister of Finance on 2 November 1783, that at first her weekly gatherings were of “quelques artistes Peintres, Gens de Lettres, Architectes et Musiciens,” and that as these soirées became well-known in the city, “les Grands” (the aristocracy) also began attending. Vigée-Lebrun informs us in her memoirs that the atmosphere was informal, and that her room was so small that often such eminent personages as the Duc de Noailles sat on the floor to listen.120 Monsieur Le Brun asserts that “professional musicians, who never bestirred themselves without expecting a fee, seemed perfectly willing, without any interested motive, to give of their wonderful talents in homage to a woman who understood their worth, and who recompensed their sacrifice with the expression of heartfelt pleasure she felt on listening to them.”121


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The composers Grétry, Sacchini, and Martini often presented excerpts from their operas at her home before the first performance; among the singers were Garat and Todi. For instrumental music [she continues in her memoirs], I had as a violinist Viotti, whose playing, full of grace, of power, of expression, was so ravishing! I also had Maestrino, Prince Henry of Prussia, an excellent amateur, who also brought along his first violinist. Salentin played the oboe, Hulmandel and Cramer the piano. Mme de Mongerou came once, soon after her marriage. Although she was very young, she nevertheless astonished my friends, who were very hard to please, by her admirable execution and especially by her expression; she really made the instrument speak. Mme de Mongerou has since taken first rank as a pianist, and distinguished herself as a composer.122 Prince Henry of Prussia visited Paris in August–October of 1784 and in November 1788–March 1789,123 apparently bringing his first violinist with him. Elsewhere in these memoirs Vigée-Lebrun describes Prince Henry’s violinistic talent as “mediocre,” and relates that he often played quartets at her salon, with Viotti playing first violin.124 We know from her memoirs and from at least one letter,125 that Madame Vigée-Lebrun and Viotti became good friends. It may well have been at her salon that Viotti met the pianist Hélène de Montgéroult (1764–1836), on the occasion mentioned above, which must have been in 1784 or soon after. It may also have been at Vigée-Lebrun’s salon that Viotti met Madame de Genlis, harpist, novelist, and educationalist, who is given a detailed pen portrait by Vigée-Lebrun in her memoirs. Genlis was acquainted with Montgéroult, and wrote admiringly in her memoirs both of the pianist and of the artist VigéeLebrun. All three of these women remained Viotti’s lifelong friends. Viotti was acquainted with still another eminent and creative woman in Paris, the writer Germaine de Staël (1766–1817). Madame de Staël was the daughter of the prominent financier, Jacques Necker, with whom Viotti, in 1789, was to enter into tense negotiations regarding his attempt to gain control of the Paris Opéra. Unfortunately, we have no details as to how well they knew each other, or where or how they met, though it may well have been at her mother’s salon, which was frequented by Morellet and Marmontel, among others, and which Germaine attended as a young woman. Married in January 1786 to the Swedish ambassador to France, Madame de Staël then took over her mother’s salon, and formed her own circle at the Swedish embassy, which, however, was frequented mainly by politicians—of the constitutional monarchist persuasion. In 1813, in London, she and Viotti were to renew their acquaintance. Madame de La Tour du Pin describes in her memoirs the musical salon in the “vaste maison” of the Comte de Rochechouart in the rue de Grenelle:

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During the winter of 1788–1789, the Rochechouart home was one of the most pleasant in Paris. Musical soirées were often given there, necessitating rehearsals that were more pleasant than the concert itself. [ . . . ] toward the end of the winter I re-entered society [after losing a baby in childbirth] and began to make music again in the hôtel de Rochechouart. These musical gatherings were very distinguished. They took place once a week, but the ensemble pieces were rehearsed several times beforehand. Mme Mongeroux, a celebrated pianist of the time, played the piano; a singer from the Italian Opera [“Opéra italien”] was our tenor; Mandini, another Italian, was the bass; Mme de Richelieu was the prima donna; I, the contralto; M de Duras,126 the baritone; the choruses were sung by other good amateurs. Viotti accompanied with his violin. We performed the most difficult finales in this way. No one spared his effort, and Viotti was extremely severe. We also had as a judge, for the rehearsals, M de Rochechouart, a musician to the core, who let no fault pass without criticising it. We were often surprised in the middle of a finale by the dinner hour. As the clock chimed we all took our hats to go; then Mme de Rochechouart would enter, telling us that there was enough dinner for everyone. We stayed, and after dinner the rehearsal began again. Strictly speaking, it was a musical day rather than a morning. On the evening of the performance fifty persons of all ages listened. Mme de Courteille retired to her room to play trictrac with her old friends. Occasionally they would come into the music room to have a look at the ‘gilded youth,’ as they were known.127 Madame de La Tour du Pin begins her account with a specific season—the early spring of 1789, a time when Viotti had a great deal on his plate. Not only had the Théâtre de Monsieur just opened (in January)128 but also, in March– May Viotti was embroiled in his intransigent, failed attempt to become the director of the Opéra. What is entirely unexpected in this account is that he is not performing in the ordinary sense of the word, not playing a solo or chamber music, but coaching a vocal group. At least one of the singers, the bass Stefano Mandini, is soon to be a soloist ( primo buffo caricato) on the roster of Viotti’s theater. The Italian tenor, as well, almost certainly came from the Théâtre de Monsieur, not the Comédie-Italienne (also known as the Théâtre Italien), which, despite its name, did not mount Italian opera and had no Italian singers.129 It is almost as if Viotti is profiting from the situation by holding rehearsals for the benefit of his singers for a forthcoming production, in which case he could have provided the matériel from his theater library. Madame de La Tour du Pin does not say for how long these weekly concerts had been given, but she implies (“began to make music again”) that they had been in existence at least as far back as 1788. “Mme Mongeroux” was, of course, Hélène de Montgéroult, the distinguished pianist and a close friend of Viotti’s, later a member of the faculty


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of the Conservatoire. Viotti’s “severe” leadership and the presence of two of his singers leads one to wonder whether he ever intervened similarly in rehearsals and performances in his theater, for which, however, there is no record.130 Madame de La Tour du Pin also writes that she was a close friend of Rochechouart’s second daughter, a talented musician who, at the age of twelve, married the grandson of the Maréchal de Richelieu. It seems likely this was the Madame de Richelieu who was the prima donna in the Rochechouart gatherings. She would have been about twenty or twenty-one years old in 1789. It is not clear whether this was the same Madame de Richelieu whose salon Viotti frequented, according to Pougin and Cucuel, or rather, in view of her youth, whether she was in some way connected with the salon of her grandmother-inlaw, the Maréchale de Richelieu, mentioned by Halévy (see above, p. 81). According to J. de Norvins, the “soirées du dimanche” of Madame de La Briche were especially distinguished for their music, and were frequented by the writers Jean Pierre Claris de Florian, the Abbé Morellet, Jean François de La Harpe, and Marmontel, and the musicians Viotti, Pierre Rode, Pierre Jean Garat, Daniel Steibelt, and others.131 Madame de La Briche herself was a pianist, and already by 1786 she and Viotti had become friends; in her memoirs she recalls that, after the six-month period of mourning on the death of her husband in July 1785, she could not bring herself to play the piano: I believe [she writes] that without M. Viotti, I would have lost a skill which filled my moments of solitude so agreeably. He undertook to renew my taste for music, and did so with an adroitness [adresse] that proved his generosity, and which I shall never forget. I finally agreed to practise some new pieces that he brought and which he asked me [me priait] to learn in two days; he duly came and had me rehearse them and he accompanied me. [ . . . ] I took such pleasure in hearing him that after a few difficult moments I regained entirely my taste for music.132 This is the earliest indication we have of one of Viotti’s most salient qualities: his steadfast support, his affectionate but firm resourcefulness in helping a friend get through a difficult moment, a character trait he was often constrained to draw upon in his friendship with the Chinnery family in later years. Following on this, Madame de La Briche began holding concerts, in which, she relates, she played the piano, accompanied by Viotti, and she played some pieces which he had written for her which were “really delightful” (réellement délicieuses).133 Taking Madame de La Briche at her word (none of Viotti’s published works is dedicated to her), we cannot but wonder what these pieces by Viotti were. Assuming that they were not written for the occasion, and since lost, they must belong to the same group of works that he played with Mademoiselle Belz, described above. Norvins, a youthful (b. 17 June 1769) eyewitness, describes one of Madame de La Briche’s soirées (which probably took place after the beginning of November

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1790 in her Paris hôtel in the rue de la Ville-Évêque), providing an insight into ancien régime listening habits: while some of the guests played at cards, Mademoiselle Belz (the Abbé Morellet’s niece, afterward Madame Chéron) “improvised [ préludait] at the piano and at the harp, accompanied by Viotti.” These proceedings were interrupted by the arrival of the newlyweds Comte and Comtesse Charles de Noailles, after which the card playing resumed, and except for the whisperings of the company, “one heard only the brilliant harmonies [accords] of Viotti and Mlle Belz,” and the occasional exclamations of the card players, who were oblivious of everything around them.134 Of particular interest is the suggestion, frustratingly laconic, that apparently it was not uncommon for violinists and pianists to improvise together, at least in private gatherings (see also below, p. 109), an area of eighteenth-century performance practice about which we know very little. There is further circumstantial evidence that Viotti appeared in Madame de La Briche’s salon more as a friend than as a professional: some thirty years later, Viotti’s pupil, André Robberechts, played at the same salon, and in a letter to Viotti in London, he tells of Madame de La Briche imparting privileged information about Viotti’s pension—information, surely, that only a close friend would possess.135 Viotti, Madame de La Briche, and several members of the aristocracy were present at a dinner given by Colonel d’Affry on 14 April 1789. After dinner, while some of the gentlemen retired to discuss “the security measures to be taken for the safety of Paris [Affry was a colonel of the Swiss Guards], in the salon there was a charming concert in which Mlle de Donissan played the fortepiano; Viotti, the violin; his friend, the viola; a young native of Bordeaux, the second violin; and a Venetian, the cello. This concert was delightful.”136 Victoire de Donissan, afterward the Marquise de La Rochejaquelein, and her parents were the guests of honor at the dinner. The young man from Bordeaux was in all probability Viotti’s pupil, Pierre Rode. The violist could have been any one of a dozen or so violinist-friends of Viotti; I have been unable to identify the Venetian cellist. As almost always, we are not told what music they played. The advent of the piano quintet as a chamber music genre lay a few years in the future (Boccherini’s quintets, op. 56, of 1797, a set of six first published in 1800–1803, seem to have been the first); assuming that all five of these musicians played together, we may conjecture that they played a piano concerto or an arrangement of a popular symphony, perhaps by Haydn. Perhaps the string players also read through one of Viotti’s string quartets, of which two sets of six had been published. What a lesson for the fifteen-year-old Rode! We shall return to this concert later in the next chapter. Perhaps the best-known of the Parisian private concerts in which Viotti is said to have participated is the one described in the anecdote, often repeated, of a concert in 1790 in the modest fifth-floor apartment of a friend of Viotti’s, a deputy in the Assemblée constituante. As recounted by Eymar, a close friend of


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Viotti’s (in fact, the apartment may well have been Eymar’s), the company consisted not only of the nobility but also of eminent musicians: the pianists Hermann and Steibelt, the violinists Rode and Giuseppe Puppo, the cellists Smerska and Bréval, and the singers Garat, Stefano Mandini, Giuseppe Viganoni, and Madame Anna Morichelli (the last three named were soloists in Viotti’s theater, the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau). A bust of Rousseau, entwined with garlands of flowers, was the only ornament in the room. Viotti played the music of Boccherini.137 We note that Eymar’s list of string players comprises just those who might play a quintet by Boccherini: Viotti, Rode, and Puppo, the two violins and the viola among them, and Smerska and Bréval, the two cellos. All four of Viotti’s fellow-performers, if such they were, were members of the orchestra of Viotti’s theater (Bréval not until 1791). There were other private concerts in which Viotti played the music of Boccherini. In 1797 Boccherini sold 110 of his works to his publisher, Pleyel, which he had sent, “in about the year 1790,” to a “certain Mr Boulogne, who later was a victim of the revolution,” and who “had them performed more than once in his house, with Viotti taking the part of first violin.”138 This Mr. Boulogne, surely, is the same “infortuné Boulongne” who, according to Eymar, had his friend Viotti play at the entertainments for the wedding of his daughter, and who, according to Miel, was a fermier-général.139 At least two members of the Boulogne family were fermiers-générals.140 But almost certainly the person in question was Jean Baptiste Tavernier de Boullongne de Magnanville, who was a close friend of Morellet’s, who was probably the “Boulogne, (de), Fermier-Général, rue Bergère” listed among the subscribing members of the Masonic Société olympique of 1788, and who was guillotined on 8 May 1794.141 The works sent to Boulogne (Boullongne) were representative of Boccherini’s output: string trios (two violins and cello), quartets, quintets (most of them for two violins, viola, and two cellos), and symphonies (typically scored for two principal violins, two ripieni violins, two violas, cello, double bass, flute, two oboes, two bassoons, and two horns, which suggests that they were more in the nature of symphonies concertantes). Within a month of his death, Boulogne’s goods, in particular his collection of musical instruments, were seized by the French government, as were those of all émigrés and persons sentenced to death. The inventory of these sequestered musical instruments (compiled by Antonio Bruni, who for a time in 1789 had been the leader of the orchestra of the Théâtre de Monsieur), with its misspellings, its mistakes, its pitiless brevity, bears stark testimony to the transience of the earthly pleasures of the privileged classes during the Terror. Certainly it leaves no doubt as to Boulogne’s passion for string music. Besides the two fortepianos (one English, by “Schoenc,” of 1788, the other by Erard, of 1787), one English “forte-piano organisé,” and a mandolin, the collection is in effect the instrumentation of a perfectly balanced little string orchestra—of very high quality: three violins, two of them “dit Steiner” (i.e., labelled Stainer) dated

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1554 (sic; possibly 1654 is intended?) and 1664, and one by Nicolo Amati, dated 1682; two violas, one by Stradivarius, dated 1710, the other “without name”; two cellos, by Casagney, dated 1757 and Cabresy, dated 1725; and an “ordinary” doublebass.142 Did Viotti play on one of these Stainer or Amati violins at the Fermier-Général Boulogne’s gatherings, or did he prefer to lead performances of Boccherini’s chamber music and symphonies with his own instrument? If indeed he performed all 110 of these pieces, it would have taken him twenty or thirty times to Boulogne’s home, at the rate of three or four works per concert. From a purely musical point of view, the most important private concerts in which Viotti participated, unfortunately not at all well documented, were his own matinées musicales, given, according to Miel, every Sunday in his lodgings shared with Luigi Cherubini. (Cherubini came to live in Paris at the end of July 1786; he lived with Viotti presumably until the latter’s departure from France in July 1792.) Miel says that these concerts were given for the benefit of Viotti’s pupils, and that they featured quartets, quintets, and the first performances of his own concertos, played by himself. In these Sunday matinées Viotti’s roles as a player and as a teacher intersected—he played as a teacher. Miel mentions quintets—again, those of Boccherini would have been among those played; Viotti himself is not known to have composed any. As for quartets, in addition to his own twelve works composed in the 1780s, and those of Boccherini, Viotti would surely have played some of Haydn’s latest works—the Austrian master’s op. 17 and op. 20, each a set of six string quartets, had been published in Paris in the 1770s. It is possible that the Grand Duke and Duchess of Russia had told Viotti of Haydn’s op. 33 when they saw him in May 1782; perhaps they had shown him a manuscript copy, which the grand duke, as the future dedicatee, may have received from the composer. At any rate, these six quartets were published in Vienna the same year, and Haydn’s op. 42, op. 50, op. 54, and op. 55 were all published in the 1780s. Clear evidence for Viotti’s interest in this repertory is the presence of his name on the list of subscribers to Pleyel’s 1801 edition of Haydn’s collected quartets.143 Five of Viotti’s concertos, nos. 11–15, published in 1787–88, were, according to White, “probably written for Versailles, 1784–6” (nos. 11–12), and “possibly written for Versailles, 1784–6” (nos. 13–15).144 If so, these concertos would have been among those he tried out first at his Sunday matinées.145 However, the scarcity of evidence for his performances at court leads me to believe that his house performances may also have had other raisons d’être: simply as tryouts for publication, or, as Miel says, for the benefit of his students. In 1787–88, two of Viotti’s violin concertos apparently received their first performances (“nouveau concerto”) at the Concert spirituel, one by Madame Louise Gautherot (7 June 1787), and one by Viotti’s pupil Paul Alday (19 March 1788).146 These concertos must have been from among nos. 11–15, since nos. 16–19, the last of Viotti’s Parisian concertos, were almost certainly composed for performance in 1791 or 1792 in Viotti’s Théâtre Feydeau. If, as we might expect, these young artists


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tried out their concertos at Viotti’s home, they may well have had the privilege of hearing the composer play the same concertos at these matinées—a masterclass avant la lettre. Miel asserts that to be invited to these séances was a much sought-after favor; however, the alleged presence of such prominent men of letters as La Harpe, Marmontel, Morellet, and Florian,147 though plausible, has no basis in any primary evidence of which I am aware. Cherubini, in his Notice biographique sur M. Cherubini, dictated in 1831, says that Viotti introduced him to Marmontel, his future librettist, but makes no mention of Viotti’s private concerts.148 Marmontel (1723–99), who frequented the salons of Madame Helvétius and Madame de La Briche, lived with his wife, another niece of the Abbé Morellet (not the pianoplaying Mademoiselle Beltz), in the same apartments as Morellet from 1777 until 1784, when the couple moved to another apartment nearby. Did members of the nobility attend Viotti’s matinées? They may well have: when it came to music there was a remarkable degree of social interpenetration in pre-Revolutionary Paris, of which the mixed membership of both the subscribers and the orchestra of the Société Olympique was perhaps the most noteworthy example. We have seen, as well, the easy collegiality in the Rochechouart home among professional musicians and the aristocracy. We may venture to suppose, then, that Viotti returned the invitations of those in whose houses he had been a guest. We note in passing that Sunday must have been, at least occasionally, a very full day for Viotti—first his own matinée, then lunch and music at Abbé Morellet’s, then the evening salon of Madame de La Briche. We are now able to discern a pattern in Viotti’s participation in Parisian salons. For his first two years in Paris, when he was establishing himself as the leading violinist of the city, he probably did make the rounds of the aristocratic salons: Bagge, Étioles, Richelieu, Guémené, and the like. His performance at Versailles in May 1782 belongs, in a way, to the same category. He would have made these appearances for the usual reasons: to make contacts with potential patrons, possibly to try out his concertos, preparatory to playing them at the Concert spirituel, to lay the groundwork for commissions, and to attract students. (As to whether Viotti was paid, in cash or gifts, for these performances, it is extremely difficult to say, as there is almost no information on this aspect of Parisian concert life. However, evidence from elsewhere in Europe suggests that performers at private concerts were usually rewarded, sometimes handsomely.)149 This activity seems to have been superseded, certainly by 1789, and probably well before that year, when these motives no longer obtained, and as his natural preference for the musical society of friends asserted itself, by a rather different kind of participation in salons—more varied, more relaxed, one might almost say “nonprofessional,” or certainly nonvirtuoso: playing chamber music in his own home in the midst of his students, or in the homes of friends

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such as Mesdames Vigée-Lebrun and de La Briche, coaching a vocal group, improvising with a friend’s niece, playing for a wedding to gratify a friend. These obviously are not activities calculated to further his professional career as a violinist—he had stopped playing in public after September 1783—he does it because it pleases him. (Of course, it is entirely possible, indeed quite likely, that Viotti began playing at some of these salons in a strictly professional capacity, and that, in due course, he became a friend of the host or hostess. Cases in point are Aiguillon, Vigée-Lebrun, Morellet, La Briche, and Boullogne.) The underlying motive, then, for Viotti’s renunciation of public playing, was surely psychological, a thing more easily grasped when one looks at the whole arc of his life and career. We will recall that one of Giambattista’s earliest memories must have been of his father making music with friends at home. Viotti preferred to play for his friends rather than in public concerts, not because he was timid or suffered from nerves—there is ample evidence that he was supremely confident before the public (of which perhaps the most convincing testimonial is that of Baillot, who could only compare Paganini’s aplomb with that of Viotti),150 but simply because he valued the appreciation of an intimate group of friends more than the accolades of large, anonymous audiences. We see this over and over again in his letters and in the letters of his friends—in the Viotti–Chinnery correspondence dating from his London years, and, especially eloquent, his letters to Baillot and those of Baillot about Viotti.151 He was in his element playing chamber music with his friends—professional colleagues and gifted amateurs, but also often including amateur musicians of a considerably lower level of accomplishment. Viotti’s resumption of public performance in England in the 1790s must be attributed to financial necessity: he says in his Précis that he had sunk most of his fortune in the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau. Paris continued to hope for Viotti’s return to the stage. As late as 23 December 1791, seven months before Viotti fled from France, a lead singer in Viotti’s theater read “Lines addressed to M. Viotti” to the audience at one of the operas. “Everyone,” the poem concluded, “likes to believe that you will finally accede to our just wishes, since it would be to increase your glory as much as to add to our pleasures.”152 The day after, in a letter to a Parisian newspaper, an anonymous “amateur” is more realistic: he laments that the great violinist has not appeared in public for so long, but concedes that “he has the right to dedicate his talent solely to the pleasure of his friends,” and that “he finds happiness not so much in the precious approval of the public, as in the calm and intimate [secrètes] communications of friendship.”153 Perspicacious and prophetic words. Denise Yim has pointed out that by 1787 the Paris newspaper Mercure de France was referring to Viotti as an amateur.154 In other words, he was considered, at least in some quarters, to have entered the ranks of gentlemen-musicians of high social standing, for whom playing the violin was not a profession. It may be, then, that Viotti, having attained this status, would have found it awkward to reappear as a professional performer in Paris, even if he had wanted to.


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There was one musician with whom Viotti seems to have had an especially close artistic rapport—the pianist Hélène de Montgéroult. Nine years younger than Viotti, she had studied under Nicolas-Joseph Hüllmandel, and with Jan Ladislav Dussek when he visited Paris in 1786. Both of these pianists were friends of Viotti; both, as well as Madame de Montgéroult herself, published arrangements for pianoforte of various of his violin concertos. Viotti’s friend Eymar records an occasion in June 1792 when Viotti and Montgéroult improvised together, taking the thematic lead by turns in a tour de force of creative invention and expressivity.155 We may pause to digress for a moment on Viotti’s improvising. It is in the nature of improvisation that our evidence for it, particularly as practiced as long ago as the eighteenth century, is confined mostly to treatises and to anecdote. But there are too many testimonials to Viotti’s exceptional powers in this art to be lightly dismissed. Here we are distinguishing between, on the one hand, the common practice of improvising an embellished version of a simple melodic line, particularly in an adagio, and on the other, of improvising an entire piece, either as a prelude to the performance of a written composition, or as a freestanding improvisation in its own right. Clear evidence for Viotti’s practice in embellishing an adagio is to be found in the autograph score of his Concerto no. 27. In the slow movement Viotti has added an extra staff with ornamentation for the solo violin part (see figure 3.7).156 Baillot, in his treatise, L’art du violon, of 1835, gives two examples from Viotti’s violin concertos (the slow movements of nos. 3 and 19) in which he provides suggested ornamentation, in the former case amounting to an elaborate rewriting of the entire movement, and including two cadenzas.157 Since Baillot was a close friend and admirer of Viotti, it seems reasonable to suppose that these examples (consisting prominently of, but not confined to, scale-wise filigree, similar to that in no. 27) represent Baillot’s recollection of Viotti’s manner of playing an adagio. Viotti almost certainly did not confine his improvised ornamentation to slow movements. The Sieber edition of Concerto no. 15 (1788) has an ornamented version of the first movement (Maestoso assai) in which, contrary to what might be expected, “most elaborate ornamentation occurs in the brilliant passage work; the lyrical sections are largely un-ornamented.”158 We may assume that this ornamented version reflects the manner in which Viotti might have performed this movement, and, by inference, similar passages in his other concertos. Related to ornamentation is the improvised practice of tempo rubato. Baillot suggests how tempo rubato might be applied to two passages from Viotti’s Concertos nos. 18 and 19.159 In them many of the original rhythms are displaced, compressed or elongated, but without disturbing the bar-by-bar framework (different from the slowing down and speeding up of the tempo that is commonly associated with the works of Chopin, for example). Again, it seems likely that in these examples Baillot was attempting to reproduce how Viotti might have performed these works. All of this evidence, taken together, suggests that Viotti

Figure 3.7. Viotti: Concerto no. 27, autograph, a page from the second movement, with ornamentation added on a separate staff above the solo violin part. (By permission of the British Library; Add MS 28970.)


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interpreted his concertos, and possibly his sonatas, in a freer, more improvisatory style than violinists of today would permit themselves. In his written description of a ranz des vaches, or Swiss cowherd’s song, that he had heard years before, and which he played with Madame de Montgéroult on the occasion just mentioned, Viotti appended a transcription of the music, in the key of A major, in an entirely free rhythm, without a metric signature and without bar lines. He explains, “There are cases when a melody ought to be unrestricted, in order to be itself, and only itself. The least rhythm spoils its effect. So true is this, that one cannot determine how long it takes for these sounds, lingering in space, to travel from one mountain to another.”160 One almost feels, at the risk of overinterpreting, that Viotti is making a broader point, that he is hinting at the desirability of rhythmic freedom in general, chafing against the metric strictures of European art music. Unfortunately, very few cadenzas composed by Viotti himself for his concertos have come down to us: the very brief cadenza he provided for the slow movement of no. 13, the cadenza for the third movement of no.27, and the accompanied cadenzas at the end of the third movements of nos. 22, 28, and 29. Baillot included in his treatise cadenzas for the first and second movements of no. 22, which may well reflect Viotti’s improvisatory style. In general the technical demands of these cadenzas are modest compared, for example, to the elaborate cadenzas by Joseph Joachim for the first two movements, which are those probably most often played in modern performances of this concerto. Apart from cadenzas in concertos, the practice of improvising an entire piece was more likely to occur in private soirées than in public concerts, and more commonly associated with pianists than with violinists. Miel affirms that “Viotti improvised with ease.” The variations on airs that he played at his benefit concert in April 1782, “of which he is the author,” may well have been improvised, or played with the merest of notated sketches as a guide. The accompaniment, whether played on a piano or by an orchestra, would simply have been repeated for each variation, in the manner of the theme-and-variations finales of his sonatas for violin and bass. One account informs us that when playing his airs with variations, Viotti “paid but little attention to the text before him.”161 There is at least one account of his improvising at a private soirée in London, of which we shall learn in a later chapter. Viotti, though obviously skilled, was not unique in this area of expertise. Nicola Mestrino (1748–89), for example, was admired for his improvisations. According to Baillot, Rodolphe Kreutzer was the only violinist, “to the best of our knowledge, who has indulged in [ playing improvised preludes] with any success, yet even he never improvised in public.”162 More remarkable is the fact that occasionally a pianist and violinist would improvise together—which would seem to double the difficulty. We have learned of Viotti’s preluding with the pianist Mademoiselle Belz. Dare we suggest that Viotti’s engaging and attractive character particularly suited him to this kind of music making?

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Madame de Montgéroult’s Cours complet pour l’enseignement du forte-piano, published in 1822, contains a section, titled “Fantasia,” which surely reflects her experience of improvising with Viotti: A Fantasia or Caprice is really a written-out improvisation [ . . . ]. The performer must not keep time too exactly: he can slow down the phrases which seem pathetic to him, and press ahead on those of which he intends to animate or agitate the expression. In general this type of composition should be played in a somewhat disorderly fashion, so that the improvising artist follows only the inspirations of his soul.163 There follows a musical example, “Fantasia,” in several sections, liberally sprinkled with expression marks such as affrettando, calando, molto agitato, sotto voce, a piacere, and modulating from G minor through several keys as far afield as B major before ending in G minor. Montgéroult makes no reference to the art of improvising a due; we shall have to be content with imagining the sounds in her music room on that summer day in 1792. There is insufficient evidence concerning whether there was a romantic attachment between Viotti and Montgéroult, hinted at by Eymar and Miel, and vulgarized in the attack on Viotti in the Journal de la Cour et de la Ville in 1791 (see also below, p. 160). What is known is that in the summer of 1793 Viotti put himself in harm’s way to succour Madame de Montgéroult, who, with her husband and others of her party traveling in the Tyrol, was the victim of a bizarre international incident in the Revolutionary war.164 By this time, however, Viotti had formed his lifelong attachment to the Chinnery family, in particular to Margaret Chinnery. Nevertheless, Viotti introduced Montgéroult to the Chinnerys in 1802, and kept up his friendship with her until the end of his life.

Composer and Teacher Viotti is thought to have composed the following works in Paris from 1782 through 1792:165 Concerto nos. 1, 2, 4–19 Two Symphonies concertantes Trios (6) op. 2 Quartets (12) op. 1, op. 3 Duos (12) 1er and 2me livres Solos (6, possibly 12 sonatas) Various arrangements of the above works We know nothing about Viotti’s compositional habits, how quickly he composed, or how much time he spent on revising his works and preparing them for publication. The above list represents a fairly substantial output for ten years,


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but it should be borne in mind that Viotti may well have composed several of these works, and begun many others, before he arrived in Paris. Elsewhere we touch upon the question of where and when the concertos and the symphonies concertantes were performed, both by Viotti himself and by others.166 One of the elements of his Parisian concertos that distinguished them from those of his contemporaries was that the virtuoso sections, the so-called passagework, as opposed to melodic or thematic passages, were more interesting and more successfully integrated into the overall texture. Another was Viotti’s wider harmonic palette—White points out his sudden changes of mode, and occasional abrupt modulations, usually brought about by the descent of the interval of a third. Still another was the greater variety and structural interest of his rondo finales.167 As to the chamber music, there is no record of a specific performance in Paris or Versailles of Viotti’s sonatas, violin duets,168 trios, or quartets. We must assume that what performances there were all took place at private concerts, including Viotti’s matinées. It is perhaps worth noting that in the 1780s there was as yet no such thing as a professional, “permanent” string quartet in Paris. Music written for this combination of instruments, not to mention trios and duets, was normally intended for the private enjoyment of string players and their listeners. However, we have seen that, at least in Geneva, if not at the Concert spirituel in Paris, chamber music was performed at public concerts, that is, Viotti’s “solo” in the second half of the subscription concerts, and a Boccherini quintet at what appears to have been a public or semipublic concert. In his Parisian string quartets, op. 1, WII:1–6 and op. 3, WII:7–12, published in the mid-1780s, Viotti’s compositional style seems to have evolved in at least one respect. The op.1 works are of the quatuor concertant type. They typically consist of only two movements, and they are characterized by the full participation of all four players in the presentation of melodic materials (hence concertant: each instrument is given the chance to shine in turn, though all of the parts are of only moderate difficulty). The op. 3 quartets (four of which are in three movements, the other two in two movements), on the other hand, begin to show characteristics of the quatuor brillant type, that is, with a more soloistic first violin, the other three instruments, especially the viola and cello, often being relegated to an accompanimental role.169 All twelve of these works lack the rigorous thematic-motivic developmental technique characteristic of Haydn’s string quartets as early as 1770, and displayed to particular advantage in the op. 33 set of 1782. Viotti’s string trios, like most others of the late eighteenth century, including all but one of Haydn’s, are for two violins and bass, which had been the typical instrumentation of the trio sonata, the preferred chamber combination of the Italian Baroque. In a sense then, they, like the sonatas, are conservative in outlook, though there can be little doubt that Viotti intended the cello as the third instrument. It was Beethoven who broke decisively with this tradition with his op. 9, a set of three trios, published in 1798, scored for violin, viola, and cello, although other composers, including Haydn, Boccherini, and, most notably, Mozart in his

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Divertimento, K. 563 of 1788, had experimented with the same instrumentation. Haydn composed no more string trios after 1767, but Viotti continued to compose them well into the nineteenth century (twenty-one in all) always for two violins and cello. The texture of Viotti’s Parisian trios, op. 2, consists most characteristically of a soloistic first violin with the second violin accompanying and the cello providing a simple bass. It was this style that rendered these works suitable, in their original form or arranged as solos with piano accompaniment, for Viotti in the Geneva concerts in 1780, and, in their original form, as vehicles for Madame Gautherot in London in 1789 and 1791 (see below), as well as for Viotti himself in his London Hanover Square performance on 28 February 1793. Viotti composed thirty-six violin duets, more than any other genre. They range from “duos faciles” to “duos concertans,” catering for different levels of amateur proficiency. The two Parisian sets are “grands duos” and “duos concertans,” respectively. Perhaps even more than in the case of his other compositions, his violin duets were published almost as often in arrangements for other instrumental combinations as in their original form—sonatas for piano with violin and cello accompaniment, violin and viola duets, flute duets, clarinet duets, string quartets, and quartets for flute, violin, viola, and cello. Viotti’s Parisian sonatas are violin pieces with piano accompaniment (Sonates à violon seul et basse).170 The pianist’s part consists only of a bass line (the basso continuo, a legacy of the Baroque period), which must be “realized,” that is, the pianist must fill in the harmonies above this bass. The finale of several of these three-movement works is a Theme and Variations in which Viotti provides the bass only for the theme; the pianist is expected to vary the realization appropriately for each variation. The ability to realize a bass, very often at sight, was part of the technical equipment of an accomplished pianist of the eighteenth century. We may presume that Madame de Montgéroult possessed this skill, but would she have been content to play only this type of work with her celebrated friend? In Viotti’s sonatas the pianist is not given anything like the equality of participation that one finds, for example, in the set of six sonatas for keyboard and violin of Mozart (K. 301–306) published by Sieber as early as 1778, and in the subsequent set of six (K. 296, K. 376–380) published in 1781. Surely Viotti, out of respect for his highly accomplished duo partner, as well as from the natural desire of skilled performers to explore the available repertory, would have occasionally played Mozart’s sonatas with Madame de Montgéroult.171 Viotti took a number of pupils in Paris. In addition to the Duc d’Aiguillon, already mentioned, there may have been other aristocrats (men, probably not women, since the violin was considered unsuitable for women, who were expected to learn to play the harpsichord, later the piano, as a social grace). According to the Abbé Morellet, Viotti gave musical advice to the abbé’s niece Mademoiselle Belz, with whom he often played his works for violin and piano. We know from one of Viotti’s letters that he gave lessons “out of friendship” to the son of a merchant-friend


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in Ghent, named Smed. Thus Viotti may have made one or more visits to Ghent during the period 1782–92. Nothing more is known of this pupil, who, by the time of Viotti’s writing in the summer of 1793, had died at the age of eighteen.172 Other pupils, who became professional violinists, in some cases distinguished soloists, were, in approximate chronological order: • Jean Baptiste Cartier (1765–1841), who became Viotti’s pupil, apparently in 1783, and who, according to Fétis, became Marie Antoinette’s accompanist in 1785. He was assistant leader of the Opéra orchesta from 1791 to 1821 (at the end of which period Viotti was director of the Opéra). In 1798 Cartier published his L’art du violon, which included works by Corelli, Tartini, and Pugnani appearing for the first time in France—a repertoire that he may have acquired from Viotti;173 • Paul Alday le jeune (ca. 1763–1835), who studied with Viotti, apparently only in 1785;174 • August F. Durand (Duranowsky) (ca. 1770–1834), who was brought to Paris from Poland in 1787, according to Fétis, and made his début at the Concert spirituel on 8 September 1787 with a concerto of Giornovichi’s, but who, on his next appearance, 22 May 1788, played one of Viotti’s concertos; • Pierre-Jean Vacher (1772–1819), who, according to Choron and Fayolle,175 was Viotti’s pupil, and according to Fétis,176 “received a few lessons from Viotti,” but according to another source, was instead a pupil of a certain “Wauthy”;177 • Louis-Julien Castels de Labarre (b. 1771), whose lessons, according to Fétis, consisted of “a few words of advice”;178 • Pierre Rode (1774–1830), Viotti’s most eminent pupil, began studying with Viotti in 1787 or 1788.179 It has been suggested that Friedrich Johann Eck (1767–1838) studied with Viotti in 1785.180 Since he taught his younger brother Franz (1774–1804/9), who, early in 1802, became the teacher of the great German violinist, Ludwig (Louis) Spohr (1784–1859), the matter is of some importance. Friedrich Eck played in the Concert spirituel in 1782, when he was fourteen years old, and again several times in 1789. He may well have been strongly influenced by Viotti’s playing while in Paris, but there is no concrete evidence that he was in Paris in 1785, or that he ever took lessons from Viotti. The early biographers do not mention Eck in connection with Viotti, nor does Spohr in his autobiography. Eck dedicated his first two violin concertos, published around 1790, to Viotti, which is compelling evidence of some kind of connection between the two musicians.181 But until further information comes to light, it seems best to consider Friedrich Eck a “follower,” rather than a pupil, of Viottis. Other names have been brought forward as pupils of Viotti, but it is not clear when and where they studied with Viotti, and corroborative information is lacking:

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• Michal Kazimierz Ogin´sky (1728–1800) and his nephew, Michal Klesfas Ogin´sky (1765–1833): the former is asserted to have been taught the violin by Viotti, apparently in his youth (!), the latter in 1798, when Viotti was in exile near Hamburg.182 • Madame Paravicini (1769–after 1827), according to Fétis, was from Turin, became a pupil of Viotti’s, played only Viotti’s music, and well exemplified his tradition.183 • Johan Heinrich Poulsen (1770–1838), a Danish violinist, one of Ole Bull’s early teachers in Bergen, Norway, is stated to have been a Viotti pupil.184 • Count Ludwik Rokicki, the owner of an estate in Poland in the first half of the nineteenth century, is asserted to have been a pupil of Viotti’s.185 Still other names have been alleged, but contrary evidence casts serious doubt.186 The evidence suggests that the number of Viotti’s pupils in Paris did not exceed about four to six at any given time. As is well known, however, his influence through his pupils and disciples was profound and far-reaching. So far as we know, all of Viotti’s pupils were already more or less accomplished players when they came to him. Nonetheless, it seems reasonable to suppose that he would have imposed scales as part of his teaching regime, since, as we have seen, even late in his career he asserted that he himself “never ceased” to practice scales. Other than his own concertos, which he gave as assigned pieces to Alday and Rode, and, apparently, a concerto by Mestrino (see below), we cannot know what repertory he used as teaching material. Though Viotti stopped playing in public, his concertos continued to be played at the Concert spirituel: twice in 1784,187 five times in 1785,188 three times in 1786, nine times in 1787 (including performances of Viotti’s two symphonies concertantes by Henri Guérillot and Imbault and two performances of arrangements for pianoforte of his violin concertos), seven times in 1788, once in 1789 (another performance of a pianoforte arrangement, accompanied by Alday— this may have been the arrangement for pianoforte with violin obbligato of the first and third movements of no. 9, published in 1788–89, WIa:3, or the arrangement by Steibelt for pianoforte with violin obbligato of Viotti’s first symphonie concertante, published in ca. 1790, WIa:15), and at least twice in 1790, including a performance by Rode.189 The tapering off toward the end of this list may be partly explained by the fact that in 1790 Viotti was beginning to present performances of his concertos in his own theater. Performances by violinists in the Concert spirituel in 1789 were dominated by Eck and Alday, though Eck apparently played only concertos of his own composition. All told, Viotti’s works were played about fifty-six times at the Concert spirituel, including his own twenty-seven performances—well below the figures for Haydn (ca. 256), Gossec (ca. 111), and Pergolesi (ca. 80), for example, but


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surpassing by far the number of performances of any other composer’s concertos. Already by 1784 Viotti had replaced Giornovichi as the composer of violin concertos most often played at the Concert spirituel. Only three other violinists came near to playing as many times as Viotti did at the Concert spirituel. Guérillot played twenty-eight times between 1783 and 1788, but of those only eleven were performances of solo concertos, the others being of symphonies concertantes for two violins, at first with Pierre-Noël Gervais (who played twenty-one times, but, again, only about half of these were solo concertos) and later, with Imbault, including performances of Viotti’s works in this genre. Viotti’s pupil Paul Alday played twenty-five times; of these, ten were performances of concertos by Viotti, more than any violinist other than Viotti himself. Madame Gautherot played a Viotti concerto five times at the Concert spirituel, and several other violinists played a Viotti concerto once or twice. Alday was a clear case of a convert to the Viotti school. He first performed on 25 March 1783 (he was fewer than ten years younger than Viotti), with, as might be expected, a concerto by Giornovichi, followed in April by a performance of his own concerto and of a concerto by Fodor. This was the very time that Viotti was playing at the Concert spirituel—Alday must have heard the Italian several times. In all of 1784 and most of 1785 Alday did not play; finally, on 8 December 1785, after having studied with Viotti, he reappeared with one of Viotti’s concertos. From then on he performed with increasing frequency, especially in 1788–89, until March 1790, always with either a concerto by Viotti or one of his own. The case of Madame Gautherot, formerly Mademoiselle Deschamps, is instructive. She was a seasoned performer, having made her first appearance at the Concert spirituel in 1774, aged eleven. Between then and 1779 she performed at least a dozen times, including at least five times with a concerto by Giornovichi. Then there is a gap of five years, during which time she married. She resumed her career at the Concert spirituel in 1784 with a concerto by Nicolas Capron, continuing in 1785 and 1786 with five performances of concertos by Giornovichi (the performance of one of which, on 14 April 1786, was by popular demand) and a concerto by Franz Lamotte on 7 April 1787. At this point she seems to have seriously come to grips with Viotti’s concertos.190 She performed one at the concert of 27 May, another (“new”) one on 7 June, and, after a one-off return to Giornovichi on 15 August, she became one of Viotti’s most indefatigable interpreters; it was she who introduced Viotti’s concertos to London audiences, beginning early in 1789. None of the early sources names Madame Gautherot as one of Viotti’s pupils. It is tempting, however, to suppose that she received some coaching from the composer to whose works she had largely dedicated her career, perhaps beginning as early as the spring of 1787; for his part he would have wanted his concertos to be presented to the English as brilliantly as possible. Table 3.1 lists all of Gautherot’s known performances in Paris from 1784, and her performances of Viotti’s works in London.

Table 3.1 Louise Gautherot’s Known Performances in Paris from 1784, and Her Performances of Viotti’s Works in London Date 1784 1785

1786

1787

1788 1789

1790

1791

1794

Work December 24 March 28

concerto "

December 24 " April 10 " April 14 " April 21 " April 7 " May 27 " June 7 " (“new”) August 15 " November 1 " August 15 " February 9 " (LONDON) This appears to have been the public in London. February 27 " May 1 trio May 8 trio February 2 concerto (PARIS) February 19 " (LONDON) April 9 "

Occasion/Venue by "

Concert spirituel "

" " " " " " " " " " "

Capron Jarnowich (Giornovichi) " " " (“demandé”) " La Mothe Viotti " Jarnowich Viotti Viotti Viotti

" " " "

" " " "

"

"

Oratorio concert Her benefit Harrison benefit Concert spirituel, Théâtre Italien Oratorio concert

"

"

" " " " " " " " " " Professional Concert first time Viotti’s music was performed in

New Musical Fund May 7 " " " Her benefit February 24 trio " " NMF March 11 concerto " " Salomon 1st concert Haydn, who had arrived in London on 1 January, presided at the harpsichord at this concert; a “new Grand Overture [symphony]” of his was played. This may have been the first time Haydn heard a performance of one of Viotti’s concertos. April 4 [sinfonia?] " " Delaval benefit concertante

Sources: Paris listings, Pierre and Bloch-Michel 1975, 327–42; London listings, McVeigh Calendar. The trios by Viotti performed in London would have been from the set of six, WIII:1–6, published in 1783–86. A copy of “A favorite trio for violins and bass, as performed by Madame Gautherot at the Nobility’s concerts, composed by M. Viotti,” London, Dale, n.d. (WIII:1), is held by the Biblioteca del Conservatorio di musica Cherubini, Florence.


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Two of the performances of Viotti’s concertos at the Concert spirituel in 1785 were by Madame Sirmen, whom Viotti had probably heard in Turin when he was a boy of thirteen, and again probably in 1774. Madame Sirmen’s performances of two of her own concertos at the Concert spirituel of 5 May 1785 were reviewed in the Mercure de France: Mme Sirmen has preserved the characteristics of the excellent school of Tartini, perhaps too neglected today: a charming tonal quality, fine technique, a style full of interest and grace, to which her femininity may be added. But her style of playing, which is the same as it was fourteen years ago [when she last appeared in Paris], has become very much out of date. Now that violinists have substituted sheer velocity for beauty of sound, feats of skill for a singing tone, their one aim is to astonish the listener, and Mme Sirmen certainly charms the ear, but she does not astonish. No criticism of her playing style is intended, but since this way of playing is no longer fashionable, we believe she would be well advised to play concertos in a more up-to-date style; we do not doubt that she would then be as enthusiastically received as she was formerly.191 It is difficult to say whether this reviewer’s characterisation of the “modern” style of violin playing is a reference to Viotti, the memory of whose playing was less than two years old. If it is, it is not especially flattering, nor does it conform entirely to the consensus of contemporary opinion as to the salient characteristics of Viotti’s playing. Madame Sirmen herself seems to have anticipated the reviewer’s advice—in both of her subsequent appearances at the Concert spirituel, on 15 and 26 May, she played a concerto of Viotti’s, presumably chosen from those already published, nos. 1–10. But whether she was successful in adapting her style—the Tartini school—to Viotti’s music, we cannot know, since these performances were not reviewed. Viotti seems to have had an extraordinary interest in things scientific, and in “technology.” We have already noted his participation with Tourte in the latest developments, including mechanical developments, to the bow. He was also an early user of Johann Maelzel’s metronome, invented in 1814. An undated manuscript, not in Viotti’s hand, in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, lists the metronome tempos for the various movements of eleven of Viotti’s concertos and several of his duets, sonatas, and quartets. According to White, “There is no reason [ . . . ] to doubt that the tempi are Viotti’s own.”192 Miel reports that the violinist attended the public lectures on physics of Jacques-Alexander-César Charles, the famous physicist and aerial balloonist, that he assisted the anatomist-surgeon Sue193 by demonstrating the movements of his wrist while playing the violin, and that he enjoyed botany.194 Sue was the Chinnery family doctor in Paris in 1802. It seems likely that it was Viotti who introduced them.

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“M. Sue, professeur d’Anatomie” was a member (“Professeur”) and apparently one of the lecturers at a series of lectures, called a “Musée,” sponsored by the Comte de Provence and his wife, for which a list of members for the year 1785 has come down to us.195 Among the founders and subscribers were Jean François Marmontel, Prince Bariatinsky, and Imbault. Viotti’s name does not appear, but it is likely that he attended at least some of these lectures, given his connection with Sue.

The Concert Olympique In 1786, Viotti’s name appears in the directory of another Masonic lodge, not as a frère à talent, but as a regular member.196 This lodge, La Loge Olympique de la Parfait Estime (Société olympique), was a daughter-lodge of the lodge Contrat Social, which Viotti had joined in 1783; many members of the Contrat Social also became members of the Société olympique, which sponsored the series of twelve annual concerts called the Concert de la Société olympique. These were not open to the public—they were reserved for the members of the Society and of its affiliated women’s lodge. A candidate for membership would be sponsored by a member, after which the members voted. Viotti may have been sponsored by Chabanon, or by the Baron de Bagge, both of whom are listed as members in 1786. The combined membership, the total potential audience for these concerts, was in excess of 500 persons. The Société had its own orchestra, composed partly of amateur member-masons, many of them from the aristocracy, and partly of professionals. It was the Société olympique that commissioned from Haydn the six “Paris” symphonies, nos. 82 to 87, and it was the olympique orchestra that gave the first performances of these works in 1787. Strangely enough, on that Société olympique membership list of 1786 Viotti is not shown as having any active musical role—the list of orchestra members is given, but Viotti’s name is not on it. However, there is a long-standing historical tradition, which has been repeated sufficiently often and in sufficiently reliable sources to give it some degree of credibility, that Viotti “conducted” the orchestra of the Société olympique, at least for a period of time. The initiator of this tradition, as far as I can determine, was Jacques Marquet de Montbreton de Norvins, the distinguished man of letters and historian of Napoleon, who, as a presumed eyewitness, has some claim to credibility.197 Thus it could have been Viotti who led those first performances of Haydn’s “Paris” symphonies, although there is no solid evidence for this. We would have to assume that Viotti’s name was on the 1787 orchestra list as the principal violinist. In the Society’s directory for 1788,198 the only other year for which a directory has survived, Viotti’s name is not included. The other chief candidate put forward for the position of conductor of the olympique orchestra is the mulatto violinist and swordsman Chevalier Joseph


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Bologne de Saint-Georges (1745–99),199 who was a member of the Loge Les Neuf Soeurs,200 and who had been the leader of the Concert des amateurs, which was dissolved in 1781, to be succeeded by the Concert olympique. However, SaintGeorges’ name does not appear in the Concert olympique directories for 1786 or 1788 in any capacity. The hard fact is that, in both orchestra lists [Guillaume Julien] “Navoigil[ l ]e” (ca. 1745–1811) is given as the first of four (!) players at the first desk of the first violins, albeit in the 1788 list with [ Isidore] “Bert[ h]eaume” appearing immediately below his name as an alternate. Furthermore, in 1788 Navoigille (“the elder”) is listed among the Officiers Dignitaires with the rank of Second Expert, an indication, surely, that at the very least he had not left the orchestra in 1787. It is possible, of course, that Saint-Georges and/or Viotti were the leaders, say, in the years from 1783 to 1785 or after 1788. But it seems inescapable that it was the journeyman Navoigille, and/or Bertheaume, not the more glamorous Saint-Georges or the more distinguished Viotti, who led the first performances of Haydn’s “Paris” symphonies in 1787, unless someone (Viotti?) was especially invited for the occasion. The orchestra for these performances may well have numbered close to seventy players. Considering the relatively complex textures of these works by Haydn, and the attendant difficulties of ensemble, as well as the uncertain competence of some of the amateur players, it would have been a difficult task for the first violinist to lead such a large orchestra from his chair. Norvins reports that some of the members of the orchestra “played in embroidered suits, with lace cuffs, their swords at their sides and their feathered hats on the seats” (sur les banquettes),201 the latter two points allowing us to infer that they may have stood to play. Several professional members of the orchestra were friends of Viotti or, in different ways and at different times, within his “sphere of influence,” including the violinists Feliks Janiewicz (a member in 1788 only), Alday, Guérillot, Imbault, and the cellist Jean-Louis Duport. Norvins also asserts that the orchestra of the Concert olympique was a “good orchestra [ . . . ] thanks to the frequent rehearsals conducted [conduites] by the greatest masters.”202 If taken literally, this suggests that the orchestra was an exception to the eighteenth-century practice of only one rehearsal for a concert, and, further, that guest conductors were invited. But in that case, how did they lead the orchestra—from the leader’s chair? If so, what was Navoigille’s function (or Viotti’s, as Norvins has it)? Could the guest conductors have stood and used a baton? (In a letter of 1816, Viotti refers to “my old baton” having been returned to him from France, where, presumably, it had been in the safekeeping of a friend.203 The inescapable inference is that Viotti had used this baton during his Paris years.) Or, by “grands maîtres” does Norvins mean composers who conducted their own works from the keyboard, possibly sharing the leadership with the principal violinist? Haydn, of course, never went to Paris. It seems at least possible that Viotti’s compositions were sometimes included in the programs of the Concert olympique. Lacking conclusive evidence,

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however, we must, again, rely on inference. It was not uncommon in the 1780s for the same pieces to be performed at both the Concert spirituel and the Concert olympique, even in the same season, or in successive seasons. Thus, some, if not all of Haydn’s “Paris” symphonies were probably performed at the Concert spirituel in March of 1788.204 The title pages of some editions of these symphonies appearing in 1788, as well as of such works as Bréval’s op. 31 (a symphonie concertante for flute and bassoon, published ca. 1790) and Eck’s Violin Concerto no. 1 (ca. 1790), bear the words “performed at” or “from the repertory of” both concerts. The title page of the Bréval work specifies that it was an arrangement by François Devienne of Bréval’s Symphonie Concertante for Oboe and Horn, op. 30, which had been performed “par MM. Salentin et Le Brun aux concerts de la reine, de la loge olympique, et au Concert spirituel.”205 All four of these musicians were members of the Concert olympique orchestra (principal flute, cello, oboe, and horn, respectively). It is possible, then, to take one example, that Viotti’s pupil Alday, who played Viotti’s concertos several times at the Concert spirituel in 1785–90, also performed these works at the Concert olympique, the more so since he was a member of the olympique orchestra in both 1786 and 1788. Similarly, Guérillot and Imbault, both members of the olympique orchestra in 1786 and in 1788, gave four performances of symphonies concertantes by Viotti at the Concert spirituel in 1787. According to T. Lassabathie, who is generally accurate about the Concert olympique, not only was Viotti among the instrumental soloists for the Concert olympique but also his second symphonie concertante was performed there by Guérillot and Jean-Jacques Grasset under his direction.206 (However, Guérillot and Grasset never performed together at the Concert spirituel.) And, again, Isidore Berthaume and his pupil Grasset, both members of the olympique orchestra in 1788, played a symphonie concertante by Viotti at the Concert spirituel on 13 May 1790. They may well have performed the same piece at the Concert olympique. As against all of this, however, early Parisian editions (Boyer) of both of Viotti’s symphonies concertantes have on their title pages “cette symphonie a été executé au Concert Spirituel par Mrs Guérillot et Imbault,” without mention of the Concert olympique. There does not appear to be any edition of any of Viotti’s works with the title page stating that the work had been performed at the Concert olympique, something an editor would surely have been eager to announce had such a performance occurred. At any rate, if Viotti did not conduct concerts of the Société olympique, nor play in them, he almost certainly would have heard them, at least in 1786, when he was a lodge member. Otherwise it is hard to imagine why he would have paid the subscription dues. The concerts were held, from 1786 onward, in the Salle des Gardes207 of the Palace of the Tuileries. This is the second of the three rooms in the Palace that have already been noted as the scenes of Viotti’s activities. Its dimensions were approximately 75.5 × 32 feet (about the same size as the Hanover Square Rooms in London in which Viotti would


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perform in the Salomon concerts). The ceiling was about 23.5 feet high. Here, as had been done for the Concert spirituel in the next room, a platform for the orchestra was placed at the south end of the room, just in front of the fireplace (see figure 3.4). Around the other three sides was placed a tiered arrangement of seating, apparently without boxes—perhaps a little less lavish than the Concert spirituel accommodations had been. The walls and ceiling were splendidly decorated with mural paintings and low reliefs of mythological and allegorical scenes of military triumphs, battles, trophies, marching armies, and the like.208 (It was the Salle des Gardes, after all.) If, as Norvins would have us believe, the queen, “under whose patronage [sous la protection] the Société olympique was,” attended these concerts several times, unannounced,209 she could have had access directly from her pied-à-terre in the south wing on the main floor, by way of the south terrace into the Salle des Suisses, thence into the Salle des Gardes. We have already encountered several of Viotti’s fellow members of the Société olympique. Besides Bagge and Chabanon, there were the Comte d’Albaret, three members of the Boulogne family (in 1788 there was only one: “Boulogne (de), Fermier-Général, rue Bergère”), Calonne, Madame de La Tour du Pin, the Comte and Comtesse de Rochechouart, the Maréchal de Duras, Madame de La Briche, and Colonel d’Affry, all or most of whom were socially and musically acquainted with Viotti. There were others: Madame the Marquise de Rougé (or Rouget), 199 rue du Bacq, who later was apparently to play an important role in Viotti’s life (see below), the Vicomte d’Osmond (“Ossemond”), the Comte de Beauharnais, and the Comte and the Baron de Menou. The Vicomte d’Osmond was the brother of the Marquis d’Osmond, who, with his wife, was on friendly terms with Viotti and the Chinnerys when he was Louis XVIII’s ambassador to London from 1815 through 1818.210 Viotti’s home address in the 1786 directory of the Société olympique is given as 20 rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires, the same as that given for the “Comte de Beauharnois.” This almost certainly was Claude III de Beauharnais (1756–1819), son of Claude II and Marie-Anne-Françoise Mouchard, called Fanny (1737– 1813), who had a well-known salon in the rue de Tournon. We may surmise that Viotti and Cherubini, with whom he lived, paid rent to the Comte de Beauharnais for lodgings in his hôtel. The comte’s name no longer appears in the 1788 directory. Similarly, the Comte and Comtesse de Menou, who belonged to the Société olympique in both 1786 and 1788, are listed in the 1788 directory as living in the rue Royale, Place Louis XV, no. 27, the same address as Viotti’s in April 1789. In the same directory the Baron de Menou (1750–1810) is also listed, with another address.211 This man, along with his friend the Duc d’Aiguillon, was a member of the States General in 1789, and served a term as president of the

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Assembly in March–April 1790. At first left-leaning and anti-monarchical, after Varennes he was one of those who argued for the restitution of a constitutional monarchy, and he was one of the founders of the Club des Feuillants, in opposition to the more radical Jacobins. Later, as General Menou, he was the commander in chief of the French forces defeated by the English in Egypt in 1802. Upon his return to France in the same year, he was sent by Napoleon to Piedmont as general administrator. It was then that André Viotti, in a letter of 9 April 1803, to which we have referred earlier in this chapter, asked his older half-brother for a letter of recommendation to General Menou in the hopes that it might further his military career. Clearly André had learned that Viotti had sufficient influence with the general to warrant such a request. It is not known if Viotti wrote the desired letter, and if he did, whether it produced results (it is known that André went on to enjoy a distinguished career in the French army, becoming a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 1812, and an Officier in 1820). Viotti must have introduced the general and his wife to the Chinnerys in 1802, as a letter of that year from Madame de Menou to Mararet Chinnery shows.212 General Menou was able to be of service to Viotti, indirectly, in still another way: August Durand (Duranowski), a pupil of Viotti’s, entered the French army in about 1796. According to Fétis’s article on Durand, he was involved in an “unfortunate affair” for which he was imprisoned in Milan. Thanks to the intervention of Menou, Durand was saved from further consequences. It is impossible to know whether it was through the Société olympique that Viotti first came to know any of these persons; their common interest in music was perhaps the crucial factor in their friendships, and their membership in the Société would have strengthened this bond. We know very little else about Viotti’s Masonic musical activities,213 or for that matter about the activities of the Société olympique. It is one of the uncharted regions of eighteenth-century music. And there is no record of Viotti having any connection with a Masonic lodge in London after he moved to that city in 1792.

chapter four

Paris, 1789–92 Entrepreneur

The Théâtre de Monsieur Although Viotti’s activities in Paris after he stopped playing in public in 1783 can to an extent be accounted for, there is a disconcerting scarcity of information, of documentation, for more than five years, above all regarding what by his own testimony was his chief employment during this period, that is, as a musician in the service of the Queen of France. Soon, however, Viotti will emerge from this relative obscurity into the full glare of public attention. We have seen that the career of a virtuoso violinist, even as the most acclaimed instrumentalist of his time, held no great attraction for Viotti; we have not yet encountered the ambitious side of his character. He is about to embark on the first of the two major entrepreneurial undertakings of his life, both, in different ways and for different reasons, doomed to discomfiture. Sometime in 1788, possibly as early as the summer, Viotti entered into an association with Léonard Autié, the queen’s hairdresser, as coadministrator of a new theater. Autié’s first partner in this enterprise seems to have been Madame Montansier, the well-known theater entrepreneur, who, among many other ventures, had brought the Italian troupe from the King’s Theatre in London for a season of opera buffa at Versailles in the late summer of 1787, which was a roaring success. At some point she and Autié fell out (culminating in an acrimonious lawsuit and a quarrel in the press early in 1791), and it was then that Autié was joined by Viotti.1 Another version of these events is that Autié and Viotti were together from the beginning and that they associated themselves with Montansier on 17 April 1789 in order to strengthen their capital position.2 At any rate, by June of 1788 unofficial word of Viotti’s involvement had reached England. In the Times of the eighteenth of that month the following 125

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notice appeared: “Parisian Intelligence, Paris, 9 June. Leonard, the Queen’s hairdresser, has obtained the patent for the new comic Opera-House which is going to be erected at the Luxembourg. Cherubini and Viotti are to be the ostensible managers. Morelli and Storace are engaged.” In fact, the Luxembourg garden was at first considered as the site of the new theater, but the Times is mistaken in naming Cherubini as a manager. Autié, or Léonard, as he was more commonly known, enjoyed a position of some prominence at Versailles—he was the hairdresser to many of the ladies of Marie Antoinette’s circle. It was Léonard who invented those wildly elaborate, impossibly high hairstyles made popular by Marie Antoinette and imitated all over Europe, especially in England. His salon was in the Boulevard de la Chaussée d’Antin, and one Paris directory reports that he was “particularly renowned for placing flowers and crumpling chiffon” ( poser des fleurs et chiffoner les gazes).3 To a degree he was in the confidence of the queen, and because of his royal connections he was perhaps a more suitable business partner for Viotti than might at first appear. As early as 7 April 1788 Autié had obtained the privilège, for thirty years, to operate the theater. A society of investors had been assembled by the end of May, with a board of directors, consisting mostly of lawyers and notaries. Viotti’s name is not mentioned in any of the pertinent archival documents of 1788. It was Autié who did the delicate negotiating with the Maison du roi for the right to establish the new theater in the Palace of the Tuileries, in the Salle des Machines, a vast theater built for Louis XIV, so called on account of its elaborate theatrical machinery. Twenty-five years before Viotti’s time, in 1763, this theater had been remodeled, that is, greatly reduced in size. An entire new theater, auditorium plus stage, was constructed in the space previously occupied by the stage alone. Among the public amenities in the new theater were boutiques and a café bar. A wooden structure was attached to the outside, on the carrousel side, containing various service rooms, actors’ rooms, a guard room, and so forth. In this form the theater had been variously used, chiefly by the Opéra and the Comédie-Française, until the early 1780s. In early September 1788, Autié and his associates ( possibly including Viotti, though it is by no means certain that he was yet involved), and Legros, the administrative director of the Concert spirituel, which had moved in 1784 to the Salle des Machines, met with the Tuileries functionary on-site. Since certain structural changes had been made to accommodate the Concert spirituel, it was found necessary to “re-establish things as they had been before the arrival of Legros.” This entailed, among other things, the installation of a mechanism that could raise the orchestra (for the concerts) or lower it (for the operas) in four hours.4 The new theater was called the Théâtre de Monsieur, because it enjoyed the patronage of “Monsieur,” as the elder of the king’s two younger brothers, the Comte de Provence, was known. The Comte de Provence, the future Louis XVIII, though he allowed his name to be used for the theater, was not

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particularly interested in opera, and he played no active role in the new enterprise. We may permit ourselves the assumption that his sister-in-law, the queen, whose love of opera is well documented, was the true patroness of the Théâtre de Monsieur. Certainly, both Autié and Madame Montansier, as well as Viotti, were within her sphere of influence. Marie Antoinette manifested her interest in the Théâtre de Monsieur in the most direct and flattering way imaginable. By September 1788 she had commissioned a project for a theater box and a suite of anterooms to be converted and refurnished for her private use. The box is indicated in figure 4.1, before the conversion, and the detailed plans in figure 4.2 show the considerable structural changes that were made. What had been public space was appropriated or moved—even a set of stairs was squeezed to one side, doors were knocked through two walls, and the entire space was partitioned off to afford Marie Antoinette complete privacy, from her pied-à-terre, by way of the Salle des Suisses, along the north terrace, entering the theater by way of a corridor, through the two anterooms for her footmen and for her personal bodyguard, along a passageway to her private salon, thence to her box.5 It is pleasant to

Figure 4.1. Interior of the Comédie Française in the converted Salle des Machines. “The Crowning of Voltaire,” 30 March 1778. Engraving after Moreau le Jeune. Viotti altered and enlarged the orchestra space in front of the stage for the Théâtre de Monsieur. The box that became Marie Antoinette’s is the first lowermost box to the left of the stage. (Bibliothèque nationale de France; RES QB 201 Fol-Hennin 9640.)

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imagine Viotti and Léonard poring over these plans with the queen’s architect, perhaps even with the queen herself. A detailed inventory of the furnishings of this suite of rooms has come down to us: there were four large armchairs, two “fauteuils cabriolets,” two wall seats (one of which the architect has drawn in), and four stools, all covered in Utrecht velvet. The floor was covered with a blue and white moquette.6 One might suppose that Viotti would be only too happy to have such a tangible display of royal support: the assurance of the regular physical presence of the queen in his theater. But we would do well to remember that by 1788 Marie Antoinette no longer enjoyed the universal affection of the Parisians that she had in 1773, when she received their homage on the terrace of the palace. In fact, she had become the object of a sustained, vicious, often obscene campaign of vilification in the popular press. Although Viotti could not have foreseen how quickly events were to precipitate in the next few months, I dare say his gratitude was not unmixed with apprehension. It must be admitted, in fact, that there is no secure evidence that this architectural project was ever realized. The Théâtre de Monsieur employed some 350 persons, increasing to 400 by 1791,7 when it became known as the Théâtre Feydeau. It was three companies in one: an Italian opera buffa company, a French opéra comique company (whose repertoire was chiefly Italian opere buffe translated into French), and a French prose play company, all with different casts. Add to this the fact that they were sharing the Salle des Machines with the Concert spirituel, and we can only imagine the logistical and administrative nightmare it must have been. By 1789 the three “Administrators and Owners” were Autié, Viotti, and one Chailla des Arènes, a wealthy businessman. It is not known exactly how the administrative duties were divided among them, but it is safe to assume that Viotti’s position was in the nature of artistic director, that he would have concerned himself primarily with the Italian opera side of things, and that he would have delegated a good deal of authority. Neither do we know where Viotti had his office—he would have needed one—but a likely place is the former auditorium of the Salle des Machines. Part of this cavernous space was used after the conversion of 1763 as a theater storage area, but most of it was given over to improvised dwellings for actors, palace dependents, and others. All of these persons were evicted when the Théâtre de Monsieur arrived. I would like to think that Viotti turned the most luxurious of the former boxes into offices for himself and one or two secretaries. Figure 4.2. (opposite) Architect’s plans for the queen’s private box in the Théâtre de Monsieur, 1788 (detail). A, before the conversion; B, after the conversion. The queen would have entered the door shown on the lower right of the plan in B, passed through the two anterooms and the corridor (with the stairs on her right), to arrive at her salon, thence to her box shown on the upper left of the plan. (Archives nationales; O1 1683/172, 173. Cliché Atelier photographique des Archives nationales.)

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Viotti and his associates could not have been unaware that the Théâtre de Monsieur was feared and mistrusted by many of those connected with the three major theaters of Paris. Each of them had much to lose from the establishment of the new theater: it encroached directly on the repertoires of the ComédieFrançaise and the Opéra-Comique (or Comédie-Italienne, which, despite this name, gave French opera comique, not Italian opera), and it threatened the timehonored monopoly of theatrical entertainments in Paris enjoyed by these two theaters and the Opéra (known officially as the Académie royale de musique). As early as 9 July 1788 the minister Breteuil replied to a letter of protest from the director of the Opéra, assuring him that the new theater would be leaving the Tuileries after a year. Throughout 1788, and as late as 25 January 1789, the Comédie-Française made representations to the Comte de Provence and others that “his” theater would not give French spoken comedy. The comte gave reassurances, but the theater proceeded to present the forbidden repertoire. All three theaters protested in letters to various authorities and ministers, but to no avail; the Théâtre de Monsieur clearly had backing too powerful, too close to the royal power to be denied.8 The Théâtre de Monsieur opened on 26 January 1789 with a performance of Giacomo Tritto’s Le Vicende Amorose, and the next evening the same opera was given as a benefit performance “au profit des Pauvres.”9 (The theaters of Paris occasionally would turn the proceeds of a performance over to a charitable institution.) Soon the theater was known not only as the most fashionable in Paris but also for the high standards of its productions of Italian opera buffa in particular, by such composers as Pasquale Anfossi, Niccolò Piccinni, Antonio Salieri, Guiseppe Sarti, Domenico Cimarosa, and above all, Giovanni Paisiello. The Théâtre de Monsieur had the distinction of being the first resident theater in France to produce a year-round repertory of Italian opera. Its policy was to present the best works from the vast repertory of Italian opera buffe. Only two new works in the genre were commissioned. Here Viotti could draw upon his experience in the Teatro Carignano in Turin. (It seems extraordinary that only ten years earlier he had been sitting in the second violin section of the orchestra of the Teatro Regio!) Giovanni Morelli, himself a basso buffo who later became one of the mainstays of the theater’s roster, had been appointed to go to Italy to hire the best Italian singers, including the bass Luigi Raffanelli, his wife the soprano Giulia Moroni Raffanelli, and the bass Carlo Rovedino.10 Other singers on the roster included the baritone Stefano Mandini and the mezzo-soprano Madame Mandini (who had created the roles of Count Alamaviva and Marcellina in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro in Vienna in 1786), the tenors Giuseppe Viganoni and Bernardo Mengozzi (who was also a harpsichordist and house composer), the prima donna Rosina Baletti, and, beginning in May 1790, the prima donna Anna Morichelli. Morelli, Rovedino, Viganoni, and Morichelli later sang in operas and concerts in the King’s Theatre, London, in the period 1794–98, when Viotti was


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variously managing the theater, directing the concerts, and leading the orchestra there.11 These leading singers of the Italian company of the Théâtre de Monsieur were paid salaries almost double that of their counterparts in the French opera company, a fact that did not go unnoticed in the Parisian press. But, in effect, the directors of the theater had no choice: Italian singers, unlike their French colleagues, were in demand in the opera houses of all Europe—Italian opera had for years been dominant everywhere except in Paris. The Théâtre de Monsieur, to attract the best singers, had to pay competitive fees. The sixteen-member chorus excited admiring comment: only those who could sol-fa at sight were admitted, as the administration wished for the chorus to be a “breeding ground” which it could draw upon for future replacements in secondary solo roles. There was even, it was reported, a school of singing and declamation.12 The house rules of the Théâtre de Monsieur provide a precious glimpse into the working lives of the singers of Viotti’s theater.13 Viotti undoubtedly had a say in the formulation of these General Regulations Approved by Monsieur, Concerning His Theater, a printed booklet dating from 1789, probably early in the year. Presentday actors and opera singers may be interested to know that these “Acteurs et Actrices” of the ancien régime were invited to participate in artistic decision making, at least to an extent: article VI states that new works are to be read to the company, whereupon the roles are to be distributed, as agreed upon by the author of the work with the administration, after hearing the opinions of the singers or actors. On the other hand, there are several articles that betray an almost adversarial attitude toward the actors and singers. Article VIII (“Rehearsals”) announces a fine of 6 livres for late arrival at a rehearsal, or for leaving a rehearsal before it is finished, a fine of 12 livres for failure to appear at a rehearsal if the rehearsal can proceed without the absentee, 24 livres if it cannot. Chorus members are to be fined for the same offences, but at half the amount. In case of illness, the actors are required to inform the administration of their inability to attend the rehearsal, “but if it is determined that the illness is feigned, or that the actor is not to be found at home, he must pay a fine of 24 livres.” Actors and singers must provide certain of their own costumes: “men’s and women’s peasant costumes; outfits à l’anglaise; gowns and fur coats; black suits and dresses for men and women; mourning clothes, etc.” The administrators will furnish Greek and Roman, Turkish, Spanish, Indian, American, and Italian costumes of the nobility, and other special costumes, including transvestite costumes, “man’s to woman’s, and woman’s to man’s,” but will not provide shoes, boots, feathers, gloves, ribbons and hats, except for helmets, hussar’s caps, and transvestite accessories. Actors may not ask the theater tailors to provide any articles not expressly authorized by the administrators. Chorus members and extras will be provided with costumes, rouge, and evening stockings. Members of both the Italian and the French troupes may enter the auditorium during the performances, and may, upon written application, obtain free

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tickets (only for the parterre and the top gallery, never for the boxes), but this “should always be regarded as a favor [ . . . ] and no actor may complain if he is refused.” The fine for singing or appearing in any other theater, public or private, in Paris or outside the city, without written permission from the administrators, is 300 livres. We have no precise knowledge of the number of rehearsals normally held for a new work in the Théâtre de Monsieur. One of the articles in the Regulations of the theater (Article IX) stipulates that the singers must learn their parts for a given opera by a certain day, when they and the other members of the cast will begin rehearsing with the keyboard répétiteur, until they are ready for the dress rehearsals with the orchestra, “which will always be few in number.” We recall the rehearsal schedules for the productions of new operas in the Teatro Regio, in which there would be somewhere between five and ten rehearsals with orchestra leading up to the first performance. Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842) was the most distinguished musician employed by the Théâtre de Monsieur. Florentine by birth, the son of the maestro al cembalo at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, he arrived in Paris in July 1786 after successful productions of his operas in various Italian cities, and after two seasons as house composer at the King’s Theatre in London. He had already met Viotti on a visit to Paris in the summer of 1785; Viotti, though only five years older than Cherubini, was an established and celebrated musician—his compatriot was comparatively unknown in Paris. In 1785 the violinist was living in the Hôtel de Chartres, rue de Richelieu;14 in 1786 he was joined by Cherubini at 20 rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires. They remained lifelong friends. Undoubtedly, Viotti helped the younger man make useful contacts in Paris— it was he who urged Cherubini to compose a French opera, and who introduced Cherubini to Marmontel, who provided Cherubini with the libretto for the opera Démophone, produced at the Opéra in December 1788. Although there is no evidence that Cherubini ever joined the Société olympique (he apparently became a member of another Parisian lodge, Saint-Jean de Palestine, in 1784),15 he composed two cantatas for the olympique concerts. The first of these (1786), though not performed, may well have owed its commissioning to Viotti’s intercession. Some time in 1789, probably in September, Cherubini joined the staff of the Théâtre de Monsieur as a house composer, with an annual salary of 4,000 livres.16 His duties, apart from composing two French operas each year, with no rights of ownership, consisted chiefly of composing arias and ensembles to be inserted into the operas, often to suit the vocal capabilities or to show off the strong points of a particular singer, and to adapt the work in question to French taste.17 There might be only two or three insertion arias or ensembles in an opera, but often they comprised more than half of the vocal numbers. They would be taken from other operas, or newly composed by one of the house composers. Cherubini composed some fifty insertion numbers in the period 1789–92, most of them arias.


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The music of Mozart was used for this purpose in three different operas in the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau,18 and Viotti twice provided an aria, for Sarti’s Le Nozze di Dorina (opened 14 September 1789), and for Martín y Soler’s Una Cosa Rara (opened 3 December 1791), in both cases a polacca, arranged from the finales of his Violin Concertos nos. 2 and 13, respectively. (Rode had played no. 13 at the Théâtre de Monsieur on 18 October 1790 [see below, p. 146]; a few knowledgeable members of the audience on the opening night of Una Cosa Rara would have been pleasantly surprised to hear the familiar music of Viotti in its vocal guise.) A canon “à trios dessus,” apparently by Viotti, was also reported as having been inserted into Una Cosa Rara.19 This practice is, of course, not countenanced today, but was common in the late eighteenth century (though at least one critic objected to it on the grounds that it “results in a disparateness of style shocking to delicate ears”),20 and reflects, as do their fees, the dominance of singers in opera of the time— over everyone else, including composers and conductors. In 1792 the leading singers of the Italian troupe of Viotti’s theater (three primi uomini and two prime donne) were paid more than twice the salary of Cherubini (16,800 as against 6,000 livres), exactly seven times the salaries of the two leaders of the orchestra (2,400 livres), and roughly twelve times those of the first desk wind players (1,200–1,500 livres).21 It was surely Viotti who hired the cream of Paris’s instrumentalists for the orchestra of the Théâtre de Monsieur, which soon gained a reputation as the best in Paris. In 1789 it consisted of forty players, rising by 1791 to fifty. Many of the musicians were Viotti’s friends; nine or ten of them had played in the orchestra of the Concert olympique.22 Giacomo Ferrari, whom we have already met, was a répétiteur, orchestral keyboardist and house composer at the outset, soon to be replaced in the latter capacity by Cherubini. An article in the Mercure de France of 14 February 1789 announced that the Polish violinist, Feliks Janiewicz, whom Viotti probably met in Warsaw, was the leader of the orchestra for the Italian operas, but a month later the same newspaper reported that the position was being filled by Nicola Mestrino.23 It is not clear whether the earlier report was in error, or whether Janiewicz was the leader for this brief period.24 Mestrino, a brilliant violinist, originally from Milan, had played in the orchestra of Prince Esterhazy, under Haydn, from 1780 to 1785. In 1786 he came to Paris, making his début at the Concert spirituel on 24 December of that year, and became one of the most popular violinists in the city. According to Edme Miel, he attended Viotti’s matinées. He died, barely forty years old, in July 1789. By August his place had been taken by Antonio Bruni.25 Bruni was a pupil of Pugnani’s, according to Fétis; he too had played successfully in the Concert spirituel in the early 1780s, and by 1782 had begun publishing his chamber music. Bruni composed the music for L’isle enchantée, first performed at the Théâtre de Monsieur on 3 August. He in turn was replaced

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as leader of the orchestra by Giuseppe Puppo, apparently by the beginning of the new year. It is not clear why Bruni’s tenure was cut short. Arthur Pougin suggests that it was due to his difficult character.26 On the face of it, his having been a pupil of Pugnani’s should have placed him favorably in Viotti’s eyes as chef d’orchestre. But two newspapers hint at disaffection in the orchestra after Mestrino’s death, though it is impossible to say whether these problems were caused by Bruni’s appointment.27 At all events, by the spring of 1790 Bruni had gone over to Madame de Montansier, at least as a composer. On 27 April his Le mort imaginaire was produced at the Théâtre Montansier, and the same theater gave another of his operas in the summer. As we have seen, he was to flourish later in the French Revolution. For the 1790 and 1791 seasons Puppo shared the position of “premier violon et chef d’orchestre” with Pierre La Houssaye, the distinguished French violinist who, as leader of the orchestra of the Concert spirituel, had collaborated with Viotti in the Salle des Suisses, and had been the leader of the orchestra of the ComédieItalienne from 1781 until Easter 1790. At the Théâtre de Monsieur Puppo was the leader for the Italian operas, La Houssaye for the French operas. In the 1792 season La Houssaye held the post alone. La Houssaye had been a pupil of Tartini’s; Puppo, too, though Italian (from Lucca) was not a product of the Piedmontese school, nor were any of the other violinists in the orchestra (except for Viotti’s pupil, Rode), almost all of them French natives. Puppo and, particularly, La Houssaye consistently received praise from the critics for their leadership. Julien Navoigille (le jeune, although Fétis asserts that it was the older brother, Guillaume, the leader of the Concert olympique) was the leader of the second violins, and, according to one source, conducted the orchestra “in the absence of La Houssaye and Mestrino.”28 He retained this position for two years. For the leadership of the orchestra, Viotti, remembering his experience in the Teatro Regio, implemented the so-called dual-control system, by which leadership of the orchestra was shared between the first violinist and the harpsichordist or pianist. (Ferrari remembered being hired to play the pianoforte for the opening season, but the instrument is referred to as a harpsichord [clavecin] several times in the press.)29 An often-quoted press notice praising the orchestra of Viotti’s theater ridicules the use of the baton: “No baton wielder for this theater, since true musicians have no need of someone to give the beat; the Italians especially are so used to precision, their ear is so sure in this regard, that they think they are being mocked if someone tries to give them the beat. The French, less skilled in music, want to be reassured by a donkey-stick [ guide-âne].”30 (We are reminded of Dr. Burney’s admiration for the good ensemble of the chapel orchestra in Turin.) Interestingly enough, in 1788 La Houssaye had been asked by the executive committee of the Comédie-Italienne to conduct the orchestra of that institution from a full score, using his bow; in other words, to conduct in the modern sense.31 It is not known whether he did so; indeed, a refusal to comply with the request may have contributed to his leaving the Comédie-Italienne for the Théâtre de Monsieur. According to the historian Castil-Blaze, La Houssaye


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had the orchestra of the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau set up in much the same way as that of the orchestra of the Teatro Regio in Turin, with the leader to the far left of the ensemble.32 Whether this really was La Houssaye’s doing, or Viotti’s, is difficult to say. Giacomo Ferrari wrote in his memoirs: The orchestra [of the Théâtre de Monsieur] was numerous, and was formed in the twinkling of an eye, to the surprise of all the Parisians, considering the number of theaters existing in Paris. But with a first violin like Mestrino, with a cellist like Shcumerczka (Bohemian), with a contrabassist like Plantade, and with a maestro who got along with the first violin, the orchestra was bound to go well, and so it did.33 “Shcumerczka” (also spelled “Smiezka,” “Smerzka,” “Smreska”), as the “first accompanying cellist” ( premier Violoncelle accompagnant), had the all-important duty of playing the bass line of the recitatives, along with the keyboard player. According to Ferrari, he “had a grandiose bowing stroke, he drew a round and well-proportioned tone, he spun the sounds as if with the voice, and he sang on his instrument like a first-class tenor [di cartello], that is, one who wants to sing and not astonish.” Ferrari could as well have been writing of Viotti himself. Charles Henri Plantade, who played in the double bass section of the orchestra of the Concert olympique, was also a composer: his Les deux soeurs, an opéra comique, was produced at the Théâtre Feydeau on 22 May 1792. Ferrari’s memory of him as the (presumably) principal double bassist of the orchestra of the Théâtre de Monsieur is not borne out by the known orchestra lists.34 Perhaps he occupied the position only for a short time at the beginning of 1789. In 1790 and 1791 Pierre Rode’s name appears as the last of the ten members of the first violin section; in 1791 that of Pierre Baillot (1771–1842) appears at the back of the second violins. The former (1774–1830) was Viotti’s most gifted pupil, who enjoyed a brilliant international career as a soloist; the latter, though not a pupil of Viotti’s (he had been absent from Paris for nearly eight years), was profoundly influenced by the older master and became a lifelong friend. Rode and Baillot, soon to become Viotti’s successors and rivals as the leading violinists of the day, were each paid 900 livres in Viotti’s theater. For the financially hardpressed Baillot it was not enough—in September 1791 he resigned, having taken a position in the Ministry of Finance, but not before sending a touching letter to Viotti, filled with admiration and gratitude for “your benevolence.” Viotti replied in kind, expressing an almost fatherly solicitude (he was all of thirty-six years old) for the younger man.35 The first desk wind players were also chosen from the best in Paris. Antoine Hugot, the first flute, for example, had performed a concerto in one of the same concerts of the Concert spirituel in 1782 as had Viotti. Several of the wind players became members of the faculty of the Conservatoire. Hugot was one of the authors of a flute method (1804), and the first horn, Frédéric Duvernoy, was the author of a horn method (1802), both works printed by the Conservatoire

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press. François Devienne, second, then first bassoon, published a flute method in 1795, Méthode de flute théorique et pratique, from which, twenty years later, the young Berlioz learned to play that instrument. Devienne had performed at the Concert spirituel as a flautist several times in the early 1780s, then, beginning in 1784, as a bassoonist. A prolific composer, he saw his opera Les visitandines staged by the Théâtre Feydeau in 1792. Worthy of remark was the presence on the orchestra roster of M. Mariotti, trombonist, “astonishing for his accuracy on this instrument, of which the beautiful effect was unknown in France.”36 The first truly unqualified success of the theater was Paisiello’s Il Re Teodoro in Venezia, which opened on 21 February 1789. Five days later the following notice appeared in the Journal de Paris: “Yesterday we received from the musicians of the Théâtre de Monsieur the sum of 300 livres, coming from an extraordinary gratuity, which they did not wish to keep for themselves, preferring to give it to the poor, at the disposal of the Société Philantropique.” The donor of the extraordinary gratuity has been putatively identified as the Comte d’Artois, the younger brother of the Comte de Provence, giving rise to a long, convoluted, and unsubstantiated anecdote, to Viotti’s discredit, regarding his alleged conflict with the orchestra members over the division of the gratuity.37 The anecdote is almost certainly a fabrication; the mystery of the identity of the source of the gratuity remains unsolved. Il Re Teodoro in Venezia was given twenty-one times in 1789, and was revived in all of the following three years of the Italian troupe’s existence. Giacomo Ferrari reports that, in 1787, he accompanied Marie Antoinette and members of her entourage in excerpts from this opera, “her favorite,” which she knew by heart.38 It seems likely that she attended one, if not several performances at Viotti’s theater. Another of Paisiello’s operas, La Serva Padrona, which opened on 12 March 1789, had been given its first performance at Catherine the Great’s summer palace, Tsarkoje Selo, late in the summer of 1781 (10 September). Viotti and Pugnani had left Russia just before that date, but they may have seen a rehearsal.

“Une bien grande machine” For three weeks from the end of March the Théâtre de Monsieur observed the obligatory Easter closure, but Viotti was far from unoccupied. He was proving himself to be an energetic and able administrator, all the more remarkable considering that he had had no experience. The Théâtre de Monsieur, it is true, was a success almost from its opening, but this success was not won without difficulties, without occasional setbacks, as when an opera or a play failed, or when the artistic policies of the theater were criticized in the press, nor without the myriad vexations that the running of such a large and many-faceted organization


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brings. (The often brutally short and fraught careers of present-day opera house superintendents testify to that.) And yet, despite this already onerous burden, despite his lack of administrative experience, and as events proved, despite his ignorance of the political intricacies involved (or his choosing to ignore them), the thirty-three year-old Viotti, having scarcely settled into his new responsibilities, as if his entrepreneurial ambition grew by what it fed on, now embarked on an ill-judged, impossibly adventurous attempt to wrest control of the Paris Opéra for himself and a group of investors he had assembled. This was not the first time that proposals had been made to take over the administration of the Opéra. As recently as 17 January 1789 the king had let it be known that he had no intention of changing the administration of the Opéra, “still less of entrusting it to private individuals.”39 With hindsight, it seems clear that Viotti’s attempt was doomed from the outset. The details, consisting of an increasingly acrimonious exchange of letters (those of Viotti are the first of his to have come down to us), pamphlets, replies, and counter-replies, are to be found in the national archives of Paris and in a Memorandum to the King (Mémoire au roi ), which Viotti published. What follows is an outline of events, with particular attention paid to any insights the episode provides into Viotti’s character.40 The first salvo is fired by Viotti, in a letter of 23 March addressed to the Director-General of Finance and Principal Minister, Jacques Necker (Calonne had been dismissed on 8 April 1787). Viotti proposes that he be granted the privilège of the Opéra for thirty years, offering 3 million livres as surety, on which the king is to pay 5 percent interest annually. Viotti’s tone—his addressee is probably the most powerful man in France—can only be described as peremptory: “Time presses, and the promptness of a decision is all the more important to me, in that I would lose the esteem of my backers if I do not release them from their obligation one way or another; it would no doubt offend your sense of justice to allow me to incur this inconvenience.” Necker, who throughout seems to have remained impartially aloof, politely refers Viotti to Laurent de Villedeuil, the Minister of the Maison du roi, to whom Viotti has already spoken. Viotti writes to Villedeuil, enclosing a formal submission of his proposal, consisting of fourteen articles. Put briefly, the privilège Viotti seeks, which he explicitly relates to letters patent dating from the late seventeenth century, is to give him exclusive rights for thirty years, throughout the kingdom, not only over the Opéra, but also the Opéra-Comique, subscription balls (bals payant), all concerts, vocal and instrumental, whether in French, Italian, or other languages, all Concerts spirituels, and the reproduction of all opera libretti. This would mean that no one in France could put on any opera or concert, or perform any piece of music or dance for money, or print any music without the express consent of Viotti. It would mean a vast expansion of the monopolistic powers of the Académie royale de musique, a reversion, in effect, to the virtually unlimited power enjoyed by another Italian violinist, Jean Baptiste (Giovanni Battista) Lully (1632–87) in the reign of Louis XIV.

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The other articles are concerned chiefly with matters of internal administration, depreciation of property belonging to the Opéra, insurance against fire, and financial matters, including the assertion that, under Viotti’s administration, the king would save 250,000 livres each year. On 30 March Viotti writes another letter to Villedeuil; he receives no reply. On 7 April Villedeuil writes to a certain Madame la Marquise de Rouget (Rougé). This mysterious person was, according to a recent scholar, “Viotti’s protectress.”41 No information as to her identity has come to light, except that she was a member of the Loge d’Adoption of the Société olympique in both 1786 and 1788, and that she lived at 199 rue du Bacq. Villedeuil lists four brief objections to Viotti’s proposals, the first three amounting to a rather generic defense of the status quo. The last objection has often been quoted: “I have much confidence in the abilities of M. Viotti, but, it is a really big machine, the Opéra! ” ( J’ai beaucoup de confiance aux talents de M. Viotti, mais c’est une bien grande machine que l’opéra! ) This, of course, was perfectly true, and still is. Viotti replies to this letter five days later, it having been communicated to him by Madame de Rouget, saying that Villedeuil seems not to have had the time to examine Viotti’s previous letter to him, and enclosing his Objections Contenues dans la Lettre du Ministre, à M[ad. la Marquise de Rouget], avec les Réponses de S.r. Viotti.42 Viotti compares himself favorably, and rather tactlessly, with the two present directors of the Opéra, Dauvergne and Morel. Beginning with this letter (12 April 1789), and in two or three others in this correspondence, Viotti gives his address as “rue Royale, place Louis XV, no. 27.” It may be that this was not Viotti’s home address, but his office for the Théâtre de Monsieur, or perhaps it was both.43 Antoine Dauvergne (1713–97) was no administrative hack. He had had a career as a violinist both at court and in the orchestra of the Opéra, had been codirector of the Concert spirituel (1762–73), and had much published music to his name—operas, instrumental music, and motets. He was surintendant de la musique at court and, intermittently since 1769, director of the Opéra. However, he had previously been accused of inept management from both within and without the Opéra, and in 1789 he was seventy-six years old—Viotti may have felt that he represented an outdated tradition. In addition, Viotti implies that Dauvergne’s experience was provincial: “Having seen, more than M. d’Auvergne, all the theaters of Europe, at close hand, it must not cause astonishment that [M. Viotti] claims to have a more extended theatrical knowledge than that which he assumes M. d’Auvergne possesses.” Of course, it was quite true that Viotti had probably seen more theaters than had Dauvergne, but he had had only three months’ experience directing one. As for Morel, Viotti mentions the “various abuses that obviously exist at the Opéra,” which he carefully avoids saying Morel is responsible for, but insinuates that he is incapable of correcting them. At this point another highly placed person enters the picture: Denis-PierreJean Papillon de La Ferté (1727–94), intendant of the Menus-Plaisirs, the name


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given to a department of the Maison du roi, which controlled, among other things, the nonsacred musical activities of the court: concerts, balls, operas. La Ferté was perhaps the most important person in the organization of the musical life of the court in the second half of the eighteenth century. He also oversaw the Comédie-Française, the Comédie-Italienne, and the Opéra. This brilliant and powerful man, however, had seen his influence at court eroded by the gradual abrogation of some of his functions by Marie Antoinette, who, with the passive connivance of her husband, had gradually taken to herself much of the decision making regarding music, concerts, and opera at Versailles. He and Villedeuil, his immediate superior in the Maison du roi, and Dauvergne, his immediate inferior (this is something of a simplification since the hierarchies and overlapping areas of responsibility in the French court were of a Byzantine complexity), all may well have resented Viotti, whom they undoubtedly perceived as a creature of Marie Antoinette, a foreigner dramatically raised to power as director of a new theater that itself imperiled the interests and stability of the Opéra, their Opéra, and who now threatened to storm the citadel itself. On 16 April La Ferté writes to Villedeuil, Viotti having in the meantime distributed copies of his printed Extrait des Propositions de Sieur Viotti concernant l’exploitation du Privilège de l’Académie Royale de Musique.44 He encloses the printed matter which S. Viotti, who has not had the patience to await your instructions, has spread about everywhere yesterday at Versailles and at Paris, and who has caused several of the leading singers of the Opéra to come to me, who are in the greatest alarm, and several of whom intend to resign if this takes place. [ . . . ] To tell the truth, Monsigneur, the conduct of Mr Viotti is quite extraordinary.45 On 18 April Viotti writes a last letter to Villedeuil, complaining of his silence, accusing certain “persons interested in asking you to perpetuate it in the hope of tiring me.” At the end of the letter, a threat: if Villedeuil persists in not replying, “I shall consider myself authorized to take appropriate action, as much for having [my proposals] brought to the attention of the king, as for relieving my Company from the near-oppression in which I am constrained to keep it, on account of your indecision.” The next day Viotti writes to Necker, enclosing a copy of this letter to Villedeuil. On the same day (the nineteenth), the Journal de Paris publishes a letter from the “Comité de l’Académie Royale de Musique” in which Viotti’s figures regarding the deficit of the Opéra (which, in any case, was a large one) are contested. Viotti immediately pens a reply addressing the financial questions, in general attempting to placate the doubts of the Opéra committee, and in particular assuring the “premiers sujets” (the leading actors and singers) of guaranteed fees regardless of receipts.46 Having apparently been prohibited from publishing this letter in the same journal,47 he published it privately some time later.

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On 29 April Viotti publishes his Mémoire au Roi concernant l’Exploitation du privilege de l’Opéra, demandé par le sieur Viotti, consisting of his entire correspondence with Necker and Villedeuil, including the fourteen articles. He sends copies to Villedeuil and to the king on 2 May. Viotti places responsibility for this extraordinary move squarely with Villedeuil: “I am in desperation, Sir, that you have by your silence placed me in the absolute necessity of taking this step, but I could not do otherwise without harming the interests of my financial backers.”48 The Mémoire concludes with a long and wide-ranging commentary in which, among other things, Viotti says that M. Necker, who is as busy with other affairs as is Villedeuil, found time to answer him. This was, of course, an ill-considered and invidious remark, serving only to offend Villedeuil and, if anything, to cause Necker to close ranks with the other minister. Viotti argues against letting authors or composers or actors (singers) run the Opéra, as in the past, because of their rivalries and the potential conflict of interest. Viotti not only sharpens his attack, he broadens it, in what can only be described as a tirade: The most august interventions [Viotti means those of the queen, Marie Antoinette] were necessary to allow the celebrated Gluck, Piccinni, Sacchini, and others, the means to give their productions. Why was this? Because the directors of the Opéra were themselves composers, and they prided themselves, highly, on being martyrs to old music. They certainly could not have chosen a more pitiful cause (with the exception of the immortal works of Rameau) for their martyrdom! Be that as it may, it is certain that they would have excluded all the great talents who are the glory of the Opéra today, and that French music would still, even now, be the object of the sarcasms of foreigners, without the august protection which has protected it from them. There were probably many who were all too willing to construe these lines as a general attack on French music—that without the infusion of foreign (Italian in particular) composers and styles, French musical life would be a laughingstock. Certainly it was an attack on Dauvergne, a composer, who had been director of the Opéra when Marie Antoinette had promoted the three foreign composers Viotti mentions. And similarly, in what amounts to an attack on the French style of singing, Viotti suggests, in his most ironic vein, that if the (French) singers had their way, they would still be singing at the Opéra as they had done two centuries before: “France could have prided itself [if the singers were in charge] with having preserved, exclusively, the art of singing with as much seriousness as it was done two centuries ago.”49 Viotti has now placed himself in opposition not only to the three most powerful men of the Opéra but also to many of its employees. La Ferté, in a memorandum, snidely alludes to the presumptuousness of “a foreigner permitting himself to make public letters with which a minister of the


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king was kind enough to take the trouble to answer him,”50 ignoring that Viotti had in fact not received any replies from Villedeuil. By 8 May, Viotti has still received no reply, and no word of a pronouncement from the king, whose decision it ultimately was. On that date, Villedeuil, in a memorandum to the king, refers to Viotti’s “bitter and dishonest” (dans le style amer et malhonete) letter of 18 April. He continues: While I was ill in Paris, unable to take orders from Your Majesty, busy moreover with the fateful events that were taking place, S. Viotti took it upon himself to have my letters and his own printed with a memorandum to Your Majesty in which he complains that I oppress him—those are his words. A reading of this printed matter which I place before Your Majesty will convince you of the contrary, and enable you to judge the character of S. Viotti, as well as of the persons who chose him to represent them. [ . . . ] I beg Your Majesty to be so kind as to make known to me your intentions regarding the proposals of S. Viotti.51 In the margin there is a note in the king’s hand: “I have no intention of giving [away] the enterprise or of changing the regime of the Opéra.” The sixweek struggle is over: Viotti has lost. The next day Villedeuil informs Madame la Marquise de Rouget of the king’s decision, “so that you may inform Sr. Viotti and the other persons whose names you have referred to me in this affair.”52 It is clear that, for whatever reason, Villedeuil is communicating with Viotti through Rouget, rather than directly. Adding insult to injury, a sarcastically dismissive pamphlet appears on 10 May (probably written by La Ferté),53 titled Franches et courtes réflexions sur un mémoire au roi, publié nouvellement par M. Viotti, 10 mai 1789. Two or three excerpts will give a taste of its contents: M. Viotti cannot conceive why such important proposals for the maintenance of good taste in the Music of France, as patriotic as his are, haven’t been examined and discussed by the King’s Council, which, in these times, no doubt has nothing better to do. [ . . . ] M. Viotti promises to make a torrent of marvels gush forth from the Privilege that he seeks [ . . . ]. To offer money—millions, and to promise pleasures! How deceiving that is! What a bait to capture public opinion! The pamphlet ends by announcing a forthcoming detailed examination and refutation of Viotti’s proposals. This apparently never materialized, probably because in the meantime the king’s decision was made known. Viotti’s comportment in this episode has been almost unanimously condemned as “aggressive” and “tactless” by his biographers (even Pougin, who admires Viotti, calls Viotti’s criticism of the Opéra administration “edgy, fierce,

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heated”).54 There is some justification for this judgment, though it is arguable that Viotti was not entirely in the wrong in acting as he did. But was it only a matter of style, not the proposal itself, that defeated him? As we have seen, there was some scepticism about the substance of the proposal, in particular of its financial promises. It is outside the scope of this work, and of the competence of the present author, to pass judgment on these financial aspects. It would have been interesting to see La Ferté’s refutations. However, one has the distinct impression that it was indeed Viotti’s approach, rather than the proposal itself, which caused it to be rejected out of hand. Let us attempt to discover motives and reasons for the rejection. There can be no doubt that it was partly a matter of timing, in more ways than one. In the first place, Villedeuil certainly was ill in mid- to late April, as he said,55 and therefore he could not receive the orders of the king, that is, he could not go in person to the king. This explains why he did not reply to Viotti. Villedeuil also says that he “was occupied with the fateful events that were taking place.” But if he was too ill to deal with Viotti it is difficult to understand how he could be busy with other things. At any rate, fateful events were indeed taking place: • The harvest of summer–autumn 1788 had been disastrous. • The winter of 1788–89 was the coldest in eighty years, forcing thousands out of work and adding to the general misery. The Seine froze over. (A notice had appeared in the Paris newspapers throughout most of January announcing the postponement of the opening of the Théâtre de Monsieur “on account of the extreme cold.”) • By February the price of bread was double that of the summer of 1787. Throughout the spring there were peasant insurrections in various parts of France, including the Paris region. In January–March there were bread riots. While fashionable Parisians were smiling at the buffa antics and delighting in Paisiello’s music in Viotti’s theater in the Palace of the Tuileries, not a mile away hungry men and women were breaking into bakeries. • On 27–28 April 1789, as Viotti was putting the finishing touches to his Mémoire, the appalling Réveillon riots broke out in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine—the rioters were fired upon by troops, dozens of people were killed, others were later hanged. This bloody event shocked Parisians, and its significance was not lost on the governing authorities. • There were also more benign, but equally great political events in the offing—nothing less than the early gestation, the first glimmerings of the French Republic, though no one was yet aware of that. Since 5 July 1788, the date of the official announcement, the country had been preparing for the meeting of the States General. Since January 1789, cahiers de doléance had been sent in from all parts of the kingdom.


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• On 2 May, the day Viotti sent his Mémoire to Louis XVI, the deputies of the three estates from all of France were presented to the king at Versailles, a ceremony that lasted from 11 A.M. until 8 P.M. • On 5 May the opening session of the States General took place, at which Louis gave the opening speech and at which Necker gave an extended discourse. • The Dauphin, Louis-Joseph, the joyous celebrations for whose birth Viotti had probably witnessed in Paris on 21 January 1781, was a sickly child, suffering from tuberculosis of the spine. Throughout the spring of 1789 his condition worsened; the king was at his bedside as often as five or six times a day; on 4 June he died. The king, then, as well as his ministers, did indeed have other things to occupy them. And Viotti was surely unreasonable to expect a reply so quickly concerning such a complicated and drastic operation as a complete change of management of the Opéra. He gives as the reason for his urgency the need to release his backers from their financial commitment, “one way or another,” but can he really have thought that the great wheels of the Maison du roi bureaucracy could turn so fast, even had there been the will? But there was not the will, for Viotti committed at least two very grave tactical errors: instead of diplomatically courting their benevolence, he alienated, with a puzzling lack of tact, the three most important persons in the hierarchy of the Académie royale de musique, as well as many of its singers, and he “went public” over the heads, and behind the backs, of the very persons whose assistance he needed. This was suicidal. The courtier’s way, patiently currying favor in the corridors of Versailles, was not Viotti’s way. It had been a direct, frontal assault, and it failed. On the other hand, even if Viotti had been more diplomatic, less peremptory, and even if his timing had been more fortunate, for example if Calonne, who apparently was favorably disposed to him, had been the principal minister instead of Necker, there is reason to think that he still would have failed. The tradition, the interests vested in the Opéra were too ancient, too firmly entrenched, too French, to permit the intrusion of a foreigner, who, unlike Lully, had been in France only a few years, and who had not come up through the ranks of the French court and of the Académie royale de musique. There is more than a hint of xenophobia in LaFerté’s communications regarding Viotti. Marie Antoinette, with whom Viotti implicitly aligns himself in his Mémoire, was commonly referred to as “l’Autrichienne” by the 1780s. It is perhaps worth mentioning that nowhere in any of the communications did the name of Léonard appear—Viotti clearly did not wish to share the directorship of the Opéra with anyone else. There is one bizarre twist to this episode in Viotti’s life. One of the guests at the soirée at the home of Colonel d’Affry on 14 April 1789, mentioned in the previous chapter, in which Viotti and Rode played in a string quartet, was none

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other than Laurent de Villedeuil! According to our source (the journal of the host’s son-in-law), Villedeuil was among the gentlemen who retired after dinner to discuss the security measures to be taken for the safety of Paris. Apparently his illness was not so severe as to keep him from fulfilling this social engagement. On 14 April, as the outline of events given above shows, the hostilities between Viotti and Villedeuil were approaching their climax, though it was the day before Viotti really burnt his boats, committing the unforgivable breach of decorum of publishing and disseminating his Extrait. Villedeuil’s “j’ai beaucoup de confiance aux talents de M. Viotti” betrays a previous acquaintance with his adversary—they may indeed have met at some salon or another. We can only hope that they were not seated beside each other at table that evening.56 Can there be a more telling picture of the ancien régime at the edge of the abyss? After dinner, Viotti and his colleagues play his music, “full of verve and elegance,” the ladies whisper admiringly, some of them may notice the extraordinary talent of the young Rode, a few of the company play at cards, while in the next room, the gentlemen anxiously confer in low, grave tones. Outside, Paris is in a state of near-insurrection. Viotti’s reputation with the Parisian public, if not with the Maison du roi and the Opéra, seems to have survived his attempted coup undiminished. The Théâtre de Monsieur went from strength to strength, not, however, without criticism in the press, leveled mainly at the perceived inferior quality of the libretti of the Italian opere buffe. The longeurs of the Italian recitatives were singled out, which, the critics complained, were largely superfluous, and in any case incomprehensible to the Parisians. The artistic direction, almost certainly at Viotti’s instigation, responded by having cuts, often very extensive ones, made in the recitatives.57 Always sensitive to the comfort of their public, and aware of the proximity of the Tuileries garden, the administrators announced in the Journal de Paris of 12 May that the performances would begin at “precisely half past five, so that the public can enjoy a stroll after the performance.” The bon ton of Paris thronged to the Garden of the Tuileries in warm weather, even after dark, despite the notoriety attached to certain areas. On 24 May 1789 the Journal de Paris announced a benefit concert on the twenty-seventh for “Mr. George Bridgetower, a young Negro from the English colonies, aged nine, Salle de Panthéon, rue de Chartres.” The program included a concerto by Giornovichi and one by Viotti, both to be played by Bridgetower. Years later, in 1803, Bridgetower gave the first performance, with the composer, of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, op. 47, for violin and piano, which Beethoven had dedicated to him. (Afterward Beethoven changed his mind and dedicated the published work to Rodolphe Kreutzer.) Bridgetower had made his Parisian début at the Concert spirituel on 11 April 1789, and played three more times in that series in April–May, but this benefit concert is


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the first time he is recorded as having played a concerto of Viotti’s. It seems likely that Viotti would have heard the mulatto prodigy (who was actually ten, not nine, years old), whose ambitious father may have introduced his son to the celebrated master; perhaps Viotti coached the boy in his concerto. The Bridgetowers left Paris for England around the end of May; on 5 December George played one of Viotti’s concertos at Bath, the first time Viotti’s music had been heard there.58 On 28 May 1792 Bridgetower played a Viotti concerto at a benefit concert in the Hanover Square Rooms, London, the last time one of Viotti’s concertos was played in public in London before Viotti himself made his London début on 7 February 1793. On 4 June the Théâtre de Monsieur again closed for nine days, as did all the Parisian theaters, in commemoration of the death of the Dauphin. And, as we might expect, the events surrounding the fall of the Bastille caused the theater to close for about ten days. The city had been in turmoil since 12 July, when gunsmiths’ shops were looted, a crowd of 3,000 had invaded the Opéra at the beginning of a performance, and had forced the theaters of Paris to close, in protest against the dismissal of Necker the day before. Widespread looting and destruction of private property occurred. On the seventeenth Louis entered Paris, watched by a tumultuous crowd lining the streets. The opening of Paisiello’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia, scheduled for the thirteenth, was delayed until the twenty-second. That the Théâtre de Monsieur was somehow able to raise the curtain on a new production in the aftermath of these chaotic events is a tribute to the administrative skills of Viotti and his colleagues, and the dedication of the troupe. On 6 October 1789, when the Théâtre de Monsieur had been operating for scarcely nine months, the king and queen and their children, in one of the great, tragic set pieces of the French Revolution, were forcibly removed from Versailles by a mob, consisting mostly of Parisian women, and after a sevenhour trip to Paris, were taken that evening to the Palace of the Tuileries. They lived there, in the south wing, for just under three years, the king on the main floor, the queen on the ground floor. Of course the previous occupants of the palace were turned out to make room for the royal family, having been given less than a day’s notice. It was the presence of the royal family, together with their numerous servants and entourage, that rendered impossible the continuance of the Théâtre de Monsieur in the palace—the irony of the situation would not have been lost on Viotti. On 23 December the last performance in the Salle des Machines was given, and on 10 January 1790 the theater reopened in the Salle des Variétés, Foire St. Germain, on the left bank. This venue, from the beginning, was regarded by Léonard and Viotti as a temporary pied-à-terre, as one of the publications of the time put it, “until a theater worthy of this enterprise is built.”59 It seems to have been inadequate in all respects, not least on account of its location, removed as

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it was from the fashionable area of the boulevards on the right bank, and disturbed by the bells of Saint-Sulpice.60 As early as the beginning of the year the owners were considering the idea of building a new theater on land formerly occupied by the “Stables of Monsigneur,” on the rue St. Honoré, behind the north end of the Tuileries palace. It is interesting that, this late in the day, the proximity of this site to the palace was considered advantageous in that “the royal family could even reach it under cover.”61 Various other sites were proposed; by February a piece of land on the rue Feydeau was decided upon. Permission for this venture was blocked for a time by the mayor of Paris, Bailly, apparently because of the proximity of the site to the Salle Favart, home of the Opéra-Comique (Comédie-Italienne), the site occupied to this day by the Opéra-Comique. (The Opéra-Comique, predictably, had protested, but to no avail—the winds of liberté, of égalité, if not of fraternité, were blowing: within a year, on 13 January 1791, the ancient privilège of the three major Parisian theaters was abolished, with the result that there were no more theatrical monopolies, no more restraints on theatrical entrepreneurship.) Léonard and Viotti obtained the go-ahead in April 1790.62 The design of the new theater, in a neoclassical style, was entrusted to the architects Jacques Legrand and Jacques Molinos, and construction was begun almost immediately. In the Salle des Variétés, the production of operas continued unabated. On 3 February 1790 Piccinni’s La Buona Figliuola was given, with the composer conducting. Piccinni and his work were warmly received. On 30 June Anfossi’s I Viaggiatori felice was considered mediocre both for its libretto and its music, but it was redeemed by the insertion of several numbers by Cherubini, in particular the second-act quartet, “Cara da voi dipende,” which was loudly applauded, the composer taking a bow at the insistence of the audience.63 By this time, indeed, Cherubini’s music was often singled out for praise in the reviews. Viotti sometimes used his position to create opportunities for young violinists. On 2 May the Journal de Paris announced that Pierre Rode, aged sixteen years, would play a concerto of Viotti’s between the two operas composing the double bill, Don Quichotte and L’Epiménide français.64 On 18 October Rode played a concerto of Viotti’s (no. 13, according to Fétis) between the two acts of Sarti’s Le gelosie villane. The Moniteur universel reported, “This young man received the greatest applause and aroused the greatest expectations of his talent.”65 On 11,12, and 13 November, the Théâtre de Monsieur placed a notice in various newspapers asking the indulgence of the public for the theatrical inexperience of a young singer, Signora [ Luigia] Gerbini, who was to make her début on the thirteenth in a one-act pasticcio, Il Dilettante. It may have come as a surprise to the Parisians at the première that, as part of the plot of the piece, Gerbini played Viotti’s Concerto no. 3 in A Major. Gerbini’s singing was considered to have potential; her violin playing was much more enthusiastically received. The


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opera was given two performances, then quietly shelved.66 Gerbini subsequently enjoyed an international career both as a violinist and as a singer. On 28 December there was a benefit performance of Sarti’s Le Gelosie villane for Piccinni. Paul Alday and Rode played one of Viotti’s symphonies concertantes in the entr’acte.67 The receipts were a disappointing 700 livres. The Feuille du jour asked: Has not M. Piccini, that celebrated but abandoned artist, deserved to be helped in his old age? He has given pleasure to the French; his delightful melodies are in everyone’s heart, yet everyone’s heart is closed to his unfortunate situation. How can one listen to Roland, Didon, Athys, etc., be well-off, and coldly remember that the author of these beautiful compositions is indigent, that he is the father of a family and that he is in his seventies?68 Piccinni’s career paralleled that of Viotti in some ways. He had arrived in Paris five years before Viotti; he received a pension from Marie Antoinette in 1783 and gave her singing lessons. He fled the French political situation to his native Naples in 1791, was placed under house arrest in 1794 for alleged Jacobin sympathies, returned to Paris in 1798, enjoyed some prosperity under Napoleon, and a post at the Conservatoire, but died in poverty in 1800. We do not know whether Viotti, who surely had planned this benefit, was able to do any more for his compatriot.

Rue Feydeau In the meantime, construction work on the new theater was proceeding in record time. In a little over six months it was ready, or almost ready. There was a crescendo of notices in the press, including one in November announcing the opening for 15–20 December—prematurely as it turned out. As of mid-December, box rentals were on sale.69 In early January instructions were published for approaching and leaving the theater by coach and on foot. At last, on 6 January 1791, the Théâtre de Monsieur opened in its new premises in the rue Feydeau (the site is now nos. 19–21). The evening began with a “grande symphonie” of Haydn. It is tempting to suppose that it was one of the “Paris” symphonies, or even one of the more recent ones, nos. 88–92, recently brought to Paris. We do not know who was given the honor of leading the orchestra for this important performance, Puppo or La Houssaye; perhaps it was both. Then followed a welcoming speech (we may assume that Viotti had a hand in its composition), delivered by a member of the company, begging the public’s indulgence for the still unfinished decorations. The main fare was Sarti’s Le Nozze di Dorina, in which one of the substitution arias, Viotti’s polacca, “Che gioja, che contento,” was sung by Giuseppe Viganoni, a lead

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tenor of the Italian troupe, who was later to be a colleague of Viotti at the King’s Theatre in London. The theater itself won almost unanimous praise. Although the Chronique de Paris thought that some of the ornamental details were in “bizarre taste,” in general the interior pleased, and the acoustics were considered good. One dissenting voice, the Almanach général des spectacles de Paris et de la province pour l’année 1792, thought the space too big, the singers and actors seeming like preachers in a cathedral, so that only those in the closest boxes could hear them. The Almanach was also of the opinion that the design of the boxes was “abominable,” closed on all sides, like bathrooms, so that latecomers would disturb the occupants. The Journal de Paris approved of the moderate prices for places (some 1,720–2,300 of them, depending on the source), and noticed that everyone was seated.70 On 21 January Laurette, a French-language version of Haydn’s opera buffa, La Vera Costanza, was given; its reception was lukewarm but respectful: The name of Haydn predisposed the general opinion in favor of the music: the excellent craftsmanship of this master was in evidence in several very pleasant songs. However, the more severe connoisseurs did not detect the piquant originality that distinguishes his instrumental music. It would seem that the genius of this celebrated symphonist, cherishing its independence, loses all its force under the yoke of words.71 The nineteenth-century enshrinement of “Papa Haydn, Father of the Symphony” was, it seems, already in place in the Paris of 1791, well before the composer’s death. The early days of the new theater were clouded by the eruption of the dispute, ostensibly resolved in the courts, but still contested, between its administrators and the redoubtable Madame de Montansier. There ensued a war of words in the press. At issue was the amount of money owed by the theater to Montansier as a result of her earlier investment in the theater, and her subsequent withdrawal. Montansier had in the meantime set up her own theater in the Palais Royal, which proved to be a serious rival to the Théâtre de Monsieur. In one of the latter’s public notices (responding to Montansier’s public accusation that it was unable to pay its debts), the address of its administration offices (bureau de la direction) was given as 8 rue de la Michodière, the home address of Viotti and Cherubini, to which they had recently moved.72 That the Théâtre de Monsieur was a meeting place of the fashionably elite is apparent in a letter of complaint to the Chronique de Paris: A few days ago I was passing near the théâtre de Monsieur, rue Feydeau, and drawing on all the expertise which my habit of walking in Paris has given me, I was avoiding to the best of my ability the danger of being crushed at every step by a long queue of arriving coaches and


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another stationary one. I noticed a coachman who was attempting to park his coach in this last queue; a functionary of the National Guard shouted to him that he couldn’t remain there. I asked the functionary, “What privilege do these other coaches have that they may be stationed so near the theater?” “Sir,” he replied, “those are the coaches of ambassadors.” So, you see, we have the coaches and horses of foreigners who have preserved the privilege, at the approaches to a great theater, of crushing those who are merely the pedestrian citizens of this country. As it is possible that the ambassadors are unaware of the prerogative they enjoy, I do not doubt but that the publication of my letter will prompt them to give it up.73 On 17 March Léonard and Viotti signed a contract with Jean Marie Collot d’Herbois, an actor and the author of a prose comedy, Les deux porte-feuilles, which had opened on 23 January, and two other plays produced in 1790. Collot d’Herbois was a militant Jacobin, who later culminated his revolutionary career as one of the chief perpetrators of the mass executions of “counterrevolutionaries” in Lyons in November–December 1793. (It was this man who, as a member of the Committee of Public Safety, incriminated his former colleagues at the Théâtre-Français [Comédie-Français] with a letter to the public prosecutor, Antoine Fouquier-Tinville: “The Committee sends you, citizen, the documents concerning the former actors of the Théâtre-Français. You know, as do all patriots, how much all these people are counter-revolutionary; you will bring them to trial on Messidor 13.”)74 As a document in the history of labor relations and of authors’ rights of ownership, this contractual agreement is not without interest. It stipulates the fees payable, per act, on a sliding scale according to the number of future performances his plays receive, beginning with Les deux porte-feuilles. Conditions regarding the author’s rights of ownership, and those of the theater, are laid down, again according to the number of performances given—simply put, the theater retained ownership for as long as it continued to perform the author’s works. Otherwise, these rights reverted to Collot d’Herbois. He and his wife are allowed free passes ( grandes entrées) to his play for four years, and, in perpetuity, to his future plays. He is given twelve additional tickets for each of the first three performances of his works, and four tickets for subsequent performances, all of these carefully allocated to specified locations in the theater.75 These terms seem equitable enough, but, as we shall see shortly, Viotti soon found himself embroiled in a controversy regarding authorial rights. The remarkable fact that so many revolutionaries had theatrical connections has often been pointed out. One such was Fabre d’Eglantine, Georges Jacques Danton’s close friend and private secretary, one of whose plays was produced at the Théâtre de Monsieur in May of 1789. Eglantine later became a Jacobin and sat on the committee that devised the Republican calendar. To him were

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due many of the new names for the months, such as Prairal and Floréal. He was guillotined early in 1794. To replace the old Concert spirituel, which had ceased to exist after the Holy Week concerts of 1790, Viotti, quick to see an opportunity, instituted concerts in the Théâtre de Monsieur, beginning at least as early as Holy Week of 1791. Six concerts were given from 17 to 24 April, in five of which Janiewicz played a concerto of his own composition. Rode played a concerto by Viotti in the concert of 21 April, and “Mademoiselle Zerbini” (Gerbini), who also sang in one of the concerts, played an unidentified violin concerto(s) in those of 20 and 23 April.76 The Feuille du Jour regretted that so few concerts were given, and named the artists: the instrumentalists Janiewicz, Rode,77 Punto ( Johann Stich), Étienne Ozi, François Sallentin, Devienne, Louis-Sébastien Lebrun, Duvernoy, and Smirka, of whom Rode, Devienne, Duvernoy, and Smirka (Smerzka) were members of the orchestra, the others invited guest artists; mesdames Morichelli, Baletti, Gerbini, and MM. Mandini, Viganoni, Giuseppe Simoni, Rovedino, all leading singers of the theater; and the second bassoonist of the orchestra, ThomasJoseph Delcambre, who was singled out for praise. The orchestra, led by La Houssaye, was placed on the stage, with a semicircular curtain as a backdrop.78 On Wednesday, 20 April 1791, Sarti’s Miserere was sung by Mlle Baletti and MM. Viganoni and Mandini, accompanied by twenty-six violas, fourteen cellos, and six double basses.79 To assemble this extraordinarily large and unusual ensemble, Viotti must have scoured the city; the difficulty, at this distance, would seem to be finding twenty-six violas, let alone twenty-six violists. The program of the concert of 24 April, which began at 6:30 P.M., included a “Symphony with the accompaniment of a horn obligato” by Haydn (possibly no. 31, “Hornsignal,” or no. 73, “La Chasse”); the overture to Démophone by Johann Vogel; a violin concerto played by Janiewiecz; Italian arias sung by M. Simoni, Mlle Baletti, and M. Viganoni; a horn concerto played by Punto; and “a quartet by Haydn sung by Mlles Baletti and Gerbini and MM. Simoni and Rovedino, with the accompaniment of violin, cello, flute and bassoon obligato,” played by the orchestra members Rode, Smirka, Hugot, and Devienne.80 This last piece is not a known work by Haydn; it may have been an arrangement or an excerpt from a larger work. It is interesting, however, that, except for a flute instead of an oboe, the instruments are the same as those of Haydn’s only symphonie concertante (Hob. I: 105), presumably first performed less than a year later in London (9 March 1792). On Ascension Day, 2 June 1791, a thirteen-year-old pianist, Mademoiselle Camerani, played a piano concerto of Johann-David Hermann’s, and Rode again played a Viotti concerto. At the concert on 12 June (Pentecost), Alday played a Viotti concerto, and on 1 November (All Saints’ Day), Janiewicz played.81 The Almanach général reported that the “Concert spirituel chez Monsieur” (sic— the theater had been renamed Théâtre Feydeau several months previously) on


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8 December had been “one of the most brilliant, except for one young man who had tried the patience of the public to the limit by daring to scrape on the violin for one and a quarter hours [cinq quarts d’heure].”82 This could only have been in reference to August Durand, Viotti’s pupil, who had been announced to play a concerto by Mestrino.83 It is difficult to know how to interpret this kind of comment. One and a quarter hours is surely a facetious exaggeration—or did Durand go on to play other pieces, or to improvise? We may wonder why Viotti gave his pupil a concerto by Mestrino to play rather than one of his own. At any rate, the criticism, if he took it seriously, must have stung Viotti both as a teacher and as an impresario. However, MM. Devienne, Sallentin, Ozi, and Lebrun enchanted everyone, according to the same report (they had played a symphonie concertante for flute, oboe, bassoon, and horn by Devienne).84 The writer goes on to say, “We hope that M. Viotti will be good enough to let his talent shine in the Christmas Day concert, or, at the latest, in that of New Year’s day. It has been ten years that he has not played in public; we would be hearing the first violinist of the universe.”85 We have already noted that these sentiments were shared by others. They were doomed to disappointment—Viotti did not break his silence. The Christmas Day concert, at 6 P.M., consisted, not unusually, of no less than ten pieces, including the almost obligatory Haydn symphony (in C—could it have been one of the more recent ones in that key, no. 82 of the “Paris” symphonies, or the even more recent no. 90?), a “new” vocal quartet by Mozart, and a new Viotti concerto played by Rode. Parisian concertgoers were faced with an embarras de choix: on the same day, beginning a half-hour earlier, a similar concert was given at the Théâtre Italien, which included “M. Creutzer” playing a new concerto of his own composition.86 Rodolphe Kreutzer (1766– 1831), though traditionally thought to be a follower of Viotti’s, was not his pupil, and did not play in the orchestra of Viotti’s theater. He seems to have enjoyed complete independence to play both in Viotti’s concerts and in competing venues. To my knowledge, there is no record of his playing a solo concerto by Viotti in public. There does not seem to have been a New Year’s Day concert; the first concert of the year 1792 was on 2 February, and included a violin concerto by Viotti played by Rode, who also played the viola. Below is the program, which may serve as a typical example of Viotti’s concerts in the Théâtre de la rue Feydeau:87 Part I Symphony in G Minor88 Sonata for Harp Madame Clery Air Gazzaniga Mme Morichelli

Haydn Clery

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Concerto for Bassoon M. Delcambre, pupil of M. Ozzi Cantata, Circé M. Gaveaux

Devienne Cherubini

Part II Overture Iphigenia in Aulide Gluck Concerto for Violin Viotti M. Rode Scene Giordariello Mme Morichelli, with “accompagnements obligés” of viola, cello and bassoon, played by MM. Rode, Smrzka and Devienne. Sonata for forte-piano Dussek Mlle Camerani Concerto for Horn Punto M. Punto The review in Affiches praised the individual performers, and opined that the orchestra, conducted [dirigée] by M. Lahoussaye, left nothing to be desired, and everyone agreed that it would be difficult to hear the symphonies of Haydn and the Ouverture d’Iphigénie better performed; the latter piece even had to be repeated. In a word, this concert, one of the most beautiful that the taste of those who present them in this theater has offered to the public, attracted a large number of listeners, and did not disappoint them. The auditorium, decorated artistically for this type of entertainment, was full, and offered a spectacle to the eye [coup-d’oeil ] of which the most beautiful concert halls of Europe cannot boast.89 Another concert was held in the Théâtre Feydeau on 26 March, Annunciation Day. Kreutzer played a concerto, and Rode accompanied Mademoiselle Baletti in an air of Pugnani’s.90 It was surely Viotti who had this piece performed. Johann Friedrich Reichardt, the Kapellmeister at the Prussian court, whom Viotti and Pugnani may have met in Berlin in 1780–81, praised the concert, singling out the playing of the two violinists, but noted that the audience was smaller than it had been at the former concerts of the Concert des Amateurs and the Concert olympique. Reichart was also of the opinion that the audience often showed its enthusiasm too noisily and without discernment.91 Finally, the Théâtre Feydeau organized eight Easter Concerts spirituels in 1792, 1–13 April. Rode played in all but one of them, including several performances of Viotti’s “new concerto in E Minor” (no. 18 ) and (at least) one performance of no. 17 in D Minor, on the thirteenth.92 Said the Moniteur universel, “This composition [Concerto no. 18], full of strength, feeling and grace, received the


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highest accolades; it is the first work of this genre in which the opening tutti has had so much success. The applause was so vigorous and sustained that M. Rode could begin the solo only after a long pause.”93 The Chronique de Paris echoed these remarks, adding that this concerto had been requested several times.94 More than thirty years later, Baillot remembered the occasion.95 Alday played three times: once an unidentified concerto, once a concerto of his own composition, and once a Viotti symphonie concertante with Rode. Kreutzer twice played a concerto of his own composition, and, with Rode, accompanied Madame Morichelli in a rondo by Bianchi. Besides Morichelli, other soloists from the theater who performed included Mademoiselle Baletti, and Viganoni, Simoni, and Rovedino. Hugot, Duvernoy, Devienne, Delcambre (wind players in the orchestra), the hornist Punto, the clarinettist Lefèvre, and the young pianist Mademoiselle Camerani also appeared as soloists. La Houssaye was praised for his leadership of the orchestra.96 These concerts were well attended, though one critic complained of a certain monotony because the soloists were always the same—could not some new artists be heard?97 It must not be thought that these concerts of the Théâtre de Monsieur/ Feydeau were the only ones given in Paris in this early phase of the Revolution. Already in 1790 there seems to have been a rush to fill the gap left by the demise of the old Concert spirituel in the same year. Among the venues were the Panthéon, rue de Chartres, already mentioned, and particularly the Cirque du Palais-Royal, later Cirque National, in the inner courtyard of the Palais Royal, owned by the duc d’Orléans. This space, recently completed, a kind of public garden, surrounded then as now on three sides by arcaded shops and cafés, was one of the favorite places to stroll in Paris, day and night. In the first six months of 1790 it was the venue for several performances of Viotti’s concertos: • On 28 March, on the same evening that Alday played a concerto of Viotti in the Concert spirituel, in the Salle of the Opéra, porte SaintMartin, an unidentified violinist played a concerto of Viotti in the Cirque du Palais-Royal, in a concert followed, as usual in this venue, by a “ball until 11 P.M.”98 • On 30 March a concerto by Viotti was played by an unidentified violinist in a concert at the Cirque du Palais-Royal.99 • On 2, 3, 4, and 6 April violin concertos of Viotti were performed at the Cirque, by Messieurs Wanthy (Wauthy), a violinist in the Opéra orchestra; Panwels; Wanthy; and Chol le jeune, respectively.100 • On Ascension Day, 13 May, the same evening on which Isidore Berthaume and his pupil Jean-Jacques Grasset performed a symphonie concertante of Viotti at the Panthéon, an unidentified violinist played a solo concerto of Viotti at the Cirque.101 • On 23 May (Pentecost) and 3 June there were concerts again in the Cirque, in both of which a concerto by Viotti was played, again by an unidentified soloist or soloists.102

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Viotti and Léonard had been publicly accused in March 1790 of unfair practices: “Is it not astonishing, when we all breathe the air of liberty, that the directors of the Théâtre de Monsieur wish to enchain the talents they possess to the point of not allowing their Italian singers to perform at the Concert spirituel?”103 But the Chronique de Paris was being disingenuous—theatrical contracts often restricted artists in this way, and still do. On the other hand, singers from the Opéra had always been at liberty to sing at the Concert spirituel, and, indeed, Rosina Baletti, Bernardo Mengozzi, and Carlo Rovedino, three of the most popular singers of the Théâtre de Monsieur, had sung at the Concert spirituel throughout the first half of 1789. Either they had obtained permission to do so, to avoid the 300 livre fine—crippling even for the highly paid Italian singers—or the Concert spirituel had been considered exempt from this restriction. At all events, in 1790, with the proliferation of Concerts spirituels in Paris, Viotti and Léonard tightened the reins on their singers, thus the complaints about the dearth of foreign (meaning, of course, Italian) artists to be heard in concerts in Paris. On 23 January 1791 there was a Sunday concert at the Club des Quatre Nations, Hôtel du Musée, rue Dauphine, directed by La Houssaye and Alday. The program included two symphonies of Haydn and a concerto played by Rode. According to the announcement, these concerts were to be held four times a month.104 It is interesting that although La Houssaye, Alday, and Rode had close connections with Viotti, they seem to have been free to undertake these concerts, which, had they continued (they appear not to have done so), would have competed with Viotti’s own concerts at the Théâtre de Monsieur. There clearly was severe competition for audiences. The Cirque National gamely offered concerts on almost every evening in Holy Week of 1791 that the Théâtre de Monsieur did, though, in contrast with 1790, there were no concertos by Viotti in any of its programs. One suspects that the superior quality of Viotti’s programs was making it increasingly difficult for the other venues. The Cirque National concerts seem to have been phased out after its concert of 2 June 1791, and Viotti’s Easter concerts of 1792 swept all competition aside. Simon Schama, in Citizens, his magisterial account of the French Revolution, repeats the story told in a popular biography of Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, that the great statesman, on the evening of Monday, 28 March 1791, attended the Théâtre Italien to hear Morichelli. Feeling ill, he left halfway through the performance, staggered out into the street, walked home, took to his bed, and died five days later.105 Of course, it must have been the Théâtre de Monsieur, not the Théâtre Italien, if it was Morichelli he went to hear. And, unfortunately, since it is a good story, Morichelli had been in Turin for four months, and did not reappear at the Théâtre de Monsieur until 11 April, or even as late as 20 May.106 Thus there is reason to doubt the story—Mirabeau may have attended the Théâtre Italien, or the Théâtre de Monsieur, but not


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to hear Morichelli. The incident does not seem to have been reported in any of the newspapers of the time. If it did happen (Mirabeau did indeed die on 2 April), it would have been a cause of concern to Viotti; it strangely presages the death, twenty-nine years later, of the Duc de Berri in another theater directed by Viotti. At all events, on 24 May a one-act prose play, Mirabeau à son lit de mort, one of several Parisian literary and theatrical exercises in commemoration of the powerful and controversial former president of the Assembly, was given its first performance at the Théâtre de Monsieur. Cherubini contributed incidental music, consisting of three choruses. One is on dangerous ground in attributing political motives to artistic initiatives, tempting though it may be. The Théâtre de Monsieur was undoubtedly tarred with the royalist brush—its very name, its patronage by the queen, the backgrounds of its two directors were enough to convince everyone of that. But Mirabeau, member of the Jacobin club, deputy in the Assembly, had himself been in the pay of Louis XVI since May 1790. It is as a piece of solemn entertainment, in tune with the times, that Viotti and Léonard’s production of Mirabeau à son lit de mort should be considered, as much as a political “statement.” In the summer of 1791, a year and a half after Viotti and Léonard and their theater had vacated the Palace of the Tuileries, there occurred another of the dramatic events of the Revolution: the flight to Varennes. The royal family, fearing the worsening political situation, made a desperate attempt to flee to safety. In the dead of night on 20 June 1791 (that evening Paisiello’s La Frascatana was being performed at the Théâtre de Monsieur), they crept out of the Palace, in disguise, leaving by a small service door (indicated in figure 3.4), got into a waiting coach, drove through the streets of Paris, changed coaches on the outskirts, and rode to the east. At various points along the way, detachments of royalist mounted troops led by trusted officers were waiting to escort the coach, in ever-increasing numbers, along the route. However, due to unforeseen delays, the coach was more than two hours late. The officer in charge of the first detachment, at the village of Pont de Somme-Vesle, about 100 miles from Paris, growing more and more impatient, at about five o’clock in the afternoon decided that the royal party would not be arriving, withdrew with his dragoons, and sent a messenger back along the route to tell the others, mistakenly, that the coach would not be arriving. Of course the coach did eventually arrive, and the outcome reverberates down the ages: the royal party got as far as Varennes, where they were apprehended and taken back to the Palace of the Tuileries, and, in due course, the king and queen were guillotined. Now the name of that messenger, who rode back along the route with that fateful, false message, was Léonard Autié.107 The Comte de Provence and his wife, Josephine of Savoy, made good their escape to Belgium, by another route, having left on the same night as the king. A week later, Viotti made a prudent change, as reported in the Chronique de

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Paris: “We have asked several times that the theater called ‘de Monsieur’ change its ridiculous name. That which reason could not obtain has been accomplished by an outburst of indignation. It has just taken the name Théâtre Français & Italien de la rue Feydeau.”108 By July the name Théâtre de la rue Feydeau, or simply Théâtre Feydeau, had been settled upon. The other theatres with royal connections did similarly: the Académie royale de musique became the Académie de musique, the Comédie-Française became the Théâtre de la Nation. Léonard Autié, doubly implicated as a court hireling and an accessory at Varennes, fled to England, it is not known when. In his Souvenirs,109 he says that he left Paris for London on 27 December 1791, whereas in a letter written in 1817 to the Minister of the Interior, he says that he left at the end of June 1792.110 Both dates are of dubious reliability, the first because the Souvenirs may be apocryphal, the second because, to ingratiate himself with the restored monarchy, he may have wished to appear to have remained by the side of the queen for longer than he actually did. He apparently left France in the company of his younger brother, Jean-François, who had been entrusted with the royal diamonds. ( Jean-François returned to Paris, and was guillotined, along with André de Chénier, on 25 July 1794.) Léonard went first to England, soon left for Germany, and thence to Moscow. Having returned to Paris with the Restoration in 1814, he tried unsuccessfully to obtain the privilège for a renascent Théâtre de Monsieur.111 He was reimbursed by Louis XVIII (the former Comte de Provence) for various debts and was awarded a position as an inspector in the administration of the royal Funeral Service Ceremonies. He died on 24 March 1820, his last days haunted by the renewed claims made against him by his old associate and bête noire, Madame Montansier.112 There is no hint in any of Viotti’s correspondence that he ever had contact with Léonard after the latter left France in 1791–92, though Viotti made several annual visits to Paris beginning in 1814, and lived there from 1819. On 18 July 1791, Cherubini’s French opera Lodoiska was first performed. This work, a melodrama in three acts with spoken dialogue (as opposed to recitativo secco in the Italian manner), is considered a landmark in the history of opera, though it has disappeared from the repertoire. The musical style is richer, more symphonic, than that of any opera heard in Paris to that time. The Moniteur universel complained gently that the music “is too beautiful. All the numbers are elaborated with infinite care, and all of them equally, so that the listener has no time to draw breath. One would like to hear something simpler once in a while, to allow a moment of respite.”113 The opera was dramatically innovative in combining the comic with the heroic, the melodramatic, and even the macabre, as only Mozart had done in Don Giovanni, premièred four years earlier in Prague. The finale, an assault on the villain’s castle, followed by a conflagration, overwhelmed the Parisian audiences, both for its powerfully dramatic music and for the stage effects created by the DeGotti brothers, the stage designers, and Boullet, the “machiniste” (technician). Cherubini, and surely Viotti as well,


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could not have been unaware that this scene would resonate powerfully in the hearts and minds of the Parisian first-night audience: the Bastille had been taken two years earlier almost to the day. The success of this opera was a breakthrough for the thirty-year-old composer, whom Beethoven was later to name as his most significant contemporary. Cherubini had signed the contract for Lodoiska on 8 December of the previous year; his friend and employer, Giovanni Battista Viotti, signed for the theater. Cherubini was paid 2,000 livres for the work, the rights of ownership belonging to the theater.114 (A little over a decade later, the two friends signed another contract, but with their roles in effect reversed: Viotti as the composer and Cherubini as the publisher of Viotti’s works.) As a theater director, Viotti of necessity was concerned with the problem of authors’ rights, which in Revolutionary Paris had begun to take on political and nationalistic overtones. The law of 13 January 1791 liberalizing theaters, already referred to, also recognized authorial ownership: the works of living authors were not to be performed without their consent. But Paisiello’s La Pazza per l’amore, with a libretto based on an opéra comique titled Nina and premièred at the Théâtre Feydeau on 3 September, caused an uproar.115 The popular composer André Ernest Modeste Grétry, in a letter of 18 August to Beaumarchais, accused Viotti’s theater of evading the law by translating French plays and opéra comiques, setting them to new (Italian) music, and performing them without the consent of the original authors.116 Two weeks after the première of Paisiello’s opera, the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers presented a petition to the National Assembly asking that such translations be outlawed as a violation of authors’ rights of creative ownership.117 This accusation was disingenuous and unfair, since the practice was common both in Italy and France, and worked in both directions (that is, Italian opera buffe were sometimes translated into French and set to music by French composers). However, Viotti, no doubt embarrassed (among the signatories were Marmontel and Kreutzer), found it necessary to publish the following announcement on 6 November 1791: Théâtre de la rue Feydeau. Having always desired that authors should nowhere else enjoy more advantages than on its stage, the administration of this theater has tried to achieve this goal by means of various regulations. But convinced that it is more appropriate to leave it up to the authors, who have formed an association, to fix the price of their works, the administration believes it has a duty to inform them that, while excluding private agreements, it will henceforth follow the rules that they [the authors] have established, limiting the effect of its former regulations to works already accepted.118 A few months later, on 29 March 1792, Cherubini signed a new four-year contract. His salary was raised to 6,000 livres and, significantly, certain authorial rights were granted: his works were to be his property, to print or to have

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performed, but only outside Paris.119 Many years later Cherubini asserted that he had never been compensated for the disastrous devaluation of the assignat (the revolutionary government note), in which currency his salary had been paid until 1793.120 Less than two weeks after the première of Cherubini’s opera, Rodolphe Kreutzer’s Lodoiska opened at the Théâtre Italien on 1 August 1791. In the succeeding months the two operas were sometimes performed on the same evening. Opinion was (and still is) more or less evenly divided as to the relative merits of the two works. Kreutzer’s Lodoiska was only one of several operas he composed for the Théâtre Italien, beginning in 1790. As a violinist, Kreutzer came within Viotti’s sphere of influence (we have seen that he played several times in concerts at the Théâtre Feydeau); he now found himself, as a house composer of a rival theater, in the position of posing a threat to Viotti’s interests as a theater director. Kreutzer was one of the signatories to the petition of the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers in September 1791. It was only after Viotti had left Paris that one of Kreutzer’s operas was produced at the Théâtre Feydeau, on 14 November 1792. Of the triumvirate of violinists upon whom Viotti’s mantle fell, Kreutzer seems to have been the least close to Viotti personally, though, thirty years later, when he was chief conductor of the Opéra orchestra in the period when Viotti was the administrative director of that institution, there was a close professional relationship between them. Violinists who are familiar with Kreutzer only from having struggled through his Forty Etudes or Caprices (1796), one of the foundation stones of present-day violin technique, may be surprised to learn of his long list of operas. One distraction from the cares of theater management was provided every two years by the Paris Salon of paintings. Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, who had emigrated in 1789, painted in Naples in 1790–91 a portrait of Giovanni Paisiello, seated at the keyboard in the throes of creativity, eyes fixed rapturously heavenward. It was widely admired at the Paris Salon in the autumn of 1791 (along with David’s The Oath of the Horatii ), a year in which Viotti’s theater was showing no fewer than six of Paisiello’s operas. Viotti would have made a point of seeing it—a more fortunate conjunction of the arts, and a more profitable one for both parties, or rather all three parties, can scarcely be imagined. We do not know how often Marie Antoinette attended performances at the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau. Had she been able to make use of her private box in the Palace of the Tuileries? Did she have a box at the new theater in the rue Feydeau? Unfortunately, we cannot answer these questions. The king and queen were cheered when they appeared at the Opéra for a performance of Sacchini’s Oedipe à Colonne in September 1791.121 In the same month the queen attended Grétry’s Richard I at the Opéra-Comique. On the first of December, at a play given at the Théâtre de la Nation (formerly the Comédie-Française), she


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received the homage of the public, it was reported, not only in the theater but also on her way back to the Tuileries.122 There were other royal appearances at theaters in December. May we presume that in the Théâtre de Monsieur/ Feydeau the queen was accorded a similar welcome? Viotti’s theater was known for its royalist sympathies, and had the advantage of being situated close to the Tuileries, closer even than the Théâtre de la Nation. After Varennes the royal family were, in effect, prisoners in Paris. Political tensions in France increased palpably. The frontiers were closed, a surveillance committee was set up in November to investigate crimes against the nation, laws against émigrés became increasingly severe, and the sequestration of their property was decreed in February 1792. France declared war on Austria on 20 April. Viotti himself, like many others, was obliged to join the newly formed National Guard, as he tells in his Précis. He had friends in the relatively moderate Constituent Assembly ( June 1789–September 1791), he says, who were “good and honest men” on whom he could rely for protection in the frightful confusion of the times, but none in the more extremist Legislative Assembly that succeeded it at the beginning of October 1791, and from which he could expect only “new horrors.” Viotti doesn’t name his friends in the Constituent Assembly, but they included his biographer, Ange Marie d’Eymar, the duc d’Aiguillon, and probably four others who served terms as presidents of the Constituent Assembly. These were the Baron Menou and Alexandre de Beauharnais (the cousin of Viotti’s landlord in 1786), both of whom were Viotti’s fellow subscribing members of the Société olympique, and two men who, Michael Kelly123 says, were Viotti’s dining companions, along with Aiguillon, at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand in the mid-1790s: Alexandre de Lameth (also a member of the Société olympique, and an habitué of Madame de Staël’s salon) and Adrien Duport. It is possible that Viotti did not meet the latter two until they all were in London, but the likelihood is perhaps stronger that they had been acquainted in Paris. Still another politically minded friend was Hugues-Bernard Maret, a distinguished journalist, later a diplomat, who, from early 1790 to September 1791, wrote the parliamentary reports for the politically moderate and authoritative Moniteur universel, ou gazette nationale. Maret almost certainly was a close friend of Madame de Montgéroult’s; by his own testimony he and Viotti met in 1790.124 Almost all of these friends of Viotti changed their political colors in the early years of the Revolution in remarkably similar ways. After Varennes, that is, by July of 1791, they all retreated from a more or less radical form of “leftism”— Aiguillon and Menou had served terms as president of the Jacobin Club; Lameth, Duport, Maret, and Beauharnais were members—to a more moderate position as members of the Feuillants, which espoused a form of constitutional monarchy. Later, their careers diverged: Aiguillon, Lameth, and Duport fled in 1792; another probable acquaintance, Pierre-Louis Ginguené, though not a representative in the Assembly, welcomed the Revolution, but “criticism of its

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excesses led him to be imprisoned [ . . . ] and only the fall of Robespierre [27 July 1794] saved him from the guillotine.”125 Beauharnais was executed a few days earlier. Eymar, Menou, and Maret survived the Terror and flourished to varying degrees under the Directory and under Napoleon; Ginguené (in 1797–98), Eymar (in 1798–99), and Menou (in 1802–ca. 1805) served terms as governors in Piedmont. Viotti, then, counted a number of politically active men among his friends and acquaintances in Paris (as well as one woman, Mme de Stäel). To judge by the politics of most of those of whose political leanings we have knowledge, Viotti may have had liberal, perhaps even mildly revolutionary ideas—he certainly was exposed to such ideas. But he was not antiroyalist, as has sometimes been claimed, though he was forced to soft-pedal his royalist connections in public, of which joining the National Guard and changing the name of the Théâtre de Monsieur to Feydeau were the most obvious manifestations. Later, his friendship with the Prince of Wales and with the Duke of Cambridge surely attests to his abiding royalist sympathies. The Théâtre Feydeau could not escape being ruffled by these political perturbations. As early as 17 July 1790, a patriotic piece by Collot d’Herbois, La famille patriote ou la Fédération, was given.126 A mixture of prose and music, it was partly a sentimental celebration of the Fête de la Fédération. The lines “ce bon roi,” uttered by the hero of the piece, gave no hint that the author would vote for the death of Louis XVI within less than three years. On 20 September 1791, at 2:15 P.M., the curtain of Viotti’s theater opened on a gratis performance of two French operas, in celebration of the newly completed Constitution, signed by the king a few days earlier. The house was full to overflowing.127 But it was difficult to avoid putting a foot wrong, even more so for a theater than for a private person. On 3 November 1791 the Chronique de Paris commented, with ironic knives drawn, that “this theater, which is known to be the rendezvous of those who least approve of the revolution, nevertheless has excellent patriots among its directors. They didn’t have to accept the Club des bonnes gens [The Good Folk’s Club, a play by Cousin Jacques, the journalist and director of the royalist newspaper La lune de Cousin Jacques], that aristocratic banality of the sublime author.”128 But the Feuille du jour reported that on the evening of 2 March 1792 there was “a great tumult in the theater [ . . . ]. Patriots, or at least those who flaunt that name, called for the suppression of Club de bonnes gens, just as good folk call for the suppression of the Jacobin Club.”129 Clearly, Viotti could not please everybody, though the Almanach général reported approvingly that in the year 1791 the Théâtre de Monsieur refrained from staging provocative Revolutionary works, “and those that it did stage were so little tied to current events that they will be equally pleasing at all times.”130 Without friends in the Legislative Assembly, Viotti was increasingly vulnerable. A smear campaign was mounted against him by the Journal de la cour et de la ville. In the issue of 26 November 1791, Viotti was accused, absurdly, of being


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a “violon de Jacobin” and of “ingratitude for the Queen’s kindnesses,” and his relationship with Hélène de Montgéroult was scurrilously impugned. An article in the issue of 1 December alleged that Viotti favored the soprano Baletti over Morichelli in the principal role in Soler’s Una Cosa rara because of his having an improper relationship with her. This newspaper, it is true, was royalist (it was published by the Club monarchique), but these crude and unsubstantiated attacks must surely be regarded as nothing more than gutter journalism. In 1792 the production of Italian opera in the Théâtre Feydeau fell off noticeably in favor of French opera, understandably in view of the political situation (though French prose plays were discontinued in April, probably because of the theater’s reluctance, or inability, to continue to compete with the Théâtre de la Nation).131 Even so, three new Italian operas were introduced in 1792, the last on 16 June, which was given five more times. By the spring of 1792 Viotti must have realized that his days in France were numbered. He would have begun to make plans for his departure.132 On 20 June, the anniversary of the flight to Varennes, and of the Tennis Court Oath of 1789, an armed mob of some 8,000, including many members of the National Guard, invaded the Tuileries. Up the Grand Staircase in their hundreds they rushed, armed with pikes and guns, through the Salle des Suisses and the Salle des Gardes into the Antichambre du roi, where they cornered the king and forced him to wear the red bonnet rouge, symbolic of the Revolution, and to drink a toast to the people. Marie Antoinette and her children had taken refuge in the next room, the Chambre “du Lit”; she too was subjected to abuse. It was not until ten o’clock that night that the palace was finally cleared. The king and queen, it was felt, had narrowly escaped with their lives. If anything were needed to convince Viotti of the precariousness of his position, it would have been this bloodthirsty invasion of the very rooms that, not so many years before, had rung to the sound of his music. His past royalist associations were well known and undeniable. Five days later, on 25 June, Viotti and his friend A.-M. d’Eymar visited Hélène de Montgéroult at her country home in Montmorency, not far from Paris. Eymar records Viotti’s delight in Madame de Montgéroult’s garden, and, much moved by Viotti’s performance of a ranz des vaches, he asked Viotti the next day to write down a description of the occasion of his first hearing this music. In this account, often reproduced, Viotti describes his love of nature, his characteristic melancholy at dusk time, his aversion to the wind, and his tendency to profound reverie, all amply confirmed in his later correspondence. It seems extraordinary that at this moment of traumatic upheaval, when he was selling “everything I possessed” (as he later wrote in his Précis), and liquidating the debts of his “unfortunate theater,” when he was no doubt desperately attempting to minimize his losses, and to obtain a visa (no small task in those times: France was at war, though not yet with England), when he undoubtedly considered his personal safety to be at risk—it seems extraordinary, but perhaps

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not uncharacteristic, that Viotti could allow himself this idyllic interlude, and pen these rapturous lines.133 On 16 July an announcement appeared in a Paris newspaper, under the rubric “Sales of Furniture and Effects”: “Large quantity of music, violins, and instruments of the best makers; 8 violins, 2 violas and 3 cellos; good books on philosophy, sciences, arts, belles-lettres and history, good editions, in good condition, for cash, rue J.-J. Rousseau, Hôtel Bullion.”134 The Hôtel Bullion was the well-known auction house, which, thirty-two years later, sold Viotti’s Stradivari violin on his death.135 Someone, a musician or music lover, clearly was “selling everything he possessed,” probably because he was obliged to leave France. Could it have been Viotti? On 21 or 22 July 1792, Viotti fled to England. Luigi Cherubini was left in charge of the Théâtre Feydeau, but even before his friend’s departure he seems to have taken on increased responsibilities. On 18 June he wrote to a theatrical agent in Bologna, “as Director of the Opera, and of the Italian troupe,” requesting the recruitment of two Italian singers ( prime donne) as soon as possible.136 This suggests, astonishingly, that Cherubini was not aware of how imminent the collapse of his troupe was. The theater struggled on through the summer. By September, however, the Italian troupe had dispersed, many of the singers returning to Italy, and the chief raison d’être of the Théâtre Feydeau, the production of Italian opera, ceased. In its three-and-a-half years of existence, the Italian troupe of the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau staged thirty-four Italian opere buffe, for a total of 559 performances from January 1789 to July 1792. Paisiello’s Il Barbiere di Seviglia was the most performed Italian opera—fifty-six times. Seven operas by Paisiello had been staged, more than by any other composer, followed by Cimarosa with four. The theater continued with its French opera repertory until 1801, when it merged with the Opéra-Comique.

Afterword Three weeks after Viotti’s flight, on 10 August 1792, there occurred the bloodiest event thus far in the Revolution. A mob attacked the Palace of the Tuileries. The royal family escaped to the Parliament House (National Assembly) in the former riding school alongside the Garden of the Tuileries. Before the day was over about 1,000 people had been killed, including some 600137 Swiss Guards, many of them on the Grand Staircase. The bodies of dead and dying Suisses were hurled from the windows of the Salle des Suisses and the Salle des Gardes. Later in August the guillotine was placed in the Place du Cour (Carrousel), below the rooms that had witnessed Viotti’s former triumphs—the Salle des


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Suisses, the Salle des Gardes, and the Salle des Machines. Afterward it was moved to the Place Louis XV at the other end of the Garden of the Tuileries. But the Palace of the Tuileries continued to be the stage for many of the most dramatic events of the Revolution and beyond. Within a month of Viotti’s departure, it was decided to move the seat of the Convention, which had succeeded the Legislative Assembly, to the Salle des Machines. The huge space, occupying most of the north wing of the palace, transformed into a great semicircular amphitheatre ranged along the long side of the hall, was finally ready for occupancy in May 1793. Where before its walls had echoed to the strains of Paisiello and Cherubini, now Robespierre, Saint-Just, Collot d’Herbois, and the other deputies harangued. The Committee of Public Safety occupied the former royal apartments in the south end, as well as the former Pavillon de Flore, now called the Pavillon de Liberté, previously occupied by the Princess de Lamballe, who was murdered in September 1792. In one of the former rooms of Marie Antoinette, the wounded Robespierre was laid out on a table, his jaw shot away, awaiting his execution the next day, 28 July 1794. Napoleon made the Palace of the Tuileries his official residence, as did Louis XVIII on his restoration to the throne in 1814, and it remained the official residence of the emperors and kings of France until the Commune of 1871, when, during the insurrections, it was gutted by fire and later razed to the ground.

chapter five

Viotti’s Achievement Thus Far

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he first great chapter of viotti’s international career has come to an abrupt and premature end. There is no reason not to think that he had every intention of continuing with his theater indefinitely, and of never playing the violin again in public. The theater seems to have challenged him and provided him with the influence and prestige that a career as a violinist, even the most acclaimed of his time, could not do. The pattern his career would follow in London has been uncannily foreshadowed, though not in the same sequence: success as a violinist and the composing of concertos, manager of an important opera house and artistic director of a concert series, renunciation of public violin performance, continued composing and teaching. At the same time, the year 1792 represents a decisive break—a completely new start in Viotti’s life and career, in particular the beginning of his relationship with the Chinnery family, which became the mainspring of his existence. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars widened this separation of the two periods in Viotti’s life. In effect, he was forced to turn his back on France and on his past until 1802, when he visited Paris and renewed old ties. Chappell White considered Viotti’s Parisian decade to be “the most successful and influential period of his life.”1 Let us try to sum up Viotti’s achievement thus far. To begin with, as a violinist, his broad, powerful bowing style and varied tone production, in combination with the his espousal of the tonal qualities of the Stradivari-type instruments and the characteristics of the Tourte bow, swept aside the competition in the 1780s. Moreover, on the musical level he introduced a new standard. Though he possessed a sovereign technique, his playing went beyond instrumental virtuosity and emphasized musical values—brilliance, yes, but also an expressivity and an emotional depth not previously heard.2 He thereby profoundly changed the tastes and expectations of the Parisian public. 164


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It almost beggars belief that he accomplished this having played in public for less than two years. Rode, Baillot, and Kreutzer became faculty members at the Paris Conservatoire, founded in 1795. The Viotti school was thus passing to a third generation, as it were, within three years of the master’s departure. But for ten years, it was the memory of Viotti’s playing, not its living reality, that inspired and influenced his Parisian followers.3 A sixteen-year-old pupil at the Conservatoire in the late 1790s would not have been born when Viotti last played in public in Paris. It was not until August of 1802 that Viotti came to Paris for two-and-a-half months (during the Peace of Amiens) and played with Rode and Baillot in several private gatherings, at which he enchanted the small number of listeners. The systematic inculcation of the violin technique required to play Viotti’s music was begun in 1797, when his concertos became required test pieces at the Conservatoire (and continue to be used to this day). (These works, at least for the first few years, would have been the Paris concertos, since the London concertos were slow to be published on the continent.4) Thus, even the members of the violin faculty who were not “followers” of Viotti, such as LaHoussaye (b. 1735), and the elderly Pierre Gaviniès (1728–1800), whose musical formation, indeed, had long preceded the arrival of Viotti, were obliged to teach the works of Viotti to their pupils at the Conservatoire. Viotti’s concertos were often played by students of the Paris Conservatoire at its regular concerts, called “students’ exercises” (exercises des élèves). The Viotti school of violin playing is formulated and, as it were, canonized, in the immensely influential Méthode de violon by Rode, Baillot, and Kreutzer, published in 1803 by the Conservatoire. In this work, of a total of 209 pages, almost 150 are devoted to scales in all the positions, chromatic scales, scales in double stops, and études based on scales. We are reminded of Viotti’s emphasis on scales mentioned in an earlier chapter. All of the scales are provided with an accompaniment for another violin, composed by Cherubini. Baillot wrote on 16 September 1812, when he was more than forty years old and one of the finest violinists in Europe, “I spend the night [in the country] and return every morning for my scales for fear of forgetting them.”5 The Méthode, and Baillot’s more thorough and up-to-date L’art du violon (1835), formed the basis for the training of several generations of violin students at the Paris Conservatoire. There is no doubt that by around 1810, the notion, and the reality, of a Viotti “school” of violin playing had taken root in Paris. As might be expected, the strings of the orchestra of the Conservatoire had become its showcase, as revealed in a review in 1810: Many concerts, announced with grandiloquence and at great expense, are not up to the level of those given at the Conservatoire, modestly called the “Students’ Exercises.” The perfect execution of the

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symphonies surpasses that of the former Cléry concerts; everyone agrees on this point, but no one has yet given the true cause: it is essential to point it out, for it is at the root of the good or bad organization of an orchestra. In the past, the violinists, violists, and cellists that made up the symphony orchestra were, taken individually, from very good teachers, but each [of the latter] had his own manner of bowing. Some had that of Jarnovick, others of Tartini, and a very small number that of Viotti. This resulted in completely different ways of striking the string, thus the inevitable lack of polish and of perfect ensemble. Nowadays these deficiencies no longer exist: Messrs Rode, Kreutzer and Baillot, who are the principal professors at the Conservatoire, no doubt have their individual schools of bowing, but altogether these three manners resemble very closely that of the great master of them all, the celebrated Viotti. The pupils of these three classes all have a broad and energetic style of playing; this results in such unity of execution in the symphonies that from a distance there seems to be only a single violin to a part.6 The effect of Viotti’s students’ and disciples’ playing had already begun to be felt by the time Viotti left Paris in 1792, chiefly through the performances of his concertos by Paul Alday and Pierre Rode and others at the Concert spirituel and at the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau. These performances served to keep the memory of Viotti’s style alive for Parisian audiences. Viotti’s concertos continued to be among the staples of the concert repertory of Paris for long after he had left that city. A few examples:7 • 10 July 1796, Opéra: benefit concert for Pierre Gaviniés, a symphonie concertante by Viotti was played by Rodolphe Kreutzer and his younger brother, Jean-Nicolas.8 • 8 January 1797, Théâtre de la rue Feydeau: both a violin concerto by Viotti, played by the fifteen-year-old Charles Philippe Lafont, and a “piano concerto” by Viotti (that is, an arrangement, in this case by Dussek, of a violin concerto),9 played by “la citoyenne Moreth” were heard. Lafont again played a concerto by Viotti on 9 March in the same series, and on 27 January Baillot played a concerto by Viotti.10 Judging from the programs, there was no change in the form and content of the Feydeau concerts during the Directorate. It is as if Viotti had not left. Lafont, who was a pupil of Kreutzer and Rode, went on to enjoy an international career as one of the foremost exponents of the French school. • 16 May 1797, Théâtre de la Cité: the violinist Demeuse played “a concerto of Violty [sic] in D minor [no. 17]” between the performance of two plays.11 • 12 July 1797, Théâtre des Jeunes Artistes: the Courier des Spectacles announced that “between the two last plays, citizens Girard and


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Cordebas, artists of this theater, will execute for the second time, on the violin, a symphonie concertante by citizen Viotti.”12 26 July 1797, Élysée, Hôtel Bourbon, rue Saint-Honoré: a symphonie concertante for two violins by Viotti was played by Pierre-Jean Vacher and Lafont in a concert conducted by La Houssaye.13 January–April 1798, Concerts of the rue de Cléry (?): Baillot played “the A Minor [no. 14] and, at the last concert but one, the E Minor [no. 18] of Viotti.”14 25 February 1799, Théâtre du Vaudeville: the Journal des Théâtres announced that “in the second entr’acte, citizen Demeuse, an artist [of the Théâtre] de la République et des Arts, will play a concerto of Viotty on the violin.”15 Early November 1799, benefit concert: Baillot and Jean-Jacques Grasset performed “the symphonie [concertante] of Viotti.”16 18 March 1804, exercise des élèves: Jacques Mazas, a pupil of Baillot’s, played a violin concerto by Viotti. 22 March 1804, Concert olympique (formed in 1798): a violin concerto by Viotti was performed by Alexandre Boucher. This concert was reviewed in the Mercure de France by the redoubtable Madame de Genlis, who praised Boucher’s playing, “which placed him in the ranks of the greatest violinists.” However, in the rondeau, Boucher was so overcome with emotion that he became ill, and had to be taken away.17 Boucher played again in the summer of 1804 at a benefit concert in which he apparently was again forced to interrupt his performance (of “Viotti’s Concerto in A Minor”) “because of a kind of attack of nerves.”18 19 January 1805, exercise des élèves: Mazas played the same concerto (probably no. 14, published in 1788, Viotti’s only Parisian concerto in A minor, although no. 22, in the same key, had been published in Paris in 1803, and Baillot might well have begun teaching it to his advanced pupils).19 18 April 1807, Athénée des étrangers, rue de Cléry: a pupil of Baillot’s, F. Fémy the elder, played a “Concerto of Viotti, in G [no. 23].”20 March 1810, Salle Olympique, third concert, Baillot himself played Viotti’s Concerto No. 18.21

Three things stand out. First, for at least twenty years after Viotti left Paris, violinists, unless they played their own compositions in public concerts in Paris, were more likely than not to play a concerto by Viotti. Second, the Viotti tradition was passed on from teacher to pupil with an extraordinarily concentrated continuity, reinforcing itself with constant reference to the works of Viotti. For example, on 20 February 1811, at the Odéon, Théâtre de l’Imperatrice, Mazas, a former pupil of Baillot’s, gave a concert in which he played, with one of his pupils, a symphonie concertante of Viotti’s.22 By 1811, then, there was a fourth

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generation of violinistic inheritance from Viotti. Third, already by 1810, the preeminence of Viotti over his successors has been established. They are carrying on his tradition, but time and time again, reviews and critical comments in the press in the first decade of the nineteenth century give the impression that violinists were not quite up to it—above all not able to do justice to the expressive requirements of Viotti’s concertos: • The Gazette Nationale or The Moniteur Universel of 21 March 1809, reviewing an exercise des élèves at the Conservatoire, reported that one Marcel Duret again played the concerto that he had played at the Odéon, and that he tried hard to approach more closely the style of the master, of Viotti the spellbinder [l’enchanteur]—there is no other word that better depicts the effect that he always had on his listeners. M. Duret’s performance again seemed confidant, vigorous, neat and brilliant, almost always correct; he still lacks that which Viotti had par excellence both as a composer and as a performer: variety, nuances, grand expressivity when the music required it, finesse, grace, and both as a whole and in the details, the particular spirit of a composition. I do not know if these exquisite qualities can be acquired, but work and study have acquired so many others for M. Duret, that it would be unfair to think that he cannot still, by the same means, acquire these, the most necessary and precious of all. • Baillot’s performance in March 1810, at the Salle Olympique, of Viotti’s Concerto no. 18 in E Minor was judged “not to have the touching nuances that only a true sensitivity of the heart is capable of producing. He also played the adagio rather coldly.”23 Fourteen years earlier, Baillot himself had reported that “the G Minor of Viotti [Concerto no. 19] is much beyond my abilities” (de beaucoup au-dessus de mes forces).24 • On 18 April 1810, in the Concert de l’Odéon one M. Vidal “played very well the first movement of Viotti’s Concerto No. 17 in D Minor; the finale presto has great demands of physical strength which M. Vidal lacks.”25 • And, perhaps most convincingly, certainly most volubly, “M. Corantin Habeneck [a younger brother of the more famous François] plays the violin very well; he obtained general approbation [in an exercise des élèves, June 1810] in the beautiful concerto of Viotti in B Minor [no. 24, published by Cherubini and Company in 1805]. If some old connoisseurs were less satisfied, it is because they remember that expansive warmth, that burning intensity with which Viotti animated his concertos; in fact they are, in this genre, what the music of Gluck is to French opera. They will not admit of charlatanism, and must be played more with soul than with technique, though their


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difficulties demand an extremely high level of technique. It is not so much a matter of a collection of passages as a living depiction of the emotions. They are expressed with an accent so true and so moving that it seems to me that one could write beneath each melodic phrase, indeed every passage, a dramatic scene following along, which would express the various intentions of the composer. We must therefore not be surprised that the most able violinists of the Conservatoire, up to the present time, remain below the level of a model so grand, so expressive and so profound. Only Garat (if he played the violin) could find, in his soul and in his astonishing musical genius, the necessary skill to interpret Viotti well.26 By 1810, then, Viotti was casting his shadow over his successors. Even the great Louis (Ludwig) Spohr (1784–1859) fell under it. It is difficult to determine how soon the influence of Viotti’s playing was felt outside France. Rode went on a tour of Holland and Germany in 1795, but it was Viotti’s German follower Friedrich Eck who probably first disseminated the Viotti school in Germany and Austria. J. F. Reichardt heard him play in Berlin in 1791 and was full of praise for his “beautiful tone and tasteful performance.”27 We have seen in a previous chapter that the Viotti style may have been transmitted to Spohr through Franz Eck, Friedrich’s brother. More decisive still was the influence of Rode, whom Spohr heard in Brunswick in July of 1803. In his autobiography, Spohr wrote, “I had no hesitation in placing Rode’s style of play (then still reflecting all the brilliancy of that of his great master Viotti ), above that of my instructor Eck, and to apply myself sedulously to acquire it as much as possible by a careful practice of Rode’s compositions.”28 Thus, while he was still in his forties, Viotti had become the venerated fons et origo of European violin playing. As early as 1810, no less a musician than Jan Dussek, in a letter to Viotti, refers to the violinist as “le Père createur du Violon,”29 and, ten years later, Spohr himself writes from London of his satisfaction that he will be heard (in a concert of the Philharmonic Society) by Viotti, the “père de tous les violons.”30 As to Viotti’s compositions, we cannot know what turn his concertos would have taken without the stimulus, indeed the necessity, for new works, created by his own performances, as in fact occurred in London beginning in 1793, and without the direct exposure to Haydn’s London symphonies. At all events, the last four of Viotti’s nineteen Parisian concertos, nos. 16, 17, 18, and 19, probably composed for performance by Rode in 1791–92 at the Théâtre Feydeau, show new maturity, a richer, more expressive and dramatic style (all four of them are in minor keys), and a more symphonic concept of the violin concerto than ever before. According to White, it was these concertos that particularly influenced the rising generation of French composers for the violin, who were also Viotti’s violin pupils and followers, chiefly Rode, Kreutzer, and Baillot. It was Viotti’s Concerto no. 13 in A Major, however, that Ludwig

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Spohr took as his point of departure for his first concerto, in the same key, composed in 1803. Spohr’s finale is very obviously modelled on Viotti’s popular polonaise-finale. It is surprising that so few of Viotti’s concertos and chamber works seem to have been published in other European countries during Viotti’s Paris decade: only a handful, including, of course, the publication of Concerto no. 3 in 1781 in Berlin, and publications in about 1785 in Offenbach and in Mannheim of the op. 1 quartets, the others dating from 1789 or later. Of his other concertos, only no. 12 (in Offenbach), possibly no.13 (in London), and one or two arrangements were published abroad by 1792. The great vogue of Viotti’s works on the Continent, to judge from the number of foreign editions alone, did not get underway until the later 1790s and particularly the first decade of the next century. If a pattern can be distinguished in these editions,31 it is that they are mostly chamber works. There is a sprinkling of Viotti’s concertos, but most of the pieces are duos, trios, quartets, and arrangements thereof, reflecting the demands of the amateur chamber music market. According to Alfred Einstein, the eminent Mozart scholar, “Mozart knew and valued Viotti’s work.”32 But little concrete evidence has thus far been brought forward. Mozart’s five violin concertos were composed in 1775, long before there could have been any influence from Viotti. Einstein singles out the first movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in F Major, K. 459, “with its persistent march rhythm,” and the Piano Concerto in C Major, K. 467, both dating from the mid-1780s, as especially showing the influence of Viotti’s violin concertos.33 Viotti’s Concerto no. 16 in E Minor came to the attention of Mozart, who, as if recognizing the dramatic qualities of the work, and wishing to enhance them, composed trumpet and timpani parts to be added to the original orchestration of the first and third movements (K. 470a). It seems likely that Mozart intended these additions for a performance in Vienna, but it is not known when or by whom. It has been suggested that Friedrich Johann Eck brought the manuscript of the work from Paris (it was not published until about 1789–90) and showed it to Mozart when he saw him in Vienna in March 1786, with a view to performing it in Vienna. However, there is no record of a performance taking place in Vienna in the 1780s.34 It is more likely that Mozart made these additions around 1790. According to the musicologist Manfred Schmid, Viotti’s Concerto no. 16 influenced Mozart’s compositional style in a very particular way: Mozart had used slow introductions in his instrumental works before, but never as Viotti did in this concerto, that is, by having the introduction return later in the movement. After 1789 Mozart used the same device in his String Quintet, K.593, and the overtures to Così fan tutte and Zauberflöte.35 Another example of the possible influence of Viotti’s works on Mozart is the striking similarity of a phrase in the first movement (bars 30–33) of Mozart’s Symphony no. 40 in G Minor (1788) with a passage in the opening tutti (bars 31–35) of Viotti’s Concerto no. 7 (1784).36


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Similarly, since Viotti almost certainly played his Concerto no. 16 in his London concerts, it is highly likely that Haydn heard it. The overall layout, arrangement of rhythmic, orchestrational and dynamic elements in Viotti’s slow introduction are echoed in the slow introduction to the first movement of Haydn’s Symphony no. 104.37 Performances of Viotti’s concertos in Vienna in the 1790s and early 1800s were given by two violinists who were associated with Beethoven. On 2 March 1793, the twelve-year-old Franz Clement was announced to play a Viotti concerto on the twentieth in the National Theater in Vienna.38 On 25 March 1801 and on 27 March 1803, he again played a concerto by Viotti. Beethoven wrote his violin concerto for Clement, who gave the première on 23 December 1806. In the autumn of 1798 Ignaz Schuppanzigh, the leader of the quartet that played many of the first performances of Beethoven’s string quartets in Vienna, played a Viotti concerto in the Theater auf der Wieden.39 These Viennese performances were almost certainly of Viotti’s Paris concertos, though his Concerto no. 20 had possibly been published in England in 1793–95, and in Paris in 1799. It was Viotti’s Parisian concertos (but also including nos. 22 and 23), as well as those of Rode and Kreutzer, which have conclusively been shown to have profoundly influenced Beethoven in his violin concerto of 1806.40 Interestingly, by around 1810, Viotti’s music was already beginning to be considered somewhat old-fashioned, no doubt partly because of the delay in the publication of his London concertos.41 The avant garde was represented by the music of Beethoven, whose symphonies were slowly introduced to the Parisian public during the first decade of the nineteenth century by François Habeneck, a pupil of Baillot’s, conducting the Conservatoire orchestra.42 Baillot himself played Beethoven’s chamber music, at first in private performances, and, beginning in 1814, in public chamber music evenings.43 That Baillot, while continuing to champion the chamber works of Beethoven, remained a steadfast admirer of Viotti’s music, is a tribute to his discernment and historical awareness. The same may be said for Habeneck. One unexpected way in which Viotti’s music continued to be heard in Paris after his departure from that city was through the use of several of his works as accompaniments for the ballet at the Opéra. The first movement of Concerto no. 3, performed by the leader of the Opéra orchestra, Marie-Alexandre Guénin, was inserted as a final ballet divertissement in the revival of Gluck’s Alceste in late 1798. The polonaise finale of Concerto no. 13 was arranged, including the solo part, for full orchestra, for a ballet titled Le Jugement de Pâris, date unknown. Excerpts from two of Viotti’s chamber works, the finale (Menuetto con moto e espressione) of the violin duet, WIV:20, and the finale of the trio, WIII:7 (Allegretto vivo scherzoso), were inserted into the ballets Achille à Scyros by Cherubini (1804), and L’Enfant prodigue by Henri-Montant Berton (1812), respectively, in both cases arranged for a large orchestra. Another Viotti piece, an unidentified Adagio et

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Allegretto in E major-A major, was added to a revival of the Noverre balletpantomime, Médée et Jason, in 1803, again arranged for full orchestra.44 The importance of the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau in the cultural history of Paris and in the history of operatic production and taste should not be underestimated. For the first time, Parisians had a resident repertory company producing Italian opera to the highest standards—an immeasurable enrichment of the cultural life of the city, which focused and redefined the tastes of Parisian opera audiences. One has the distinct impression, moreover, that the criticisms levelled against the Italian opera repertory, the alleged inferiority of the librettos to those of French opéra comique, and the notion of foreign contamination of French culture, were not shared by the vast majority of Parisian operagoers, who flocked to Viotti’s theater because they enjoyed the fare, and who were unconcerned by the literary-aesthetic objections of a handful of critics and authors. Lastly, the stamp of Viotti’s personality (despite the enemies he made as a result of the Opéra episode) was felt in Paris long after he left that city. Madame de La Briche, Madame de Staël, Madame de Genlis, Madame Vigée-Lebrun, Baillot, and Dussek all testify in their memoirs and letters to Viotti’s noble character, his generosity and constancy in friendship. His unstinting generosity toward young musicians was remarked upon: “It is well known that Viotti’s good offices were never offered from interested motives, that he befriended young people in whom he recognized great qualities, and that he took pleasure in training some of them.”45 They, in turn, sometimes showed their gratitude and respect by dedicating their works to him. Alday dedicated his first violin concerto to Viotti,46 and Rode’s first violin concerto (1794) bears the following inscription on its title page: “First Violin Concerto, dedicated to citizen Viotti, composed and performed at the Théâtre-National, rue de la Loi, by citizen Rode, pupil of citizen Viotti.”47 (Viotti’s reaction to the republican turn of phrase has not been recorded.) Friedrich Eck dedicated his first two violin concertos (ca. 1790) to Viotti, and a certain Vandik (Vandick), a member of the first violins of the orchestra of the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau, who also played in the orchestra of the Concert olympique, dedicated his violin concerto, op. 5, of 1788 to Viotti.48 We have come full circle. Less than ten years have passed since Viotti dedicated his first concerto to his master, Pugnani. One discerns a pattern of infelicity in Viotti’s choice of patrons and some of his associates in Paris: the Prince de Gueméné, Calonne, who was dismissed in disgrace, and whom posterity has not treated kindly, and Vaudreuil, who, although apparently a charming man, was constantly in debt and is remembered as the quintessentially frivolous courtier of Marie Antoinette’s entourage. Calonne and Vaudreuil both were habitués of Madame Vigée-Lebrun’s salon; she painted portraits of both of them as well as of Viotti. Both, like Vigée-Lebrun and Viotti himself, were forced to emigrate. The case of Léonard Autié is also troubling. His role in the Flight to Varennes was undignified at best, and his entrepreneurial career ended disastrously. We are ignorant of the extent of his friendship with


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Viotti. Was it his decision to recruit Viotti as his codirector of the theater, or, as is more likely, was he merely a front man for its real owners and benefactors? What links him to Calonne, Vaudreuil, Vigée-Lebrun, Viotti himself, to an extent, and to many others, is that he rose and fell with Marie Antoinette. One of Viotti’s closest friends in Paris was Ange Marie d’Eymar, whose Anecdotes sur Viotti of 1792 is one of the earliest biographical sources for Viotti. Eymar survived the Revolution and flourished under Napoleon; in October 1798 he was named ambassador to Turin. In December he forced the abdication of the king, Charles Emmanuel, and installed a revolutionary government in Piedmont; from then until March 1799 he instituted what can only be described as a reign of terror: mass arrests of Sardinian patriots, the burning of state archives, and the seizure of Savoyard property. Finally, in April 1799 he was driven from Italy by Austrian troops. Pierre-Louis Ginguené compiled a similarly unsavory record in Piedmont in 1797–98 as Eymar’s predecessor. How much did Viotti know of Ginguené’s doings in Piedmont when he wrote a friendly letter to him in 1802?49 I do not wish to overstate this matter. In the first place, Viotti could not have known, when he entered into relationships with these persons, what was about to happen to them, whether it was bankruptcy or political disaster. As for patrons, we must remember that musicians such as Viotti did not have much choice. The most sought-after patrons were the highly placed courtiers, and, above all, the reigning families. Viotti cannot be blamed for gravitating to where the power lay. The case of Eymar is more difficult to explain, but it was not the only time that a sensitive and cultured person became capable of misdeeds in times of strife or upheaval. In the second place, Viotti made several friends in the 1780s who remained friends for life—Cherubini, Baillot, Jean-Louis Duport, and Vigée-Lebrun spring to mind. Concert violinist, composer, teacher, salon performer, court musician, Mason, theater director, concert impresario: Viotti’s career in Paris was multifarious. But his abiding legacy, despite his renouncing a career as a violinist, remains his music for the violin. What has been said about his playing is true also of his music, which, as far as the Parisian public was concerned, meant his concertos. His concertos were the reflection of his manner of playing; his playing was the sounding embodiment of his concertos. Viotti’s early chroniclers do not hesitate to place Viotti in a different category from that of his contemporaries. As early as 1780, the Reverend Thomas Brand, we recall, was aware of a difference: the “whistlings and tricks of a concerto of Davaux and Jarnowick.” For Fétis, Viotti was the savior of the French violin school: “From the moment this beautiful music [ Viotti’s concertos] was heard, the fashion for Jarnowick’s concertos disappeared, and the French violin school embarked on a grander course.” Miel, following Baillot, looks to a more distant horizon: “The vogue of Jarnowick and his imitators was only a fad: it soon passed away; the fame of Viotti endures and will endure forever.”50

chapter six

London, 1792–98, and Exile, 1798–ca. 1800

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e left viotti in the chaos of his last few weeks in paris. No doubt he shared the coach to the coast with others fleeing the country—by the summer of 1792 the trickle of émigrés had become a flood. Viotti was now thirty-seven years old. His career as a theater director, and his source of income, had been cut off. He would have realized that he had no choice other than to return to the violin for a living. He would have known of London’s flourishing concert life, of Haydn’s presence, and of his own reputation having preceded him. But, so far as we know, he had no certain or secure idea of his own prospects in England. Viotti may have been to England before. A year later, when he crossed the English Channel in the other direction, he hinted at this possibility in a letter. “It has been a long time,” he writes, “since I had such a fast and pleasant crossing.”1 Here Viotti is surely not referring to his crossing in July 1792, but to a still earlier trip or trips across the channel, possibly his putative one of 1773. Indeed, at some point after his arrival, possibly immediately, Viotti was taken in by his friend of Paris days, the pianist Nicolas-Joseph Hüllmandel, with whom he may well have been acquainted from as far back as 1773, in London, as we have learned. Hüllmandel had been Madame de Montgéroult’s teacher, and an habitué of Madame Vigée-Lebrun’s salon as well as that of the Abbé Morellet. Figure 6.1. (opposite) Adaption of a detail of “An Entire new Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster . . . 1809” (Mogg), showing Viotti’s places of residence and professional activity. Streets and other elements referred to in the text are highlighted. Key: 1, Hanover Square Rooms; 2, King’s Theatre; 3, Carlton House; 4, future site of the Argyll Rooms; 5, future site of the church of St. Marylebone. In the insert, the shaded area represents modern Greater London. (By permission of the British Library; Maps 3480 [85].) 174

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He had married wealth, and had fled the French Revolution to London in 1790; from then on he had not performed in public. Viotti’s address as given in the newspaper advertisement for his benefit concert on 26 April 17932 is that of the Hüllmandel residence at 47 Curzon Street, Mayfair (see figure 6.1). We do not know when he went to live with the Hüllmandels—perhaps he spent the summer and early autumn months of 1792 at his hosts’ country home at Brompton in the parish of Kensington.3 Here he would have been much occupied with composing new concertos and practicing (including, one would like to think, a daily dosage of slow, sustained scales) in preparation for the London concert season beginning in early 1793. London in 1792 was teeming with refugees, many of whom were musicians— “music as well as misery has fled for shelter to England.”4 Among these were at least three who had been very much in Viotti’s orbit in Paris: the violinist Feliks Janiewicz, who had arrived in London between November 1791 and January 1792; Viotti’s pupil Paul Alday, who went to London sometime between 13 April 1792 (the date of his last known performance in Paris) and the spring of 1793, when he played in the Lenten Oratorio series in the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, on 8 March, and in the New Musical Fund concert on 12 April; and the pianistcomposer Giacomo Ferrari, who had been employed at Viotti’s theater in Paris, and who arrived in London in April 1792. Janiewicz and Ferrari we shall encounter again, but the case of Paul Alday is rather strange. According to the oboist and memoirist William Parke, Alday was hissed off the stage at his London début when he played his concerto with variations on “God Save the King.”5 Alday had been one of the most popular violinists at the Concert spirituel and at Viotti’s Théâtre Feydeau concerts in Paris. Can he have so misjudged the tastes of the English public? At any rate, perhaps realizing that he could not compete with his former teacher, he moved to Oxford in May 1793, and remained there until 1796. He performed again in London in 1796, 1799, and 1800, when Viotti was not active as a violinist. He seems to have had no further contact with Viotti—at least there is no mention of him in the Viotti-Chinnery correspondence. And yet, he had dedicated his first violin concerto to his former master. Another recent arrival was Giovanni Mane Giornovichi, whom Viotti and Pugnani had probably encountered in Berlin, and who, after having toured extensively in Europe in the 1780s, gave his first public London performance in January 1790.6 There were also a number of foreign musicians already long established in London, several of whom became associated with Viotti. Most prominent among the violinists7 were Wilhelm Cramer (1745(6?)–99), resident in London since the early 1770s, and Johann Peter Salomon (1745–1815), since 1781. These two German-born musicians had long enjoyed careers as the orchestra leaders of the most prestigious subscription concert series in London, respectively, the Professional Concert (established in 1785) and Salomon’s own series, begun as early as 1783. Janiewicz, Giornovichi, Cramer, and Salomon were Viotti’s chief


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rivals in the 1790s in London. To an extent, Viotti’s success in London was at their expense, except for Salomon, who, as we shall see, owed his success as a concert promoter in no small measure to Viotti. Muzio Clementi (1752–1832) was one of the most distinguished musicians to become associated with Viotti. He had been brought to England as a boy; in 1775 he had made his début as a pianist in London; in 1785 he was named principal composer and performer at the Hanover Square “Grand Professional Concert,” appearing as piano soloist until 1790, when he abandoned his public career as a piano soloist. However, he was soon to become successful as a publishing and instrument-manufacturing entrepreneur, and his career intersected with Viotti’s in various ways for the next two decades.

Hanover Square Of all these London musicians, it was Johann Salomon who was to have the most direct and immediate impact on Viotti’s career. Salomon had achieved a veritable coup with his subscription concert series at the Hanover Square Rooms in 1791 and 1792, featuring the participation of the most famous composer in the world, Joseph Haydn. The Austrian master, now nearly sixty years old, had presided at the harpsichord in both series, in which his own Symphonies nos. 93–98 (the first six of his twelve “London” symphonies) were premièred. The concerts, and Haydn’s symphonies, were an unprecedented success. The chief rival series, the Professional Concert, of which Cramer was the leader, attempted to compete by inviting Ignace Pleyel, a former pupil of Haydn’s, to be its composer and conductor for the 1792 season, but Salomon’s concerts, and Haydn, with Janiewicz as the featured violinist, carried the day. Haydn left England in July 1792 (only a week or two before Viotti arrived), and returned to Vienna, with the understanding that he would return for the next series. We do not know when Viotti was contracted by Salomon to play in the Hanover Square Rooms Concert in the 1793 season.8 A London newspaper reported on 20 November 1792 that Viotti “is now in London, but being a man of independent fortune it is hardly probable that he will appear in public.”9 This in a way was a perfectly reasonable assumption—Viotti had not played in public since 1783, but it seems odd that at this late date it was not yet generally known that he would be playing in Salomon’s concerts early in 1793. We may imagine the climate of expectation for Viotti’s appearance. There had been talk of his imminent arrival on at least two previous occasions, one as early as 1786, when it was rumored in an English newspaper that he was on his way, and again in 1789.10 Moreover, his music had been played several times in public concerts in England, as we have seen: at least nine times by Louise Gautherot and once by George Bridgetower in London, from 9 February 1789 to 28 May 1792, and several times in Bath, beginning with a performance of a Viotti concerto in December 1789 by Bridgetower, to mention only those

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performances of which we have knowledge. That these harbingers of Viotti had been lesser, lower-ranking artists served all the more to whet appetites to hear the fountainhead, the celebrated composer himself. Salomon announced his forthcoming series on Christmas Day 1792, in the Morning Post,11 and again on New Year’s Day. It was fully expected that Haydn would return: “Salomon is resolved to make a bold stand against all opposition [meaning, of course, the Professional Concert and other rival series]. He is to have, in addition to MARA, and HAYDN, the celebrated VIOTTI, supposed to be the first Violin in the world.”12 But Haydn did not come back as expected; by the end of January it was clear that Salomon’s Concert would have to do without its greatest attraction, and Clementi was appointed in his place to “preside” at the piano. It was as if the fates had intervened on Viotti’s behalf. Though Haydn’s absence was a disappointment to Salomon and his subscribers, it meant that Viotti would be the new star of the series. The renowned soprano Gertud Elisabeth Mara of course commanded a wide following, but her presence lacked the element of novelty (she was well known in London and had sung several times in Salomon’s concerts the previous year), as did Clementi’s. One newspaper reported that Viotti was to play nowhere else in public; another asserted that his fee for the twelve concerts was to be 550 guineas.13 This, assuming it to be true, was an unprecedented amount for an instrumentalist, roughly equivalent in today’s purchasing power to somewhere between £30,000 and £50,000.14 Adding further spice—the element of competition—to the forthcoming season, the Professional Concert had engaged Giornovichi, who probably was Viotti’s most able rival, as its featured violin soloist. We have noted that Viotti preferred the intimacy of private concerts to the larger, anonymous atmosphere of public concerts. It seems entirely possible that, just as he had done in Paris, Viotti played in one or more private concerts in London before his first public appearance. Salomon’s announcement in several newspapers on the day of the first concert of the season, 7 February 1793, states that it is to be Viotti’s “first public Performance in this Country,” whereas it is the castrato Bruni’s “first Performance at any Concert in this country.” Salomon seems to be taking pains to distinguish between the two cases, suggesting that Viotti had indeed already played in at least one private concert.15 But now, after almost ten years of abstinence from public performance, he is about to play in what had become the most prestigious public venue in the largest city in Europe, not because of professional ambition but because of financial necessity. The concert hall of the Hanover Square Rooms was about the same size as the Salle des Gardes in the Tuileries Palace in which the orchestra of the Société olympique had played. It was elegantly appointed, with a barrel-vaulted ceiling and three rows of sofas on each side. The normal subscription was about 500 persons. It is not known which concerto Viotti played in the first Salomon concert, though the consensus of recent scholarship is that the most likely candidate is no. 21, or possibly no. 20. Here it is as well to digress briefly on the problem


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of the chronology of Viotti’s London concertos, comprising the last ten, that is, nos. 20–29. The fact of the matter is that it has been possible only to make educated guesses as to the order in which Viotti composed these works, based on such elements as the paper watermarks of the few manuscripts in Viotti’s hand, the instrumentation of the orchestra accompaniment,16 and the occasional hint gleaned from title pages and reviews of performances. The dates of the first printed editions, even when ascertainable, are of limited help, since all of the concertos were first published from about four years to as long as twenty-five years after they were composed, not to mention the fact that five of them (nos. 20, 21, 23, 25, and 27) appeared in arrangements as piano concertos more or less at the same time as, or as long as several years before, they were published in their original form as violin concertos.17 This is not so odd as might at first appear. In the first decades of the nineteenth century piano playing became increasingly popular among amateurs, especially as a social grace for girls. There was a constant demand for new piano pieces, far greater than for the violin. At any rate, though the numbering of the concertos does not reflect their order of composition, and though it is impossible to assign any of these works to a specific performance, it is generally agreed that Viotti composed nos. 20–27 for his performances in London in the years 1793 to 1798, that no. 29 probably dates from around 1801, or possibly the mid-1790s, and that no. 28 was the last to be composed, probably in 1803–4.18 Also performing for the first time in England, Gaetano Besozzi, Viotti’s compatriot and fellow performer in the Paris Concert spirituel, played an oboe concerto on the same program. He played once again in Salomon’s concerts—the eighth, on 4 April. One of his last public appearances was at Giornovichi’s benefit on 30 May 1794. He died in London in 1798, having passed his seventieth birthday. Viotti’s effect on the Hanover Square Rooms audience was a repeat of his brilliant début at the Concert spirituel eleven years before. The reviews the next day were equally extravagant. The Oracle: “The compositions of VIOTTI are yet, if possible, more exquisite than his Performance. [. . .] His tone is astonishing upon the instrument, particularly upon the first string—the strength of his hand is remarkable, and the flexibility at the same time incredible.—His taste and feeling are the finest we have witnessed.”19 The Morning Post: “VIOTTI, in a Concerto on the Violin, electrified the Company. Added to a bold, rapid and masterly bow, he has the art of drawing from the instrument, tones the most electric and harmonious.”20 It will be noted that both reviewers single out Viotti’s tone for particular praise. It may be wondered whether the first reviewer actually intended the fourth string (the G string), Viotti’s mastery of which was admired on other occasions, rather than the first (the E string). Of Viotti’s performance at the second concert a week later, it was reported that “a general rapture burst forth at every interval.”21 Even allowing for a degree of exaggeration, this suggests that London audiences, when moved to enthusiasm, were as capable of vociferous participation as were their Parisian

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counterparts (we recall the applause after the first tutti of Viotti’s Concerto no. 18 in the Théâtre Feydeau). Viotti performed in all twelve of Salomon’s scheduled concerts, always with one of his own concertos, except for the fourth concert, on 28 February, when he played one of his trios with Salomon and the cellist Mara (husband of the soprano); the ninth concert, 11 April, when he played one of his duets (“Duo Concertante”) with Salomon; and the eleventh, 25 April, when he played the violin accompaniment to an aria by Pugnani sung by Madame Mara (it seems likely that this was the same aria that Rode accompanied at the Théâtre Feydeau the year before.22 Mara had sung an Italian air by Pugnani in 1782 at the Concert spirituel. It is conceivable that it too was the same air, and that Viotti had accompanied it then—Viotti had played at Madame Mara’s benefit concert on 17 April 1782). In the twelfth concert, 2 May, Viotti played one of his symphonies concertantes with Salomon, and a concerto, “the middle movement of which was the air ‘Let me wander not unseen,’ which he played with admirable simplicity.”23 This air is a siciliano from Handel’s oratorio, L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. None of Viotti’s London concertos has a siciliano as its second movement that can be seen in the incipits in the thematic catalogue of Viotti’s works. Viotti must have arranged a movement based on Handel’s siciliano to substitute for the original movement on this occasion, a clear attempt to cater to the English fondness for the music of Handel.24 Perhaps it was the Italian title that first attracted Viotti’s attention, though both Handel’s oratorio and Milton’s poems upon which it is partly based are in English. And the bucolic text no doubt appealed to him, with its loving evocation of the English countryside.25 He had had at least four opportunities to hear this air sung in public performances in the preceding months.26 At his own benefit concert on 26 April, Viotti played one of his concertos as well as a “new” duet with Salomon, which they played again at Salomon’s benefit concert on 9 May. Finally, bowing to popular demand, Salomon gave an additional subscription concert on 27 May, at which he and Viotti played the same symphonie concertante they had played at the twelfth concert, as well as the same duet they had played at their benefit concerts, and Viotti again accompanied Madame Mara in a Pugnani song. Below is the program of Viotti’s benefit concert on 26 April 1793: Part I “Grand overture, MS” [that is, an unpublished symphony], by Haydn Aria, sung by Domenico Bruni Concerto for pedal harp, played by Madame Krumpholtz Aria, sung by Madame Mara “New” violin concerto, played by Viotti Part II [another] Grand overture, MS, by Haydn


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Aria, sung by Bruni “New” duetto for two violins [by Viotti], played by Viotti and Salomon Scena, sung by Madame Mara Finale, by Haydn27 It will be seen that this program, typical of those given in London in this period, is very similar to the Concert spirituel programs in Paris: alternating vocal and instrumental pieces, and, typically, a symphony by Haydn. An important difference was that, in London, unlike in the Concert spirituel, chamber music was traditionally performed in public concerts. It is not clear what Haydn’s “Finale” was, though the term is often used, with no further identification, as the last item on program advertisements. Occasionally, at the end of a concert, the last two movements of a symphony were played, of which the first two movements had been played at the beginning of the concert, or of the second half of the program. But this is precluded in the present case by the phrase “full piece” in the announcements. Domenico Bruni (1758–1821) was a castrato soprano who sang at the King’s Theatre and in Salomon’s concerts only for the 1793 season, to universal praise. Had he and Viotti met in Turin? He sang (at a very tender age) in the Teatro Regio in the two carnival operas of 1772–73, the year before Viotti joined the orchestra, but Viotti would certainly have heard him. The harpist Madame Krumphholtz (née Steckler, 1766–1813) had played in the Paris Concert spirituel in the period 1779–84; she gave a benefit concert on 8 March 1783 in the Salle des Suisses.28 Having reportedly left her husband, the harpist-composer J.-B. Krumpholtz in 1788, and gone to England “with an unknown lover,” she was active in London as a harpist in Salomon’s concerts, including the 1793 season. As for Madame Mara, we must suppose, recalling the report of the soprano’s pique on the occasion of Viotti’s benefit concert eleven years earlier, that she had decided to let bygones be bygones. If we compare Viotti’s first London season schedule with his two seasons at the Concert spirituel a decade earlier, it will be seen that the number of his performances was similar, the most obvious difference being that the Salomon series was extremely regular, the twelve concerts taking place on consecutive Thursdays, with only one break of two weeks between the seventh and eighth concerts. As had been the case in Paris, two or three concertos probably sufficed for the entire season.29 Sometime after his arrival in England, Viotti met the Chinnerys, who became the center of his existence in England. William Bassett Chinnery (1766–1827), the son of a writing master, and brother of the miniaturist George Chinnery, was a clerk in the Treasury. His wife, Margaret (née Tresilian, ca. 1765–1840), was highly cultured, fluent in French and Italian, and an accomplished pianist. They had two children when Viotti entered their lives, the twins George and

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Caroline, scarcely a year old (b. 3 September 1791). A third child, Walter, was born in 1793 (22 April). Viotti probably met the Chinnerys sometime in the autumn of 1792, and they remained fast friends for the rest of their lives. Viotti, or “Amico,” as he was affectionately known to the Chinnerys and his closest friends, became virtually a member of the Chinnery family, participating in their frequent musical evenings and weekends, sharing their lives intimately, and, from 1796, living with them. Their correspondence, including some 120 letters from Viotti, opens a window on Viotti’s life and career after his move to England. It has long been known that Viotti was close to the Chinnerys. Edme Miel writes in his article on Viotti of 1827 of “an honorable family, who extended to him the ‘douceurs’ of the most intimate friendship, and whose destiny, for thirty years, he shared.” The Chinnery Family Papers allow us to see the full extent of this relationship in extraordinarily vivid detail.30 Three days after his last appearance at the Hanover Square Rooms, Viotti wrote the first of a group of three letters, the earliest to have survived from the Chinnery Family Papers. He is staying at the country home of an English gentleman—these letters, in French, as are almost all of his surviving letters, are addressed to Margaret Chinnery in London.31 We are immediately led into the inner world of the great violinist—his brooding melancholy, his love of nature (but, at the same time, his dislike of the wind), and above all, the intensity of his feelings for Margaret Chinnery. A few excerpts: It has been an hour that I hold pen in hand to write to you, my dear amica; if I had begun when I seated myself near my window, my letter on my little table would be finished, but an exquisite view, a regiment of crows making a devil of a racket in the trees, the sun at times brilliant, at times sombre according to the passing of the clouds, and a light wind which persecutes me, have delayed the conversation that my heart desired with my amica; with each passing moment my eyes contemplate this wonderful Mother Nature; I pass my hand over my forehead, and I write very slowly. I will not attempt to describe to you all that I feel. Not only would it be difficult to disentangle my thoughts, and to paint for you my sensations, but also my letter would become too long, and besides I like to let you guess some things; your soul is in tune with mine; you know what I am going through, all that affects me—fill in therefore what my hand fails to show.32 You must admit amica that you do not treat me well. How is it that now for four days I haven’t seen you, and you have written not a word to me? I well know that you are going to say, “but Mr Smith33 didn’t come, I was counting on him,” but since he didn’t come to town yesterday couldn’t you have sent me a letter by post? Really, this is not good. I await the return of our messenger this evening with the greatest impatience. I count on receiving a fine letter from my good friend. [. . .] I continue to be the most sullen person in the world; I am unable


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to do anything or say anything. Yesterday there was company; I tried my best to be entertaining [faire le fou: act the fool], but I was clumsy, and when the awkward moment had passed I fell back into my natural state, lost in thought, and convinced that everyone must have thought me quite ridiculous. Oh well, such is life, half of which is spent doing things, the other half complaining, sometimes blaming oneself, other times blaming others.34 You think that I am enjoying myself here. Well my friend, you are mistaken. I spend my days finding everything beautiful, but enjoying nothing. In the morning I rise, I have breakfast, I say a few words with the greatest effort; afterwards we go for a walk, and I go back up to my room, where I make a few useless efforts to be busy, and to do something worthwhile. [Could Viotti mean that he is composing?] Dinner is served, I eat without pleasure, I dream at length while looking at the superb views, we go for a little stroll, the melancholy hour arrives,35 I am more silent than usual, we dine and I go to bed in the same mood as in the rest of the day. That’s more or less my daily life. Do you call it enjoying myself, amica? I don’t think so.36

Incident on the Continent In the first of these letters, Viotti enclosed an urgent letter to be sent to “my poor friends from France.”37 These, almost certainly, were Hélène (the Marquise) de Montgéroult, and her husband, the Marquis de Montgéroult, who were escaping from France in the company of Hugues-Bernard Maret, the former journalist, recently appointed ambasssador to Naples. The story of Viotti’s involvement in his friends’ unfortunate experiences in the summer of 1793 was brought to light by Denise Yim. It is an extraordinary episode, not unlike the plot of a Revolutionary rescue drama. Through his letters to Margaret Chinnery, we are able to follow Viotti as he travels across Europe, and at the same time, we learn a great deal about his character. Viotti left Dover on 22 July, bound for Ostend. He stayed for a few days in Ghent at the home of a merchant friend, Mr. Smed, whose son Viotti had taught. One evening, Viotti played an impromptu concert for the Smeds, which he describes with a lightness of touch that veils the emotional power of his playing: After dinner I played a fine piece of music for this good Papa, his wife, and his two daughters, one of them married; I had scarcely finished the first part when, either from a remembered sadness, or from musical feelings, great tears fell from the eyes of the married daughter, and a moment later it was the same with the younger daughter. Soon the mother did the same and the father and I, unable to prevent ourselves,

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followed suit. I could no longer see clearly, so I stopped playing in order to join this very touching Concert of tears.38 In the same letter Viotti reports that “as soon as it was known in this city that I had arrived, these good Flemish folk gathered in crowds to look at me. I felt exactly as if I were one of those big strange animals taken to the fair to be stared at.” This suggests, at the very least, that Viotti’s reputation had preceded him to Ghent, and even, intriguingly, that he may have played publicly there on a previous occasion, perhaps on one of his visits to give a lesson to the Smeds’ son.39 By 3 August Viotti is in Frankfurt (by way of Brussels),40 from where he writes: “The other day I looked at the Rhine which flows majestically toward the place where you live. Oh! How I regret leaving it to go away, all alone, and not to be coming nearer to you rather than distancing myself. But what can I do. One must follow one’s destiny and go where your duty calls you.”41 Here, in these brief lines, the twin leitmotifs of Viotti’s letters to Margaret Chinnery are exposed: his sadness, his torment whenever he is separated from her (in this case he poetically invokes nature, another recurring element in his letters), and his compelling sense of duty to his friends. He signs the letter, “Adieu mon amica, ma seule mon unique amica d’Angleterre.” At this point there is a gap of a month in Viotti’s letters—the next is from Baden, near Zurich, on 4 September 1793—a month in which a series of unfortunate, indeed calamitous events overtook Madame de Montgéroult and her husband.42 Viotti arrived on the scene too late to do anything other than offer comfort to his distraught friend and former colleague. Briefly, what happened was this: Madame de Montgéroult and her husband, traveling in the party of Maret in several coaches en route for Naples, were intercepted on about 25 July in the village of Novate, in the neutral territory of Valtellina, near Lake Como, by Austrian forces. The marquis, a man of sixty, in poor health, was imprisoned in Mantua (as was Maret), where, according to Viotti, he died within two weeks, on 2 September.43 Madame de Montgéroult, left in a “piteous state,” with “only the clothes she was wearing,” had made her way to Baden, where Viotti at last caught up with her.44 In all of this there is the question of when Viotti learned of his friends’ misfortune. Denise Yim plausibly conjectures that Viotti had originally planned to rendezvous with the Montgéroults in Venice. Then, probably after arriving in Frankfurt, he must have received the news of the Austrian attack. During his two-and-a-half months in Baden and Zurich, Viotti wrote five (surviving) letters to Margaret Chinnery, and two to William, reporting on the situation. From these we learn that he had been in Venice on 13 August, from where he had probably gone to Mantua, before heading north to Switzerland by way of Valtellina, and that he had suffered a severe attack of fever for a fortnight in September, in the process losing so much weight as to be “unrecognizable.”45


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Viotti is outraged at the “injustice and the barbarism” committed against his friends, who are “politically innocent.” He encloses a letter (missing) from Madame de Montgéroult for William Chinnery to deliver to the British prime minister William Pitt. (Maret had been in England in late 1792 on a peace mission—he had had a favorable interview with Pitt on 2 December—and again in January 1793, before France declared war on 1 February.46 The Austrians had committed a warlike act in a neutral territory. All of this would no doubt have been of interest to Pitt, but no record has yet been found of his acting on the letter, or even of its having been delivered.) Viotti asks the Chinnerys to send £200, by way of his banker, “Mr Amersley” (Hammersley), to help Madame de Montgéroult, which he finally received only after a first remittance apparently was lost.47 On about 21 October, despite the dangers, Madame de Montgéroult returned to France,48 where the Terror was gaining momentum by the day. Viotti planned to leave for Ghent about two weeks later, but in the event did not leave until 15 November.49 On 2 November Viotti writes to Maret’s sister-in-law in Dijon, where Montgéroult had taken shelter. He carefully addressed the letter “to Citizen Maret, Wife of the District President, Département of the Cote d’Or,” and gives the date as “the 2nd year of the Republic,” so as not to arouse suspicion if the letter were intercepted by the French authorities. He is desperate to receive news from Maret in Mantua and from Madame de Montgéroult (whom of course he does not name) in Dijon. “I leave it to you to judge how my heart has been oppressed. [. . .] In God’s name write me a word, whatever it may be.”50 While in Zurich and Baden Viotti would have learned of the execution of Marie Antoinette on 16 October (Louis XVI had preceded her to the scaffold on 21 January). The guillotine was on the Place de la Révolution, formerly the Place de Louis XV (now the Place de la Concorde), where Viotti had lived, at least for a time, in 1789, and which he surely walked across many times on his way through the Garden of the Tuileries to the Théâtre de Monsieur. Viotti’s private woes were but an after-tremor of the general woes convulsing France and, increasingly, all of Europe. Not the least of the ironies of Viotti’s situation was that the “barbarous” malefactors, the Austrians, were the allies of the English, who were at war with France since February, and with whom Viotti had by now thrown in his lot. Viotti’s letter of 8 November to William Chinnery contains an interesting musical insight: he says that he has not touched his violin since leaving England (this of course we know was not quite true), but “you know that thanks to the gifts with which Nature has endowed me, I will not need much time to regain my form and that a week will suffice for me to be as worthy of being listened to as last year.”51 Viotti was neither falsely modest nor inordinately proud; we may take this remark as a simple statement of fact. In addition, it is this reference to “last year” that allows us to infer that Viotti had met the Chinnerys in 1792.

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At Ghent, where he had arrived by 6 December, he stayed again with the Smed family for about two weeks before embarking for Dover. Once more he speaks of his black mood, and, alarmingly, he seems to have lost interest in music: “Harmony has irritated me ever since the events of my life effaced the harmony existing in my being; if this antipathy continues, I shall probably continue to act in London as I have done on my trip.”52 While in Ghent Viotti received a letter, in French, from Gaetano Pugnani, dated 16 October 1793, to which we have already referred. “It has been more than two years since I have heard from you,” he writes, but he has heard that “you have covered yourself in glory in London,” and he has played “one of your latest concertos, in E major. It pleased me very much, it is new in style and well written.” This must be Viotti’s Concerto no. 21, which means that in all probability Viotti had played this concerto in London in 1793. Pugnani also reports that “a certain Salomon [had] passed through here.” It may well have been Salomon who brought a manuscript copy of Viotti’s concerto to show to Pugnani (it was not published until 1803). Salomon apparently reneged on his promise to have published in London some of Pugnani’s new symphonies and a concerto, as well as his melodrama based on Goethe’s The Sorrows of the Young Werther. Pugnani then had written to Luigi Borghi (?1745–ca. 1806), a former pupil of his, who had been in London since 1769,53 asking for his help in the matter, but Borghi had replied that Pugnani’s music “is no longer appreciated in London, and that only Haydn and some other new composers had a reputation.” (This, though galling in the extreme to Pugnani, was essentially true.) Pugnani then asks Viotti to “see what you can do,” adding that Werther has also been reduced for harpsichord.54 Apparently Viotti was unsuccessful in performing this service for his much-esteemed former master (no works of Pugnani are known to have been published in London in the 1790s), but we may be sure that he made every effort to do so. We must now reconsider what Viotti says in his Précis of 1798 concerning this trip to the Continent, namely that “the death of my mother” obliged him to go to Italy to put his affairs and those of his “brothers, still children,” in order. As we have seen, Viotti would have had very little time to go to Fontanetto during his hectic trip through the Tyrol (which indicates Innsbruck and the Brenner Pass) to Venice and Mantua,55 and on to Switzerland in August 1793. Indeed, I think it highly unlikely that he went to Fontanetto, which suggests that he may have considered the real reason for his trip too politically sensitive to reveal to the British authorities in his Précis (Hugues-Bernard Maret, after all, was a high-ranking French civil servant at a time when France was at war with Britain). He may simply not have had enough time to go to Fontanetto. But it is difficult to explain why he makes no mention whatsoever of his stepmother’s death in his letters to the Chinnerys immediately preceding his departure from England in July, or why he does not mention a visit to Fontanetto in any of his letters from the Continent. Furthermore, Negri states


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unequivocally in his biographical note of 1810 that the last time Viotti was in Fontanetto was in the summer of 1783.

London and Bath Upon his arrival in London Viotti stayed for a time with the Hüllmandels until he could find lodgings of his own. He had asked the Chinnerys to find him lodgings near their own house, and to find him a servant (“bon domestique”).56 The first of these requests was met in highly successful fashion: it was not long before he had moved into an apartment at the corner of Wells Street (no. 34) and Charles Street (no. 16), only a few yards away from the Chinnery residence, 5 Mortimer Street, Cavendish Square.57 Meanwhile, Salomon had begun advertising his 1794 series, featuring Dr. Haydn (he had been awarded an honorary doctor of music degree by Oxford University in 1791) who “will supply the Concerts with New Compositions, and direct the Execution of them at the Piano Forte,”58 and with Mara and Viotti among the soloists. This year Salomon was to be unopposed, since the Professional Concert had been abandoned, Pleyel, Cramer, and Giornovichi having been eclipsed by Haydn, Salomon, and Viotti. Janiewicz, who had been the violin soloist in Salomon’s Concert in 1792, was also pushed very much into the background by Viotti: in 1793 he played only four times at the Oratorio series (King’s Theatre and Theatre Royal, Haymarket) and at his benefit concert and at the benefit concert of the Dusseks. In 1794 he is recorded as having played only once in London, at his benefit concert on 14 May, and in 1795 again only once, at Madame Mara’s benefit on 24 March. Janiewicz was able to find a niche for his talents in Bath, where he became the orchestra leader and featured soloist in Venanzio Rauzzini’s concerts for the year 1793 and the 1793–94 winter season, and in other cities in Great Britain and Ireland. Salomon’s concerts were to be on Monday evenings, beginning on 3 February. In the event, the first concert was postponed until the tenth, Haydn’s arrival in England having been delayed (until the fifth), as Viotti informs Margaret: “Haydn has definitely not arrived. They caught me out telling me that he had.” In the same letter he reports that his foot is feeling better—a few days earlier he had complained of “acute pains” in his foot, probably gout, a recurring problem, which is occasionally mentioned in his correspondence.59 Viotti played in eight of the twelve concerts, always with a concerto, except for the last, on 12 May, when he played a duet with Salomon. He and Salomon also played a duet at a benefit concert on 6 March for the New Musical Fund (“for the relief of DECAYED MUSICIANS, their WIDOWS and ORPHANS, residing in England”), Viotti played a concerto at Haydn’s benefit on 2 May, as well as two new concertos at his own benefit on 23 May, and he led the orchestra for Salomon’s benefit on 28 May.

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Viotti’s concerto at the first concert was “new.” “We have no doubt,” said the Morning Chronicle the day after, “but both these pieces [Viotti’s concerto and Haydn’s “New Grand Overture”] will be called for again; for they are to be ranked among the finest productions of which music has to boast.” No higher praise could be bestowed upon Viotti’s music than to place it on equal footing with a new symphony by the “incomparable” Haydn. The new symphony by Haydn has been identified as no. 99, in E-flat major, the first in which Haydn uses clarinets. There was still another new work on the program: Dussek played his “New Concerto for Piano Forte.” These were heady days for the Hanover Square subscribers. Viotti indeed played the same concerto at the second concert a week later.60 The Morning Chronicle identified it as a concerto in a minor key, the composition and performance of which were alike masterly. In style it was neither perfectly ancient nor modern, though it partook of the beauties of both. His power on the fourth string is indeed great; but, like power in general, it is liable to abuse. To speak proverbially, “he harps a little too much on one string.” He played however with uncommon sweetness, feeling and effect.61 The consensus of recent opinion is that this minor-key concerto is no. 24 in B Minor,62 though it does not contain an unusual number of passages for the G string. The autograph score of the slow movement of this work is written on small, almost pocket-sized sheets, in an unusually careful hand. White’s suggestion that it may have been intended as a gift63 is supported by a letter Viotti wrote to Margaret Chinnery on 13 February, between the first two Salomon concerts: “I am sending to you, amica, another of my new children; I desire that you receive it with the indulgence of friendship and that you never be annoyed by it. You well know of course that it is a concerto of which I speak, for how could I be speaking of anything else, I, a poor being cut off from everything, my soul so ardent and so devoid of that which could satisfy it!”64 If indeed this “child” of Viotti’s was a fair copy of the (entire) Concerto no. 24, we must suppose that the other two movements have been lost. Does Viotti’s outpouring in the last sentence refer to something between, or rather, not between, him and Margaret? Of Viotti’s performance at the fifth concert, 10 March, again the Morning Chronicle: The masterly performance of VIOTTI exceeded all former example; his power over the instrument seems unlimited. The great mistake of Musicians has been a continued effort to excite amazement. VIOTTI, it is true, without making it his object, astonishes the hearer; but he does something infinitely better—he awakens emotion, gives soul to sound, and leads the passions captive.65


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Here the reviewer is touching upon a recurrent theme in the critical reaction of the English to Viotti—they appreciated the “noble simplicity” of his playing, his eschewal of “tricks” or technical virtuosity for its own sake. It was this greater maturity of style that Baillot remarked upon in his Notice on Viotti of 1825. Another review of the fifth concert, in the Oracle of 13 March, reported that Viotti played a most beautiful Concerto, in which he introduced the movement, whose effects arouse that Amor Patriae in the SWISS, which makes them sicken after the blessings of a distant home. In truth, there is such a divine simplicity in the strain, it corresponds so well with our impressions from that country, and its most happy inhabitants, that to hear it without emotion is impossible. This almost certainly refers to Viotti’s Concerto no. 5, the second movement of which, we have noted, is apparently a Swiss “mountain air.” An unexplained change of plans occurred for the eighth concert, 31 March. As late as two days before the concert, the Oracle announced that Viotti would play a concerto, but in the event he and his concerto were replaced. In the ninth concert, 7 April, Haydn’s Symphony no. 100 (“Military”) was repeated after its first performance a week earlier, and Viotti played a concerto. Said the Morning Chronicle: Some of the connoisseurs profess to like the playing of Viotti better than his Music.—Judgements differ: we will not pretend to affirm they are mistaken; we can only say, though his Compositions partake of the old French School, there is yet a richness, unity, and grandeur in them, that in our opinion place them far beyond the jigs, quirks and quackery, in which modern music is apt to indulge. Not that we are enemies of modern music: it has many essential improvements, but it has no few radical vices.66 Again, the contempt for the superficial in music, but this reviewer also attempts an historical analysis: the old French School versus modern music, a variation on the theme of “ancient” and “modern” in the review from the Morning Chronicle of 19 February, quoted above. In England, ancient music meant above all the music of Handel (though much earlier music was also performed in concerts of the Academy of Ancient Music and the Concert of Ancient Music). By “the old French School” the reviewer perhaps had in mind the violin concertos of the great French violinist Jean-Marie Leclair (1697–1764), published in 1737 and 1745, or perhaps the more recent concertos (1764) of Leclair’s most distinguished successor, Pierre Gaviniés. Charles Burney attended this concert. A week later, he wrote to his daughter, Fanny, revealing a playful side to his personality not readily apparent in his monumental General History of Music:

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Who among others should I have met with at Salomon’s concert but Mr and Mrs Piozzi and all the Miss Thrales?67 The Ladies all on the same sopha, & la mere in the middle! Mr Piozzi’s eye caught my eye first, and we approached each other and shook hands, and talked of the music and performers before I knew the ladies were there. But on my hoping that la signora sa consorte was well, he said she was there, pointing to a sofa close to the orchestra. When I hastened towards it, & met her eyes with their usual fire & good humour—she held out her hand & met mine with great eagerness & pleasure—“why here’s Dr B. as young as ever”—“oh I am but just made up, quo[th] I—indeed but just got up, from a bed of sickness”—&c &c well, we talked, & laughed as usual, and I never saw her more lively, good humoured & pleasant in my life. My old affection for her all returned, & I would have done anything possible to have shewn it with the same impressement as in the best of Johnsonian, Thraliana & Streatham times.68 If Burney and Mr. Piozzi, a singing teacher, had their talk during the interval, they would not yet have heard Haydn’s symphony, which opened the second part, nor Viotti’s concerto. We might have wished that Burney, in his letter, had turned his formidable critical and descriptive powers to the music and the performers, for Fanny’s delectation, and ours. Years later, in 1819, Burney described Viotti’s music as a mixture of the old and the new: “writing sometimes with all the solidity of the old [Italian] school [in “his grave and elaborate movements”], and sometimes with the levity and frivolity of the French in modern times [in his finales].”69 After playing in Salomon’s ninth concert, on 7 April, Viotti did not appear again in London until 2 May. In the interim, he played four times in concerts in Bath. These were given in the New Assembly Rooms, and were administrated by Venanzio Rauzzini, the famous castrato, latterly become an impresario. The six letters that Viotti wrote to Margaret Chinnery from Bath70 throw a light onto the concert and social life of Bath, and, again, allow us entry into Viotti’s innermost thoughts. As always, the violinist complains of being separated from his friends, and is impatient to be back with them. And again, he hints at his dissatisfaction with his profession, his longing for a quieter life: “It would suit me, Amica, if I were Mr. and Mrs. Chinnery’s gardener, and that Mr. and Mrs. Chinnery never left the countryside; I would be much happier.” His life consists of rehearsing in the morning and performing in the evening. It is the custom, after the concert, to gather in a large room to chat and take tea, which “I, who am something of a bear, am always in a hurry to leave,” though in the process he meets many people, especially women, who invite him to their homes. Viotti, never one to mince words, is scornful of the reserve of English audiences: I played yesterday for the 3rd time; I was reasonably pleased with myself. They said that I was a big success; I assure you, Amica, that


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I was completely unaware of it. They have a singular way of showing it, I must say! I swear to you my dear Margaritina that I could never get used to this cursed coldness, indeed I am more inclined to think of your compatriots as logs, as ignoramuses, than to grant them that concentrated sensitivity that they claim to have [18 April]. Viotti appears to have forgotten the “general rapture” that had “burst forth at every interval” a year earlier in the Hanover Square Rooms,71 though it may be argued that the off-season Bath audience (the more fashionable season for visitors was the period October–Christmas) was less likely to be receptive than its London high-season counterpart. By the end of his stay in Bath, though he has softened somewhat in his attitude, he is still put off by the reserve of English women: I have already met many people, people much more likeable than I at first thought. Mind you I mean women—as for men, I’m not familiar with their ways. But why don’t these cursed women show themselves immediately for what they are, instead of presenting themselves with faces of marble on first meeting? I would like to send them all to my amica so that she could teach them her pleasant and delightful manners. [23 April] In another letter, Viotti mentions in passing that “[m]y ear is much better although the faint whistling [petit siflement] that has settled in it still persists. I hope that on my return I shall be completely rid of it; it has lasted long enough. Please thank your sisters for the concern they have shown” [16 April]. The next day he refers to his “deafness” (and to Margaret’s), but we hear nothing further of this problem, which, while it lasted, was surely a cause for great concern to Viotti, as it would be for any musician. In his first letter from Bath, Viotti alludes to Margaret’s musical activities, and reveals his matter-of-fact attitude as to where he stood in the world of violin playing: “You do well, good Amica, to have your music a week today; too long an interruption could perhaps upset the continuity [l’ensemble] of our little parties, and besides it is no bad thing to have one without Amico—Salomon’s sun, and Yaniewicz’s, will shine forth more brilliantly” [16 April]. As we have had occasion to remark, false modesty was not in Viotti’s character. We learn, as well, from these lines that Margaret held her musical parties at Mortimer Street on Wednesdays, and that Salomon and Janiewicz participated in them. Elsewhere in these letters Viotti reveals a sharpness, not to say waspishness, in his observations about his professional colleagues: You did well to demand the Sonatas from that Papa Haydn. This was something that always bothered me, to see him handing out manuscripts to all and sundry when he should have first offered one to you. I fully intended to reproach him for this. It seems to me that along with

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a great genius this kindly old man has very little tact or judgement. What can one say, he lurches along in the German way, whoever he meets along the way gets it [the music] [que voulés vous il agit à l’almande, par bond et par saut, celui qui se rencontre sur son chemin attrappe]. [18 April] (But it should be noted that, almost as if repenting of his harshness toward his distinguished friend, Viotti writes in a postscript, “If Papino speaks of me to you, give him my kind regards.”) If Margaret could claim priority on Haydn’s manuscript sonatas, it would suggest that at the very least, he was acquainted with her, and therefore may well have attended her musical parties. In the same letter, without pausing for breath, the Italian turns his attention to another German colleague: “Why does Salomon talk so much to you about me? Is he in love with me? . . . how silly to ask you the reason, do I not know it already? If his torment were real it would be right to complain. In his place, rather than giving myself over to jealousy, I would work hard to be as praiseworthy as the next person” [18 April]. And yet, we have every reason to believe that Viotti collaborated with both these men on terms of mutual regard—he and Salomon played duets together in Salomon’s concerts, and Viotti played at Salomon’s benefits in 1793 and 1794, in the latter case as leader of the orchestra, an act of pure friendship that held no special glory for the Italian, now again established as the greatest violinist alive. Similarly, Viotti played at Haydn’s benefits in 1794 and 1795, and Haydn’s letter to Viotti cited below is nothing if not cordial. The violinist warmed to Venanzio Rauzzini, “such a good and honest man,” but gives no indication of any previous knowledge of him, though it is scarcely credible that he did not remember him and his voice from twenty years before at the Teatro Regio in Turin. Rauzzini was Viotti’s host for a day at his home in the country, Woodbine Cottage, Perrymead, near Bath, which a few months later, in August, Haydn also visited. At one o’clock on the afternoon of Easter Friday, Viotti rode out of the city on horseback, alone: I went by way of a country lane lined with trees of all description laden with flowers. This road climbed to a kind of forest crowning a hill, which commanded a view of the entire city. It was there that I halted to contemplate the beauty of nature and its inconceivable author. After some time of profound reverie I descended a little, and I was rejoined by the company which had been strolling for an hour in a garden filled with flowers and geraniums of all kinds. I greeted everyone jovially and then under the pretext of examining everything I saw, I avoided as much as possible the company of the others. At any rate the site sloping down to a rather narrow valley never ceased to be pleasant, but then what isn’t in this season. My chief occupation was in gathering violets, which is one of the flowers that a person of my acquaintance loves the most. [19 April]


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Viotti was extraordinarily sensitive to nature in all its manifestations. In two of his letters of the previous summer he had told Margaret how the moon “did not leave me for an instant” on the coach to Dover, and, on the Channel crossing, how “the moon kept me constant company.” And now, in Bath: “I find that an hour after midnight is a time to collect myself quietly and to work, especially when there is a beautiful moonlight, [. . .] from time to time to look at that soft and exquisite star in order to relax, and to dream for a moment, my thoughts full of cherished friends” [17 April]. Viotti gave a benefit concert in Bath on 23 April, for which his pupil Philippe Libon (1775–1838) had apparently offered to come from London to play in the orchestra. Viotti asked Margaret to thank the young Spaniard for his offer, which “I would have accepted but the orchestra is not only passable but almost good.” Libon was a favored pupil of Viotti’s; he had the honor of playing with his master in a public concert the following year.72 After his return to London on 25 April, Viotti played a concerto at Haydn’s benefit on 2 May, followed by performances of a concerto at the eleventh of Salomon’s concerts on 5 May, and a manuscript duet with Salomon at the twelfth and last in the series on 12 May, his thirty-ninth birthday. The day before, Sunday, 11 May, the “gentleman composer,” John Marsh, after the sermon at St. Paul’s Covent Garden, went to a rehearsal of Salomon’s concert at Hanover Square for the next evening, on first entering w’ch I co’d not make out what they were about, hearing all the way I went up stairs to the room the tinkling of a military triangle, w’ch with cymbals & other military instruments were then accompanying Haydn’s celebrated MS Symphony with the military movement. With this & some other things that were then rehears’d I was so pleas’d that I found myself tied by the leg (or rather by the ear) & began to lament my being engaged to dine at 4 at Mrs Coxe’s, Westminster. [The next evening Marsh attended the concert, at which the military movement was encored].73 Marsh would have particularly appreciated hearing Viotti play his own duet (it presumably was by Viotti)—he records playing “a duet or two,” and “two or three of Pleyel & Viotti’s duets” privately in the summers of 1793 in Greenwich and 1795 in Chichester, and hearing two young boys play “a difficult duet by Viotti” in December 1801 in Chichester. On 28 April 1799, in Salisbury, after tea and sandwiches, he and his son, playing the cello and violin, respectively, accompanied a Miss Wapshare in a “spirited concerto of Viotti’s in G (which I then first heard) & other things.”74 This would have been the arrangement of no. 23 as a piano concerto by Jan Ladislav Dussek. Viotti played two new concertos at his own benefit on 23 May,75 and he led the orchestra in Salomon’s benefit on 28 May, in which Dr. Haydn was “at the Piano Forte.” This was Viotti’s last recorded performance in 1794.

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Below is the program of Viotti’s benefit, as it appeared in the newspapers: HANOVER-SQUARE. For the BENEFIT of Mr. Viotti. TO-MORROW, May 23, will be a GRAND CONCERT of INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. PART I. Grand Overture (M.S.) – HAYDN. Aria, Mr. NIELD. New Concerto Violin, Signor VIOTTI Aria, Mr. FISCHER. Concerto, Piano Forte, Mr. DUSSECK. PART II. Grand Overture (M.S.) – HAYDN. Scena, Madame DU CREST. New Concerto Violin, Signor VIOTTI. Terzetto, Madame DU CREST, Mr. NIELD, and Mr. Finale.76

VOCAL

and

FISCHER.

It was no doubt something of a cachet to have a manuscript work of Haydn’s on one’s benefit program, although it was by no means an uncommon occurrence.77 As for the artists who assisted at Viotti’s benefit, the Bohemian pianistcomposer Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760–1812) was particularly distinguished. Dussek, after playing in the various capitals of Europe, including St. Petersburg in 1783, had arrived in Paris late in 1786. He gave lessons to Madame de Montgéroult, and apparently “was particularly noticed by Marie-Antoinette.”78 There can be little doubt that he and Viotti became friends at this time. Early in 1789 he fled to England; his first appearance was at the Hanover Square Rooms on 1 June 1789. Perhaps Viotti, shortly after arriving in England, attended Dussek’s marriage in London on 31 August 1792 to Sophia Corri, herself a pianist and harpist. Dussek had played in Salomon’s concerts in 1792 and in the Professional Concert in 1793, returning to Salomon’s in 1794; he played in Janiewicz’s London benefit on 14 May and Giornovichi’s benefit on 30 May, as well as Viotti’s. In 1792 Dussek had joined his father-in-law, Domenico Corri, in a publishing business, which brought out the first edition of Viotti’s Concerto no. 23, arranged by Dussek as a piano concerto. This edition, which appeared in late 1794, some ten years before the first edition of the same work in its original version as a violin concerto, bears on its title page the words “Viotti’s celebrated new Grand Concerto in G as performed at his concert, Hanover Square.” This almost certainly refers to Viotti’s performance of one of his two new concertos at his benefit concert on 23 May. Dussek also arranged and published Viotti’s Concerto no. 25 as a piano concerto in ca. 1795–96, dedicated to Margaret Chinnery, about eleven years before it first appeared as a violin concerto.


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Jonathan Nield was a tenor who often sang in concerts in London in the 1790s.79 He was particularly appreciated for his renditions of Handel’s music, both in London, and in Bath, where he was Rauzzini’s principal male singer during the 1790s, and where in all likelihood he and Viotti met a month earlier, if not before. Nield had sung in the Salomon concerts on 5 and 12 May. He is not mentioned in the Chinnery Papers. Ludwig Fischer, basso profundo, one of the King of Prussia’s principal opera singers, made his London début in the first Salmon concert of 1794 and received very good reviews throughout the season. He had been Mozart’s first Osmin in Die Entführung aus dem Serail in 1782, then had gone to Paris in 1783, where he sang three times at the Concert spirituel, once, on 21 April, on the same program as Viotti. Madame (the Marquise) Du Crest, who was also a pianist and harpist, was the sister-in-law of Madame de Genlis. According to her daughter’s memoirs, she held concerts in her London home attended by such musicians as Dussek, Johann Cramer, Giornovichi, and Viotti.80 The 1794 season seems to have been her last in England; apparently the Ducrests left the country in about 1795. One naturally wonders to what extent her salon competed with that of Margaret Chinnery. There is no mention of her in the Viotti-Chinnery correspondence. We record here that Viotti did not reciprocate, did not return the favor for any of the artists who assisted at his benefits in 1793 and 1794, except for Salomon, whom he assisted both years. The generosity of colleagues must probably be weighed against the degree of prestige to be gained from playing at a very celebrated performer’s benefit. It will be seen in the list below that, with two exceptions, Viotti played or led only in the benefits of three of the most eminent artists of the day (who also were his friends): Salomon, Haydn, and Domenico Dragonetti. Viotti himself gave no benefit concerts after 1794. Benefits of others in London in which Viotti participated Salomon, 9 May 1793 New Musical Fund, 6 March 1794 Haydn, 2 May 1794 Salomon, 28 May 1794 Haydn, 4 May 1795 Dragonetti, 8 May 1795 [?Ashe, 8 June 1795. Viotti was advertised to play a new concerto, but was omitted from later advertisements.] Giuseppe(?) Agus, 23 March 1797. Viotti was “director.” Salomon, 1 May 1797 [?Braham, 7 June 1797. Viotti was advertised as director, later replaced by Salomon.] Dragonetti, 29 May 1797 Viotti returned to Bath as the featured soloist in Rauzzini’s concerts in late November and December 1794. The Bath newspapers announced that he would

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play in the third, fourth, and sixth of the eight subscription concerts. He also played a concerto between the acts of Handel’s Messiah at Rauzzini’s benefit on 24 December (in which Mara also performed). Janiewicz, who had been Rauzzini’s star violinist since December 1792, made way for Viotti “with the most friendly good nature.”81 There are no reviews of these concerts, nor any letters from this period in the Viotti-Chinnery letters, probably because his stay in Bath for each concert would have been very brief.

The King’s Theatre Late in 179482 Viotti was appointed acting manager of the King’s Theatre in London. An announcement in the Bath Chronicle of 18 December reported that “when Viotti signed his articles as Manager of the London Italian Opera, he had a clause inserted which enables him to fulfil his engagements at Rauzzini’s Concerts.”83 The King’s Theatre, with which Viotti was to be associated in one guise or another for a little over two years, had been the chief venue for Italian opera in London since the time of Handel early in the century. Recently, it had been plagued by administrative and financial difficulties, competing factions for the royal patent, and two suspicious and disastrous fires, the last in January 1792. Viotti inherited this tangle of corruption, conflicts of interest, profligacy, and bankruptcy, although it seems unlikely that he had any financial interest in the theater as he had had in the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau. His position as “acting manager” is best understood as an artistic director in today’s terminology, since the manager (named William Taylor), in the modern sense, was purely a business administrator, a nonmusician unconcerned with artistic affairs. And “acting” did not signify “temporary” or “substitute,” as might be thought nowadays, but more in the nature of “executive.” In retrospect, it almost seems inevitable that Viotti should have been considered the man for the job, by virtue of his international reputation, and his recent, highly successful directorship of the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau, bringing invaluable contacts with singers, in particular Italian singers, and the operatic world in general.84 Unlike Viotti’s Parisian theater, however, the King’s Theatre gave serious Italian opera as well as opera buffa. Viotti might have expected that the King’s Theatre was at last in a stable condition, a new theater having been constructed in the Haymarket, the largest in Europe except for La Scala in Milan. For the 1793–94 season Michael Kelly and the composer Stephen Storace had been the acting managers,85 appointed by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, one of the proprietors,86 whom Viotti probably met at this time, and who was to cross paths with the violinist in a completely different context some sixteen years later. The season lasted from 6 December 1794 to 11 July 1795, with performances on Tuesdays and Saturdays.


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On 15 December the season was advertised in the Morning Chronicle, under the caption “Mirror of Fashion”: King’s Theatre. Tomorrow, Tuesday the 16th Instant will be performed a new Comic Opera called L’Amore Contrastato, or La Molinarella. [In fact La Molinarella had already been performed at the King’s in 1791.] The music entirely by [Giovanni] Paisiello. [The singers are listed, including Madame Morichelli and Signor Rovedino. End of first act: a Divertissement. End of second act: “a Grand Heroic Pantomime Ballet.”] A new serious opera (never before performed at the Theatre) called Zenobia in Palmira, the music by Anfossi (composed for Madame Banti in Venice in the year 1790) is in preparation, and will be speedily produced, with new Scenes, Dresses, and Decorations. [The singers are listed, including Banti and Rovedino.] The whole under the Direction of Mr VIOTTI, who is engaged as acting Manager of the Theatre. Signor Dragonetti, double bass at the harpsichord, being engaged for the Concert to be carried on in future in the New Room, will occasionally perform in the Serious Opera, and for the first time in this country in the Opera of Zenobia in Palmira. Pit 10s. 6d. Gallery 5s. No Money to be returned. Doors to be opened at half past six, and the Performance, to begin at half past seven. The Nobility are entreated to give directions to their Servants, to set down and take up at the Theatre, with the horses Heads towards Pall-Mall. On account of abuses practiced in the names of the Subscribers, it is become necessary to require the production of the Subscription Tickets both at the doors and the boxes. Unfortunately, we do not know precisely what Viotti’s responsibilities were— in particular the extent to which he was involved in the choice of repertoire, the engagement of singers and other employees, and the artistic direction of individual operas.87 It is difficult to know what is meant by the designation of four of the operas as “under the direction of” Viotti (see table 6.1.).88 Wilhelm Cramer was the highly respected leader of the orchestra, and the shared leadership from the harpsichord or piano was the responsibility of the composer, if present, for the first three performances (as in the case of the Bianchi work—Bianchi was living in London at the time), or of the resident keyboardist or maestro al cembalo, Vincenzo Federici, who, however, was “not in evidence” in the 1794–95 season, except in the Opera Concert.89 In the preceding season, when Storace and Kelly had been joint directors, most if not all of the operas had

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been under the direction of Federici.90 What is implied, then, is that Viotti succeeded not only Storace and Kelly but also Federici, though it surely does not mean that Viotti sat at the harpsichord. It is equally unlikely that stage direction, in the modern sense, could have been meant, though the possibility is not so far-fetched as might at first appear, in view of Pugnani’s having stage-directed at least two operas in Turin. There does not seem to have been someone specifically in charge of this aspect of productions at the King’s Theatre. Michael Kelly’s thirty-year-long position, from 1793, is usually described, including by himself, as “stage manager.”91 At any rate, Kelly was apparently not involved in stage management in the 1794–95 season.92 It seems likely that “the whole under the direction of Mr Viotti” does not refer to a specific involvement with a specific opera, but is simply a conventional form of words referring to his overall supervision of artistic production as acting manager. Indeed, in the advertisement cited above, it is not entirely clear whether the “direction” refers only to Zenobia, or to both Zenobia and La Molinarella. Further support for this interpretation is provided by the announcement in the Times, on 26 March 1795, of a benefit performance of Semiramide for the dancer Madame Heligsberg. At the end of Act 1, a “New Divertissement” was introduced, in which Madame Heligsberg and her sister danced in “Man’s Clothes. [. . .] The whole under the Direction of Mr Viotti.”93 Of course Viotti would not have directed a ballet. One of the operas “directed” by Viotti, Gluck’s Alceste, was reported to have been given “thirty full and regular rehearsals.”94 Miel asserted that Viotti was enthusiastic about several works (s’exaltait en parlant de plusieurs ouvrages) of Gluck and that he kept a bust of Gluck in his study.95 Was it Viotti who insisted on

Table 6.1 Operas Produced at the King’s Theatre during Viotti’s Directorship, 1794–95 Opera

Composer

L’amor contrastato (La molinarella) *Zenobia in Palmira *I zingari in fiera La scola dei maritati Semiramide *Aci e Galatea Il conte ridicolo (Il re Teodoro in Venezia) *Alceste Ati e Cibalev L’isola del piacere Le nozze dei contadini spagnoli Le nozze di Dorina

Paisiello (TM 31 October 1789) Anfossi Paisiello Martín y Soler Bianchi Bianchi Paisiello (TM 21 February 1789) Gluck Cimador Martín y Soler Martín y Soler Sarti (TM 14 September 1789)

TM = Théâtre de Monsieur, with dates of first performances. *Advertised as “under the direction” of Viotti.


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so many rehearsals? At any rate, Alceste was the most successful production in 1795, with thirteen performances, followed by Semiramide and Scola, each with twelve, none of the others having more than six, and Cimador’s Ati e Cibele and Martín y Soler’s Le nozze dei contadini spagnuoli but one each. In fact, it was not a particularly successful season as regards attendance, and no doubt some of the blame for this would have been placed with Viotti. It will be seen in table 6.1 that three of the operas given at the King’s Theatre under Viotti’s directorship had been produced at the Théâtre de Monsieur/ Feydeau. Three émigrés from Viotti’s Parisian theater were stalwarts of the King’s Theatre in 1794–95: the basses Carlo Rovedino and Giovanni Morelli, and the prima donna Anna Morichelli, who specialized in comic roles.96 Morichelli’s counterpart in serious roles, and her chief rival, was the great dramatic soprano Brigida Giorgi Banti, who had made her London début in the preceding season in Semiramide. It was to hear Banti that Viotti was prevailed upon by Joseph Haydn for opera tickets to the première of Zenobia in Palmira on 20 December 1794. Such requests were already familiar to Viotti from Paris, and were to be again, though not usually from such an illustrious petitioner. Haydn’s note (in Italian, written only a few months after Viotti’s rather uncharitable reference to him), is couched in terms of conventionally polite respect, revealing no special intimacy between them: My most esteemed friend! You will excuse me when I with every good reason would like to hear our dear Banti tomorrow: but since poor Maestros can no longer spend a half-Guinea so often, you will have the goodness (if it is possible) to procure a ticket for me from Mr Deller, who last winter favored me with a free pass to the theater. I am sorry not to have had the honor of seeing you the last time in your house; I hope to another time. I am, with all my respect, Your most devoted and obliged servant, Haydn Bury Street, 19 December 179497 The popular polacca melody from the finale of Viotti’s Concerto no. 13, which had been inserted in Martín y Soler’s Una cosa rara in the Théâtre Feydeau (“Consola, amato bene,” WVIIa:2a), now, in London, was set to different words, “Amanti che nel core” for Paisiello’s La serva padrona (this opera had been given twelve times at the Théâtre de Monsieur in 1789, but there is no record of this aria being used in it). It was Banti who sang this aria in the King’s Theatre première on 29 May 1794—the work had seven performances, all of them, it should be noted, before Viotti became acting manager. Viotti’s aria was published in an arrangement with piano accompaniment, probably in 1794, by Corri, Dussek & Co.: “the favourite polacca as sung by Signora Banti [. . .] in the opera La serva padrona.”

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Similarly, in the fifty-two performances of Sarti’s Le nozze di Dorina at the Parisian theater, Viotti’s substitution aria-polacca, “Che gioja, che contento” (WVIIa:1a), based on the finale of his Concerto no. 2, had been sung by Giuseppe Viganoni. There is no evidence that this tradition was continued in the London performances by the young tenor, Luigi Brida, who took the role, though the aria, with piano accompaniment, had been published in London by February 1795 (Birchall; Sta. Hall, 21 February 1795): “a favourite polacca as sung by Viganoni.”98 The same melody was used for “Ha l’uomo han tanti inganni” (WVIIa:1d) for Paisiello’s I zingari in fiera, given at the King’s Theatre in 1793, and again during Viotti’s tenure as acting manager, beginning on 10 January 1795. We may say with only slight exaggeration, that operagoers could have had the pleasure of hearing an aria sung in the King’s Theatre the evening after hearing it played by Viotti in the concert hall. And, if they wished, the next evening they could accompany themselves in the same aria on the piano at home. It is not known what Viotti’s salary was. As in Paris, the principal singers were relatively highly paid. In the 1796–97 season (the salaries in 1794–95 appear to have been comparable) Banti and Morichelli each received £1,400 plus one or two benefits, Viganoni £800 plus a benefit, and Rovedino £500. In the same season Francesco Bianchi received £400; Cramer, the orchestra leader, probably £300; Federici £200; Da Ponte, possibly £250; and Dragonetti, probably £240 plus a benefit.99 First desk players were paid around 3 guineas a night at Salomon’s concerts; rank-and-file orchestra players around this time were paid as little as 10s 6d nightly.100 There was a vociferous, sometimes vicious Italian cabal in the King’s Theatre, which supported certain singers and composers and hissed others. Lorenzo Da Ponte writes that “the room was packed with hands paid to applaud” Bianchi’s Aci e Galatea in 1795.101 We can be sure that Viotti was aware of this group of claqueurs in the galleries (apparently they were sometimes paid by the management), but we cannot know whether he was able, or even willing, to suppress it. On 28 March 1795 Haydn saw a performance of Bianchi’s opera; he liked Banti but not the orchestra, which “is larger this year, but just as mechanical and badly placed as it was before, and indiscreet in its accompaniments.”102 Did he tell Viotti? It would be interesting to know precisely what he thought was wrong with the placement of the orchestra. Bianchi, as we shall learn, was soon to become an intimate of Viotti’s and the Chinnerys. Another common practice in the King’s Theatre, much deplored, but persistent, was the habit of gentlemen subscribers to crowd onto the stage and behind the wings during the performances, which, particularly during the ballets, was apt to create havoc. G. B. Cimador’s Ati e Cibele was first performed at the King’s Theatre on 14 May 1795. Cimador was a Venetian who had come to London in 1791. A letter from Viotti, written probably in the first half of 1795, reveals that Cimador and his housemate, Gaetano Bartolozzi (1757–1821), son of the famous engraver, himself an engraver, printseller, and talented amateur violinist, were acquainted with Viotti


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and attended, and probably played at, Margaret Chinnery’s concerts.103 Viotti mentions that the address of Cimador and Bartolozzi is “no. 207 Piccadilly,” St. James (Westminster), which was the address, as of April 1796,104 of the great Venetian double bassist Domenico Dragonetti, who arrived in England in the autumn of 1794. Dragonetti had been singled out in the King’s Theatre advertisement cited above as the “double bass at the Harpsichord.” He and Viotti became close friends, and he too frequented Margaret Chinnery’s musical parties. Another distinguished colleague of Viotti’s at the King’s Theatre was Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist in Vienna for his three famous buffa operas, and author of a highly entertaining volume of memoirs. Da Ponte had arrived in London in the autumn of 1792, and, at the end of 1793, was appointed house librettist at the King’s Theatre. During Viotti’s tenure he provided the librettos for Martín y Soler’s three operas listed in table 6.1 (the composer was present in London in 1794–96), as well as adapting the original libretto of Gluck’s Alceste. In 1794 Da Ponte had revised the libretto for the London production of Bianchi’s Semiramide. Da Ponte does not mention Viotti in his Memoirs, nor is he himself mentioned in the Viotti-Chinnery correspondence. We must suppose that his relationship with Viotti was strictly professional. After returning from a trip to Italy in 1798, Da Ponte was beset by financial problems and declared bankruptcy in 1800. He emigrated to the United States in 1805. The year 1795 was one of the busiest in Viotti’s life, since it also marks his London début as a concert impresario. Salomon had decided to throw in his lot with the King’s Theatre: “in the present situation of affairs on the Continent, Mr. Salomon finds it impossible to procure Vocal Performers of the first talents.”105 A concert room in the King’s Theatre was to be the venue for a new series, known as the Opera Concert. The room was considerably larger than the Hanover Square concert room, with a capacity of 800 as compared with 500 at Salomon’s concerts. The orchestra, too, was larger—some sixty players as compared with the forty or so of Salomon’s group. Again, Viotti was perhaps the logical choice to lead this endeavour—he had done exactly the same thing in his Theâtre Feydeau, although it might be argued that Salomon was equally deserving, especially in view of his friendship with Haydn, whose music and personal presence were again to be the main attraction. It was announced that there were to be nine concerts (in the event eleven were given), every Monday fortnight, beginning on 2 February, featuring, in addition to Haydn, the composers Martín y Soler, Bianchi, and Clementi (who, as might be expected, were not as frequently represented as Haydn); the lead King’s Theatre singers, in particular Banti (not Mara, who was engaged in Bath), Morichelli, Rovedino, and Morelli, “who are all engaged not to perform out of the Theatre”; and, among the instrumental soloists, Salomon, Dussek, Dragonetti, the cellists Christopher Schram and Robert Lindley, the flautist Andrew Ashe, the oboist Harrington, and the bassoonist Holmes, as well as

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Viotti himself (it will be remembered that in his Concerts spirituels at the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau he had refrained from playing). Haydn and Federici were to be “at the harpsichord.” The “Leader of the Band” was Wilhelm Cramer, “the whole to be under the direction of Mr. Viotti, who will also occasionally furnish new Pieces of Music.”106 The Opera Concert of 1795 has always been regarded as one of the supreme moments in the history of the concert life of London. Haydn introduced his last three symphonies, nos. 102–104,107 and Viotti played at least two new concertos, probably no. 25, at the first concert on 2 February, and no. 27 at the seventh on 27 April,108 as well as (probably) a concerto at the ninth on 18 May.109 The slow movement of Concerto no. 27 has passages for solo string quartet, perhaps an echo of the slow movement of Haydn’s Symphony no. 93, first performed in 1792. The finale has passages in which the leader, solo, imitates a jaunty figure of the solo violin part.110 Viotti wrote these passages knowing, of course, that he would be playing them with Cramer. A letter Margaret Chinnery wrote to her husband around this time offers an uncertain but fascinating glimpse into Viotti’s creative process. She says that “Amico is forever at the Opera House, & I am convinced from the specimen I had on Saturday night that he has a great deal to do.”111 She is surely referring to a new concerto that Viotti is working on, and since the letter seems to have been written in January 1795 or thereabouts (it is undated), we may naturally wonder whether he actually had not yet finished Concerto no. 25 in January for a performance on 2 February! To render this scenario more credible, we may suppose that he was engaged in the final stages of work—perhaps preparing the orchestral parts for copying. And it is perhaps not unreasonable to assume that Viotti would already have had the solo part under his fingers. In general, Viotti’s London concertos show an increased interest in the use of the orchestra, and a tendency to expand the orchestra of strings and pairs of oboes and horns that he had normally used in the Paris concertos. (In the Paris concertos, in fact, the winds are marked ad libitum in the early editions.) Nos. 22 and 29, for example, are written for the full complement used by Haydn in five of his last six London symphonies: strings plus flute112 and pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, horns and trumpets, and timpani. In his London concertos, Viotti expands the role of the orchestra in the slow movements, so much so that it dominates in the contrasting middle section. In addition, Viotti varies to a greater extent the relationship of the solo violin to the orchestra: “there is more interest in the varied possibilities of placing the solo in an accompanying or obbligato relationship and of creating a somewhat more imitative, learned texture.” White singles out an extraordinary passage from the first movement of no. 26, for winds alone, worthy of Haydn for its contrapuntal inventiveness and instrumental coloring. It demonstrates, observes White, “what Viotti might have accomplished had his interests turned in this direction sooner or had he not chosen to abandon his musical career.”113


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Viotti also played one of his violin duets (“Duetto Concertante”) with Salomon at the second concert, 16 February, and again, at the fourth concert, 2 March, with his pupil, Libon. By popular demand two additional concerts were given, on 21 May and 1 June, in neither of which did Viotti play, though he had been advertised to play in the first of these as well as in the benefit for the flautist Ashe on 8 June (a “new” concerto); in both cases he was replaced. From the standpoint of sheer frequency, this represents a falling-off in Viotti’s presence from the preceding seasons, not surprising in view of his vastly increased responsibilities. On the day after the first concert, 3 February, the Prince of Wales gave a gala supper and concert at Carlton House, his residence on Pall Mall, around the corner from the King’s Theatre. Several members of the royal family attended, including the king (George III), the queen, and the Duke and Duchess of York. (The duchess, the eldest daughter of Frederick William II of Prussia, was the talented pianist for whom Mozart had written a piano sonata.) “The Concert was led by Salomon. The music consisted chiefly of Haydn’s symphonies, and a Concerto, played by Viotti.”114 Viotti may have noticed a coincidence—that this, his first recorded performance for English royalty occurred on the evening after a public performance, just as had his first performance for Marie Antoinette thirteen years earlier. Now, as then, he may well have played the same concerto as on the evening before. Viotti was to enjoy the friendship and esteem of the Prince of Wales, later George IV. In addition to the leading singers and instrumentalists from the King’s Theatre, Viotti drew upon his circle of acquaintances for the Opera Concert. An old friend, Dussek, played a piano concerto at the first concert; a newer friend, Dragonetti, three times played a piece of his own composition. A duet by Giacomo Ferrari was sung by Rovedino and Morelli at the seventh concert, 27 April, and the works of two new composer-friends, Clementi and Bianchi, were occasionally featured. A newcomer, Madame Gillberg, played violin concertos at the third and sixth concerts, 23 February and 13 April, respectively, and at the New Musical Fund benefit on 20 April. At the first of these she played a concerto by Friedrich Johann Eck, apparently with an adagio by Viotti inserted as the second movement.115 It is as if she was trying out Viotti’s music a little at a time—at her benefit concert on 23 April she played a Viotti concerto, which she may well have played in her two other appearances in April. However, Madame Gillberg is not known to have played Viotti’s music publicly in London afterward, and we know of no further connection between the two violinists. Two reviews suggest that Viotti was solely responsible for the choice of repertory at the Opera Concert, one mentioning “delightful pieces, for the selection of which the subscribers are indebted to the director, Viotti,” and the other, “the selection for last Monday evening, was made with that happy discrimination which the director, Viotti, has shown through the whole course of these

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Table 6.2 Works Programmed by Viotti in the Opera Concert, 1795, Previously Heard in the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau, 1789–92 Work

Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeaua

Opera Concert, 1795

Gluck, overture Iphigenia in Aulide Vogel, overture Démophone Cherubini, vocal quartetc

2.2.1792;b 26.3.1792

23.2.; 27.4.

24.4., 2.6.1791; 26.3.1792 34 performances, 1790–92

3.3.; 16.3.; 1.6. 14.4.; (1.6.)d

a

Information from Aaad, 1791, 1792. This is only a sampling of performances of the two overtures in concerts at the Théâtre Feydeau; it is more than likely that there were others. Curiously, Cherubini had also composed an Ifigenia in Aulide (premièred in Turin, 12 January 1788), and a Démophone (Paris Opéra, 2 December 1788). But Viotti’s first allegiance was to his theater—Vogel’s Démophone, premièred posthumously at the Opéra in 1789, proved much more successful than Cherubini’s. b The review in Aaad, 4 February 1792, reports that the Gluck overture was encored by popular demand. c This, almost certainly, was the quartet, “Cara da voi dipende,” inserted in Anfossi’s I Viaggiatori felice, which had been such a success, both popular and d’estime, at the Théâtre de Monsieur. See above, chapter 4, p. 146. It was sung by Rafinelli, Rovedino, Viganoni, and Morichelli, two of whom, Rovedino and Morichelli, sang it in London in 1795, with Brida and Morelli. d The quartet was originally programmed for this concert, but by 26 May it had been dropped from the advertised program. See Landon 1976, 310, 312–13.

Concerts.”116 His choice of programs, while it may reflect to some extent his personal taste, must surely have been based on his assessment of the tastes of his English audience, leavened by the knowledge of what had been successful in the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau, both in the operas and in the concerts. Three works that had pleased listeners in his Parisian theater he programmed repeatedly now in London (see table 6.2). One genre of music was conspicuously absent from the Opera Concert: the string quartet. Haydn had composed his six quartets op. 71 and op. 74 in late 1793 especially for London audiences, and Salomon performed two of them in the 1794 Hanover Square series. It seems likely that the composer and his interpreter would have wanted to continue to present these works in 1795. That Viotti decided not to was a symptom of the general decline in the popularity of string quartets in London public concerts in the 1790s, despite the presence of Haydn.117 At any rate, Viotti’s choice of repertory and performers proved to be a winning combination: the season was sold out. Said the Morning Chronicle of the seventh concert (27 April), “The Room, though the largest in London, was crowded. No wonder, the musical powers of all Europe are at present there collected.”118 Viotti played a concerto in two benefits in 1795: Haydn’s, on 4 May, and Dragonetti’s, four days later. According to the eminent Haydn scholar, H. C. Robbins Landon, Haydn’s concert “was the big event of the season, [. . .] perhaps the greatest concert of Haydn’s life.”119 His Symphony no. 104, the last of his “London” symphonies, and his cantata, Scena di Bernice, composed for and


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sung by Banti, were performed for the first time. Haydn wrote in his notebook: “The whole company was thoroughly pleased, and so was I. I made four thousand Gulden on this evening. Such a thing is only possible in England.”120 There was apparently only one review, which praised Haydn’s music, but made no mention of the other pieces. After Dragonetti’s benefit on 8 May, Viotti played at the ninth Opera Concert on 18 May, his last known public performance in 1795, though he was probably present for the two extra concerts on 21 May and 1 June. In 1795 he did not give a benefit concert.

The Wine Business, Gillwell, the King’s Theatre Now, after three seasons of intensive and very public activity, Viotti drops from the public eye almost entirely, just as he had done in Paris, this time for almost eighteen months. His name is no longer to be found in the ranks of the King’s Theatre, either as an administrator or as a musician, though the opera season continued as before, as did the Opera Concert, under the name, for the 1796 series only, of the Academy of Music. In his Précis, written on 23 March 1798, Viotti gives what is, on the face of it, a reasonable explanation: Living thus in the bosom of friendship [with the Chinnerys], I was, however, frustrated by the pursuit of my career [contrarié par l’exercice de mon talent], and the irritation it caused me made me decide to renounce it and to follow another path. I informed my friend [William Chinnery], he approved, and we agreed that I should collect all of my small fortune, put it into business, and establish myself as a wine merchant. Viotti goes on to say that his business partner was Mr. Charles Smith, “with whom I invested [confondû ] all that I possessed, and with whom I lived peaceably for fourteen months.” If Viotti was associated with Smith as early as January 1797 (fourteen months previous to the Précis), it could mean that during part of 1796 he was laying the groundwork for his entrance into the wine business. It should not surprise us that Viotti was persuaded to go into business. Many of his friends had done so. In London, Clementi, Dussek, and Da Ponte had entered the publishing business, Kelly the wine trade; in Paris, Pleyel, Cherubini, Rode, Kreutzer, Jean-Georges Sieber, and Imbault had gone into publishing, or were about to. To go into trade not only bid fair to provide a secure living, more secure than the music profession could normally offer, but also, perhaps particularly in England, was a thoroughly respectable thing to do. Charles Smith had been a wine merchant since at least as early as 1794.121 According to the Survey of London, he was a rate payer at 3 Duke Street from 1797 until 1820. This address, now John Adam Street, between Villiers and Buckingham streets, where Viotti says he lived for fourteen months from about January 1797, was near the Adelphi complex of buildings just off the Strand.122

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At the same time, with these words from his Précis quoted above, Viotti has made explicit his apparent dislike of public, as opposed to private performing. The concerts at the Chinnery home on Mortimer Street were by now well established—they had got underway at least as early as 1794, as we have seen— and Viotti was very much a part of them. On about 13 July 1795 Margaret Chinnery wrote to her husband in Bristol: Yesterday we had the Sunday Party [evidently the regular day had been changed from Wednesday]. The Morichelli’s came, Cimador & Bianchi were absent on account of colds and Sir Peter Burrell & Mr Bigge were the only people who came in the evening. Clementi played three or four Sonatas & certainly I never heard him play so well—they performed the overture to the Frascatana, twice, & Morichelli sang the two best arias in the Opera—I do not think you will see Morichelli again, as they propose leaving London on Saturday or very early Sunday. [. . .] Amico was all attention the whole Day, that he took every possible care that I should not have the least Trouble or Difficulty, & was so obliging as to find Conversation at Supper for Sir Peter Burrell until 2 o’clock in the morning when Sir Peter & Mr Bigge took their leave. The Dutchess of Hamilton & Miss Muir sent me their cards last Friday, of course I imagine they mean to be invited for next Sunday, which I shall not fail to do this evening.123 These lines give us something of the flavor of the Chinnery musical parties, which consisted of “dinner for a select few, followed by music beginning at about nine, followed by a substantial supper at midnight.”124 William Chinnery, who played the cello, normally participated in the music making, as did Viotti, although in the period December 1794 to June 1795 his responsibilities at the King’s Theatre would have left him little time to spare. Paisiello’s La Frascatana was one of the most popular opere buffe in the repertory since its première in Venice in 1774. Morichelli had sung the role of Violante in the thirty-four performances given at the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau, and at the revival at the King’s Theatre in June 1794, when it was performed only once, though apparently Morichelli had been liked. The overture would have been played by whatever musicians were present, including Viotti and Clementi, and presumably, a few others not mentioned by Margaret. We cannot know which of his sonatas Clementi played; as to what sort of piano he played them on, it would appear that it was a Broadwood (probably grand) piano that William Chinnery had bought in 1793 (see appendix 10). There can be little doubt that Margaret Chinnery would have had the most up-to-date concert instrument of the best quality in her music room. Worthy of note is Viotti’s willingness and ability to “find” conversation (of course, it would have been in French) for Sir Peter125 until two in the morning,


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whether or not it was to his liking. Margaret’s remarks about Viotti reveal that he is already taking the role of host, not to say that of husband, in William’s absence. His solicitousness for Margaret is by now a natural expression of his place in the lives of the Chinnerys, who are now scarcely thirty years old, ten years his junior. At this distance it is difficult to assess the degree of impropriety this ménage à trois represented at the time. One of their friends, Lord Glenbervie, later made insinuations, but there seems to have been no hint of scandal, even when, in 1812, William Chinnery moved to the Continent permanently, leaving Viotti and Margaret living together. Furthermore, many letters between Viotti and William, and from both men to others, testify to their remaining affectionate and steadfast friends until Viotti’s death in 1824. Not long after this Sunday party, Clementi dedicated to his hostess three sonatas for piano with violin and cello accompaniment, published 1798–ca. 1800. These Clementi had arranged from the first three of Viotti’s set of six cello “duets concertanti,” WIV:37–42, which he, in turn, had dedicated to John Crosdill.126 Crosdill (1755–1825), a pupil of Jean-Pierre Duport’s (the elder of the Duport brothers), had been active as a soloist and orchestral player in London, but retired from public playing in about 1787, having married into wealth. He was the Prince of Wales’s cello teacher, as well as William Chinnery’s, and was a close friend of Viotti’s, and an habitué of the Chinnery musical parties. Evidence has recently been uncovered showing that at least some of the musicians who sang and played at the Chinnery concerts were paid. William’s account at Drummonds Bank shows several withdrawals over the period 1793 to 1809 for payments to musicians (as well as music teachers): Salomon, Janiewicz, Crosdill, Philippe Libon, Francesco Bianchi and Mrs. Bianchi, Paolo Spagnoletti, François Dizi, Luigi Asioli, and the Chevalier La Cainea, to mention only those who have been identified (see appendix 10). Further evidence, albeit jaundiced, comes from the oboist William Parke: When I played the principal oboe and concertos at Salomon’s popular concerts at Hanover Square, in the year 1796, Salomon, on one of the nights, said to me, “Mr. Chinnery has requested me to say, that he will be glad if you will perform at his concert on Sunday evening next. You will meet your old friend Crosdill there, Viotti, and myself; and he begged me to add, that as it will be on a Sunday night, when there is nothing to do, he will pay you one guinea.” Feeling indignant at the proposition, I replied,—“What would you think of me if I were to play for a person so situated in life as Mr. Chinnery is, for one guinea, when you, a brother professor, pay me three?”127 On the other hand, some musicians, especially string players, may have considered it an honor to be asked to make music with Viotti, while others, such as Clementi, Crosdill, and Dragonetti, were close friends, and on an equal footing socially and musically with Viotti. Elsewhere in his memoirs, Parke reveals a

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certain antipathy to Viotti, and to William Chinnery. This excerpt reveals, at any rate, that Chinnery had the reputation of being a man well situated. It was in the autumn of 1796 that the Chinnery family left Mortimer Street to live year-round at Gillwell, their country home in a seventy-acre estate near Waltham Abbey, Essex, on the edge of Epping Forest, twelve miles (a two-anda-half-hour coach ride) from London (see figures 6.1 and 6.2).128 Viotti may have devoted some time helping prepare the house for full-time occupancy. It was particularly at Gillwell that visitors began to notice that William Chinnery appeared to be living beyond the means of a clerk of the Treasury, even that of chief clerk, which post he filled from 1799. He indulged his passion for ancient vases, over the years amassing a large and valuable collection, and the Chinnery evening parties were acquiring a reputation for lavishness. Viotti was occupied for at least some of the time in 1796 with composing and publication of his works. In July his trios, WIII:7–9 (for the usual combination of two violins and cello) were published in London. They were dedicated to J[oseph] C[haplin] Hankey, a banker, whose banking partner and relation, Richard Hankey, was the last president of the Anacreontic Society, a concert organization run by bankers and merchants in the City.129 A month later, Viotti sold the rights of publication in France of these works and his Concerto no. 20, and arrangements of the trios for piano, to Ignace Pleyel, recently turned publisher in Paris. Viotti signed the contract on 19 August 1796, giving as his address, “rue Edward Street, Cavendish Square au No 27.”130 (Apparently he

Figure 6.2. Gillwell House (Photograph by the author).


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had moved the two blocks west from his address of 1794 at Wells and Charles streets—closer to Cavendish Square, but further way from the Chinnery residence at 5 Mortimer Street. It seems likely that he remained here until the move to Gillwell, when, from early in 1797 until he was forced to leave England in March 1798, he and William lodged with Charles Smith in Duke Street during the week, going to Gillwell for the weekends.) Within a few weeks, Baillot wrote from Paris to his friend François de Montbeillard that “we have also played some new manuscript trios by Viotti, at Pleyel’s place.”131 No doubt Pleyel was eager to have an advance hearing of these works to whet appetites for their publication. Sometime in the autumn of 1796, Viotti wrote to Luigi Boccherini in Madrid, asking him for some 120 manuscript works that Boccherini had sent to Monsieur Boulogne in about 1790, and which Viotti had played in Boulogne’s home in Paris. Boulogne’s copies of these works had in the meantime apparently been lost, and Viotti now wished to buy them from the composer, possibly with a view to publishing them in London. Boccherini, however, “refused it to him because it did not seem to me that Viotti had either right or justice on his side in making this request of me.”132 One gets the impression that Viotti was casting about for ways to earn money, though it is also true that he would have wanted these works for his own use. One musical event that Viotti was likely to have attended in 1796 was Dragonetti’s benefit on 8 June, not only because his friend “Drago,” as he was affectionately known, played a concerto but also because George Bridgetower, now seventeen years old, played a concerto by Viotti. Bridgetower had studied with François-Hippolyte Barthélemon (1741–1808) for a time in London, but came under the influence of Viotti, if not actually taking lessons from him. The memoirist Charlotte Papendiek, who knew the boy well, reports that he “improved greatly from [Viotti], whose style appeared to suit him, for Bridgetower had always been remarkable for his elegant and bold manner of drawing the bow.”133 According to Samuel Wesley, Bridgetower “practiced much” with Viotti, and “imbibed largely of his bold and spirited style of execution.”134 Besides Bridgetower, other violinists continued to play Viotti’s concertos occasionally through the 1790s, including Madame Gillberg, already mentioned, Madame Gautherot, in a symphonie concertante by Viotti, with Mlle Larrivée, and Master Baux, scarcely six years old, who played a concerto by Viotti twice in 1794. The vacuum left by Viotti’s absence from the London public musical scene in 1796 was filled—with alacrity, one imagines—by others. The position of acting manager at the King’s Theatre had passed to one Antoine le Texier. Cramer continued as orchestra leader for the operas and the concerts in the King’s Theatre Room, the direction of which was assumed by Giornovichi, who was also the “First Solo Player.” Viotti’s pupil “Lebon” was listed among the solo instrumentalists.135 Janiewicz was the featured solo violinist of Salomon’s Concert,

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now revived. Between them, Giornovichi and Janiewicz played concertos about twenty times in 1796, including benefit concerts. At the end of the year, however, Viotti reentered the arena: the Morning Chronicle of 23 November announced the opening of the King’s Theatre opera season on the twenty-sixth, with Viotti as “Leader of the Band and Director of the Orchestra”; for the Opera Concert he held the same position.136 He thus replaced Cramer,137 and, at a stroke, the London careers of both Giornvichi and Janiewicz were cut off. Giornovichi left England after the 1796 season and never returned; Janiewicz left London to pursue his career in other parts of Great Britain, eventually settling in Liverpool and Edinburgh, though later he was a colleague of Viotti’s in the Philharmonic Society in London. We cannot know why Viotti did not resume his former position as acting manager. In the rather shady behind-the-scenes jockeying for positions, it was now Michael Kelly who filled that position. It was perhaps just as well for Viotti—the complicated and dubious financial manoeuvrings of William Taylor had almost brought the theater to its knees. At the end of the 1797 season, we read in the Monthly Mirror that “the manager enjoys a snug sinecure, so the poor fiddlers and figurantes may be clamorous in vain for their salaries—his person is secure!!! The expences of this house, we are told, exceed the receipts by many thousands annually.”138 Apparently, some salaries were not paid, though it may be supposed that Viotti would have been among those having priority. His salary as leader at the Italian Opera was £300 for the season, as Cramer’s before him had been, and Salomon’s after him.139 Of the eleven operas given in 1796–97 (the season ended on 29 July 1797), one, Sarti’s Le Gelosie Villane, was thoroughly familiar to Viotti—he had probably played it in the Teatro Carignano in his youth (1778), and it had been performed twenty-eight times in his theater in Paris. Another, Paisiello’s Nina, o sia la pazza per l’amore, first performed 27 April 1797 and given nine times, would have brought back rather uncomfortable memories of the embarrassment it had caused Viotti over authors’ rights in Paris. Two of the operas, Il Consiglio Imprudente and Merope, were by Bianchi, who would have presided at the harpsichord for the first three performances of each. On stage, with Viotti now in the orchestra below, were the familiar faces and voices of Banti (but not Morichelli, who, as Margaret Chinnery has told us, left England in July 1795), Rovedino, and Morelli, joined by Nancy Storace and two new tenors, the young Englishman John Braham, and Giuseppe Viganoni, one of the mainstays of Viotti’s theater in Paris. Viganoni had joined the King’s Theatre in the previous season, and sang in all but one of the operas produced in 1797. He remained with the King’s Theatre until 1805. Viotti, we must remember, had had very little if any experience leading an orchestra. He may have led, briefly, the orchestra of Prince Guemené, which in any case would have been no more than a quarter the size of the King’s Theatre group, and before that he may have led the orchestra in Geneva in 1780, though


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his role there may have been purely that of soloist, with Imbault leading. This was the first time in his life, so far as we know, that he had led an opera orchestra, which, particularly in the eighteenth century, was quite a different thing from leading a concert orchestra, partly because of the shared leadership with the harpsichordist (Federici, who was now back in harness). An anonymous, undated pen and wash portrait of Viotti (see figure 6.3) raises tantalizing questions. He is shown standing, in formal attire, as if readying himself for a performance, with his bow in his right hand (the old-style convex bow contradicts the received wisdom that Viotti was in the forefront of developments to the bow), a rather thick, bound volume in his left hand, and, surprisingly, without his violin. Could it have been intended as a portrait of

Figure 6.3. Pen and wash portrait of Viotti by an unknown artist (© Copyright the Trustees of The British Museum; Object Number 1944, 1014.636).

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Viotti as a conductor? If so, it constitutes precious concrete evidence for him in this role. Orchestral violinists, including the leader, would normally play from an unbound orchestral part, whether printed or manuscript, not from a thick, bound volume. The bound volume, if it is some kind of (operatic?) score, would be cumbersome and impractical on a violinist’s music stand, but perfectly usable on a flat or nearly flat conductor’s stand. For the 1796–97 and 1797–98 opera seasons, and for the Opera Concerts in 1797 and 1798, Viotti was announced as “Leader of the Band and Director of the Orchestra.”140 Taken literally, the wording suggests something more than merely “Leader of the Band,” which had been the phrase invariably used in previous seasons, both for operas and concerts. Is it not possible that he stood to conduct, with his bow, the operas if not the concerts? The absence of a violin is otherwise difficult to explain. Against all of this, however, is the fact that such a departure from normal practice would surely have been remarked upon in the reviews. Viotti was announced as the composer of music for a ballet, Apollon Berger, first performed on 27 December 1796 and given twelve times, and revived in 1803.141 This work is not listed in the thematic catalogue of Viotti’s works. Since the ballet was announced as “composed” by Gallet, the ballet master of the King’s Theatre, it is evident that the work was a pastiche put together by Gallet, including a piece or pieces by Viotti or arrangements thereof, for orchestra, just as had been done at the Paris Opéra in the late 1790s and early 1800s. One of these pieces, indeed, was “the favorite Pas de Trois danced [. . .] in the Ballet of Apollon Berger,” arranged from the second movement of Concerto no. 5, published in an arrangement (theme and three variations) for piano in about 1798.142 The Opera Concert in 1797 followed the same format as previously: twelve concerts on Monday evenings. The subscription price was 5 guineas. Salomon, who was listed with Viotti as one of the two violin soloists, “having joined this Undertaking, will furnish, for the use of the Concert, the original MS GRAND SYMPHONIES of Haydn, which were formerly performed at his Concert, in Hanover-Square.” For Viotti, the difference, of course, from his previous directorship of the series, is that now, in addition to playing concertos in at least five of the concerts (the programs of the sixth and eighth concerts are not known), including a “new” concerto at the ninth concert on 8 May, he leads the orchestra in all of them. As in 1795, Viotti selected the programs, using the King’s Theatre singers and instrumentalists. Proven favorites, Haydn’s “Grand Military” Symphony, no. 100, the Cherubini vocal quartet, and the Gluck overture, were given and repeated, but Viotti also presented two or three novelties, notably an overture by Cherubini, possibly the Lodoiska overture, which also was repeated. Among the solo instrumentalists were the brilliant, eccentric pianist, Daniel Steibelt, the harpist Madame Krumpholtz, and Dragonetti. The first concert, at which Viotti played a concerto, was on 6 February. The reviewer of the Morning Chronicle was pleased with Viotti’s leadership of the


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orchestra, but says nothing about his performance of his concerto: “Such an union of talents was never witnessed in any exhibition; and the force and character which VIOTTI gave to the Band rendered it most truly interesting.”143 Viotti also participated in three benefit concerts in 1797: he was the “director” of the concert of Agus on 23 March, he played a duet with Salomon at the latter’s concert on 1 May, and at Dragonetti’s benefit on 29 May he played a concerto and one of his violin duets with the extraordinary Dragonetti playing one of the parts on the double bass (readers who are double bassists will have to argue among themselves as to how many octaves down, if any, Dragonetti transposed the original). By now Drago was an habitué at Gillwell. Margaret wrote to William from Gillwell (on a “nasty” winter’s Friday morning early in 1797, “so dark at ½ past 7 that I fear I cannot put out my light”) that “Amico and Drago send you a great many good wishes & are, they say, impatient for tomorrow Evening that you may be here again.”144 A few years later, at any rate before September 1804, after a private concert in London given by the Portuguese ambassador, we are told that Viotti and Dragonetti engaged in a friendly contest, each trying to outdo the other with ever more difficult variations improvised on a tarantella melody. Eventually Viotti admitted defeat: “What can one do? He has the Devil in his body or in his double bass!”145 An indication of Viotti’s friendship with Dragonetti is a letter, almost certainly in Viotti’s hand, to an unidentified, highly placed “Madame” (“Votre Altesse”), written on Dragonetti’s behalf concerning a misunderstanding that had arisen over the double bassist’s fees for playing in concerts directed by Sapio.146 As for Viotti’s participation in the Agus benefit concert, there were two violinists named Agus, probably father and son; in the present case it probably was the former, Giuseppe (ca. 1725–1803), who played in the second violin section at the King’s Theatre.147 No other evidence of a connection with Viotti, nor of why Viotti should have lent his services, has come to light. Apparently, however, Agus, now elderly, had fallen on hard times—he was awarded a “grant for hardship” by the Royal Society of Musicians, of which he was a member.148 Viotti was no doubt simply helping out a colleague in need. A letter from Viotti to William and Margaret at Gillwell, written in ca. January 1797, presumably from Duke Street, provides a snapshot of Viotti’s daily life in this period. He begins by thanking Margaret for some velvet that she has sent: “I’ve chosen a green suit, and now I don’t know if the black collar will match; we’ll see about that tomorrow.” Viotti was known for his sartorial elegance, and he relies on Margaret’s advice in this area.149 Then, “Where the Devil has Gastaldo [one of Viotti’s names for William] got the idea that I’m having a good time dining out and partying here and there? Except for a day at Mrs Kingsman’s, to whom I wanted to speak about my bottles, the rest of the time has been in taverns black as chimneys where I ate my soup after very tiring rehearsals.” Then, after pretending to be angry with the Chinnerys for “mocking” him, he alludes to their friendship: “You say not to speak any more

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about my little present that you wish to give me? Oh, no, I won’t leave it at that, I want to have it, and whatever comes from my good friends, friends whom I love, gives me more pleasure than all the jewels of Greece,150 even if it’s only a pin.” Then, as if he has just looked at the clock, “I must leave you now, my dear companions, my rehearsal awaits—I must go to it.” He closes with the thought that “tomorrow, thank the Lord who has made Sundays, I too will enjoy the country air,” and “a hug for the little puppets” (George and Caroline are now five years old, Walter, three).151 If Viotti indeed wrote this letter on 7 January (which was a Saturday in 1797), it would have been opera rehearsals that were so tiring, as the Opera Concert did not begin until a month later. It was a busy time at the King’s Theatre— Paisiello’s La Modista Raggiratrice opened on that same evening, Sacchini’s Evelina three days later, 10 January. The rehearsal that interrupted his letter (a morning rehearsal?) would not, we hope, have tired Viotti and his colleagues unduly for the opening that evening. Viotti’s protestations about the gift are entirely typical. His friendship was intense, demanding, but we have seen, and we shall see, that while he expected much, he gave no less in return. It is extraordinary to think of the celebrated Viotti, in the midst of rehearsals and performances, paying a business visit to Mrs. Kingsman (clearly a customer)—to negotiate a wine consignment? This was very early in Viotti’s career as a merchant. Increasingly, around the turn of the century, he was acquiring friends and contacts in the higher reaches of English society. He and his partner would have found this useful. Viotti’s charm and polished manners would not have been a hindrance with the sort of people who drank wine, at least good wine. We have no details as to the wine trade he conducted in association with Charles Smith, except for an allusion in his Précis to a letter he had written to a man in Dijon, “asking him for some wine from Burgundy and Champagne. Mr. Smith dictated the letter to me and it was sent with his consent.” This letter Viotti would have sent sometime between 1796 and March 1798, when he left England, a time of hostilities between England and France on land and on sea. It is difficult to understand how Smith (who was, after all, an experienced wine dealer), managed to import wine from France under these circumstances. Already since the outbreak of war in 1793 there were restrictions on trade between France and Britain. The English government introduced a series of crippling duties on imported French wines, notably in 1795, 1796, 1803, and 1804, resulting in a drastic reduction in consumption, at least of “legal” wine. After England began its blockade of France in 1803, and Napoleon retaliated with the Continental Blockade in November 1806, smuggling was surely resorted to. The only alternative was clandestine import-export licences, usually involving bribes, permitted by Napoleon, by which items such as wine were exported from France and products needed by France were imported.152 To give an idea of Viotti’s professional commitments in 1797, a schedule of all those known in the month of May appears in table 6.3.


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Table 6.3 Viotti’s Professional Commitments in May 1797 Date

Event

Monday, 1 May Tuesday, 2 May Saturday, 6 May Monday, 8 May Tuesday, 9 May Thursday, 11 May Saturday, 13 May Monday, 15 May Tuesday, 16 May Thursday, 18 May

Salomon’s benefit (violin duet) KT, Nina (Paisiello) KT, Nina Opera Concert (new concerto) KT, L’Albero di Diana (Martin y Soler) KT, Nina, benefit for the dancer Mme Hilligsberg KT, Nina Opera Concert (new concerto as on 8 May) Nina KT Alceste (Gluck), “Benefit for the Widows and Orphans of the Brave men who perished, and for those who were wounded, in the Glorious Action on the 14th of February last [off Cape St. Vincent], under Admiral Sir John Jervis.” KT, Nina Opera Concert KT, Alceste, with “the favourite song with the violin obligato, [sung by] Mme Banti.” There is no song with violin obbligato in Alceste. This surely was Guglielmi’s aria from Debora e Sisara, which Banti had introduced with such success into Bianchi’s Semiramide, and for which Viotti played the obbligato in the 1797–98 season. In any case, it would have been Viotti who played the obbligato on this occasion. KT, Gli Schiavi per Amore (Paisiello), benefit for the dancer Mlle Parisot KT, L’Albero di Diana Dragonetti’s benefit (Viotti duet for violin and double bass, concerto) (No performance. A masked ball was held at the KT)

Saturday, 20 May Monday, 22 May Tuesday, 23 May

Thursday, 25 May Saturday, 27 May Monday, 29 May Tuesday, 30 May

KT = King’s Théâtre. Information regarding the Opera Concert from McVeigh 2006, 118–19; regarding the King’s Theatre, from Hogan, ed., 1968, 1959–70. It is possible that Viotti was not expected to play in the three Thursday evening benefit performances.

The next season at the King’s Theatre, 1797–98, opened regularly on 28 November. The announcement was almost a carbon copy of the previous year’s. Mr. Kelly was now styled “Director and Manager of the Entertainments,” all the lead singers returned, Signor Bianchi was again the composer, at the harpsichord was Mr. Federici, and leader of the band and director of the orchestra was again Signor Viotti.153 One of the highlights of the season was a revival of Bianchi’s Semiramide; o, la Vendetta di Nino. The Morning Chronicle reported on the day after the second performance, on 9 January, that “the charming air, the composition of Guglielmi, was introduced [that is, it was a substitution aria], and accompanied on the violin by Mr. Viotti, with exquisite delicacy and taste: it was admirably sung by Banti, who was in full voice.”154 According to Mount

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Edgcumbe, confirmed by newspaper reviews, this violin obbligato had been “originally played by Cramer [in 1794, 1795, and1796], afterward by Viotti, Salomon [beginning in 1798, after Viotti went into exile], and [Charles] Weichsel [who replaced Salomon as leader in 1802; at the end of the 1802 season Banti retired].” The song, “A compir, già vò l’impresa,” from Guglielmi’s oratorio, Debora e Sisara, “though long and of great exertion, was so great a favorite that it never failed of being encored.”155 Viotti presumably played the obbligato the five times the opera was given in January and February 1798. The Right Honorable William Windham, the secretary for war, attended the opera on 9 December 1797 and saw the ballet Ariadne et Bacchus. “We have advanced to the point of seeing people dance naked,” he wrote in his diary.156 Viotti, if he saw this ballet, would have done so from the wings or from a box, since he did not play for the ballets. On Tuesday, 23 January 1798, Viotti wrote to “L’Illustrissima Signora Distintissima Parona”:157 I believe, dear Signora Parona, that you haven’t given me any other errands, beyond going to Gillwell tomorrow? [. . .] to tell the truth I cannot deprive my dear carcass of having a little fresh air, if my affairs allow me. What did you do yesterday? Did our good friend [WBC] play well? I hope if he scraped [“raclé,” that is, on the cello] that he did it without much pleasure—I don’t like him enjoying himself in that way when I’m not with him. I would have given anything to go and be with you all! Instead, I was burdened with three long hours of rehearsal, and even worse, afterwards I had a detestable dinner at our place [Duke Street] which lasted until three in the morning, and Smith and I were bored beyond endurance. Kelly, Mrs Crouch,158 another very ugly lady whom I don’t know, Viganoni and Drago were the company. Everything went well except I wished they had left five or six hours earlier. I forgot to tell you that Mrs Crouch brought her sister’s daughter, 4 H years old, and that this poor child stayed without sleeping until the above-mentioned abominable hour. [. . .] Did Rode stay with you?159 The three-hour rehearsal was undoubtedly for Martín y Soler’s La Scola dei Maritati, which opened on the twenty-third. We can imagine Viotti, Kelly, Dragonetti, and Viganoni, who was the lead tenor in the production, making their way to Duke Street from the Haymarket, not an unduly long walk, on a bracing January evening. The dinner conversation was surely conducted in French. Viotti and Viganoni had many memories in common from Paris with which to amuse, or enthral the ladies, but they may have been too tired from the rehearsal to make the effort. Perhaps Kelly, who, to judge from his Reminiscences, was a raconteur of the pure Irish stamp, regaled the company with stories of Mozart in Vienna; perhaps, indeed, fortified by a good Burgundy from the


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Duke Street cellar, he went on for too long, Viotti the while looking disapprovingly at Mrs. Crouch, and wanting to go to bed. Her much vaunted “loveliness and gentle demeanour” and “extraordinary personal charms”160 would have counted for nothing. Charles Smith remains somewhat shadowy in the ViottiChinnery correspondence. Apparently a close friend, often present, though very little is said about him, generous to a degree with his house, he was the eminence gris of Viotti’s ill-fated wine venture, and in the end his friendship with Viotti dissolved with the business. Pierre Rode, Viotti’s favorite pupil, was indeed at Gillwell. Sailing from Hamburg to France, after a tour of the Low Countries and Germany with the singer Pierre Garat, begun in late 1795, he had been forced to England’s shores by a storm, according to the early biographers.161 He played at a benefit concert for the New Musical Fund on 22 February 1798, at which the audience was small and unappreciative.162 It was not a propitious time for a non-émigré Frenchman, however talented, to be in London.163 But the master and his pupil would have had much to talk about. Rode would have brought Viotti the Parisian news—in particular of Madame de Montgéroult, with whom Rode and Baillot were friendly (Baillot reported in 1796 that she had gone to her country home—she had survived the Terror and apparently had recovered from her experience of 1793—and that Rode had written to her from Hamburg).164 Viotti would have been eager to hear news of Cherubini (according to Fétis, Rode remained in the orchestra of the Théâtre Feydeau, of which Cherubini remained the house composer, until 1794), and of Parisian musical life, especially the concerts and operas at the Feydeau. Rode would have given Viotti detailed, inside information about the newly founded Conservatoire, at which he had been named professor of violin on 22 November 1795. And he would surely have told his former teacher about Robespierre’s Festival of the Supreme Being on 8 June 1794, in which, as orchestrated by the painter Jacques Louis David, the master of ceremonies, 2,400 representatives of the various Parisian sections sang atop an artificial “mountain” in the Champs de Mars, joined in the singing by the massed people below, including schoolchildren. To prepare for this, Rode and his colleagues in the National Institute of Music (the predecessor of the Conservatoire), including the violinist Mathieu-Frédéric Blasius, the composers Jean François Lesueur, Étienne Méhul, François Joseph Gossec, Charles Simon Catel, and François Devienne, Étienne Ozi the bassoonist, François Sallentin the oboist, and Johann-David Hermann the harpsichordist-pianist, had apparently gone out into the various quarters of Paris the night before, from seven to “well after ten” o’clock, to teach the songs, including a hymn by Gossec, to “the people.”165 According to the early sources, Rode had played for Frederick William II in Berlin during his tour.166 The king, though in ailing health by 1796 (he died on 16 November 1797), still enjoyed playing the cello. Fifteen years earlier he had heard and made music with Rode’s teacher and his teacher’s teacher.

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Rode would no doubt also have brought greetings from the queen, Viotti’s dedicatee. The Opera Concert opened on 5 February 1798. Again Viotti was leader of the band and director of the orchestra, and again he selected the programs, adhering to the same successful formula as before, with one noteworthy novelty: a “Grand Overture” (that is, a symphony) by Mozart, played at the first concert, repeated (presumably it was the same piece) at the second on 12 February. Mozart had died a little over six years earlier; his symphonies had not yet attained anything like the popularity of Haydn’s in England, and there had been very few public performances of them in London in the 1790s.167 Viotti may have felt that he was going out on a limb with this piece. He deserves credit for introducing it to the Opera Concert audience, as well as leading the orchestra in its performance. Perhaps he had been persuaded by his friends Giambattista Cimador and Gaetano Bartolozzi, both of whom were fervent admirers of Mozart’s music. Viotti played a concerto in the first two concerts; the Morning Herald praised Viotti’s “great spirit and ability” in leading the orchestra in the first concert, and reported that the Prince of Wales “entered soon after the Concert commenced.”168 In the third concert, along with a Haydn symphony, the familiar and much-loved Gluck overture, concertos played by Steibelt and the bassoonist Holmes, and vocal pieces sung by Viganoni, Signora Angelelli (Mrs. Correr), Rovedino, and Banti, Viotti and Dragonetti played a duet, probably composed by Viotti. This performance, on 19 February 1798, was the last time Viotti played in public for fifteen years, and he never appeared again in public as a concerto soloist. Apparently, however, he continued to act as leader in Bianchi’s Cinna on the evenings of 20, 24, and 27 February. What happened next was unexpected and unfortunate.

Exile Viotti, who, less than six years earlier, had been forced to leave France because of his royalist associations, was ordered to leave England, under the Alien Bill, for alleged Jacobin (revolutionary) activities. Rode was also expelled. Anti-French sentiment in England had reached a peak of hysteria. Since the autumn of 1796 there had been fears of an imminent French invasion, intensified in October 1797 with the appointment of Napoleon as commander-in-chief of the “Army of England.” Up and down the country, above all in London, conspiracies were rumored. There were many arrests. But Viotti seems to have had no warning whatsoever for this blow, beyond the pervasive climate of suspicion in a country at war. He had even made comparatively long-range plans for the future, having apparently been engaged to play at Mrs. Second’s concerts in Dublin at 100 guineas per night.169 On 3 March Salomon took Viotti’s place for the remainder of the season.


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The Times of 5 March 1798 went so far as to say that “Viotti is said formerly to have been in the Republican armies,” an uncharitable and misleading allusion to Viotti having joined the National Guard, as all able-bodied males in France had more or less been expected to do. The same issue of the Times contained a “translation of the Declaration of J. B. Viotti,” the original appearing in at least one French newspaper:170 I have received an order from Government to quit a country which is dear to me, and which I consider as my own.—I obey;—but in declaring to the whole world—to all those who are acquainted with my name, that I go without having to reproach myself with any thought, word, or deed—that I have never interfered in any political affair whatever,—that during the six years I have passed in England I have never written a syllable that either directly or indirectly related to its political concerns, or to those of any other country,—that I have never held any conversation to which the smallest degree of blame could attach,—and in short that I have never frequented any Coffee-house, any Tavern,171 any Club, or any suspected Society. I have testified the above assertion on Oath, and I call the Supreme Being to witness the truth of my declarations. I hope the many respectable persons to whom I am well known, will answer at any time for the purity of my conduct; and my peaceful conscience assures me, that I shall in the end be fully justified. (Signed) J. B. Viotti Denise Yim suggests that this translation “bears the unmistakable stamp of Margaret Chinnery’s turn of phrase.”172 Certainly, Viotti himself could not have written so eloquently in English. But he is eloquent enough on two occasions that we shall examine shortly. Many years later, William Chinnery wrote that George Rose, Senior Secretary of the Treasury in 1783–1801, “in the affair of Amico [. . .] did everything in his power to exasperate Mr Pitt & the Government against me for the part I ‘presumed to take against the Order of the Day.’ ” (The Order of the Day was the government order for Viotti’s expulsion.) Rose, strangely, had apparently been instrumental in procuring for William his clerkship in the Treasury in 1783. According to William, a friend took the part of William and Viotti with Pitt, which silenced Rose.173 But it was not sufficient to prevent the Order from being carried out. On 8 March Viotti sailed from Yarmouth on the packet King George, bound for Hamburg (which, during the wars, was, with Lisbon, the only port open to the English). He would have arrived on 10 or 11 March,174 and he went to live in the village of Schönfeld, near Hamburg, in the home of one Mr. Smith, a wealthy merchant, but certainly not Viotti’s partner Charles Smith.175 Not long after his arrival, on 23 March 1798, Viotti wrote his Précis de la vie de J. B. Viotti depuis son entrée dans le monde jusqu’au 6 mars 1798 (see appendix 3).

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It consists mostly of a brief and fairly straightforward autobiographical sketch. Toward the end, he mounts his defense: “Possessing all that I could wish in England, I have maintained no connections whatsoever with France. I have written only four letters to that country: my friends know of them, and they know that I never received a reply from them.” Viotti then describes the contents of these letters, hoping that it will “serve to dispel any misunderstanding, which is probably the cause of the dreadful misfortune that has befallen me.” The first was a letter to Cherubini, “asking him for all the scores of his masterpieces.” Second was the letter to Dijon, mentioned above. Third and fourth were letters undertaking favors for friends or friends of friends, innocent of political ramifications. Viotti concludes: Perfectly certain of my irreproachable conduct, sustained by hope, I shall await the end of my misfortunes. May it arrive soon, may I soon see again the happy Isle where I left all my affections, where I left all my possessions. Then I will praise the heavens and my liberators, and I shall live ever after as I have always lived as a loyal and faithful subject of His Britannic Majesty. We do not know if this document had any influence with the British authorities, or with the prime minister, William Pitt, for whose eyes it may have been intended. Three months later, on 30 June, Viotti wrote, in French as always, to his former patron, the Prince Dal Pozzo della Cisterna, whom he had not seen for fifteen years. Viotti is moved to tears by his friend Cerruti’s176 assurance that “the compassionate heart of my Benefactor remains unchanged.” He is living in the country, with a rich English merchant, a good and faithful friend: We lead the life of two good farmers; he busies himself with the fields, I work in the gardens. The city rarely sees me. Excepting those days when my wine business (which thank heaven for the care taken by my partner in London proceeds just as if I were there) obliges me to go there, I am never tempted to set foot there. The people we receive here are all good and worthy merchants. For the rest, the letter is a cri de coeur, protesting his innocence. Viotti’s tone is deferential but not obsequious; he is at pains to justify himself and to have the esteem of the prince more than that of anyone else. “My Prince, I am innocent, I have nothing for which to reproach myself, not even an indiscretion. But such was the power of those who wished to bring me down, that a pure and spotless conduct of six years couldn’t save me from [their] traps [pieges] of the blackest maliciousness.” Is Viotti referring here to the jealousy of other musicians in London? Miel says that Viotti was “the victim of a mistake, of which jealousy took advantage.” Fétis, on the other hand, is of the opinion that “the favor extended to Viotti by the Duke of Orléans was at the root of this calumny.”


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Fétis provides no evidence for this supposed association with the Duke of Orléans (who headed a faction opposing his cousin Louis XVI), and no other reference to it exists in the Viotti literature. The only conceivable connection is Madame de Genlis, who was the governess of the duke’s children, but it is not certain that Viotti and Madame de Genlis were acquainted before 1802. Most distressingly of all, Viotti bitterly rejects music and its profession, sentiments we have heard from him before, but here expressed more passionately than ever: “O, my Prince, would that you had granted me your protection to be a good peasant, instead of to acquire a skill! My gratitude and your benevolence would have been the same, and my suffering so much less.” Again: “It is once again this miserable talent that is the cause of my present disgrace.” And again: “I almost never concern myself with music because it has caused me too much pain.”177 What must the prince have felt as he read these lines? He would in any case have had little time for regrets; his own political difficulties were upon him. In 1799 he was exiled to Dijon on the orders of the French Republic, as were several other Torinese noblemen. The prince returned from exile in 1800, to his palace, his wife and children, and his career. No other correspondence between him and his former “suonatore del Principe” survives. Viotti did concern himself with music enough to produce a set of six violin duets (WIV:19–24) during his exile. On the title page of the first printed edition, beautifully designed with an engraving of Viotti after a portrait by George Chinnery, the well-known miniaturist, William’s brother, are the words (in French), “dedicated by the author to Mr. and Mrs. Chinnery. Full of gratitude, I offer this work to friendship. It is the fruit of leisure, which misfortune has brought upon me. Some pieces were dictated by pain, others by hope.” We know, as well, of one pupil who came to Viotti in this period. It is reported that Viotti, “unsolicited and without remuneration,” gave lessons to the thirteen-year-old Friedrich Wilhelm Pixis (1785–1842), who, on tour with his father and pianist brother, was making an extended stop in Hamburg.178 Both brothers went on to enjoy distinguished careers; in 1810 Friedrich Wilhelm became professor of violin at the conservatory and conductor of the theater in Prague. Julian Baux, now ten years old, who played a Viotti concerto in 1794, was also reported to be in Hamburg, where he may have come into contact with Viotti, perhaps even taking lessons from him.179 Hamburg was an open port, crowded with French émigrés, who gravitated to the suburb of Altona, and with travellers on their way from England to various parts of Europe. Among the transient visitors were several of Viotti’s acquaintances, past, present, and future: Madame de Genlis was one of the latter—her visit overlapped with Viotti’s by two weeks, but there is no evidence that they met. Lorenzo Da Ponte arrived in Hamburg in the autumn of 1798 on his way to Italy, and again on his return journey in the spring of 1799. An old acquaintance, G. G. Ferrari, passed through Hamburg in the summer of 1799, on his

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way to his hometown in Italy. Neither he nor Da Ponte make mention in their memoirs of meeting Viotti, though they both undoubtedly knew that the violinist was in the area. Viotti’s old rival, Giornovichi, had been living in the area since 1796. The Hamburg correspondent of the AMZ reported in August 1799 that Viotti and Giornovichi had been in the area the previous winter, but that neither of them had been heard in public concerts.180 Giornovichi’s presence in Hamburg at this time is confirmed by Baillot in a letter to Montbeillard, dated 8 August 1798: “Viotti is staying at a place near Hambourg, where Jarnowick is.”181 There seems to have been no love lost between Viotti and Giornovichi, so they did not necessarily meet. According to the same report in the AMZ, the Romberg cousins, the violinist Andreas and the cellist Bernhard, were in Hamburg at this time. Another musician resident in Hamburg, since 1794, was Antoine Reicha (1770–1836), a friend of Beethoven’s in Bonn, composer, theorist, and pedagogue. According to Fétis, Reicha, while in Hamburg, composed an opera, Godefroid de Montfort, which Pierre Rode conducted in a rehearsal. This would have taken place in 1796–97, before Rode arrived in England.182 Rode would surely have told Viotti about Reicha. Though there is no record of Reicha and Viotti meeting, it seems not unlikely that they did. Viotti and the Chinnerys exchanged letters during his exile, but only two have survived. The first, dated 18 June 1798, Viotti wrote to Walter, now five years old: I assume, my dear Walter, that you are behaving like a big boy, and that you are reading big books, that you are doing your arithmetic well, and skipping well, and that you are doing all your activities well with mama and mamselle [the French governess]. As I believe that you are doing all that, it is only fair that I give you proof of my approval, and that is why I am writing this letter. I hope you will like it, and when mama writes and tells me that you are continuing to be a good boy I shall write another one. Dear Walter, you must take good care of your garden and plant some flowers so that when I return you will be able to give me a pretty bouquet. Are you looking after your violin? You must take good care of it, and your brother George also, so that your amico can show you how to play it. Tell mamselle that I have not forgotten her, embrace papa and mama for me, and keep loving me with all your heart. Your Amico, Viotti183 Margaret Chinnery educated her children at home, according to a strict regimen, in part derived from the precepts of the educationalist Madame de Genlis, whose friend she later became. Viotti participated in these pedagogic activities. Skipping was one of the physical fitness exercises recommended by Madame de Genlis.184 The other letter is addressed to Caroline, dated 8 October 1798:


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I was just composing some pretty little piano sonatas for you, with violin accompaniment, when a letter from your dear mother informed me that you were much neglecting your music. This news was all the more distressing since Mama added that it was your bad temper that was preventing you from making progress! As I am sure that all this will not last very long and that you will soon be your normal sweet amiable self, I shall continue to compose for you, and I shall finish the sonatas so that on my return you may play them for me very nicely and I may have the pleasure of accompanying you. I shall send them to you as soon as I learn from your dear good mother that you have rediscovered your taste for music, for that beautiful and agreeable art that gives so much pleasure to everyone. Adieu my dear Caroline, embrace young Walter for me, remember me to Mamselle, and talk about me often to your excellent Mama and your good Papa. I hope I will soon hear that you still deserve all Amico’s esteem and friendship. J.B. Viotti Your letter gave me great pleasure, and I thank you for it.185 This is the Viotti who laments his disenchantment with music, in his letters and in his Précis, and yet one feels that his words of encouragement to the seven-year-old Caroline are sincere. We note as well that Viotti takes a fatherly role in these two letters, participating in Margaret’s carefully regulated, rigorous education of her children. He promises a reward for good behaviour, but also threatens, however gently, to withhold the reward if Caroline continues to misbehave.186 It is not known when or precisely how Viotti obtained permission to return to England. William Chinnery would have done everything in his power, using his influence at the Treasury, to persuade the authorities of Viotti’s innocence. Mr. Coleman Macgregor, the British Consul to Tenerife, to whom Viotti consigned his Précis in Hamburg,187 may have interceded, as well as Mr. Liston, Viotti’s acquaintance from Berlin days, now the ambassador in Washington, whom Viotti may have asked for help. Sir Charles William Flint, a close friend of the Chinnerys’ and of Viotti’s, and George Chinnery’s godfather, was Superintendent of Aliens at this time, but no record has come to light of an intervention on his part. According to the AMZ article cited above, Viotti had left the area by August of 1799.188 Between then and April 1801, his whereabouts are unknown, though as early as February 1800 we read in the Oracle that “VIOTTI, the famous violin, is said to be in England, incog. the worst of all states for a Musician, who ought at least to be heard, if not seen.”189

chapter seven

Gillwell, Paris, Oxford, London, ca. 1800–1812

Country Life Viotti stated in his Précis of March 1798 that, “frustrated by the pursuit of my career,” he had decided to renounce the music profession to become a wine merchant. In fact, though he had ceased to play in public for a year (1796), he then resumed a full schedule of solo and orchestral performing in 1797 and 1798 right up to the time he was exiled in March. One wonders whether, on his return from exile ( perhaps as early as the autumn of 1799), he would have continued to play in public had the political, social, and cultural situation in London been more propitious.1 It has been pointed out that there was a “marked decline in the vitality of London’s musical life” toward 1800, due partly to the hardships caused by the war with France, and partly to the departure of Haydn in 1795.2 At any rate, Viotti now retired completely from public life for about twelve years. It must have been very shortly after returning to England from exile that Viotti received a letter (which has not survived) asking him to become the teacher of Ludwig Spohr (b. 5 April 1784). Spohr relates in his autobiography that Viotti refused the request, since “he had become a wine merchant” and “occupied himself but seldom with music, and therefore could not receive any pupils.”3 The first certain evidence of Viotti’s return to England is to be found in Margaret’s education journal,4 in a “daily study plan,” dated 4 April 1801, a detailed, hour-by-hour program of study for her three children and at least one other child, a certain Maria Philipps,5 who lived at Gillwell. The children rose at 6 A.M. When weather did not permit gardening, Caroline spent the half-hour from 7:30 to 8 A.M. practicing difficult passages (des traits) at the piano, then, 224


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after breakfast, at 8:30, she was again to spend an hour at the piano. Below is the afternoon program, in which Margaret twice mentions Viotti as directly and individually participating in the education of Walter and Caroline: Lunch at 12 noon, and at 12:15 I begin readings with the older children until 1:15. Walter [now almost eight years old] in the meantime reads with Amico and learns his lesson. At 1:15 we all join together. For 10 minutes exercise with the hottes,6 which takes us to 1:25 & that will leave us until 2:30—one full hour which we will use as follows. Three times a week they will write. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, one hour under my supervision [sous mes yeux]. The other days Caroline will spend this entire hour at composition & preluding with Amico; and the boys at reciting poems and speeches with me—washing and dressing [la toilette] and dinner [to be completed by four o’clock].7 Caroline (she and George are now nine years old) had her daily piano lesson and voice lesson with her mother from 5 to 6 P.M. The evening hours were occupied with botany, mathematics, Roman history, mythology, religious instruction, and conversation until supper at eight P.M., and to bed at 8:30. Walter’s lesson with Viotti would have involved reading aloud from a French or Italian text, and writing a text dictated by Viotti. Viotti was largely in charge of Walter’s education, with the result that Walter was more fluent in French and Italian than in English.8 It would appear from the above that until Viotti’s former King’s Theatre colleague, Francesco Bianchi, appeared on the scene, Viotti taught Caroline composition, as well as coaching her in the art of improvising ( preluding). Caroline would already have had a good grounding in music theory from her mother. We know from a letter Viotti wrote to Margaret that he preferred not to teach theory, at least in the early stages: “Are you looking after George? Does he remember some of the musical notes? Take care of this, please, since I believe that that is the only thing I would not be able to teach him, for the rest I am confident [that I can].”9 By the time of her tenth birthday, 3 September 1801, Caroline had learned all the rules of composition and accompaniment, could write musical scores for two, three, or four instruments, and had mastered the rudiments of sonata composition. During the year she had also learned to play thirteen sonatas, that is, five sonatas by Muzio Clementi, opp. 4 and 37, three by Daniel Steibelt, op. 35, a duo for piano by (almost certainly J. C.) Bach, two sonatas by Jan Ladislav Dussek, op. 14, and “almost two” sonatas by Johann Schobert.10 Viotti was now living at Gillwell, immersed in every aspect of daily life there. He almost certainly made a regular contribution toward the maintenance of the household (see also below, pp. 305, 316), which included several servants, as well as his own personal servant. Viotti took responsibility for the care and education of the children in Margaret’s absence. On 20 May 1801 he wrote two letters to Margaret, who was in London for medical treatment. In the first, written

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at 1:30 P.M., he reports that Caroline had been too ill to practice the piano, “because of what you ordered her to take this morning,” but now she is better, and “I hope to have a good session [with her] after dinner at five o’clock.” Since this was the hour normally reserved for Caroline’s piano and singing lesson with her mother, and since we have no precise information as to Viotti’s own proficiency at the keyboard, we cannot be certain whether Viotti would have confined himself in this case (and in others, when Margaret was away) to purely musical, nonpianistic and nonvocal matters. In the other letter, written after dinner, “Caroline worked like an angel this morning at Canti Fermi [written exercises involving the harmonizing of or composing of a counter-melody to a given, fixed melody, or canto fermo]. She even took much pleasure in this task, though before beginning she would have preferred to practice her sonata, but the tuner came at one-thirty; I thought it best to put her to work scribbling [music] notes in my room. George is at the other end of the table writing to you.” He thanks Margaret for the oranges she has sent, which were the cause of an exchange of words with mamselle, which irritated him (“if she weren’t so stupid”—can this be the same mamselle to whom he asked to be remembered three years earlier?). He reports that the previous day he went for an eight-mile ride on horseback—“since there was no wind, I found it very pleasant.” He mentions the arrival of a cow: he scratched its neck, then left it contented in the field surrounded by the other animals kept by the Chinnerys—much better, he thinks, than the mud and smoke of London. And he notes that “a man came to cut the paniers,11 those famous paniers in front of the house. He got up this morning (at an early hour, so he said), and he began working on one; it’s been four and one-half hours and he isn’t halfway through! And yet it seems to me that I could have done all of it in a half hour.” The work, he complains, has not been well organized, “but it’s the fate of this Domo di Milano to be forever doing and redoing, even the smallest things.”12 He admonishes Margaret to take all due care to be cured, and sends his affectionate greetings to Charles [Smith] and to “my friend Crosdill.” In a postscript he remembers that he has ordered a pair of trousers for Walter—“will you please bring them along with the blue suit?”13 From the beginning of September until mid-October 1801, Francesco Bianchi and his wife stayed at Gillwell, without doubt introduced by Viotti. He had been one of the more successful composers of Italian operas in London in the 1790s. Since 1794 he had had ten new productions at the King’s Theatre. In 1801 no fewer than four of his operas were being given. Bianchi taught Caroline an hour of counterpoint every morning (Margaret also refers to these as lessons in “thorough bass, & Composition”), and in the afternoon another hour’s lesson of accompaniment and singing. (Bianchi also came on occasional weekends at other times of the year to give lessons to Caroline.) According to her mother, by mid-October she had begun to “accompany from the score.”14 In 1802 Caroline learned, among other things, a concerto in A minor by Viotti, undoubtedly


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no. 25, arranged for piano and published by Dussek in ca. 1795–96, dedicated to Mrs. Chinnery. On 8 November 1802, Viotti wrote to Pierre-Louis Ginguené, then directorgeneral of public education in France, expressing the fond wish to embrace Ginguené, and recommending a treatise by Bianchi, for “the originality, the profundity, and the merit of his system.” Viotti assures Ginguené that he has seen Bianchi putting the system into practice in lessons with a child of ten, Miss Chinnery, and that “this child is as well taught in composition, in the origins and the application of harmony, as any great composer.”15 Since Bianchi wrote several treatises, all unpublished, it is difficult to know which one Viotti is referring to. It is asserted in the Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review (1820–21), containing excerpts translated into English from Bianchi’s Dell’Attrazione Armonica, that the Institut de France in Paris had declined to publish it when English-French hostilities were renewed in 1803.16 Ginguené was a member of the committee of the Institut de France to which the treatise had been submitted for inspection.17 However, the translated excerpts in the QMMR deal with historical and theoretical, not practical, matters, and in any case seem to be incomplete. Another treatise by Bianchi, recently acquired by the Royal College of Music, the twovolume Theoretical and Practical Treatise on Counterpoint (Trattato Teorico e pratico del Contrapunto),18 gives every indication of being the work used for teaching Caroline. Inscribed on the manuscript of this treatise, which is in Viotti’s hand, is a note by Viotti stating that he had copied the treatise with the permission of Bianchi. Viotti obviously took great care in making this copy. The first volume, in particular, consisting of some fifty-one pages, containing text, musical examples, and diagrams, some of them exquisitely drawn, must have taken many hours of Viotti’s time. The second volume consists mostly of musical examples, including canti fermi exercises, suggesting that it is the practical ( pratico) part, while the first volume is the theoretical (teorico) part. The first volume contains, with a few additions and minor alterations, most of the contents of another treatise by Bianchi, Theoretical-Practical Treatise on Harmony Composed by Francesco Bianch for the Use of His Friend. First Part (Trattato di Armonia Teorico Pratico Composto da Francesco Bianchi per uso del di lui Amico. Parte p[ri]ma).19 If we accept that Viotti (and Bianchi?) considered the terms armonia and contrapunto interchangeable, then the relationship between these two treatises falls into place, namely that Viotti copied from the Trattato di Armonia . . . , of which only the first part (Parte prima) has survived. Bianchi’s “for the use of his friend” confirms this supposition, and suggests that Viotti used his copy to teach Caroline in Bianchi’s absence. There is still another unpublished manuscript treatise by Bianchi, New Easy Method for Learning Accompaniment (Nuovo Metodo per apprendre con facilità l’accompagnamento),20 which may well be the method used by Bianchi to teach Caroline accompaniment at the keyboard. It consists of graded lessons in rudiments, clef transposition, harmony, chord progressions, voice leading, modulation, harmonizing a given bass, and the like, which would have prepared

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Caroline to realize a figured or unfigured bass at sight. The Bianchis came again to stay at Gillwell for seven weeks in 1803, and again for an extended period in 1809. By 1803 Caroline could sight read “with greater facility,” and could play from score “uncommonly well.”21 In 1804 Caroline began taking harp lessons from François Dizi, the Dutch harpist. By October of 1806, however, she was forced by her frail health to terminate the lessons, at least temporarily. Since there had been a delay in informing Dizi, Viotti wrote to him, in his most polished, diplomatic manner, apologizing for the confusion, and asking Dizi, if he has a moment to spare, to come to Gillwell “so that we will have the leisure and the means to sort out this little account.”22

St. Omer and Paris In March 1802, after ten years of war, the Peace of Amiens was declared. Though it was to last only a little over a year, the English, as if a great burden had been lifted from them, flocked to France in their thousands. They filled the hotels, they strolled in the boulevards and around the shops and cafés of the Palais Royal, they visited the Louvre, they watched Napoleon, the First Consul, reviewing his troops in the Cour du Carrousel behind the Palace of the Tuileries, if they could they wangled invitations to levees in the palace, and they went to the Opéra and to the Opéra-Comique, recently (September 1801) amalgamated with the Théâtre Feydeau and occupying the Salle Feydeau. William and Margaret Chinnery, their three children, and Viotti were among the visitors, for a stay of two and a half months from early August. They lodged in the Hôtel de l’Empire, rue Cerutti. The face of Paris, and of the Tuileries palace, was beginning to change under Napoleon. Viotti could not have helped noticing the four great bronze horses, booty from the basilica of San Marco in Venice, now placed on pedestals at the entrance to the Cour Carrousel. Napoleon began the construction of the northern gallery connecting the palace to the Louvre. Inside the palace, the former Salle des Suisses, scene of Viotti’s triumphs of twenty years before, was soon (in 1806) to be renamed the Salle des Maréchaux, with large portraits of Napoleon’s twelve marshals lining the walls. For Margaret, this visit was an opportunity to meet the woman whose theories and educational works had so influenced her, Madame de Genlis. For Viotti, there were, of course, many friends and former colleagues: with the exception of Hélène de Montgéroult and Pierre Rode, whom he had seen, and Luigi Cherubini, to whom he had written, he does not seem to have communicated with any of them for ten years. Margaret lost no time in getting in touch with Genlis, and the two quickly developed a friendship based on mutual esteem and shared ideas, evident in the several letters they exchanged at this time.23 It


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may have been Viotti who introduced them; at the very least Genlis would have remembered him by name and reputation. Viotti clearly saw a lot of Madame de Genlis during this sojourn, and she refers to “l’amico” several times in her letters to Margaret. In one of the first of these, probably written in September, she asks Margaret to “say to Mr Viotti what pleasure I would have to see him again and in any case to hear him. One can listen to him with such interest even when he isn’t making music!”24 In another she asks Margaret to “tell l’amico that I have made all the necessary preparations to teach him my admirable skill at making imitation precious stones. I hope that in gratitude he would be so kind as to teach me in two or three hours the art of enchanting all who listen to me.”25 In still another letter Madame de Genlis reminds Margaret that she is hoping to have a rondeau from Viotti, for which she has been practising for two days for the first time in two years, and, showing all of the self-confidence of Viotti himself, she believes that “I will refind my fingers.”26 Viotti was probably preparing an arrangement for harp of one of his concerto finales. Margaret Chinnery celebrated her birthday on 16 October with a party at which three poems were sung: a romance by Madame de Genlis, set to music by Cherubini, sung by Caroline; a poem by the Chinnery children’s French tutor, sung by Caroline; and couplets by Pierre Baillot sung by Madame Cherubini.27 It is clear that Viotti introduced many of his closest former associates and friends to the Chinnerys. Cherubini and Anne-Cécile Tourette had married in 1794. He had remained in France and survived the Revolution—his Medée and his Les deux journées, premièred at the Feydeau in 1797 and 1800, respectively, had been his greatest successes (they are still occasionally revived), and he had been appointed a teaching inspector at the newly founded Conservatoire National de Musique. Clearly the Cherubinis have become friends with Margaret and her children. Baillot, of all Viotti’s musician friends, had the closest rapport with him. It was during this visit to Paris that their friendship took root. Baillot was the most intellectual of Viotti’s disciples, and he shared with Viotti an almost morbid sensitivity, marked by periodic discouragement with the music profession, exacerbated, in his case, by a diffidence about his own abilities.28 As we have seen, Baillot had continued to play Viotti’s concertos and chamber music through the 1790s and beyond, in both public and private concerts. He had been one of the founding performers of the popular series in the rue de Cléry, which along with the concerts of the Théâtre Feydeau and of the Conservatoire, became an important concert venue in Paris, though it ceased in 1805. In the summer of 1802, along with Rode and Rodolphe Kreutzer, he had entered the service of Napoleon as a member of his private orchestra (musique particulier) and of the chapel in the Palace of the Tuileries.29 A few months before Viotti’s arrival in August, Baillot had twice played “new” Boccherini quintets (two violas) at private concerts at Lucien Bonaparte’s home in Neuilly, the first time in the presence of Giovanni Paisiello, who was in Paris at the invitation of Napoleon.

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Baillot and Rode had also played string quartets at the palace of Malmaison, for the “Pacificateur” (Pacifier), as Baillot called Napoleon. Baillot, Rode, and Kreutzer’s Méthode de violon, published in 1803 by the Conservatoire, had already in February 1802 been “adopted to serve for study at this institution,” as the title page proclaims. It is tempting to suppose that the authors showed the Méthode to Viotti in Paris in August–October, and that he offered suggestions that may have been incorporated in the published version of 1803. Certainly Rode and Baillot had ample opportunity to do so. After Viotti’s departure, Baillot wrote eloquently of their meetings: I shall begin with some rather bad news, things that have sorely afflicted me [ . . . ], Rode has been struck by a problem with his arm, a very persistent erysipelas30 that appeared violently, and which has spread to his head. These repeated attacks disturb me greatly for his sake [ . . . ]. Viotti was here for two and a half months. He left nine days ago and should be returning this winter. It was more than six weeks before I was admitted to his house, but since Rode had his arm trouble, I always accompanied our dear master, who is, as I have been assured by everyone who heard him in the past, more beautiful, more expressive, grander, more sublime than ever. He has kept all his intensity, all his enthusiasm. Our admiration was evenly divided between his playing and his music. I have at last heard him properly [ Je l’ai enfin bien entendu]. I listened to him with every fibre of my soul [toutes les facultés de mon âme],31 with all my ears, with all my eyes, so to speak. [ . . . ] I accompanied him seven or eight times in the lovely duo in f minor [WIV:22 from the Hamburg set, dedicated to the Chinnerys]. He seemed pleased with me [ . . . ]. I cannot rid myself of the regret that my poor friend [Rode] was not at my side to hear this dear Viotti who has nourished us for so long and to whom we are indebted for clearing a path that no one will be able to follow after him. He came here with Madame Chinnery and her children, a charming family in the midst of which he lives happily.32 One or two things that Baillot says call for comment. It may seem surprising that Viotti would invite Baillot to join in the music making only after Rode’s indisposition. But Viotti knew Rode and his playing far better than he did Baillot and his playing. Rode had been his pupil, who had championed his concertos in the Feydeau concerts, whereas Baillot had left the theater in September 1791. Viotti had seen Rode, and no doubt made music with him, in 1798 in England, whereas he had not seen Baillot for at least ten years. All the more remarkable then, is Baillot’s perceived debt to Viotti for having “nourished us.” Now, “at last,” Baillot is making up for not having taken lessons with the master. He played second violin to Viotti’s first, seven or eight times, in private concerts in the Hôtel de l’Empire and probably in


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other homes. One wonders why it was so often the F minor duet—was this a particular favorite of Viotti’s? In his Notice sur Viotti, written a year after Viotti’s death, Baillot remembers that Viotti’s “latest trios and the duos that he had composed in Hamburg” had been played on these occasions.33 Remarkable as well is Baillot’s brief, pregnant assessment of Viotti’s historical role: he has shown the way but no one can be of sufficient stature to follow. Baillot goes on in the Notice to analyse Viotti’s playing in 1802: The broad character of his execution struck us; we admired an exquisite simplicity in his playing, and, if one may so express it, the total absence of ambition; everything seemed to flow from its source on the inclination of the moment. But his inspiration certainly did not fail him; he raised himself imperceptibly to the upper regions of artistry, and he seemed to hover there with so little effort, as if he had reached a higher level. His quality of tone had become so soft, so sweet, and at the same time so full and energetic, that one could call it a bow of cotton drawn by the arm of Hercules; a vivid and accurate image, which, for the small number of listeners admitted to these intimate gatherings, expressed perfectly the effect they experienced.34 Among the trios that Viotti played were three sets of three each, which, on 25 September, Viotti sold to a newly formed publishing house, the Magasin de Musique founded by Cherubini, Rode, Kreutzer, Nicolas Isouard, Étienne Méhul, and François Boïeldieu. The contract has come down to us, duly signed by Viotti and the six composer-publishers, along with the incipits of the nine trios (WIII:13–21), as well as of six violin concertos (nos. 21–26). Over the next few years Cherubini and his partners published the concertos, at the rate of roughly one per year, with letter designations (“A,” “B,” etc.) instead of concerto numbers or opus numbers, to distinguish them from Viotti’s earlier concertos. Number 22, in A minor, since the late nineteenth century the most popular of Viotti’s concertos, Viotti dedicated to Cherubini. Viotti was paid upward of 10,000 francs (1,080 for each concerto and each of the three sets of trios), considerably above the normal rates paid by Parisian publishers. The payment was to be in three instalments, the first immediately, the second on 20 December, the last on 20 March 1803,35 money needed, no doubt, to help defray the expenses of this Paris visit, to help pay off his old debts, and, if there was anything left over, to invest in the wine business. It may have been during this visit that Viotti wrote a note to Baillot, asking him “if he will have the goodness to accompany Mr. Viotti in a trio or two next Friday” at the home of Madame de Montgéroult. Since John Crosdill was to leave the next day, Viotti hoped that Baillot’s fellow Conservatory professor, the cellist Charles-Nicolas Baudiot, would come to their aid. Madame de

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Montgéroult joined her invitation to Viotti’s in a postscript.36 We know from a letter that Margaret wrote nine years later that Viotti and the Chinnerys spent a morning at Madame de Montgeroult’s in 1802, though we have no details, except that it was a musical gathering.37 Did Viotti and Madame de Montgéroult improvise a due, inspired perhaps by the memory of their afternoon together on the eve of his flight from Paris ten years earlier? Among the many old Paris acquaintances whom Viotti saw in 180238 was Hugues-Bernard Maret,39 who survived his imprisonment of 1793–95 by the Austrians and was rising in the ranks as one of Napoleon’s most devoted followers—by 1802 he was the First Consul’s private secretary, soon to be Secretary of State, and in 1809 he received the title of Duc de Bassano. On the face of it, it is extraordinary that Viotti and the Chinnerys maintained this friendship and others like it. The Revolution had blighted the lives of Viotti and his friends and associates in France and Italy (we recall the exile of the Prince della Cisterna; Gaetano Pugnani, in his letter of 1793 to Viotti, had spoken of the “French dogs”). Napoleon had indirectly been the cause of Viotti’s exile in 1798 and had brought hardship to all England. It was a case of personal ties, and, perhaps, of Viotti’s and Margaret Chinnery’s long-standing Francophile attachments, shared by many from the English upper classes, transcending political or national allegiances. One of Viotti’s two half-brothers, Giorgio, died fighting for Napoleon; the other, André, had a brilliant career in the emperor’s army. It must have been during this visit to Paris that Viotti introduced the Chinnerys to Jean-Frédéric Perregaux (1744–1808), the Swiss banker, as shown by a letter he wrote to Perregaux in 1806, mentioning the “faithful services [honnêtetés] that they [the Chinnerys] received from you in Paris.”40 Perregaux had had an extremely checkered career, having served officially on behalf of the French government in its commercial affairs abroad, at the same time acting as an agent provocateur supplying English money to counterrevolutionary elements in France. He was the preferred banker of English travelers and, during the wars, handled their finances in France. After having been imprisoned by the Convention, released, and exiled, he was made a senator in 1799, and flourished under Napoleon. By 1805 he had become president of the Bank of France. Three letters that have come down to us from Viotti to Perregaux show that theirs was more than merely a business relationship. In the first, written on 6 December 1791, they are already on terms of warm friendship: Viotti “will be delighted [très charmé ] to have a chat with his dear neighbour Mr Perregaux tomorrow.” The second Viotti wrote while in Paris on this visit, 1 September 1802: he has had a violent headache and apologizes for not replying sooner, but “I shall come to see you tomorrow morning and we will chat about your protégé Mr Thierot” (who has not been identified; was he a musical protégé?). From the last letter, written in 1806, we learn that Perregaux, on Viotti’s orders,


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was withdrawing large amounts of money on Viotti’s Paris account.41 We may infer that it was Perregaux who also handled the French end of the finances of Viotti’s wine business. They did not see each other after 1802—according to Madame de Genlis, Perregaux went mad by August of 1807.42 He died the following year. Another former acquaintance was Madame Vigée-Lebrun, who had returned to Paris after a peripatetic thirteen years visiting and painting in the courts of Europe. J. F. Reichardt, visiting from Berlin, reported that she gave him permission to bring a few friends to her studio in early December 1802.43 Viotti would not have failed to do the same for the Chinnerys. Viotti would have sought out Paisiello, whom he had probably met in St. Petersburg in 1781, and whose operas he had done so much to popularize in Paris. Napoleon was fond of Paisiello’s music; the composer had arrived in Paris in April to be the director of the First Consul’s chapel music. Viotti no doubt attended a chapel service, now held in the room of the State Council of the Tuileries palace, for the old chapel had been demolished. There Paisiello conducted the singers and two rows of violins squeezed into a small gallery facing the altar,44 with Rode leading and Baillot at the head of the second violins. (Two years later they were joined by Jean Baptiste Cartier, who remained in the court orchestra until 1830.) The First Consul seemed to Reichardt to be “as indifferent to the music as to the Mass itself.”45 Besides spending time with the Chinnerys, renewing old acquaintances, and playing chamber music, it is likely that Viotti also took the opportunity while in France to cultivate contacts for his wine trade—dealers, agents, and shippers. It is not impossible, in fact, that he travelled to Dijon or to Bordeaux, for example. Apparently, Viotti intended a trip to Italy immediately following this visit to Paris. Madame de Genlis, in one of her letters to Margaret in October, asks “Do you wish for me to wait for Amico to return from Italy?” (to have him take a book to England).46 Baillot, a week or two later, wrote (in his letter cited above) that Viotti “should be returning this winter,” by which he presumably means on his return from Italy. But Viotti was deterred from making this trip by the death of Walter Chinnery. Viotti and the Chinnerys (except for William, who returned to England earlier) left France on about 20 October. Depending on the winds in the English Channel, they would have arrived in Gillwell in five or six days. Not long after their return, Walter, who was a bright and athletic nine-year-old, was stricken with ( possibly) typhoid fever, and died on 19 November. Viotti canceled his planned trip to Italy, and remained with the Chinnerys. Madame de Genlis wrote several very touching letters of consolation to both parents and to Viotti. A monument to Walter’s memory was erected on the grounds at Gillwell, where it still stands.

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Music, Family, and Friends Not long afterward, Madame de Genlis wrote again to Viotti, asking for his help in getting her latest novel, La Duchesse de La Valière, published in London. Viotti was to negotiate with London publishers, check on the availability of illustrations, and on the delicate business of the simultaneous appearance of a Paris edition, and so forth. In the same letter she reminds Viotti that he has promised her a rondeau. Viotti must have acted promptly and efficiently, for in a second letter, less than six weeks later, Genlis thanks him for the “arrangements” he has made.47 The novel was first published in London (in French) by Peltier (whose bookshop we know Viotti patronized) in 1804, followed in the same year by an English translation.48 In a letter to Margaret of 8 November 1802, which she would have received at about the time of Walter’s death, Pierre Rode writes that his arms “are still in a pitiable state. To tell the truth, one needs the patience of a saint to put up with the sad and monotonous life that I am forced to lead, being unable to use my arms for anything.” He promises to visit Gillwell—a promise he was never to keep—and sends his best wishes to “good Mr. Chinnery, to dear amico, and to the sweet children.”49 On 11 December, with Gillwell still under the pall cast by Walter’s death, Viotti was somehow able to be of assistance to two acquaintances in a letter, full of charm and good humor, to General de Grave in Paris: Knowing, my friend, all your kind feelings for everything English, and for all that concerns us, I cannot allow Mr Carthew and Captain Carthew, his brother, to leave, without giving them a little note for you. Both are friends of Mr Chinnery and of me; that, I believe, is sufficient to convince you to render them all the little kindnesses within your power. They plan on staying in your grand Capital one, two, three, six months, if they enjoy themselves; try, my friend, to do all you can to make them miss Paris when they leave it, and you will greatly oblige Your affectionate friend, J. B. Viotti50 After a period of mourning, the former tenor of life at Gillwell would have gradually returned, revolving around the education of George and Caroline, as well as three other girls who lived with the Chinnerys for varying periods in the early nineteenth century: the partially identifiable Maria Philipps; Matilda Margretta Chinnery (1797–1877), daughter of William’s brother John Terry Chinnery; and Margaret Chinnery (ca. 1798–1878), known as “little Margaret,” whose identity also remains somewhat in doubt—she was known as William’s half-sister, but she may not actually have been.51 All three were educated by


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Margaret while in her care, and were musically trained, benefiting, without doubt, from Viotti’s presence. Matilda in particular became an accomplished pianist. In November of 1804, a German scholar, C. L. Trumpf, a graduate in mathematics and classics from the University of Göttingen, joined the Chinnery household at Gillwell as a tutor to George and the four girls. Viotti was instrumental in procuring the services of Herr Trumpf; earlier that year he had written to a friend in Altona (a certain Mr. Schmeissen, whom he had perhaps met while in exile),52 asking for his help in the matter, and Mr. Schmeissen replied (in English) recommending Trumpf, who asked for £80 instead of the £60 offered. On the address page Viotti wrote (in French), “answered 27 June 1804, that we accept the proposal of Mr. Trumpf but that his laundering must be included [compris; Viotti surely means “deducted from”] in the £80 of his salary.”53 Herr Trumpf tutored George privately in mathematics, German, Greek, and Latin, and various science subjects, and instructed the girls in German and some of the sciences. Every Saturday he had a meeting with Margaret or Viotti to discuss the week’s lessons—again we see Viotti’s close participation in the raising of the children.54 Herr Trumpf stayed at Gillwell for four years—he left in February 1809, but remained a friend for years afterward. It would have been in the second half of April 1803 that Viotti received the letter, already alluded to in chapter 3, from his half-brother André, containing the distressing news of the destitute circumstances of his two siblings, Adelaide and Giuseppe. Viotti must have replied; he may have sent money in response to André’s and Ignazio Brun’s requests to come to Giuseppe’s aid. Viotti had recently written to Giuseppe, as the present letter informs us; it is likely that Viotti and André had corresponded previously, as shown by André’s references to Viotti’s investments: “It wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to come to Piedmont to conclude the question of the reduction of your investments. I don’t know if it is the small amount, according to you, that causes you to be slow in this business, but believe me, in these times of crisis, it is no small amount, and a liquid fund like yours is a fortune these days.” As we have learned, Viotti had intended to go to Italy in the autumn of 1802; his presence in Fontanetto had no doubt been keenly awaited, and his cancellation of the trip was probably one reason why André wrote. In fact, Viotti went to his grave never having returned to Italy since 1793, or to his hometown since 1783. This surely was cause for regret. Some solace for the sadness at Gillwell would have been brought by the visit of Madame Vigée-Lebrun. She came to England in April 1803, intending a brief sojourn, but ended by staying until 1805. “Not long after my arrival,” she writes in her memoirs, in a much-quoted passage, I went to stay a fortnight at Mrs. Chinnery’s at Gillwell, where the celebrated Viotti lived. The house was extremely elegant, and they gave me a charming reception. As I arrived I saw the gate decked with

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garlands of flowers entwined among the columns. On the staircase, which was decorated in the same way, little marble putti, placed at intervals, supported vases filled with roses; indeed it was a spring-time fairy land. As soon as I entered the sitting room, two little angels, the son and daughter of Mrs. Chinnery, sang a charming piece of music for me, which that amiable Viotti had composed for me. I was truly touched by this affectionate welcome; and the two weeks I spent at Gillwell were days of joy and pleasure for me. Mrs. Chinnery was a very beautiful woman, possessed of great perceptiveness and charm. Her daughter, then aged fourteen [recte twelve], was surprisingly skilled at the piano, such that every evening this girl, Viotti, and Mrs. Chinnery, who was a very good musician, gave us delightful concerts.55 Madame Vigée-Lebrun continued to see Viotti and the Chinnerys, and on two occasions in 1803 she brought someone who must have brought back old memories for Viotti—Prince Ivan Ivanovich Bariatinsky, the son of the former Russian ambassador to France. The latter had been present at the concert at Versailles in May of 1782 in which Viotti had played. In 1803 Vigée-Lebrun painted Margaret’s portrait (figure 7.1), and in 1805, after returning to Paris in July of that year, she painted Viotti’s portrait, which no doubt she had begun in England (frontispiece).56 In 1804 Vigée-Lebrun took lodgings in Maddox Street, where she gave several “grandes soirées,” one of which stood out for its brilliance, when “the prime donne of the Opera of London, Mrs. Billington and the lovely Madame Grassini, sang two duets with a rare perfection; Viotti played the violin, and his talent, so fine and so noble, delighted everyone. Indeed, the Prince of Wales, who attended this concert, said to me graciously, ‘I usually fly away from soirées, but this time I’ll stay.’ ”57 We know that Viotti had probably met the Prince of Wales at least as early as 1795; by now, ten years later, he has become a regular, if sporadic member of the prince’s circle. Lady Bessborough described a visit to the prince’s Pavilion at Brighton in October 1805: His way of living is pleasant enough, especially if one might chuse one’s society. In the Morning he gives you horses, Carriages &c., to go where you please with you; he comes and sits rather too long, but only on a visit. Everybody meets at dinner, which, par parenthèse, is excellent, with the addition of a few invitations in the evening. Three large rooms, very comfortable, are lit up; whist, backgammon, Chess, trace Madame—every sort of game you can think of in two of them, and Musick is in the third. His band is beautiful. He has also Viotti and a Lady who sings and plays very well. A few people have the entrée and a few more are invited.58 After dinner, Viotti and the others performed in the third room, where those who wished could listen to the music, which would have filtered into the other


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Figure 7.1. “Portrait of Mrs Chinnery,” by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, 1805. Mrs. Chinnery holds a manuscript work by Madame de Genlis. (Copyright 2008, Indiana University Art Museum. Photograph by Michael Cavanagh and Kevin Montague.)

two rooms as background music for the games. Naturally, we would like to know what sort of music Viotti played—a concerto, perhaps, with the prince’s band (though it consisted entirely of wind instruments), or perhaps a sonata or some variations, with piano accompaniment played by the singing and playing lady. Lady Bessborough neglects to tell us who this person was ( presumably it was the piano that she played); at the same time, she gives Viotti’s name as if he needs no identifying, though he has been out of the public eye for more than seven years. It was the youngest of the Prince of Wales’s six brothers, Adolphus Frederick, Duke of Cambridge (1774–1850), who became a particular friend of Viotti’s and the Chinnerys’. Cambridge was the only one of the brothers who was not

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constantly in debt and who did not have mistresses, and he played the violin, all of which would have recommended him to Margaret Chinnery. He had studied at the University of Göttingen as a boy, fought the French under his brother, the Duke of York, in Holland in the summer of 1793 ( just when Viotti was passing through), was wounded and went to England in September to convalesce. There is a remote possibility that he met Viotti in the approximately three weeks between the latter’s return from the Continent in December 1793 and Cambridge’s return to Flanders in mid-January 1794, after which he lived for the next nine years in Hanover. But it is more likely that it was after his return to England in 1803, where he remained for the next ten years. It may well have been the Chinnerys who introduced them.59 The ten surviving letters from Adolphus Frederick to Viotti (all in French) attest to the warmth of their friendship.60 Similarly, his fifteen letters to Margaret Chinnery (in English) give ample evidence of the frequency and alacrity with which he attended the Chinnery music parties. In one of these, for example, he “[looks] forward with the greatest of pleasure to Friday next. Should the hour suit you I will be at Gillwell by twelve o’clock, and I take the liberty of requesting you to desire l’Amico to write me word what Music I am to bring with me.”61 The Duke of Cambridge sometimes stayed over at Gillwell—a bedroom was kept especially for him in the house. Viotti probably gave violin lessons to the duke, if only informally, and he dedicated a set of violin “duets serenatas” (the first three of the six comprising WIV:31–36), and his Concerto no. 27 to him. The Duke of Cambridge was only the most illustrious (at least socially) of the many guests—professional musicians, amateurs, and nonmusicians— who attended and participated in the Chinnery-Viotti gatherings. Second only to Viotti in his intimacy with the Chinnerys, and Viotti’s closest companion outside the Chinnery family, was William Robert Spencer (1769–1834). Spencer, called “Guglielmo” by Viotti and the Chinnerys, was the nephew of the fourth Duke of Marlborough (which meant that he could enjoy the cachet of the Marlborough name, but not its money), and had been educated at Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford. Since 1797 he had held a position at the Stamp Office as a commissioner of stamps, but he was the darling of London society because of his wit and occasional verse. For Viotti and the Chinnerys, particularly Caroline, however, he was much more than that. He was employed as a tutor to Caroline, who called him affectionately “mio zio” (my uncle), and lived at Gillwell for varying periods of time between 1807 and 1811—three months in the winter of 1809–10, for example.62 As an accomplished scholar in classical literature, he was well qualified to teach Caroline Latin as well as to train her in verse writing. To judge from the surviving letters that Spencer wrote to Viotti (1808–11)—bantering in tone, full of puns, some of them mildly ribald—their relationship was one of lighthearted intimacy. Here is Spencer to Viotti, who is suffering from gout: “Madame La Goutte is not I believe the only Madame who is attached to


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your beautiful legs! God forgive you, but I believe you to be a great sinner!”63 Spencer includes with this letter a poem in a similar vein, later published in his Poems.64 And, in another, cajoling letter, he hints at temptations in London: At the Opera, “you, as well as I, have our duties to fulfil. We shall pay court together to the Princess, to Lady Charlemont, to your Lady Henriette &c &c &c,”65 and “everyone’s arms are open for you, but they aren’t long enough to reach you in Gillwell!! Besides, all that will be good for your standing [hierarchie], that is, with that little republic of angels to whom you and I devote our souls and our favors of every kind,—do you follow me?”66 Viotti replied with considerably more restraint, whether of sentiment or merely of language is difficult to say, that he would be charmed to come to the city for “a few buffooneries” ( faire quatre folies) with Spencer, but he is prevented by the weather; he wishes to postpone “this escapade” until he is warmed by the rays of Sig. Apollo, and free of rheumatism.67 Spencer was known to be something of a rake, but there is no evidence that Viotti ever went beyond the bounds of propriety with any of his many female friends. That said, however, Spencer, as a male companion, may have represented something of a relief for Viotti from the atmosphere at Gillwell, particularly after George went to Oxford early in 1808. William was normally at home only at weekends, Trumpf seems to have been a little on the humorless side, and Margaret herself cannot be said to have numbered a sense of humor, at least not the rollicking kind provided by Spencer,68 among her most conspicuous qualities. Margaret was certainly fond of Spencer, but she was sometimes nonplussed by Viotti and Spencer together: “You know they are both rather odd persons,” she wrote to George after hearing them discuss their plans for a proposed trip to Blenheim and Oxford in 1809.69 The chief reason for this trip, at least for Viotti, was to visit George, who, in January 1808, had begun his studies at Christ Church, Oxford. Viotti and Spencer had accompanied him on that earlier occasion, and Viotti wrote several long letters to Margaret, describing in detail the first day or two of the sixteenyear-old in his new surroundings—his health and state of mind, his lodgings, and his reception by the dean of Christ Church, tutors, and various other university personages.70 Viotti seemed to revel in the moment; his account is animated by sharp observation of place and of character. One letter opens with a vignette of George in his new college rooms: “It is from his room that I write you, in the midst of mattresses and blankets drying before a great fire. Oh, how funny he looks in his costume [academic] robes, which I find charming, and it is got up in this fashion that he is writing to you.”71 Viotti assures Margaret that George “seems as though he has always lived at Christ Church.” He has attended prayers with George in Christ Church Cathedral: “The Dean was there, and the prayers, which last twenty minutes, are a monastic mumbling, for all I can tell, which no one understands. No matter, it is mandatory to attend them every day without fail.” Then, turning to

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Margaret’s letter and parcel received that morning, he allows himself a moment of tenderness, remembering not only that she is not feeling well but also how difficult George’s departure was for her: “You have surely hidden from me a great part of your sufferings, dear Amica; I know you and I know that you have not said the half of it. There is only your handwriting which reassures me a little; it is confident and is what I at first noticed; for the rest, it is really quite unnecessary to tell me what you feel. I sense everything, exactly everything.” Again sharply changing mood, he vents his contempt for George’s tutor for not keeping appointments: “They say he is knowledgeable in mathematics. If so why is he unable to calculate the time?” And, warming to his subject: It seems to me that these tutors give themselves airs! [ . . . ] The maladie Sultanesque seems to reign here. I wish you could have seen [the tutor] of Charles,72 at whose place I was yesterday morning with the father and son. A real portrait of pedantry: small, coarse, tight-lipped, precious of speech, rather stiff, self-important, seated on his sofa as if giving an audience [ . . . ]. There you have the man. Oh, Mr Webber, you will never have me for a pupil.73 After three or four days at Oxford, Viotti and Spencer paid a visit to Spencer’s uncle at Blenheim, and to Spencer’s father’s estate, Wheatfield, not far away, before returning to Gillwell, having been away a week. In the meantime, Margaret had written to George about Amico: “Pray my beloved boy open your heart to him.”74 Viotti seems to have found time to order a pair of shoes, no doubt the famous oxfords named after the city, for in March George asks his mother to “tell Amico that I have been to the shoe-makers for him,” and to “tell Amico that I shall not forget his shoes.” Finally, on 3 May: “Tell Amico that I have paid his shoe-maker and enclose the receipt for the money.”75 The music parties at Gillwell continued apace. So far as we know, these were held on a weekly basis, and, so far as we know, Viotti participated in all or most of them, as did Caroline. Margaret recorded in her journal in January 1807 that “Caroline played and accompanied Amico’s concerto and the Chevalier’s airs extremely well last night.”76 Now fifteen years old, Caroline has clearly reached the point where she can appear alongside Viotti, as well as play arrangements of his violin concertos for piano. On the weekend of 7–8 March, Caroline played extremely well on the Pianoforte both evenings; on Saturday she played the Concerto in A arranged by Madme Montgeroult, and the Adagio was as well as I ever wish to hear it. This great stile of playing an Adagio, I may almost consider a new and distinct talent she has acquired; in this the merit is all her own. She has made her profit of the good example before her, and has formed her stile upon that of Amico’s, which is the most beautiful model she could have found in the world. On Sunday she played a Sonata of Steibelts, just as well.77


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A penciled note on the manuscript score of the third movement of an arrangement for piano of Viotti’s Concerto no. 24, now in the National Library in Paris, provides a glimpse into the practicalities of music making at Gillwell: “Miss Chinnery begs Mr. Walker to take care to make it turn conveniently.” As Chappell White explains, evidently Viotti did not have time to copy a separate piano part from the score for Caroline, who, faced with playing the piano part from the full score, sent it to be bound, and, naturally enough, wanted the page turns to be arranged as conveniently as possible.78 Margaret, with the help of Viotti’s contacts and friends in the musical world, invited some of the most distinguished artists. Giuseppina Grassini, the contralto, made her début at the King’s Theatre on 14 January 1804 in Gaetano Andreozzi’s La Vergine del Sol. She was admired both for the sweetness and power of her voice and for the grace and dignity of her acting. Napoleon admired her—perhaps more than admired her, it was thought. She also had apparently been Pierre Rode’s mistress in the period 1800–1802,79 which did not seem to compromise Rode’s appointment as solo violinist to Napoleon. All of this, however, would not have been discussed at Gillwell, where Grassini visited at least three times, and on the eve of her departure from England in November 1806, she wrote a friendly note to Margaret with her best wishes to “l’Amico amabile.”80 Hard on the heels of Grassini, both at the King’s Theatre, where she made her début in December 1806, and at Gillwell, where she joined the Chinnerys and Viotti at their Christmas party, was Angelica Catalani. Catalani was one of the great sopranos of the age, with fees to match: 2,000 guineas in 1807, increased to 3,000 the next season, and in 1808 to £5,250. It was reported that she demanded £200 for singing at a private concert. “How we are ruined!” cried the Sun.81 However, since she became a good friend of the Chinnerys, it is unlikely that she charged them such fees. Catalani continued at the King’s Theatre until 1813. Of all the King’s Theatre singers who visited Gillwell, it was the bass Giuseppe Naldi (1770–1820) who remained the longest in England, and who became the closest to Viotti. He first appeared at the King’s Theatre in April 1806, replacing Giovanni Morelli, who was now past his prime, and he continued performing there until 1818. He was also a composer and cellist, and had been trained as a lawyer. Naldi sang important roles in the first performances at the King’s Theatre of four of Mozart’s operas: Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte, May 1811; Papageno in Il flauto magico, June 1811; Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro, June 1812; and Leporello in Don Giovanni, April 1817. He became one of the stalwarts of Margaret’s concerts, always ready to sing a duet with Caroline (to whom he gave some voice instruction) or one of the guests. By 1807, he too had become an intimate of the Prince of Wales, as Lady Bessborough observed: “By the by, he [the Prince of Wales] has been living with Naldi all summer, and says he is the most delightful man in the world; I believe, if he could, he

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would make him Prime Minister, and charm the Angry world to Peace with music.”82 One young musician who came to Gillwell turned out to be more than either Margaret or Viotti bargained for. Casimir Baecker, a talented harpist, the seventeen-year-old adopted son of Madame de Genlis, stayed at Gillwell, at Genlis’s request, for about four months, from August to November 1807. He had enjoyed some success in concerts in Paris, in one of which, as Madame de Genlis reported to Margaret, Kreutzer accompanied him, and was so impressed with Casimir’s playing of one of his own pieces in harmonics that he stopped in mid-performance to applaud him.83 Madame de Genlis wanted Casimir to give concerts in London and to prepare for them under the supervision of Viotti. She deluged Margaret with instructions for Viotti (apparently she also wrote to Viotti, but these letters have not survived):84 that Casimir perfect his playing of two sonatas of Boccherini, one of them to be played entirely in harmonics (Viotti would have approved of the composer; we cannot be sure of his opinion of this mode of execution—did it not smack of whistling and tricks?), that he practice with the accompaniment of a violin and cello, both, however to be played very softly (here Viotti or one of his pupils, and one of his cellist friends could have assisted), that Viotti decide what Casimir was to play, that he see to it that Casimir is diligent, and that Viotti oversee the manufacture and merchandising of a harp specially designed for performing adagios using a bow, or even two bows, one in each hand (what would Viotti, the custodian of the classical tradition in music, have thought of this novelty?), in sum, that Viotti take entire charge of Casimir’s musical development and career. This Viotti seemed willing to do, at least at the beginning, though we hear no more of the harp invention, which Madame de Genlis thought would be lucrative. The main obstacle, however, was Casimir himself, who was lazy, immature, headstrong, and slightly manipulative. To make matters worse, Casimir had come to England accompanied by a guardian, one Colonel Macleod, who through a combination of deceit, hypocrisy, self-importance, and sheer stupidity, managed to disrupt seriously the whole enterprise. On one occasion in August, Macleod came to Gillwell and in a distressing three-and-a-half-hour-long tirade in the Gillwell sitting room, made wild and unfounded accusations against William Chinnery and Viotti. Viotti became so angry that he was only with difficulty restrained by Margaret. Margaret wrote to the wretched Macleod that “Mr Viotti desires me to say that he has not the smallest intention of taking any part whatever in Casimir’s concerns.” This, however, surely referred only to the proposed harp invention, as Viotti almost certainly did instruct Casimir in music. Casimir himself, in a letter written in December, asked about Viotti: “How is my Maître? I shall be very happy when I can again benefit from his care [soin].”85 In reply to Macleod’s assertion that Viotti had written to Madame de Genlis, Margaret wrote that “Viotti never writes to anyone.”86 It is clear from this that Viotti, still smarting


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from his experience of 1798, was reluctant to write letters to France. The two that we have earlier remarked, to Ginguené and to de Grave, were written in 1802, during the Peace of Amiens. The final rupture with Casimir seems to have been caused by his impertinently contradicting Margaret and Viotti at table.87 This occurred in November; Casimir went to London where he was introduced to society by Spencer, but in February 1808 he abruptly returned to France, two or three months before the time of the concerts that had been planned for him. It fell to Viotti, with the help of Trumpf and a servant, to pack Casimir’s belongings, left behind at Gillwell.88 We can imagine Viotti’s frame of mind as he performed this menial task for someone, albeit only a boy, to whom he had no reason to be well disposed. Unfortunately, the story does not end here. Viotti asked his friend Sébastien Erard (who with his brother had set up their piano and harp manufacturing firm in London on the outbreak of the Revolution) to ship Casimir’s two cases, but Erard seems to have forgotten about it, and years later it was discovered that some of the contents were missing. Madame de Genlis wrote in 1814 asking that Erard pay an indemnity of 50 louis, and somehow Casimir found a way of insulting William Chinnery in the matter. And so it was that in 1814 Viotti found himself in the position of writing a letter of explanation to Casimir, scarcely concealing his indignation.89 Viotti’s relationship with another harpist was altogether more pleasant. Susan, Countess of Dunmore (1774–1846), wrote after a visit to Gillwell in 1806, “Tell Amico that the Harp has quite forgot how to play a Solo & longs much for the accompaniment to which it has lately been accustomed.”90 Lady Dunmore had become a good friend of the Chinnerys’, Caroline in particular, and of Viotti’s, with whom she often played duets or harp pieces with violin accompaniment. Viotti dedicated to her his Grand Sonata for harp, with violin accompaniment ad lib., WVI:9, published in 1811. She was also a friend of William Spencer, who dedicated a poem to her in his Poems, also published in 1811. In a friendly, not to say flirtatious letter to Viotti (in French), she counters his complaints with her own: “if you have the right to see in my silence a small fault, I as a woman have a still greater right [to complain of ] your greater silence, and even in that I pay you a compliment—it is difficult to punish men who claim to be our humble slaves.”91 We have no knowledge of Viotti taking any pupils after Philippe Libon’s departure (which had apparently taken place by 1796), until the arrival of Nicolas Mori (1796/7–1839).92 Mori was a child prodigy who had studied with F.-H. Barthélemon; as early as 1805 he was reported as having played the music of Viotti (and Barthélemon) at Oatlands, the country residence of the Duke and Duchess of York, where he was heard by the Duchess of York and the Duke of Cambridge.93 He seems to have studied with Viotti from 1808 to 1814,94 usually coming to Gillwell for his lesson on the weekend. It is not known whether Mori, Libon, and Viotti’s other pupils in England studied with him under some form of the apprenticeship system then common in England. Young singers and

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instrumentalists, usually at around the age of fourteen, on the payment of a fee, typically of £25, would be apprenticed for a period of five to seven years to a musician for lessons and help in starting a professional career. Deborah Rohr observes that “an apprenticeship with a famous musician, or with one known to have valuable professional or patronage connections, was undoubtedly much more expensive.”95 Though we have no record of Viotti’s fees, his pupils certainly had uniquely abundant opportunities to perform. We first hear of Mori in Margaret’s letter to George of 7 May 1808: Sunday ½ past 8 in my Study I am just returned from the dining parlour, to which we retreated after Coffee, to hear a little music; and I assure you I have been very well entertained. First Matilda played a Sonata, and succeeded to the satisfaction of us all; then Caroline gave us a beautiful Trio of Amico’s, which she played extremely well indeed, and lastly Mori exhibited his talents to great advantage in a Concerto. [ . . . ] Mori improves rapidly.96 Amico’s trio would have been one of several arrangements of his string trios as sonatas for piano with violin and cello accompaniment, including those by Dussek (WVIa:7–9, 1799) of the trios WIII:7–9. In this Viotti would have played the violin, and William, the cello (“your father,” adds Margaret, “distinguished himself very much upon the Violoncello to night”). Surely the concerto played by the eleven-year-old Mori was one of Viotti’s. Presumably Caroline or Matilda accompanied him, possibly with the participation of Viotti and William as well. Later that year, Margaret again gave one of her regular reports to George of the family music making. Guglielmo had arrived, in very good spirits. Caroline was ill with one of her frequent colds, which prevented her from playing or singing. However, “the little girls played three Duets for the Harp & Pianoforte [ . . . ]. Mori, who came down on Saturday night, played a Concerto also, and very well; but the poor boy is grown strangely awkward and stupid; I believe his father gives him too much Salami and Macaroni!—Then our concert concluded most divinely by two Duets played by Amico and Mori.’ ”97 There is no further mention of Mori’s awkwardness and stupidity ( perhaps merely a momentary gaffe), and he went on to enjoy a distinguished career as one of London’s leading musicians.98 Mori played a concerto by Viotti the next year at Mrs. Bianchi’s benefit concert on 22 May, which Margaret attended: Little Mori played extremely well, and was much applauded and admired. He was not in the least frightened or agitated, though the audience was very large; I was delighted to see how profitable an evening it must have been to Mrs Bianchi. As to the music, I will say nothing about it, for music is at a very low ebb in London; perhaps as times go, it was a good concert; most certainly it was a very long one. I never saw Maestro [Bianchi] look so young and handsome.99


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Here Margaret is voicing a commonly held opinion that musical life in London had been in a state of decline after the high watermark of the mid-1790s and Haydn’s visits. Margaret’s almost daily letters to George give us a picture of life at Gillwell, and of Viotti’s place in it. The following excerpts are typical:100 5 March 1808 (Sunday evening). Papa is fast asleep, Caroline making out a list of Plants for my Garden. Mr Trumpf looking in the Encyclopedia,—Amico going in and out; little girls gone to bed. 12 March 1808 (Sunday evening). The family picture is as follows. Papa is reading the newspapers seated on a little stool by my table. Caroline, Amico, Mr Trumpf and the two little girls are playing the Jeu de Secretaire at a table in the middle of the room. The scene is in my study. 1 May 1808. Today has been very warm. I walked out a long while with your father and Amico, while Caroline played upon her little harp seated before the house. Aunt Marianne101 has dined here, and they are now all in the parlour playing concertos, trios &c &c. Mr Spencer is not yet returned here. 13 May 1808. I have no more time to write this morning, my dear George—the first gong is rung, and I must hasten to dress for dinner. I have not rode since my horse fell down, but I take much pleasure in walking about the grounds with Amico, and sometimes your sister too, but she generally rides every day, and the gray mare is in high favour. On 30 May 1808, describing a large weekend party: on Saturday, the Duke of Cambridge arrived at about half past twelve or one o’clock. After a walk round the grounds they returned to the drawing room where “several trios & duos were played” (by Viotti, the duke, and Caroline), then Caroline sang at the duke’s request several solfeggios “in the proper Italian style.” William Chinnery and several guests arrived for dinner and “the evening went off lightly and swiftly between singing and playing, but as the Duke had been up the night before at the House of Lords, we retired soon after 12.” On Sunday after breakfast there was singing for two hours, and after dinner there was music again, beginning at about 9 P.M., followed by waltzing (in which the duke participated) and English country dancing. The next morning the duke played with Viotti and William for three hours, before and after breakfast. 16 June 1808. Amico went to town yesterday to dine again with Mr [Richard Payne] Knight; this morning he spends with the Duke of Cambridge, the evening

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at Lady Anne’s [Lady Anne Hamilton, a lady-in-waiting to the Princess of Wales] and tomorrow he returns, after an unusually long absence. On 15 June William Spencer had written to Margaret, “I hope Amico will be well enough to come to town, Lady Anne is in despair, and fears that something has displeased him; the Passione is given up, but the Concerto is eagerly wish’d for, and S[usan] Beckford can not venture upon it unless she tries it over with him tomorrow morning.”102 These two letters give an idea of the range and diversity of Viotti’s acquaintanceships. Richard Payne Knight was one of the foremost art connoisseurs of the time. He displayed his magnificent collection of drawings and antiquities— small bronzes, vases, coins, gems, and cameos—in his house in 3 Soho Square.103 It was in and around 1808 that he was notoriously involved in a controversy concerning the Elgin Marbles, recently brought to London. Knight claimed they were Hadrianic copies, and only after several years grudgingly admitted their worth. Did he attempt to convince Viotti? In 1808 the marbles were the talk of London; it seems likely that Viotti (and the Chinnerys) would have gone to see them, whether or not he shared Knight’s views. Viotti rarely refers to the visual arts in his letters, in marked contrast to his evident appreciation of the beauties of nature. Susan Beckford, a talented pianist and singer, was the twenty-two-year-old second daughter of William Beckford, the writer and art collector (who in 1808 was building his famous residence in Wiltshire, Fonthill Abbey). We may presume that the concerto she wished to try over was one of Viotti’s, but we cannot tell whether it was for violin with piano accompaniment or an arrangement for piano, nor whether Viotti’s having spent the morning with the duke (no doubt making music) prevented, or merely delayed, her hoped-for rehearsal. It seems likely, since Miss Beckford had been a guest at Gillwell in 1807, that this was not the only occasion on which she and Viotti played together. 18 October 1808. The Duke, Mrs Bianchi, the Chevalier & Asioli104 sang the most delightful Quartetts, and Amico joined with great success in the Quintetts; now and then Mrs Bianchi and the Chevalier sang a Duett; in short we had really good music! After Luncheon, the Ladies retired, and His Royal Highness practiced for a couple of hours with Amico and Papa. [ . . . ] Music filled up the evening [ . . . ]. After supper Mr Spencer was really delightful, he was drole, entertaining, full of wit and pleasantry, in short everything that could be wished! 14 February 1809. Adieu dear George,—Amico is composing,—Guglielmo writing in his room,—Caroline dressing for dinner. This is one of the very few references in the Chinnery Papers to Viotti’s composing. Of course we cannot know what he was composing. At best, it is possible to say that if it was a concerto, by the year 1809 it could only have been no. 28.


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But there are many other possibilities, not only among the instrumental genres— quartets, trios, duets, and sonatas—but also a number of original vocal pieces that he composed especially for performances at Gillwell, none of them published. Among these, for example, are a cantata, “Au fond d’une sombre vallée,” for soprano and piano, “for the birthday of caro Padre Chinnery”; a song, “Gli Zingarelli,” for soprano and piano, “composed for Madme. LeBrun”; and a canzonetta, “Vo triste tacito” for soprano and piano, inscribed as follows (in Italian), “words by a modest man, set to music by a timid man, the whole dedicated to the amiable padrona. Gillwell House, 5 December, 1804.” There is also an incomplete set of parts for a Suite in D Major for strings. One of the parts bears the note, in Viotti’s hand, “del Teatro Gillwell.” White points out that in certain places “short musical phrases are interspersed with textual cues in French. Evidently this suite was incidental music for a dramatic presentation of some sort” at Gillwell.105 Viotti also composed or arranged short occasional pieces (now lost) for his friends, including his rondeau for Madame de Genlis, mentioned above; two songs, “Fra Martins” and “Do, Re,” sent in 1809 to Lord Charlemont, a Chinnery family friend; and his setting of “a little [ Italian] poemetto” sent to him by, and presumably written by, Lord Glenbervie.106 Still another unpublished song, not listed in the Thematic Catalogue, is an Ariette avec l’accompagnement pour la Harpe, ou Clavecin, “Che fa il mio bene” (figure 7.2). The presence of this manuscript (which bears the inscription “Viotti” on the title page, but which is not in Viotti’s hand) in the State Library in Berlin, and the designation “clavecin,” rather than “pianoforte,” suggest that it may date from before Viotti’s London years, in fact as early as 1780–81, when he was in Berlin. Usually the Gillwell musical evenings were on weekends; during the week the favorite evening pastime was reading aloud from English, French, and Italian literary works. On 17 March 1808 Margaret tells George that she has been reading Shakespeare and Greek plays to the small Gillwell circle, which Caroline and Amico enjoyed immensely. A week later it was Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Jean Baptiste Racine’s Iphigénie. Knowing as we do of Viotti’s familiarity with one of Gluck’s operas on the Iphigenia theme, we can easily understand why he would have enjoyed hearing and reading the Racine drama. As to the Shakespeare, Viotti’s command of English could not have been very good; he had been taught English by William Chinnery, but admitted that he had forgotten the little he knew.107 Edme Miel tells an anecdote about Viotti, when he was forty years old, listening to a passage from Shakespeare, in English, with particular attention, whereupon he gave a translation in French “in which nothing was omitted,” to the astonishment of everyone. Miel attributes this feat to Viotti’s highly developed artistic sensibility. Viotti’s written English was limited to the very infrequent use of a word or phrase: in a letter to William he expresses the desire to see him and “faire un Shack Hands,” and he mentions “billets d’admition” for a Philharmonic Society concert.108 In another letter he refers to “mon Lawyer.”109

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Figure 7.2. Viotti, “Ariette avec l’accompagnement pour la Harpe, ou Clavecin” (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung mit Mendelssohn-Archive; Mus. ms. 22389).

A recently uncovered letter, dated 16 March 1808, reveals a certain catholicity in Viotti’s literary tastes. He asks his friend, Monsieur [Arnauld] Dulau, a London émigré publisher and bookseller, to send him copies of Letters on the Origin of the Sciences and Letters on Atlantis by the French savant and Revolutionary deputy Jean Bailly (guillotined in 1793), and a complete edition of Plutarch’s Lives in modern French, in exchange for the Amyot edition in old French, which he already owns. Viotti also mentions the possibility of his composing music for the romance (a poem) in Madame de Genlis’s novel The Siege of La Rochelle, which Dulau published later in 1808.110 The music, if he wrote it, has not survived. William Spencer often joined the Gillwell readings, and it was he who brought another enthusiastic participant, the Comte de Vaudreuil, to Gillwell.111 The


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Figure 7.2. (Continued)

comte had renewed his acquaintance with Viotti and met the Chinnerys in Paris in 1802.112 He stayed at Gillwell for a few days in early February 1809 and became a much admired friend of Margaret’s for his exquisite manners and his ability to recite French verse, some of which Caroline set to music.113 Vaudreuil could have drawn upon his considerable experience as an actor in Marie Antoinette’s amateur theatricals (along with Artois and the queen herself ) in her private theater in the Trianon gardens at Versailles. Margaret makes no mention of Viotti and Vaudreuil being previously acquainted, which seems odd, as she thoroughly enjoyed the comte’s stories of his glittering past in the ancien régime: Monsr. de Vaudreuil has been sitting with me here in my room for two hours; talking over the court and the affairs of Louis 16th and the situations and characters of the persons who remain of that unfortunate family. Nobody can be better informed than he is of these matters,—and

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few so well, because he was in high favour, and lived constantly with the royal family during the whole of the reign of Louis 16th. He has given me a great deal of curious and interesting information.114 It is almost inconceivable, given the circles in which both men moved, that Viotti and Vaudreuil had not known each other in the 1780s. It was Spencer who also introduced the poets Thomas Moore (1779–1852) and Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) to Gillwell, both of whom remained friends of the Chinnerys’ and of Viotti’s. Moore used the melody of the second movement of Viotti’s Concerto no. 5, the “air montagnard,” to set to his poem “Love thee dearest, love thee.”115 The idea for this probably arose from a conversation of the poet with the composer. Viotti’s music certainly predates the poem, which Moore may well have written expressly to be set to the melody, as he did in his enormously popular Irish Melodies, which included “The last rose of summer” and


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“Believe me if all those endearing young charms.” Moore was much in demand in the London salons as a singer of his songs, some of them set to his own music; it seems likely that he would have included “Love thee dearest” in this repertory. Rogers, independently wealthy, sharp-tongued though exceedingly generous, was perhaps less known in London society as a poet (though his Pleasures of Memory, published in 1792, had been a success) than as a conversationalist and host. He was friendly with many of the leading statesmen of the day, and he filled his house at 22 St. James Place with objets d’art and paintings, three of which, including Titian’s Noli mi tangere, he bequeathed to the National Gallery. George’s absence from home has left us not only with his mother’s evocative letters but also the occasional word from Viotti. One such letter was no doubt written on behalf of Margaret, who was worried that George, unused to the

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Oxford custom of wine parties, would be susceptible to overindulgence. Viotti’s skill at striking exactly the right tone is nowhere more in evidence than in his fatherly words of advice to the seventeen-year-old: [ Y ]ou would do well to drink one glass every day; port is preferable to anything else. In this way this liquor won’t take you by surprise when those boisterous and drunken occasions occur. For to be in the position of losing one’s sense, to no longer be oneself, is, as you know, one of the most humiliating things that can befall a person, never mind that it appears to be the fashion in this country. There is a way of giving the impression that you have drunk a lot while only drinking a little, which I myself use, I, whom assuredly you have never seen drunk. Here is how I do it: the others refill their glasses, I take only a half-glass. They empty theirs, and I drink only a quarter. The bottle comes to me, it’s my turn, I add a little to what is left, and so I keep up with the debauchees. I use this method every time I am offered wine, and I seem to have drunk as much as the others while only appearing to have done so. Use this method, my dear George; you can do it better than I since you have a reputation for not liking wine at all, and you will satisfy your companions without harming yourself, and at the least possible cost.116 On another occasion he enjoins George not to neglect wearing his glasses, or “you will regret it all your life,” and in the same letter, reminds George to take great care to save all his mother’s letters to him, “these masterpieces of maternal love, of mind and of heart.” Viotti and George’s father intend to write on the backs of each letter a resumé of its contents for future reference—“for us, and particularly for you, these letters are an invaluable monument.”117 In early March 1809 Viotti visited George on what turned out to be a more eventful weekend than anticipated. There was a flurry of letters leading up to Viotti’s departure from Gillwell—from Viotti to George, from George to his mother, and from Margaret to George, each in its own way revealing something of Viotti’s character: Viotti to George, 28 February 1809 I am resolved to go see you, my dear George, and you can count on my having breakfast with you next Saturday between 10 and 11. [ . . . ] I shall bring my violin, and that just to please you; so if you wish to invite your friends for a glass of wine on Saturday or Sunday—it doesn’t matter which of those two days—do so and we’ll try to see that your guests have a nice little harmonious and gay evening.118 George to his mother, 28 February 1809 As to Amico’s trip to Oxford [ . . . ] his arrival would bear infinitely less inconvenience along with it than that of any other person; for


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he would readily enter into my motives for not devoting many hours to him. Margaret Chinnery to her son, 1 March 1809 It occurs to me that perhaps there may be scarcely any of your friends fond of music, and that except Goodenough119 and one or two others, no one may care about it; but even in that case, without talking of music they may like very much to spend an evening with so celebrated a person, and one, whose violin is among the very least of his merits!! He intends to make his visits in Oxford of a morning while you study. [ . . . ] Your time is your wealth, your nobility, and your every thing! . . . Even Amico must not prevent your doing what is right, and everything that is requisite towards your taking up some more “excellent collections.”120 On the night of Viotti’s arrival at Christ Church, Friday, 3 March, after he had reserved his room in the nearby Star Inn and he and George had eaten supper together in George’s rooms, Viotti returned to the inn at about ten o’clock. George was on the point of going to bed when a fire broke out in the quadrangle. “Scarcely had I entered the Quadrangle,” he wrote to his mother the next day, “when I saw one whole side of it in universal blaze. The cries of fire, fire, buckets, buckets, engines, engines were echoed on every side.” George and some others attempted to put out the fire with buckets of water, but were thrown back by “the prodigious volume of flames.” Then they all frantically worked at replenishing the fire engines with water. “Amico appeared full of affectionate anxiety, & proposed removing as many of my things out of my room as I possibly could. With the assistance of two other men, we carried all the books away, silver spoons &c &c.”121 Viotti also described the incident: The fire was to the right of Thom [ Tom Tower, built by Wren] and it was truly dreadful. [ . . . ] I found my good friend with a coolness, and a dispatch that impressed me. I had supped with him at his place, just the two of us, and it was no more than an hour after I had left him when I was awakened by terrible cries of Fire Fire [these two words in English] Christ Church. You can well imagine that I ran there almost in the nude, where thank God I found my friend as I have just told you.122 Saturday morning Viotti and George breakfasted together; later Viotti watched George fencing. The next morning George and Goodenough breakfasted with Viotti, then, joined by John Conybeare, professor of Anglo-Saxon, they “had a little of Viotti’s playing.” Later that day, Viotti “has been playing on the violin of a dilettante di musica of this college, who of course came to hear with what unusual sounds his instrument spoke.”123 Viotti left Oxford on Monday, taking the early morning stagecoach, which he thought very comfortable

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and efficient, arrived in London at 5 P.M. sharp, had a “good bowl of excellent soup at Escudiér (that French confectioner) in Oxford Street, and at a quarter past seven o’clock I was by the fire in the house.”124 Occasionally William, Margaret, Caroline, and Viotti would pay social calls in London. Two typical evenings in the summer of 1809 were spent at the Dunmores’ London residence in Berkeley Street. On 9 June the company included three or four lords and ladies, one duchess (of Beaufort), as well as Samuel Rogers. After playing a duet with Lady Susan, Caroline played a concerto, then Viotti played, accompanied by Caroline, and the Chevalier La Caina sang.125 And again, later that month, Caroline “played, accompanied Amico, played a Duett with Lady Susan and for the first time, sang!”126 Margaret means, of course, that it was the first time outside Gillwell. On 9 February 1810 Margaret wrote to George with some exciting news: “Amico’s mind is just now wholly engrossed by the beauties of a new violin he has purchased of Prince Buttero.”127 This almost certainly was the Stradivari instrument (1709), which Viotti mentioned in his will, and which was sold at auction in Paris shortly after his death. It now resides in the instrument collection of the Royal Academy of Music in London (the “Viotti ex-Bruce”). We do not know how Viotti acquired this instrument (which the Chinnerys called “the Buttero”) from Prince Butera, a nobleman of the Sicilian Branciforte family, though there are one or two intriguing possible connections with acquaintances of Viotti and the Chinnerys in London.128 It was not long before this instrument was heard in the drawing rooms of London. In February and March Viotti and the Chinnerys took a house at 24 Half Moon Street in order for Margaret, who was suffering from gallstones, to be near her physician. During this period Viotti and Caroline played and dined at several homes, including three times in the space of one week at the Dunmores. On one such occasion, reported Margaret to George, Caroline’s playing was “amazingly admired,” and “Amico too, as usual enchanted his audience, and Lady Susan played better than I ever heard her. The only vocal music was a long air by the Chevalier. We did not get home till after 2.”129 During these two months Viotti also “went frequently to dine or to play with Adolphus Frederick or with his brother the Duke of Cumberland.”130 Among Viotti’s and the Chinnerys’ other social engagements in this period were a dinner at the home of Samuel Rogers on 26 March, and, the evening before, an invitation to the home of the art connoisseur, collector, and patron of promising young artists, Thomas Hope.131 (Hope, who in 1807 had published his influential Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, would sometimes issue admission tickets to view his collection in his house in Duchess Street.) Caroline and Viotti certainly played at many of these gatherings, though we have no details as to the repertory. A musical highlight was the visit of Catalani, who had gone over to Covent Garden for a year after her exorbitant salary demands had been refused by the King’s Theatre management. She returned to the King’s triumphantly on 6


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March 1810 in a revival of Johann Simon Mayr’s Il Fanatico per la Musica. There was disagreement about her acting ability, but the Morning Post declared that she was “in excellent voice, and never displayed her great and admired powers with more happy effect.”132 Viotti agreed, adding that she had sung “perfectly in tune”—no small praise from the first violin of the universe. Margaret reports this to George in such a way as to suggest that Viotti may have occasionally attended the Opera without the Chinnerys, perhaps with other friends, such as Spencer.133 Ten days later Catalani came to dinner at Half Moon Street, where she sang arias from Pietro Carlo Guglielmi’s Atalida, which, according to Margaret, she had to learn in five days (the première was indeed given on the twentieth). Caroline, who accompanied her, was “electrified,” and Margaret thought that she was “in full voice,—she has lost something at the top which is compensated by an addition to the lower notes. Upon the whole I think her improved,—she is a much better musician than she was, and seems to have studied her art since I saw her.” The company consisted of the Chinnerys, Viotti, Naldi, and later, Lord and Lady Dunmore, and Rogers. By way of a finale Naldi and Catalani sang “the Buffo Duet in the Fanatico per la Musica,—I do not know whether you recollect it,—she sings the gammut in it.”134 Catalani was often criticized for her excessive ornamentation—“chromatic runs which are introduced on every occasion of joy and sorrow.”135 Apparently she was no more able to restrain herself in private concerts than at the King’s Theatre. Margaret omits to say whether Viotti played that evening, but it is not unlikely that he did. It was time for Caroline, now an attractive and extremely accomplished eighteen-year-old, to be introduced to the highest possible echelons of society. On 27 May 1810, in the house she had taken in Stratford Place for the spring social season, May–June, Margaret gave a party for close to fifty guests of “the first rank and fashion,” including the Duke of Cambridge, the Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Bessborough, and Lady Shaftesbury (the last three all related to William Spencer), Lord and Lady Granville Leveson-Gower (married five months earlier), Sir Sidney and Lady Smith, the Dunmores, Mr. and Miss Johnstone (brother and sister who were on close terms with the Prince of Wales), and the writer George Lamb. This, one of the most glittering parties (though not the largest) Margaret ever gave, was Caroline’s social début, at which she sang and Viotti played.136 William Spencer and George Lamb (who, apart from being a talented amateur actor, was also said to be the illegitimate son of the Prince of Wales by Lady Melbourne) would have provided literary sparkle to the conversation, including, perhaps, comments on the literary sensation of the year, Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake.137 Sparkling there would also have been between the brilliant Lady Bessborough and Lord Granville Leveson-Gower— they had been lovers since 1794, and he was the father of her two illegitimate children, as everyone knew.138 Two of her letters to him have been quoted above. Rear Admiral Sir Sidney Smith was the hero of the Siege of Acre, in which the English fleet under his command had supported the successful

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defense of the city against Napoleon in 1799. But more recently, in 1806, he had been one of the prime suspects in the official inquiry into the adulterous affairs of the wife of the Prince of Wales, Princess Caroline. These slightly disreputable presences imparted a glamorous, forbidden frisson to the atmosphere of the evening. Viotti would not have been impeded in his enjoyment of it all by his uncertain command of English. The conversation, or much of it, was almost certainly conducted in French, not only where Viotti was concerned, but among the English guests as well.139 The Chinnerys were not alone in their persistent Francophilism throughout the period of war between the two countries. In June 1810 there was a flurry of social engagements, in increasingly elevated company—dinners, parties, and balls, to most of which Viotti was invited, and at many of which he played, usually with Caroline. Twice Viotti and the Chinnerys attended after-dinner parties at Thomas Hope’s mansion, and Richard Payne Knight was an occasional dinner guest of the Chinnerys.140 Margaret herself culminated their spring season on 27 June with a dinner for a select few, followed by a party to which a hundred others were invited for a concert, at which surely Viotti played.141 Viotti must have been pleased to receive a very friendly letter, dated 26 May 1810, from Dussek, his old Paris friend of the 1780s and London colleague of the 1790s. When Dussek’s publishing company with his father-in-law had failed, he fled to Hamburg late in 1799 to escape bankruptcy charges, and since 1807 had been living in Paris. Dussek sent the letter with the twenty-two-year-old Friedrich Kalkbrenner, whom he recommends to Viotti as one of the most distinguished pianists known to him on the Continent, and who is burning with the desire to meet the “Father Creator of the Violin.” Dussek often sees Madame de Montgéroult, especially in the winter. She “has lost none of her sublime talent,” and “she is presently working on a theoretical work which will be unique of its kind [this is the Cours complet pour l’enseignement du forte-piano, published in 1822]; while we are together your ears must burn; we try to enjoy your very pleasant company by reminiscing [ . . . ]. Sometimes we are obliged to listen to some of our new great men and seeing their efforts to outdo perfection, sometimes we laugh and sometimes we are angered by their caricatures.” Almost certainly Dussek is referring here to the notoriously bad taste of the pianist Daniel Steibelt and his imitators in Paris at the time.142 Dussek respectfully tells Viotti that he has dedicated his latest concerto to him, “because I believe it to be the best I have composed.” This was the Concerto in E-flat, op. 70, “dedicated to his much esteemed Friend J. B. Viotti by the author.” He asks to be remembered to the Chinnerys, and closes with his warmest regards, invoking “the few years in which I had the pleasure to be in your company; it is one of the memories to which I return most willingly.”143 “Let not Amico forget the Buttero,”144 writes George in anticipation of the visit of his mother, Caroline, Matilda, Viotti, Spencer, and the Chevalier La Cainea in early July 1810, on the occasion of the Oxford Encaenia (the annual


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Commemoration of founders and benefactors at the commencement exercises). George had been given the honor of reciting both his poem, “The Statue of the Dying Gladiator,” which had won the prestigious Newdigate Prize,145 and his congratulatory verses for the installation of the new university chancellor. Spencer was to be awarded an honorary doctor in civil law degree. Music formed a part of the weeklong festivities, and though Viotti did not perform in the officially held concerts (at which Catalani and Mme Bianchi sang), he would have been much in demand at informal gatherings. “Amico is not forgotten,” George had written, “everybody asks whether Monsieur Viotti is to be of the party [ . . . ]. As for opportunities of playing I suppose these will not be wanting, for I trust our heads of houses & Canons &c &c will be gallant.”146 For the four or five nights of their stay in Oxford, Viotti slept in George’s sitting room, Spencer in his study, and the Chinnerys and their servants stayed at an inn. Viotti reported that George’s recitation of his prize poem “went like a charm,” but that he was having difficulty arranging for a piano for George’s private supper and musical party in his rooms on the evening of 6 July: “Can you believe that we can’t find a porter to move the piano six yards? If we cannot get one it will be the very devil for poor George. I’ll try my best, I’ll raise the devil to get it done.”147 Apparently he succeeded, and Caroline reported that Catalani and Bianchi had both sung “as much as George chose.”148 We may suppose that Viotti played upon the Buttero as well. On their last evening in Oxford, 8 July, at the home of a Mr. Madocks, Fellow at All Souls College, two “great men” (Viotti’s words) were among those invited: Dr. Samuel Parr and Richard Brinsley Sheridan.149 Parr, the schoolmaster and Latin scholar, known for his erudition, conversation, and literary controversies, had taught Sheridan at Harrow in the late 1760s, and, twenty years later, William Spencer was one of his pupils. Sheridan had been nominated for an honorary doctorate, but since it had not been unanimous, he refused it, causing a scandal. Margaret had admired Sheridan since childhood, and had already had the pleasure of meeting him the evening before at Mr. Madocks’s: Mr Sheridan sat down beside me, and entered into conversation with me,—Amico played & Mrs Sheridan sang a little between whiles; presently supper was announced and Mr Sheridan chose to hand me down & sit by me,—of course I thought I could not come away, and that I might never have such another opportunity of seeing & hearing Sheridan. He was perfectly sober [Sheridan was notorious for his drunkenness], and everybody said they had not for years seen him in such good order as tonight. [ . . . ] [T]here was a striking agreement in thought & sentiment between Sheridan and me.150 Viotti played before supper, not, presumably, with Caroline, else Margaret surely would have mentioned it—perhaps there was no piano. Something unaccompanied, then, but what? Viotti clearly had a repertory of pieces suitable for

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unaccompanied performance, variations on well-known melodies, for example, and similar pieces. Margaret had every reason to wish to cultivate the acquaintance of Sheridan—he was a close friend of Thomas Moore, who wrote his biography, he was celebrated as one of the most brilliant conversationalists in an age of brilliant conversation, and perhaps most important, he was known to have the ear of the Prince of Wales. We hope that Viotti, too, was able to have a few words with the great man, in French, of course, perhaps touching on one of their prime areas of mutual experience, theater directorship (Sheridan had been coproprietor of the King’s Theatre in the early 1790s, and for some thirty years he was the owner and director of the Drury Lane theater). Apart from his four trips to visit George in this period, and his occasional brief but hectic forays into London society, Viotti seems to have settled into an unruffled routine of bucolic domesticity, varied by the family music making and the concerts at Gillwell to which guests were invited, and by some composing. Toward the end of 1810, Margaret reported that “Amico has transformed the great room adjoining the Chapel into a Riding House! By turning out all the lumber, and putting down a quantity of sand & sawdust, it is become a little manège. The Poney has been tried in it, and very soon I am to make a trial myself.”151 The blacksmith’s son could turn his hand to more than merely enchanting the drawing rooms of London. In the spring of 1811 Margaret suffered another attack of gallstones, and Caroline was stricken with whooping cough. They convalesced in different lodgings, Margaret in Duke Street and at Gillwell, Caroline for some of the time in Samuel Rogers’s mansion in St. James’s Place overlooking Green Park. Spencer, whom Caroline adored, was especially solicitous, while Viotti watched over Margaret. The two anxious men kept each other informed of their respective charges. On 13 May Margaret regrets that she had been too unwell to dine with Amico on his fifty-sixth birthday, the day before.152 By the sixteenth her condition has worsened. Viotti, desperate at the lack of instructions from the doctor, wants to “throw away music and the violin and everything and go to study medicine.”153 He begs Spencer not to mention the gravity of Margaret’s condition to Caroline in case it distresses her, but she suspects the truth: The news you send me that Mama is better [ . . . ] gave me the greatest pleasure. May heaven grant that she suffer no further relapse. But my dear Amico, why do you hide the truth from me? Why not always tell me of my dear mother’s true condition? I am always sure to find it out, because fearing that I am not being told everything, I ask questions until I get the truth. As a favor, dear Amico always tell it to me; it will perhaps distress me sometimes, but I will be less worried—I shall then know how bad things really are.154 This is not the last time that Viotti is secretively protective of those close to him. Careworn, suffering himself from a severe toothache, he is depressed by


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the English weather: “There is nothing more annoying than to catch a glimpse of the sun and then to see it immediately disappear. You feel as though you are in the most remote caves of the North.”155 But four days later, in his joy at Margaret’s recovery, he permits himself an extravagant conceit: Now, my dear Caroline, we have the complete chord: after the 3rd and the 5th, we had the 7th—yesterday the 9th appeared, and all of them without the least pain [ Viotti is referring to Margaret having passed gallstones]. Isn’t that a blessing from Heaven! [ . . . ] P. S. Now look what has happened, Sophie [a maid] has just spoiled my calculations [calculs = “stones”]. She says that there were 7 in all. All right then, seven it is. That’s plenty if we are willing to do without Dissonances!156 [A chord of the ninth is more dissonant than a chord of the seventh.] On 19 June the Prince of Wales held a fête at Carlton House, to celebrate the inauguration of his Regency. William and Margaret Chinnery and Viotti attended, as well as Caroline, now pronounced sufficiently recovered from the whooping cough. As they entered this magnificent palace, Margaret would surely have pointed out to Viotti the classically dignified Ionic portico designed by her uncle, the fashionable architect Henry Holland. Inside, however, sumptuousness was the byword—much too sumptuous, in the opinion of many—and the fête itself has gone down in history as one of the most extravagant ever given. The Comte de Provence was there, and the Comte d’Artois and his son the Duc de Berry, and other exiled Bourbons. Presumably the Comte de Vaudreuil, Artois’s old confrere and fellow comédien in the Trianon gardens, was there as well. Provence, now styled Louis XVIII, had been living in England since 1807. There is no record of Viotti having any contact in England with the personage who had given his name to his Paris theater; at most Viotti might have caught a glimpse of the Prince Regent’s guest of honor among the nearly 2,000 guests. At half past two in the morning the prince sat down at a table set for 200 of his most eminent guests; an artificial rivulet ran down the center of the table, lined with moss and flowers, and filled with fish. The other guests sat at immensely long tables stretching out into the gardens. Viotti and the Chinnerys, and most of the other guests, did not get away until well after daybreak. Thomas Moore thought that it was all “worthy of a Prince—nothing was ever half so magnificent,”157 as did Margaret: “It was the most beautiful & most princely entertainment that ever was given in any court!”158 Others, especially those who had not been invited, including Moore’s friend, Leigh Hunt, fulminated at the bad taste and expense.159 On 25 July Viotti received the welcome news, from none other than the Duke of Cambridge, that he had become a naturalized British citizen (denizenship). It had been the duke who had interceded with his brother, the Prince of Wales. “Knowing the kindly sentiments of the Prince towards you, I am sure that he

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gave the order for your Denizenship with great pleasure, and I am extremely pleased to have been charged with presenting your application to him.”160

Tragedy In August 1811 there began a train of events that, within a few months, led to tragedy. Margaret decided that they should go to Eastbourne for the sea air, particularly for Caroline’s health. Here Viotti and the Chinnerys (except George, who was in his last year at Oxford), the relatives “little Margaret” and Matilda, waited upon by several servants, spent a leisurely month of swimming, sailing, and enjoying the seashore, with very little socializing. It was the calm before the storm. At the end of August they went to Tunbridge Wells, a favorite watering place of the haut ton. Viotti, ever helpful, ever efficient, went ahead to find lodgings. On 7 August he traveled from Eastbourne to London to take the oath of citizenship, telling Spencer (who, though he spent much time with the Chinnerys in Eastbourne, was in London that week), “If you would like to eat a cutlet with me at six o’clock, you will find it ready at Duke Street, as well as my arms open to greet you.” He jokes that the “ladies [of the Chinnery party] are ready to dry themselves in the wind at the coast!”161 We may imagine that he was not pleased at the prospect of the windy coast. On the ninth, he took the public coach to Tunbridge Wells to settle upon a house, then a (private) post chaise back to Eastbourne to rejoin Margaret and the others. In Tunbridge Wells Margaret had apparently hoped for more peace and quiet, but she should have known better. They were immediately plunged into a round of social engagements, in most of which Viotti and Caroline provided the music. On 1 September the Vaudreuils (the comte and his wife, and perhaps his son, Alfred) and Miss Berry came to dinner; Miss Berry’s sister and other guests came in the evening, “and were pleased with Caroline & Amico’s playing.”162 But already Caroline’s fragile health was showing signs of weakening. She was unable to play at a party given by Lady Charlemont; the next day she sent her piano and harp to this lady’s house, and played that evening, as no doubt did Viotti.163 Three or four days later they played at a “great party” given by Margaret’s aunt, Mrs. Holland, who was pleased that Caroline and Viotti provided so much entertainment, for which a “Grand Pianoforte & a Harp” had been procured.164 On Sunday, the eighth, Margaret gave a “small but brilliant” party, to which, among others, Mr. and Mrs. Francis James Jackson came.165 Jackson had just returned from the United States, where he had been the ambassador, in the wake of the rupture between the two countries over the English blockade. A few days later, at still another Chinnery party, “Miss Chinnery and Viotti sang and played delightfully,” according to one of the guests, Lord Glenbervie, “and Mrs Gordon very well. Viotti also drew heavenly sounds from that, in all other


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hands but his, disagreeable instrument, the fiddle.” Jackson’s younger brother, in a letter to his mother, and Glenbervie, in his diary, both have a great deal to say about the Chinnerys, much of it condescending and dismissive, especially about William Chinnery. Jackson says he “saw a good deal” of the Chinnerys at Oxford, but that he has not yet availed himself of their invitation to visit at Gillwell. “L’ami de la maison—passing by an old Frenchman—is William Spencer. I used to be not a little amused to hear him say pretty things alternately, though with little or no respite, to the mother and daughter. The lord and master was either absent or looking on; apparently, thinking it a very good joke.”166 Jackson must have met the Chinnery party at the Oxford Installation in 1810, when the “old Frenchman” was fifty-five years old. Glenbervie, more sophisticated, praises the “excellent dinner, choice wines, choice spirits” (did he know about Duke Street?), but suspects Chinnery’s “command of money, [ . . . ] which nobody knows how [he] has acquired.” Chinnery is “but a coxcomb, [ . . . ] the quill behind his ear.” But Glenbervie is full of praise for Caroline, her looks, her personality, and her talents. Spencer is “all high spirits, great good humour, coaxing civility, and irresistible drollery and pleasantry. But never solid, never steady.” As for Viotti, he has lived in Chinnery’s house, I believe, ever since the birth of the daughter—scandal might perhaps insinuate that his residence there is of a little earlier date, but I do not believe that exact chronology would justify this. However, she has been and still continues to be without interruption, the daily and favourite pupil of that first-rate musician for taste, knowledge, and execution, and who adds to such various merits in his profession that of being a very agreeable well-bred and wellinformed person in all matters which it becomes a man of the world and of good company to know.167 On 20 September Margaret had a few guests to dinner, followed by “a great deal of company to our music in the evening.”168 Though Margaret does not specify it, almost certainly Viotti would have played, probably with Caroline. Indeed, Margaret later wrote of these five weeks in Tunbridge Wells that “Caroline and Viotti had to perform every night,” and though it had been fatiguing for both of them, “Amico’s success was as great as Caroline’s.”169 For Margaret, in her enthusiasm at her daughter’s success with the haut ton of Tunbridge Wells, there could be no higher praise. Sir Robert Liston, the diplomat whom Viotti met in Berlin in 1780, and whom he mentions in his Précis of 1798 as always having taken a “sincere interest” in him, was in Tunbridge Wells at precisely this time. Now seventy years old, he had come out of retirement, having been appointed ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary at Constantinople. Francis Jackson, who saw him in Tunbridge Wells and in London, reports to his brother that Liston “is in every sense old for his work, and clings to a system and policy that are out of

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date.”170 It is highly likely, though Margaret and Viotti do not mention it, that they saw Liston, since they frequented the same society in Tunbridge Wells as did the Jacksons. Liston did not leave England until April 1812, so there would have been ample opportunity for Viotti and him to see each other, although this was to be a period of turmoil and distress for Viotti. In early October 1811 the Chinnery party moved to Brighton, where they took a house at 46 West Cliff. Viotti and the Chinnerys had been to Brighton at least twice before, in October 1803 and in September—October 1804.171 Viotti’s presence at the Prince of Wales’s Brighton Pavilion in 1805 has already been noted. While in Brighton on the present occasion Viotti received a letter of congratulation, in French, from “Guglielmo” Spencer, whose tone slides effortlessly to the Rabelaisian: Long live the red box!172 For a long time I have counted myself lucky to have you as a friend, and now I am delighted to have you as my compatriot—I say “delighted,” a less energetic phrase than the other, since I prefer one friend to twenty million compatriots—despite John Bull, Jerry Bull and all the bovine family. But, my friend, now that you have been received into the bosom of our good mother Mrs Great Britain, don’t be naughty; she has a chaste nature whose [illegible word: “bicher”?] you must respect &c&c&c. If she offers to suckle you, don’t you dare “prefer the jug to the draught” [ preferer le vase au breuvage].173 Viotti received several other letters of congratulation. One, from Sir Charles William Flint, hints at enemies behind the scenes: “nothing could be more flattering or gratifying than the manner in which the Prince Regent supported your claim: without his powerful aid you would once more have fallen a sacrifice to Prejudice and Obstinacy.”174 Again, Margaret seems to have convinced herself that Brighton would provide a more restful sojourn, though she must have known that it could not. Yet she was concerned at Caroline’s steadily declining health. One cannot help feeling that her ambitions for Caroline’s success in society had clouded her judgement. Caroline was unable to play at several parties to which they had been invited in October. By the twenty-ninth, Margaret, thoroughly alarmed, had started packing to go home. But on the same day the Prince Regent arrived at his Marine Pavilion. William Chinnery dined with the prince, and he and Margaret, Caroline and Viotti spent the evening at the Pavilion at the prince’s invitation. Caroline played her own variations, which pleased the prince, who thought they were “in the stile of Scarlatti.”175 The Marine Pavilion had been originally designed by Henry Holland, but was modified over the years. Its interior, including the music room, was admired, and deplored, for its chinoisserie, though the music room had not yet been given its present exotic, oriental tentlike aspect. The prince invited the Chinnerys and Viotti to stay another week—an invitation to the Pavilion was more like a


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summons; by 2 November they had been four times. Caroline played several times, and that she pleased the prince is attested to not only by her mother’s proud letters to her son but also by such an unbiased observer as George Jackson, who wrote to his mother on 11 November: We heard some of the finest music, executed in the very finest manner, all the performers being musicians of the first talent. On one or two evenings, Miss Chinnery, who possesses great musical ability, in addition to her many other accomplishments, was asked to play on the pianoforte. This was considered a very great compliment, and as you will readily understand was the cause of much envy and backbiting amongst the women. Many soft sleepy eyes opened, many arched brows were raised higher, and amongst the dowagers many significant glances were slyly exchanged. But Miss Chinnery performed splendidly, and without any of the airs and graces with which I have seen some girls prattle with the keys. She was complimented greatly, and particularly so by the Regent. On one occasion we heard Viotti, the celebrated performer on the violin. About 12 o’clock, sandwiches and some light refreshments are brought in, and the Prince retires; having made the tour of the room to speak to the company, both before and after the performance of the band. I think the company never exceeded a hundred, and sometimes not 30 persons were present.176 Jackson’s persistent unawareness of any connection between Viotti and the Chinnerys seems odd. Surely Caroline accompanied Viotti on the “ ‘curious fine-toned six octave grand piano in black ebony case’ which [the prince] had bought for £680 in 1808.”177 The prince’s band at the pavilion was indeed a band in the modern sense—it consisted entirely of wind instruments. The question as to whether this ensemble ever participated in Viotti’s or Caroline’s performances is partially answered by Margaret’s letter of 4 November, informing George that at that very moment, in the drawing room, seven or eight members of the prince’s band, with (Giacomo G.) Ferrari178 at the piano, were rehearsing an air that Caroline was to sing the next day for the prince. The Duke of Cumberland, brother of the Prince Regent, dropped in to listen to the rehearsal, and stayed for an hour and a half, during which time Viotti played three pieces accompanied by Caroline.179 On the same day Viotti received a note from the aide-de-camp of the prince: “Lt Col. Bloomfield’s compliments to M. Viotti & is commanded by the Prince to say that if Miss Chinnery would have the goodness to bring some Musick & M. Viotti his Violin His Royal Highness would be much gratified.”180 It is entirely possible that the band, or musicians from the band, could have played the orchestral parts of Viotti’s concertos, with scarcely any adjustments necessary. The flutes and oboes could play the violin parts, the bassoons the bass

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parts (cellos and double basses), only the viola parts needing to be transposed, to be played perhaps by clarinets. Thomas Creevey (1768–1838), a Chancery barrister and Whig parliamentarian, no doubt heard Viotti and Caroline play, but on the evening of 1 November, his interest was piqued by a more unusual sight: We were again at the Pavilion last night [ . . . ]. The Regent sat in the Musick Room almost the whole time between Viotti, the famous violin player, and Lady Houston, and he went on for hours beating his thighs the proper time for the band, and singing out aloud, and looking about for accompaniment from Viotti and Lady Jane. It was a curious sight to see a Regent thus employed, but he seemed in high good humour. On the third and fourth, continues Creevey, “the Regent was again all night in the Musick Room, and not content with presiding over the Band, but actually singing, and very loud too.” And again, on the fifth, “the Prince, according to his custom, [was] entirely occupied with his musick.”181 Caroline and Viotti, it seems, shared the musical honors not only with the band but also with the regent himself. The Prince Regent left Brighton on 9 November, the Chinnerys and Viotti a few days later, arriving at Gillwell on the eighteenth after spending two nights at Thomas Hope’s country home, Deepdene, near Dorking, in Surrey, and a night in London at William Spencer’s house at 36 Curzon Street. By the twenty-sixth Caroline and Margaret were back in Spencer’s house. Caroline was never to see Gillwell again. Her condition steadily worsened, interrupted by moments of optimism when she seemed to be improving. Viotti, writing from Gillwell on 10 January 1812, hopes against hope that she is better, since “she slept three hours in the night of Wednesday to Thursday.”182 By March it was clear that she was beyond hope. In the meantime, the Chinnerys and Viotti were struck, with cruel simultaneity, by another blow. On 16 March 1812, William was informed by the prime minister, Spencer Perceval, that he had been dismissed from his post at the Treasury for misappropriation of approximately £88,000 of public funds, the equivalent of more than £4 million in 2007.183 This had been several years coming. Already in the mid-1790s William’s tardy submission of official accounts had been a cause of concern to his superiors. Sometime in 1810, George Rose, the vice president of the Board of Trade and Treasurer of the Navy, sent a friendly but stern letter of caution to William. He had already felt “compelled to remonstrate with you about your style of living,” but now, “comments upon the extent of expense that you must be unavoidably incurring are become so unqualified and general, as to compel me, most reluctantly, to depart from that silence which I have long observed about it.”184 In addition to supporting a way of life far beyond his salary, William had lent or given large sums of money to his brothers, George, the artist, and John, a Madras merchant; to friends: £1,200


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to Viotti and Charles Smith, and £6,000 to Sébastien Erard, for example;185 and to several others. From 1810 onward it was only a matter of time before Chinnery would be exposed. George and Caroline had both been informed of the situation by the end of 1810,186 and Viotti no doubt as well. Amidst the smart dinners and evenings out, the concerts, the euphoria of George’s success at Oxford and Caroline’s acceptance in society, triumphantly vindicating Margaret’s educational methods, this threat had hung over them. One can only imagine the effect of William’s letter to Margaret of 9 August 1811,187 when she and her daughter and the others were at Eastbourne, in which he lays bare the full extent of his arrears. William tried desperately to recoup his deficit by investing with a firm of bill brokers and loan contractors, but this ended in disaster when the firm collapsed. When he was dismissed from his Treasury post, he immediately went into hiding; Viotti took the difficult decision to avoid seeing him, so that “he may without hesitation say he knows nothing of me at present”188 (Viotti’s experience of the Revolution had prepared him for such situations). On 30 March Chinnery took ship for Gothenburg, Sweden. Four days later Caroline died, almost certainly of miliary tuberculosis. She had not been told of her father’s disgrace. Viotti shared in this double misfortune as a member of the family. For Margaret he was a tower of strength. In a journal kept at this time, from March 1812 to September 1813, she poured out her grief and hopelessness, sustained only by her faith and by Viotti’s steadfast support: Oh who shall tell, who could describe what I have suffered in those eighteen months! [ . . . ] when my spirit was oppressed and fearful—then our unimpeachable friend—he who in friendship has no equal—he supported me,—reassured me, told of my courage, tried to persuade me that my fortitude was equal to the fierce encounter—and I returned to the charge.189 In one of her first letters to her husband in exile, Margaret writes, I do believe that it is the will of God to make me live through all the suffering! But what should I live for? Not for myself certainly, I can never more taste of happiness—but for my excellent perfect George I would try to live—for you my dear C[hinnery] whom I long to press to my bosom—and for the best friend that any human being ever was blessed with, for our dear Amico! I would also try to endure life, if I did not fear that my sorrow will cast a heavy cloud over the evening of his days.190 In another letter, she reports that “Amico takes me out in a Hackney coach after dark, for an hour.”191 And at the end of the same letter Viotti exhorts William, “Let us think above all of looking after our dear Padrona; that is what

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occupies George and me ceaselessly [ . . . ]. Our thoughts, our courage must be equal to our misfortunes. Let us not forget that there are still four of us who need each other.”192 Viotti received several letters of concern and condolence, including two from Colonel Anthony Butler St. Leger, the rakish friend of the Prince of Wales, by now a close friend of the Chinnerys, who assures Viotti of his support. Another is from Charles Smith, who tells his business partner about Caroline’s funeral service, which Viotti evidently did not or could not attend. For Viotti, no task was too trivial, too menial, to support Margaret in her hour of need. He acted as amanuensis by copying some of her letters to her friends to send to William, though, perhaps because of his own troubled state of mind, as Margaret later informed William, “Amico’s hand was unsteady, I fancy,” and he “made some sad blunders in copying mine to Mme de Genlis for you.”193 Viotti also took it upon himself to keep William informed of developments in England, to advise him, and to stiffen his resolve when he considered it necessary. Thus, on the very day William sailed, he sets the tone for many of his letters to his friend: You have escaped the claws of the lion, my dear good friend [ . . . ] but, alas, our other anxieties, day by day, hour by hour, become more agonizing, more dreadful! Yes, my friend, it is all too true that there is almost no more hope for our dear Caroline. Oh, my God, what an awful blow! I must not hide the truth from you any longer, as I did when you left, since probably I will be forced despite myself to send you the [news of the] horrible catastrophe by the next courier. Take courage, then, and accept like a man this inevitable sentence. [ . . . ] The Padrona, Guglielmo, George and I have discussed your idea of going to Paris. This you absolutely cannot and must not do. Indeed, above all else we forbid it in the name of friendship and of your own interests. We advise you to stay in Stockholm, or to go to Jutland, to live with my daughter’s father [le père de ma fille?], with my good friend Mr. Smith, until you are able to return.194 It was not long before Margaret had to cope with the legal and financial consequences of her husband’s malfeasance. As always, Viotti was at her side. Gillwell—the house and all its contents—had been seized by the government. Viotti had attempted to buy back the Gillwell furniture “by appraisement,” but the chancellor of the Exchequer ruled that it was all to be sold at auction.195 The catalogues of these sales are sad to read. Here are the material remnants of the daily lives of the Chinnerys, and to an extent, of Viotti. Margaret wrote bitterly in her journal of “things that had belonged to me from my birth, which had been my father’s, the books in which I had taught my children, their exercises, their drawing and writing books, even some of our own portraits, all sold by public auction.”196


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On 19 May 1812, and the four following days, most of the “household furniture, choice old wines, china, glass, paintings, prints, linen, wearing apparel, [ . . . ] musical instruments, and a great variety of valuable Effects” were sold at Gillwell by Mathew and Son. The catalogue is fifty-two pages long.197 It would appear that Viotti attended at least one day of this auction, and that he bought back some of the furniture; other objects were bought for the Chinnerys by someone else, possibly a friend whose identity has not been revealed.198 One group of lots (no. 40), sold on 22 May, consisted of music (of which the listing is frustratingly laconic) and musical instruments: Two lots of a “quantity of music books, bound,” and five of “ditto, unbound” [was any of this music by Viotti?]; Small table piano forte, 5 single and 1 double mahogany music book stands; Small violin and box [ perhaps the violin George had learned on?], tambourine and case, and 2 satinwood music book stands; Quantity of silver harp and violin strings and 3 bows [were these not Viotti’s bows? It seems extraordinary that he was not able to keep them and the strings]; Handsome fine toned spanish guitar, in a deal case, lock and key [there is no record of any of the Gillwell residents playing the guitar]; Ditto piano forte in mahogany case, by Broadwood and Son, & mahogany rising music stool [presumably a square piano, since it is not specified as a grand piano, and since the price it fetched, £18, seems too low even for an outdated grand]; Elegant fine toned pedal harp, by Sebastian Erards [sic]. We do not know whether Viotti himself was able to buy back any of these items, or whether they were bought by others for him or the Chinnerys. Another sale of the contents of the Gillwell house was held by “Mr. Christie, at his Great Room, Pall Mall,” 2–4 June. Viotti was in attendance on the first day, Tuesday, 2 June, beginning at one o’clock, when the Chinnery library was sold, including “Stockdale’s Shakespear,” “Genlis,” “2 Oeuvres de Racine, 3 v.,” and many textbooks, several of them French, on such subjects as botany, mineralogy, gardening, Greek, Roman and English history, logic, geography, chemistry, archaeology, “Salzmann’s Gymnasticks for youth,” and, most poignantly, “School books, &c a parcel, various.” In one surviving copy of the catalogue the names of the buyers and the prices for each item have been written in ink. Viotti bought the lots listed below: Essay on Petrarch with engravings. Macpherson’s Ossian, 3 v. Mavor’s British Tourists, 4 v. and 3 others, for £0.13.6; Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, 1737. Gray’s Works by Mason, 2 v. and Sotheby’s Oberon, 2 v., for £0.18.0;

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Traite de l’Ortographie. Oeuvres de Nivernois, 2 v. Dictionaire [sic] Lexique, 2 v. Oeuvres de la Harpe, 6. vol., for £0.14.0; Monde Moral, 2 v. Sethos, 1 and 3. Environs de Paris. L’esprit des Beaux Arts. Memoires du Cardinal de Retz. Oeuvres de Moliere, 3 v. and 5 Lettres Per[si?]annes, 2 v. and La Philosophe Chritienne [sic], for £0.14.0; Calendrier de Flore, 3 v. Histoire du canal du midi, and Maison Rustique, v. 2 and 3, for £0.19.0; Oeuvres de la Motte, 10 vols. in 11´ for £0.19.0; Gil Blas in Italian, 4 v. les Veillees du Chateau, 2 v., for £0.14.0; Tragedie di Alfieri, 3 v. Dante, vols 2, 3, 4, Omero, 4 v. Gravina Gerusalemme Liberata, 2 v Menzini Saffo dramma Lirico, Poesie di L: Egineo. Gli Animali Parlanti, 2 v. boards, for £0.19.0.199 We may presume that Viotti bought the first two lots, in English, for the Chinnerys. As for the French works, it would be hazardous to attempt to separate Viotti’s literary interests from the Chinnerys’. The treatise on orthography and the works of Jean-François de La Harpe are strange bedfellows, the latter perhaps of more interest to Viotti than the former, since La Harpe may have been known to Viotti through having frequented the same salons in Paris. At least some of the Italian works surely reflect Viotti’s own literary tastes. Also sold on 2 June were ten lots of “printed musick”—for these we unfortunately do not have the names of the buyers200—consisting of “Duetts by Breval, &c, 2 v.” (which probably means not two volumes of duets, but the two parts for a set of duets); “Quartetts by [Ferdinando] Bertoni and others, 4 v.” (again, probably a set of parts); several sets of parts of “Quartetts by Haydn, &c”; “Overtures [symphonies] by Haydn, [Carl Friedrich] Abel, and others, 6 v.”; “Parts of Overtures, 7 v. Ditto, ditto 11v.” and “Ditto by Borghi, Haydn, Clementi, &c 10 v.” (orchestral parts); a set of parts and the score for Corelli’s trio sonatas (presumably only one of the four sets of twelve sonatas each); “[Stephen] Storace’s Piano Forte, Violin, and Violoncello Musick, 6 v.” (trio parts); collections of Scottish and Welsh airs, of “Piano Forte Musick,” and of operatic arias; and the scores of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide, Iphigénie en Tauride, and Piccinni’s Roland. We do not know how much of this music belonged to Viotti (surely the three opera scores were his), nor whether it was Viotti who bought any of it, but we do know that Viotti was able to salvage some music belonging to him that had apparently been seized. On 25 May the Treasury Solicitor had ordered Mr. Christie “to deliver the Musick over to Mr Viotti.”201 On 3 and 4 June, furniture, porcelain, bronzes, Greek vases, including “THE MUCH CELEBRATED VASE of which the principal painting has been supposed to represent the combat of the Greeks and Trojans for the BODY OF PATROCLUS, on the reverse are 5 figures, and Eros on the wing above them, about 26 inches high—AN INVALUABLE MONUMENT OF ANCIENT ART,” Sicilian vases, marble statuettes and fragments, paintings, and other objects went on sale. Among the


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most conspicuous buyers of vases (though not of the “much celebrated vase”) were three good friends of Viotti and the Chinnerys: Samuel Rogers, Thomas Hope, and Richard Payne Knight, all of them well-known collectors of antique vases.202 Hope and Payne Knight, in particular, may have in the first instance become acquainted with William Chinnery through their common interest in antique objets d’art, but they both became good friends of the family. Several marble architectural pieces, including two “very capital Antique Altar[s] of Pentelic Marble, and of undoubted Greek workmanship, ornamented with sculptured ram’s heads and festoons” (which were sold in situ at Gillwell, no doubt because they were too heavy to be brought conveniently to Pall Mall) and two marble vases were bought by Sir John Soane (1753–1837), the architect and collector, whose house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields is now a museum of antiquities. Soane had worked early in his career in the office of Henry Holland, Margaret’s uncle, and in 1798 William Chinnery had commissioned him to design architectural improvements to his house in Mortimer Street.203 Someone, perhaps the auctioneer, wrote on the first page of the catalogue for this sale the words, “pianoforte to be bot [sic] for M. Viotti, if under 30 G[uineas].” But Viotti, who evidently was not present, was outbid—the “grand Piano Forte by Broadwood” was sold to someone else for £64.1.0. Also sold were “a mahogany quartett [music] stand,” for £2.10.0—Viotti would have been sorry to see it go, as he would have the “capital large billiard table,” which went for £18.18.0. (Miel asserts that Viotti was an excellent billiards player, and Margaret later reported in one of her letters that Amico was playing billiards with a friend.)204 Not even the children’s articles were spared the auctioneer’s hammer: “a Bow and sundry Arrows” went for £0.13.0 (the children had practiced archery as part of their physical fitness training); “a Compound Microscope by Berge, successor to Ramsden, with Apparatus, in a mahogany case,” which William had bought for George for his studies at Oxford, sold for £6.15.0. “An ivory work-basket of the most delicate Chinese carving” would have been one of Margaret’s prized possessions. The melancholy list goes on and on.205 The fortunes of the Chinnery family had reached their lowest ebb.

chapter eight

London and the Continent, 1812–19

Recovery For more than a year after the death of her daughter, Margaret declined to visit or receive guests, though she undertook a protracted legal battle to establish her right to a claim to Gillwell, having inherited it from her father. Since, by law, ownership had passed to her husband, her suit was unsuccessful. Viotti and George, who by now, despite his father’s disgrace, had obtained a place in the Treasury office, began to attend various social functions. One of the most memorable was a fête given by Sophia Johnstone on the evening of 4 August 1812, at which the Prince Regent was present. In his letter to William the next day Viotti gives a wonderfully vivid, moment by moment, almost cinematic description: he and George station themselves one on either side of the door, the regent enters, and addresses Viotti, “in a low voice—Bonsoir Viotti, but with the most gracious expression possible,” then goes into the music room, and sits on a sofa beside the fireplace near the piano. The performance of vocal music is interrupted by the reading of letters from “Lord Willington” announcing “our brilliant success in Spain and the victorious battle.” Wellington had inflicted a crushing defeat on the French in the Battle of Salamanca, 22 July. Viotti’s “our” is no more than might be expected from one of His Majesty’s loyal subjects. During the reading, Viotti and George “creep into the right-hand corner of this second room, from where we can see, hear and be seen. God Save the King is sung (atrociously, by the way, by Bertinotti and Tramezani),”1 after which Miss Johnstone tells Viotti that the prince wishes to hear him play, “adding, you can imagine, all the compliments that she knows how to make. I leave my companion, I go over to the little room where my violin was.” Returning, he is accosted by the prince, who notices “the young Chinnery,” asks about “the poor 270


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Mrs Chinnery,” speaks of Caroline, and remembers fondly the lovely evenings at Brighton: “In the meantime it is my turn—I take my violin—the best of all Princes sat down on a chair near the sofa [ . . . ] where Lady Castlereagh and Lady Cholmondeley were seated. From there he asks me all sorts of questions with an inexpressible kindness while I tuned with Vacari2 and while I prepared the music. Dear Caroline was again the subject of conversation. I play, and it seemed to me that I had the good fortune to please him. My Duo having finished, he did me the honor of calling me back,” this time to inquire about William and George. Viotti takes the opportunity to put in a good word for them both, even reminding the prince pointedly that George’s ability in “the four modern languages” should qualify him for a post in the diplomatic corps. Then the singers sing a duo, “Mia Sorella,” Viotti withdraws, but “this amiable and magnanimous Prince” does not let him out of his sight, and “gave me to understand how fine he thought the music was &c” (me faisait des signes sûr la bonté de la musique). After the duo the prince left. All in all, thought Viotti, the evening was “splendid.”3 It would seem that on this occasion George and Viotti narrowly missed meeting Lord Byron, who attended a party given by “Miss Johnson” (recte “Johnstone”?) only a few weeks earlier, at which the Prince Regent was also present.4 Viotti and the Chinnerys had a number of friends in common with Byron. Thomas Moore and Samuel Rogers were both his boon companions; the three poets met on 11 November 1811 at Rogers’s home. Moore later became Byron’s biographer.5 In 1813, Viotti and Byron both saw Madame de Staël often in society, but never, it would appear, at the same time. In a way it seems extraordinary that Viotti and the Chinnerys never met Byron; perhaps it was because Byron had “joined in the general vilification” of the Prince Regent in 1812.6 On the other hand, Moore’s satirical verse against the regent, some of it ferocious, at around the same time, does not seem to have impaired his friendship with Viotti or the Chinnerys. The deciding factor may have been Byron’s relationship with his half-sister, Augusta, which by 1813 was being noticed. In Sweden, William entered society and it was not long before he asked Viotti to send his cello. Viotti struggled with this task—“special permission for the export, proofs that the duties have been paid, and a myriad other formalities causing endless difficulties.” He prepared a box of provisions to send to William, including wigs, pomades, cheese and macaroni, in which there will be some music, he writes, but no instrument on which to play it.7 He eventually managed to send this instrument, which apparently was an Amati cello, for in a later letter Viotti tells William that it has been returned, and that he will attempt to send a “mediocre” one.8 This letter is full of news about music and musicians. Viotti mentions “the famous bassoonist” Karl Bärmann, who had been recommended to him. He says that he enjoyed William’s last letter “about my pretended pupils.” William had met Madame Gerbini in Gothenburg, and was full of praise for her. Viotti

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replies, giving no hint that it had been he who had sponsored her and who almost certainly was the inspirer of the pasticcio featuring her singing and her playing of his Concerto no. 3 in the Théâtre de Monsieur twenty-two years earlier: Mad.me Gerbini is a pupil of Pugnani. I heard her for the first time in Paris. I thought that she played very well, that she had a masculine nerve and that she drew a very fine sound [très bon son] from an excellent Stradivarius. I don’t know if she has kept this instrument. She performed in London some time ago and as I recall did not make a big impression, since she appeared as a singer and was only so-so.9 You seemed pleased with her looks! Can it be that she has become passable? I always thought her as ugly as sin. She traveled at that time with her father; now you say that the father has become a brother. Good for him but I never knew him. May Heaven preserve my compatriot, and may she earn much [success] Prix-Dalers [?].10 Viotti is concerned that the music he had sent in the box had not arrived, the more so since a letter (concerning business, Viotti thinks) from Charles Smith had been enclosed in the first violin part of the quartets dedicated to Phillipe C[ipriani].11 He is unable, he informs William, to send his quartets printed in Paris, as he does not have them to hand. Another errand that Viotti has undertaken for William involved obtaining advantageous terms for two of William’s acquaintances from the piano manufacturer Broadwood. But Viotti fears that he will have difficulties. “The thirty-three per cent discount that they are seeking is not even given to dealers or professors like himself. The other obstacle is that old Mr Broadwood having just died, Viotti will be obliged to treat with his sons, whom he does not know so well.”12 Viotti next turns to some very exciting news: the other day he played through his new quartets with Francesco Vaccari and the two Schram brothers:13 If I were not the composer, I would say that they are really charming— even more than that, but the modesty of your Jean Baptiste must impose silence upon him. You have no idea how these gentlemen were pleased with them. I’m going to make a copy of them for Erard—it’s a present I wish to give to his nephews, and you know how long it takes to do all that copying. When everything is ready I will see to selling them here to be engraved, and dedicated to the good Duke, who has not yet heard them. I wanted to have a session behind closed doors, and so that the musical racket would not bother the Padrona, all four of us went to Lord Dunmore’s, who was in Scotland and told me that I could use his house when I wished.14 As Denise Yim has pointed out, Viotti must have changed his mind about the dedication of these works, as none of his quartets is dedicated to the Duke of


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Cambridge.15 These quartets are the set of three he dedicated to his half-brother André, WII:13–15, not published until 1817. Indeed, it was not long after this trial play-through that Viotti received a letter from André with the news that he had been named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. André, now in the Grenadiers des Gardes de Paris, wrote in January 1813 that “His Excellency M. de Lacepede, Grand Chancellor, decorated me with his own hand, telling me that he was delighted to confer personally this mark of distinction upon the brother of the celebrated____.”16 The certificate in his Legion of Honor dossier,17 signed by Comte Bernard de Lacépède, indicates that André was named Chevalier on 25 December 1812, and, according to his letter, the presentation ceremony took place on New Year’s day. This is one of the few times that Viotti refers to his compositions, and very revealing it is, for these three quartets are indeed more than merely charming. Viotti adopts for the first time the Haydn model, with its four-movement structure (including a minuet as the second or third movement), infusing it with an Italianate melodiousness, and adding one or two striking features of his own, including cadenzas for the first and second violins and the cello in the first movement of the second quartet of the set. They also display an increased mastery of, or at least a stronger tendency toward, the Haydnesque, or Viennese string quartet style. Rather than each instrument taking the lead in turn, as in his Parisian quartets, there is more of a constant interplay among the four instruments, more exchange of the musical materials; in other words, there is what one might call a greater intensity of texture. Sometime in the late summer or autumn of 1812,18 the evicted Gillwell residents (Margaret, Viotti, George, Matilda, and little Margaret Chinnery) moved to 10 Charles Street, Manchester Square.19 Here they remained until 1817. Viotti often complained about it being too small—“this ugly hole, stuffed with furniture” (that had been retrieved from the auction), with not enough room for his “Quartett, or a Grand Piano-forte supposing we had one.”20

The Philharmonic Society (1813, 1814) Early in 1813, Viotti participated in an event of capital importance for the musical life of London. The Philharmonic Society was founded by a group of thirty “Members,” most of them from the cream of London’s singers and instrumentalists, including Viotti and several of his friends and colleagues, such as the pianists Muzio Clementi, Johann B. Cramer (a son of Wilhelm Cramer), and Ludwig Berger; the violinists Johann Salomon, Feliks Janiewicz, come from Edinburgh, Franz Cramer ( Johann’s brother), and Paolo Spagnoletti; the cellist Charles Jane Ashley, and the flautist Andrew Ashe; all of whom “had at one time or another graced the Chinnery drawing room.”21 One of the nonmusician founding Members, and its first secretary, was Henry Dance, who later

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was Viotti’s lawyer in connection with his wine business. Their goal was to fill the gap caused by the absence of a concert series of the eminence of Salomon’s concerts and the Professional Concert of recent memory, and the resultant decline, as they saw it, of public taste in music. The Duke of Cambridge wrote to Viotti requesting that he be put on the list of subscribers, confidant that “this Society will succeed in re-establishing the taste for Instrumental Music that unfortunately has fallen into decadence in this country.”22 Eight annual concerts were planned, to be held on Monday evenings in the Argyll Rooms on Regent Street. The “Members” and the twenty-five “Associates” (including Nicolas Mori, Vaccari, and Giuseppe Naldi, soon to be joined by George Bridgetower),23 who formed the nucleus of the orchestra and the vocal forces, were not to be remunerated for their participation; on the contrary, they were each to pay an annual subscription of 3 guineas. No concertos, solos, or duets were to be permitted—an attempt to eliminate the threat both of elitism among the performers, and, presumably, the taint of whistling and tricks in the repertory. Viotti, whatever he thought of these policies, joined in with a will, at least at the beginning. He signed the list of founding Members on 6 February 1813, but did not attend the first meeting, held on 24 January, no doubt because on the same day he had a meeting with Margaret Chinnery and an unidentified friend to whom he had written concerning Margaret’s last, desperate attempts to retain Gillwell, or at least, as Viotti put it, “to strike a good bargain.” Viotti refers to “the crisis approaching,” and enjoins his friend “to fight as hard as possible for our rights and to prevent our Friend from being deprived.”24 However, on 8 April 1813, Gillwell—the house and the land—were sold at auction. Two copies of the sale catalogue have come down to us, one with lists of figures and the names of purchasers in ink in the margins in Viotti’s hand, the other with notes in Margaret’s hand.25 This means either that they both attended the auction, or, since it may have been too painful for Margaret to witness the loss of her beloved property, she may have made her annotations from Viotti’s copy.26 Viotti presumably played in all eight concerts of the first Philharmonic Society season (the more eminent violinists, including Viotti, Salomon, F. Cramer, Janiewicz, Vaccari, and Spagnoletti, took turns leading at the concerts. Otherwise they played in the section, whether in the first or second violins has not been revealed—indicative, at any rate, of the altruistic ideals of the Society). Margaret wrote to William on the morning of 8 March, the day of the first concert, that “I have just had my walk in the Square with Amico, dearest Chinnery, in Portman Square, which is something like a garden, but where the most delightful perfections of a garden are wanting—privacy and quiet.” That evening she continued: “Monday evening, ½ past nine—Amico’s gone to the first Philharmonic.” In the fifth concert, on 17 May, Viotti was leader of the orchestra and played one of his quartets. The program is given below. It was the first time in fifteen years that a public audience had heard him play:


Part I Overture, Démophone Quartet, “Benedictus” Mrs. Moralt, C. Evans, Ledesma, C. Smith Quartet for two violins, viola and violoncello Viotti, Vaccari, Spagnoletti, Crouch Overture for double orchestra Part II Symphony Quartet, “Caro da voi” Mrs. Moralt, Ledesma, C. Smith, Naldi Quartet for two violins, viola and violoncello Spagnoletti, Mori, Vaccari, C. Neate Overture, Iphigenia in Aulide Leader, Mr. Viotti. Pianoforte, Mr.

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Cherubini Mozart Viotti [ J. C.] Bach Haydn Cherubini Beethoven Gluck Clementi

Two of Viotti’s warhorses from Opera Concert days have been put on the program: the Cherubini vocal quartet and the Gluck overture.27 It is perhaps worth mentioning that, except, of course, for the pianist and the cellists, the members of the orchestra almost certainly stood to play. In 1820 Ludwig Spohr referred to the members of the orchestra standing;28 there is no reason to suppose that this practice had changed since 1813. The quartet by Viotti was surely one of the three, still in manuscript, that he had played through the year before with Vaccari and the Schrams. It is significant that, in the 1790s, Viotti had not permitted any of his string quartets to be played at a public concert. Perhaps he feared comparison with the more intricate and rigorous style of Haydn’s quartets, or with the brilliant and popular quartets of Ignace Pleyel, to which the London public had grown accustomed. But now, in 1813, so confident is he of his new works in the genre that he does not shirk from placing one of them alongside a quartet by Beethoven. Of his other colleagues in this performance of his quartet, Paolo Spagnoletti (1768–1834) had been brought to London about 1802 by Viotti’s old friend, the tenor Viganoni, had risen in the ranks in the King’s Theatre and various other orchestras, and, almost from the outset, established himself as one of the leading violinists of the Philharmonic Society, both as a chamber music player and as leader. The cellist Frederick William Crouch (ca. 1783–1844) (not the husband of the singer Mrs. Crouch) later wrote a treatise on the cello (1826). Margaret Chinnery did not attend this concert, but her letter to her husband that very evening conveys her excitement at the event: I have kept my Packet open till now, 10 minutes past midnight,— and Amico is not yet returned,—I therefore conclude that a great deal has been encored! You must wait till the next Post-day for particulars.

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½ past 12—Here he is! Nothing can be imagined more brilliant! Amico was caressed, & complimented by almost every individual,— the concert went off to admiration, & it was with difficulty that every one of the pieces was not encored. The Duke sent for Amico between the acts, & said that the Regent fully intended to come, & that if he did, Amico must repeat his Quartett. However he was prevented from coming, which I regret, for as he has never yet heard these it would have been a pretty compliment to Amico— All the Boxes were filled and every subscriber there before the premier coup d’archet,—the professors are all enchanted,—in short his success was so compleat as we could wish!29 Mori, who took the second violin part in the Beethoven string quartet, was now sixteen or seventeen years old, and apparently still Viotti’s pupil. He became one of the more prominent chamber music performers in the Philharmonic concerts, and, beginning in 1816, one of the regular leaders. By 1813 the first eleven of Beethoven’s quartets had been published. We cannot know which quartet it was that Mori played, but it seems likely, given his youth, that he would have been coached in his preparation of this work by Viotti. This brings us to the larger question of Viotti’s response to Beethoven’s music. Beethoven’s works, both the symphonies and the chamber works, were programmed with increasing frequency by the Philharmonic Society. Already in 1813 two symphonies, five chamber works, and music from Prometheus were played. In 1814 the music of Beethoven was played in five out of the eight concerts, in 1815 in four out of the eight, and beginning in 1816 there was scarcely a concert without a piece by Beethoven. Viotti, though he would have played the orchestral works as a section member, did not participate in any performance of a Beethoven chamber work, nor did he again include any work by Beethoven when he was leader (once in 1814, and twice in 1815). It would be hazardous to draw conclusions from these scanty data, except to say that Viotti was not conspicuously a champion of Beethoven’s music, nor, for that matter, of the music of other composers in general, except, of course, for Boccherini’s. This would not have been for lack of exposure. Viotti’s friend G. B. Cimador (1761–1805), the Venetian composer, singer, violinist, violist, and music publisher, was an admirer of Haydn’s quartets and of Mozart’s “Haydn” quartets30 and other works by Mozart. Beginning in about 1800, he published a great many of Mozart’s works in London, including several of the symphonies, which he popularized in England with his arrangements for flute and strings. At his benefit concert, 18 May 1803, in the Great Room at the King’s Theatre, there had taken place what was apparently the first performance in England of a symphony by Beethoven (which must have been no. 1). In 1810 and 1811, Feliks Janiewicz had given chamber music concerts in his London home that included works by Mozart and Beethoven (as well as Haydn and Boccherini). It is possible that Viotti attended some of these events.31


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We may wonder how much of their enthusiasm for the works of Mozart and Beethoven musicians such as Cimador (as well as his friend, Gaetano Bartolozzi) and Janiewicz succeeded in conveying to Viotti. Viotti’s attitude to this music is not recorded, though he heard piano pieces by both composers at Margaret Chinnery’s and her friends’ concerts, and he had programmed and led a symphony by Mozart in 1798 and was to do so again in 1814, as well as lead the Marriage of Figaro overture in 1815. There is no record, in fact, of Viotti playing any solo or chamber music other than his own and Boccherini’s, in public performances in Paris and London, with two exceptions: his performances of a violin obbligato to an aria of Pugnani’s in two of Salomon’s concerts in 1793, and his performances of Guglielmi’s obbligato solo in the King’s Theatre in 1798. In private concerts he surely was more eclectic. It is safe to assume that he took part in performances of much of the music in the Gillwell music library: Bréval’s duets, Corelli’s trio sonatas, Haydn’s string quartets, and, no doubt, the chamber works of other composers. Perhaps Cimador managed to persuade Viotti to play through Mozart’s six “Haydn” quartets, or even a string quartet by Beethoven, with him at the Chinnerys’. The third movement of the first of the three quartets that Viotti later dedicated to his half-brother, a set of variations, Andante, in B-flat major, breathes the same air as the Allegretto con variazioni movement, in E-flat major, of Beethoven’s Quartet op. 74 (composed in 1809, published in London in 1810), especially the loud, bustling variation with a prominent first violin (more heroic, perhaps, in the Beethoven work), which, in both cases, comes immediately after a quiet, contemplative variation. In the midst of these Philharmonic concerts, and indeed, throughout this period of his career, Viotti had other professional concerns, chiefly seeing to the wine business and negotiating with his various publishers about his works, which were constantly being brought out not only in their original versions but also in various arrangements. One such letter, to “Mr. Collard,” a partner in Clementi’s publishing firm, is in Viotti’s hand, in English, and therefore probably dictated or translated by Margaret, though the sentiments are vintage Viotti: Sunday 24th March 1811 Dear Sir After waiting so long for the first Proofs of the Sonata, & then to receive only a part of the first movement most incorrectly engraved, I cannot express my mortification in terms sufficiently strong—Perhaps you did not think it worth your while to print it for me, & if you had told me so at once I would not have troubled you, but had it printed somewhere else. As it is now begun it must be finished, & I shall expect the w[h]ole of the first Proofs on Tuesday next without fail, that I may correct the remainder.32 Since there seems to be only one sonata, the work in question is almost certainly that for harp dedicated to Lady Dunmore. Viotti’s letter appears to have had

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the desired effect, for the sonata was registered by Clementi and Co. in Stationers’ Hall on 9 April 1811. Another letter, to an unidentified publisher, is equally acerbic—writing it would not have contributed to Viotti’s festive mood on his fifty-eighth birthday. It shows that, even for a composer as popular as Viotti, getting published in the early nineteenth century was a precarious business: May 12, 1813 Dear Sir, I am extremely sorry that you should have hade [sic] the trouble of writing so long and explanatory a letter on a subject which it appears to me so little deserving of it!—You are of opinion that the said work would not succed [sic]. That is a sufficient reason for my withdrawing it. Be so good therefore to return me my manuscript, and also when you are at leisure, the account of the Plaits [ plates] alrady [sic] engraved in order that I may know what I am to pay for my bad jugement [sic]. Did you take the trouble of impleing [employing] Leagal [sic] means to prevent the printing of the Concerto in G [no. 23] in Ireland? Should this not yet have taken place, pray let it be done without further delay, for we should both be equaly [sic] be Losers by this Species of robbery.33 Viotti’s spelling has deteriorated—perhaps Margaret did not have time to proofread. Eva Badura-Skoda, who uncovered this letter, conjectures that it was addressed to the publisher Pearce, of Pearce and Company, which had taken over from the original Corri and Dussek, the publishers of Jan Ladislav Dussek’s arrangement as a piano concerto of Viotti’s Concerto no. 23 in 1794–95. But Clementi and Company began publishing this work, ca. 1802–10, probably from Corri and Dussek’s plates, and so it may well have been Collard again to whom this letter was addressed. The pirating of this work by a publisher in Ireland is entirely typical of the problems faced by composers in Viotti’s time, when the notion of copyright was still rudimentary by today’s standards. The work for which Viotti asks the return of the plates cannot be identified, and at the same time raises the question of whether it was ever published. One wonders whether the plates eventually came into the hands of another publisher, or were destroyed. At around the same time, Viotti used his influence to open a door for Francesco Vaccari, as shown in a note (in French) he wrote to George Spencer, William Spencer’s cousin, and son and heir of the fourth Duke of Marlborough. Viotti had taken the trouble to go to the future fifth duke’s mansion in its celebrated grounds, Whiteknights Park, near the town of Reading, in Berkshire: 21 April 1813 Milord I have taken the liberty of coming to your home to have the honor of informing you that the Duke of Marlborouhg [sic] has


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had the goodness to allow Mr Vaccari a room in his house for his concert. As an enlightened amateur, and excellent yourself in his art, I have no doubt that you will be pleased that this skillful and good man owes this favor to your illustrious family. He lacks but one remaining favor, which is that he be honored by your presence on the day of his concert; without doubt his gratitude would then know no bounds. I have the honor to be with the greatest respect Milord, Your very humble, very obedient servant J. B. Viotti34 After sixteen months of a reclusive life, Margaret Chinnery finally permitted herself an evening of music with an invited guest. Mr. Peterson, an amateur violinist who had met William Chinnery in Gothenburg, came to dinner on 16 July 1813. Viotti’s business partner Charles Smith was also present. Mr. Peterson saw Caroline’s harp in the drawing room and desired to hear it, whereupon Amico made [ little] Margaret play a sonata Caroline had taught her, and he accompanied it. M. Peterson asked for something else, and heard the variations on the Folies d’Espagne. Then Amico proposed playing a Duett with him,—which after some compliments & excuses, was done, and very well done for an amateur. They played two of those dedicated to us. I then proposed Amico’s letting M. Peterson hear him alone,—he complied, and played the famous Menuet of Pugnani, and afterwards a Polacca. To conclude, Matilda played the new Concerto just arranged by J. Cramer, accompanied by Amico & M. Peterson.35 By this time it is apparent that Matilda is in some ways beginning to take the place of Caroline, not only as a musical participant, for she clearly had become an accomplished pianist, but also in Margaret’s affections. When she left England in 1821 to be married in India, Margaret was bereft. In the same letter, Margaret tells of her visit to the studio of the extremely popular society painter, Thomas Lawrence, soon to be knighted by the Prince Regent, who became his most important patron. George accompanied her, as Viotti had gone to breakfast at Chiswick House, a seat of the Duke of Devonshire’s, William Spencer’s relative. The purpose of the visit was to see Lawrence’s portrait of Caroline, which he had apparently been commissioned to do: Lawrence had scarcely touched it since we were there before,—I felt disappointed, and my hopes flagged,—we sat down & he continued, asking us a variety of questions about it,—he again said he is sure of succeeding, that he remembers her perfectly, and that he stood very close to her, examining her features for more than ten minutes, and

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afterwards described her to a friend, which engraved them the more strongly on his mind. [ . . . ] in about half an hour Guglielmo came in, which was very kind of him,—he looked for a long time at Cosway’s drawing until his eyes were full of tears [there was talk of poetry, Mme de Staël, the fête at Vauxhall, etc.]. At last we all got up to look at the portrait, when we were one and all struck with astonishment & admiration!!! You cannot imagine a more perfect resemblance,—and with her usual look, not the peculiar look with the eyes half closed as in Cosway’s drawing!— I never had thought such a thing possible,—God grant he may not spoil it in the finishing,—I wanted him to leave it just as it was,—but he would not hear of such a thing,—he means to rub it all out, he says, nearly,—but he assures us we shall see it again just as like and more so, as he proceeds!—I dare not hope that he will be able to keep his word,—I wish to Heavens I had snatched up the unfinished head, yesterday, and run away with it!36 In January 1814 Viotti attended a soirée given for a group of musical amateurs by William Curtis, whose father, Sir William Curtis, was a member of Parliament, former Lord Mayor of London, and a close friend of the Prince Regent. After dinner, reported Viotti to William, it was time for the tra la la (la lululu), with the first strike of the bow ( premier coup d’archet) at eight o’clock: The old father, Sir William [he was only three years older than Viotti] was there, and though not much of a musician he seemed to play very well. [ . . . ] To tell the truth I was very pleased with all these Amateurs, they each played their part very well and the master of the house acquitted himself very well on the cello. “What the devil possessed you to go there,” says you? The hope to drum up some business for C.[harles] S.[mith] & V.—if I don’t succeed, patience.37 It is clear that Viotti was not averse to playing with amateurs, and not only in his own house, nor was he elitist about the music he played. Thomas Moore records an occasion at the home of William Sotheby, an independently wealthy poet and translator. Sotheby and his wife and children lived near Gillwell, and they were close friends of the Chinnerys. Moore nicknamed him Botherby on account of his fidgety, blustering ways: Sotheby, the Poet, ( poor Botherby!) once invited the Channings [Chinnerys] and Viotti [this would have been before 1812] to his house at Epping Forest, and begged of Viotti (whose little solos are the most touching & romantic things possible) to bring his Violin—The latter good-naturedly promised he would &, on his arrival, Botherby, the barbarian, exclaimed, “I am glad you are come—you’ve brought your fiddle, I hope—now, girls—where are your partners?—stand up—here’s Mr. Viotti—what dance will you have?”—Viotti, to the immortal credit of his good-nature, played country-dances for them the whole night.38


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However, he was capable of drawing the line. He tells William that “I would like to help Mr. Peterson in his scraper’s parties [ses parties Racleuses], but he seems to want to make of me a kind of exhibition, and to tell the truth we are not that close for me to make such a sacrifice for him.”39 By early in 1814 Margaret had begun to resume her elegant parties in Charles Street, along the same lines as at Gillwell, except that there was less room, which restricted the number of guests. Among those who were frequent callers were Viotti’s old émigré friends, the Comte de Vaudreuil and his wife and son, who came to dinner in March, and Colonel Dillon, almost certainly Edward Dillon, whom Viotti presumably had known in Paris.40 Some of the concerts in the Charles Street house and at the homes of friends were reported in Matilda’s journal, which she kept in March–April 1814. On 29 March, at a soirée at the home of Mrs. Smyth, an amateur pianist and a close friend of Margaret’s, “Harriet Smyth [ Mrs. Smyth’s daughter] played uncommonly well (in Cramer’s Stile) some Variations of Beethoven” and “Amico’s Concerto finished the whole—it did not go off as coulament [smoothly] & brilliantly as I could have wished!”41 If this last refers to Viotti playing one of his concertos, and not to an arrangement for piano played by one of the three pianists present, then he was probably accompanied by Matilda, in which case her dissatisfaction may have been with her own playing rather than Viotti’s. On Monday, 4 April, Margaret gave a dinner, after which, Matilda wrote, “[little] Margaret & myself played Dussek’s Duet,—the Anacreon,—Mrs Smyth played a sonata of Mozart’s, & Amico played two little pieces accompanied by me—there was waltzing afterwards.”42 The overture to Anacreon, by Luigi Cherubini, had been performed a week earlier at the Philharmonic Society concert led by Viotti. The orchestral score had been published in 1803 by Cherubini’s publishing company, and no doubt an arrangement for piano duet had been published.43 If not, given their thorough training by Margaret and Bianchi, the two girls (they were now about sixteen or seventeen years old) could have managed from the full score. Matilda is no more forthcoming about the identities of musical works than Margaret is—Viotti’s two little pieces could be just about anything. Of course, it would be too much to expect her to have recorded which of the ladies Viotti waltzed with, or how well he himself waltzed, although she is quite free with her judgements at other times. A week later, at another of Margaret’s dinners, “the Anacreon opened the concert,—Margaret’s March followed [that is, little Margaret played a march], & Mrs Smyth played a sonata of Amico’s” (almost certainly accompanied by Viotti). Then Miss Smyth danced a pair of traditional national dances, and waltzed with George, with Mrs. Smyth at the piano.44 In the meantime, Viotti’s quiet life of domestic music making and social calls had been jarred, as had all London high society, by the arrival of the formidable Madame de Staël. Notorious for her affairs, admired for her literary works,

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exiled by Napoleon for her political views, she had come to England with her daughter Albertine and her (secret) husband Albert de Rocca, and was lionized by English society in the 1813 season. Everyone talked about her. Lord Byron met her in June, called her “Mrs Stale,” who “writes octavos and talks folios.”45 But he admired her works and kept on seeing her in society. Thomas Moore was flattered that she expressed a liking for his poetry. He and Samuel Rogers often dined with her. It was at the end of June 1813 that she and Viotti renewed their acquaintance. Viotti had left a card for her, and two hours later she replied: “How can Monsieur Viotti suppose that Mde de Staël has not kept a profound memory of his admirable talent. She is extremely desirous of seeing him again, and no one will receive him more eagerly than she.”46 Viotti copied this message verbatim in his next letter to William, adding, “Isn’t that very nice? Tomorrow I’m going to see the Phoenix, and I hope that her wit doesn’t make me look too stupid.”47 Viotti clearly was well enough acquainted with Madame de Staël to know that she was, as Lord Byron said, “frightful as a precipice.” Nevertheless, it was not long before Viotti was seeing her in society. Lord Glenbervie records in his diary that on 4 July he dined at the home of William Spencer and his wife in Curzon Street, in the company of Madame de Staël, “Viotti, with young Chinnery,” and several others.48 For the summer of 1813 Margaret and Viotti had taken a cottage in Fulham (“Bell’s Cottage, North-End, Fulham”), on the southwest edge of London. Margaret wrote to William on a sunny August morning: I am writing to you in a room that opens onto a nice little flower garden, and hear no other noise, than the hum of flies, and the buzz of insects. But alas!—grief oppresses my heart [ . . . ]. [The countrylike surroundings make her think of Gillwell and of Caroline.] Amico has unfortunately a slight touch of gout, but he has also a little sort of irruption on his arms and legs, which altogether makes rather an invalid of him. However he rose as usual and came down to make the tea. We breakfasted in the Drawing room, at the Bow-window, looking into the flower garden [ . . . ]. There is a magnificent walnut tree, to the great delight of Amico [ . . . ]. There is a cow in the field on to the left hand side of the garden. Oh how all these objects and the sounds of the country (for it is something like the country) affect me! In a few days I hope the deep impression will be felt less sensibly—indeed for Amico’s sake I must exert myself. As for George, I always try to meet him with a smiling countenance—the poor Amico sees the worst as well as the best of me!49 A week later Margaret describes the greenhouse. “Amico is sitting there, making up the onions into bunches for the winter—over his head the grapes are ripening.” We see that Viotti’s passionate reproach to the Prince della


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Cisterna, fifteen years earlier, regretting the life of a peasant, was no mere rhetorical flourish. But this idyllic scene was interrupted by the appearance of Madame de Staël, with William Spencer in tow. She berates Margaret, and especially Viotti, for not having taken a summer residence nearer to her, in Richmond. Margaret suspects that her motives are ulterior—she wants Viotti to be close by to give her daughter violin lessons. “I proposed Amico going to see her at Richmond with his violin, telling her that I regretted that she had not yet, since her arrival in England, enjoyed the pleasure of hearing him. This was agreeable to her, and Tuesday next is fixed, for Amico and George to dine & sleep there.”50 This, as much as anything in the Chinnery Family Papers, tells us a great deal about Viotti’s amenability and his relationship with Margaret—that she could feel at liberty to make this proposal, presumably without having previously consulted him. At any rate, Viotti continued to see Madame de Staël. On 11 September Margaret reports that “today Guglielmo and Amico are gone to dine & and sleep at Mdm de Staël’s.” No doubt Viotti again took his violin. They were to return the next day.51 And Viotti did give violin lessons to Albertine, as her letter to him of 3 October shows: “Don’t forget your pupil. When we get settled in town we will be seeing you often, don’t you agree? We must hear you a few times to brighten up this nasty fog.”52 A note from Madame de Staël, probably written in 1814, inviting “caro Viotti” to dinner, assures him that “we shall give back the violin which I am keeping as a pledge that you come.”53 Would Viotti have left the Buttero in the hands of his imperious friend? The 1814 season of the Philharmonic Society began on 14 February. It was not long before Madame de Staël made it clear that she expected Viotti to provide her with tickets.54 The concerts were fully subscribed and tickets were hard to come by. Having been elected one of the seven directors, Viotti had two tickets available for each concert (“billets d’admition,” as he wrote to William), and Margaret and George surely had priority over everyone else. He would have been hard pressed to satisfy all his friends. The review in the Morning Chronicle of the first concert of the 1814 season said that the “many who well know of the jealousies which so commonly subsist among artists [ . . . ] were greatly deceived to find rather an augmentation than a diminution of distinguished talent;—they found Salomon, Viotti, Franz Cramer, Vaccari &c in their usual places.”55 In a way it was remarkable that those musicians, who for most of their careers had been soloists and orchestra leaders, were willing to make common cause as section players, for no remuneration. The rules of the Society stipulated that “there shall not be any distinction of rank in the orchestra, and therefore the station of every performer shall be absolutely determined by the leader of the night.”56 Beneath the surface, however, Viotti was already showing signs of discontent. In a letter to William of July 1813, he had promised to send all the Philharmonic programs,

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with all the Laws, Regulations, names &c, but surely you have been informed that we are going to change all that if we can! It consists of no less than the establishment of a Royal Academy of Music, and of all forty of us [the Members of the Philharmonic Society] becoming true Esquires, Esquires by right! Won’t it be fine to be called Esquire Amico—how I will be puffed up by that! I hope that we will succeed despite the opposition of a few stupid Philharmonics, and that we will have the glory of having raised up and given some substance to a profession which until now has been in the muck [dans la Crotte].57 And, in another, probably in February 1814, he writes that “I had really wanted to rid myself of this Directorate, but my wishes have not been granted— it is a pity, for it involves a lot of trouble to please I don’t know whom—I hope very much that next year either there will be an Academy, or I’ll bid adieu to the Philharmonics.”58 In these two letters it is clear that Viotti’s discontent with the Philharmonic Society was linked to his involvement in a plan to establish a Royal Academy of Music. The Royal Academy of Music, still in existence, was not founded until 1822, but there had been a few earlier attempts, including a “Plan,” drawn up in 1813 by William Ayrton, one of the founders, and the first treasurer of the Philharmonic Society. Ayrton, who often called on the Chinnerys,59 was the music critic for the Morning Chronicle. He had been trained as a musician, and, later, in 1817 and in 1821, was admired for the high quality of opera production at the King’s Theatre under his musical direction. Clementi and Viotti drafted a joint note proposing the adoption of an Abstract of the Plan, which called for the establishment of a Royal Academy of Music under the aegis of the Philharmonic Society.60 A General Meeting of the Society was held on 24 July 1813 to discuss the Plan, but it is not certain whether the proposal of Clementi and Viotti was voted upon, nor whether it was passed.61 On 2 July 1813, Viotti had told Ayrton that “it was only after great difficulty that I could persuade Mrs. Chinnery to take pencil in hand to trace a few observations which she made to me in conversation.”62 These “Observations upon Mr. A’s Plan,” twelve pages written by Margaret Chinnery, a copy of which Viotti presumably enclosed, are a point by point discussion of the goals and organization of Ayrton’s proposed national institution for the training of musicians, the instructors to be Members of the Philharmonic Society, and the better pupils providing a pool of singers and instrumentalists for its concerts.63 Margaret probably had Viotti in the back of her mind when, for example, she writes in her critique: “Surely it was an error in the plan of the Philharmonic Society to exclude from their concerts the grand Scene et Arie of Jomelli, Piccini, Sachini, Hope &c&c. The exclusion of Solo instrumental Pieces, is also an error. [ . . . ] The evils of a vitiated taste in the public [ . . . ] and the vanity of performers, who upon all occasions are desirous of bringing forward their own compositions” can only be avoided by “a restriction as to the number of


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solo performances upon the different instruments to be allowed each Season” (p. 9).64 One of Margaret’s suggestions is that “all the students should attend on each concert night. Should they not all [be] wanted in the orchestra on each night, they may be taken in turn, and a place on the sides of the orchestra, or seats somewhere contrived [to be] connected with the orchestra should be appointed for those whose services may not be called for” ( p. 6). We are reminded that Pugnani, so long ago, may have taken Viotti into the orchestra of the Teatro Regio to listen and learn. The plan to turn the Philharmonic Society into a Royal Academy of Music was supported by several of the most distinguished Members of the Philharmonic Society, including—besides Aryton, Viotti, and Clementi—Sir George Smart, Salomon, Ashe, C. J. Ashley, Franz Cramer, and Janiewicz (who wrote to Ayrton from Liverpool). The Prince Regent was “pleased to approve the outline of the plan.”65 Viotti’s name, along with Clementi’s, had been put forward as two of four proposed superintendents, that is, department directors, Clementi for Composition and Piano, Viotti (and an unidentified other person) for the Instrumental Department.66 It is clear, however, that there was opposition to the plan from within the Society. Late in July 1813, Viotti tells Ayrton that he had met a “Philharmonic person” in the Chappell music shop who had “maintained to me that the new plan is a Wild Plan” (the last two words in English). Viotti concludes with “Courage! We shall succeed,” and advises Ayrton to burn his letter, advice happily not taken.67 In November, he wonders if Ayrton wishes to pursue the plan. He has not heard from Salomon or Clementi, but as for himself, “I feel firm and decided, and you can count on finding me just as you left me.”68 But despite this, and despite Margaret’s efforts and the Duke of Cambridge’s enthusiasm for the project,69 nothing came of it. It is perhaps overinterpreting to attribute it to this setback, but Viotti’s interest in the Philharmonic Society from this point on seems tepid, at least in terms of the extent of his participation, both administrative and even musical. Though he had been requested to act as one of the two auditors of the accounts at the General Meeting of 20 May 1814, and though he was reelected a director for 1815, 1816, and 1817, his attendance at the General Meetings was sporadic (only five times out of at least fifteen meetings in 1814, four in 1815, petering out to once each in 1816, 1817, and 1819).70 His declining health may have been part of the reason. We have learned of the “irruption on his arms and legs” in the summer of 1813. In his letter to Ayrton of 23 November 1813 (Viotti’s sixteen surviving letters to Ayrton testify to the closeness of their friendship), Viotti regrets that he will not be able to go to Ayrton’s the next day: “[ M ]y Esculape [Aesculapius, the Roman god of medicine; in French, humorous slang for physician] will absolutely not let me go out until this dry and hoarse cough that torments me is sent to the devil.” And there is another, new ailment: “I must submit to my bad murmuring heart” (ma méchante poitrine qui murmure).71 Early in 1815 he could not attend a Philharmonic meeting because of being “confined by

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illness,” and less than a year later he gave his indifferent health as a reason for wishing to resign as a director.72 In 1814 Viotti led the orchestra for the fourth concert only, 28 March, and again played one of his own quartets, with Messrs Mori, Moralt,73 and R. Lindley,74 as well as a string quintet by his beloved Boccherini, with the same musicians and the cellist C. J. Ashley. Also on the program were two overtures by Cherubini (Anacreon and Faniska); a vocal sextet (“Sacro Pugnal”) by Cherubini; two vocal trios, one by Mozart (“Se al volto” from La Clemenza di Tito) and one by T. Walsh (“Lov’d Scene”); a “Notturno for Wind Instruments” (the Serenade, K. 388) and a symphony, both by Mozart; and a “Grand March” by Haydn to conclude. Viotti was besieged with requests for tickets for this concert, all carefully noted by Matilda in her journal. On 9 March it was Colonel C. W. Thornton, the Duke of Cumberland’s aide-de-camp, who called “upon a pretext that he wanted to speak to Amico about the Duke of Cumberland’s subscription at the Philharmonic.” On 17 March “Amico has obtained an admission to the Philharmonic Concerts for the Duke of Devonshire, on the plea that having several times lent his Apartments for the repetitions this was due to him.” On 21 March, “[Amico] called upon Miss [ Jane] Porter [the novelist] to give her a ticket for the Philharmonic Concert at which he leads himself.” On 24 March, “just before dinner, Lady [Elizabeth] Spencer sent her Steward to ask Amico to give a ticket to Miss Chattham for Monday, but Amico told him that his tickets were disposed of—however he promised to do all he could to try and obtain one for her.” On the twenty-sixth, two days before the concert, Madame de Staël went so far as to ask William Spencer to give up his ticket, probably for her husband, Rocca, as she apparently already had tickets for herself and Albertine.75 On 25 March, three days before the concert, Matilda provides us with a salutary reminder that the received wisdom about concert life in this period— that, for example, there was normally only one rehearsal for the Philharmonic concerts—is not always strictly accurate: “Amico is just going to play over some of the pieces down stairs with five people whom he has appointed—this is only a private repetition.”76 We may suppose that four of the five were Viotti’s stringplaying colleagues in his quartet and in the Boccherini quintet, but who the fifth was is more difficult to imagine. Possibly it was Clementi, the “conductorpianist” for the concert, with whom Viotti may have wanted to go over some of the difficult passages from the orchestral works on the program. On Saturday, 26 March, “Amico’s repetition [that is, the full rehearsal] obliged us to dine at ½ past five o’clock. [. . .] He left us before 7 o’clock as it was to begin at that hour.” On Sunday, the evening before the concert, Viotti had been cajoled, or bullied, into accepting Madame de Staël’s invitation to dinner. “He first tried to get off this invitation under the pretext that he must leave her at dessert on account of his repetition at night. But still she would have him & he went. By ten o’clock however he returned home leaving them at Coffee.” On the


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evening of the concert, the dinner hour was again adjusted: “We dined at ½ past 5 o’clock, that Amico might not eat his dinner in a hurry.—At 7 o’clock he took a cup of coffee, and at a ¼ past 7 o’clock he left us. It has just struck 8 o’clock so I suppose he is beginning.”77 Matilda’s account of the concert is no less vivid for being secondhand: Towards 10 o’clock on Monday night [ . . . ] we were surprised by Mr Spencer’s arrival. The quartetto was over, & had been divinely played,—he would have staid to hear some more of the music had he not been very much annoyed, first by being in a box with five ladies who would chatter about Mr Kean78 while the quartetto was going on, & secondly by finding himself afterwards by the side of petty professors, who instead of admiring the divine music, & Amico’s incomparable talents, said that he was weak on the 4th string, and that the applause given to him was unmerited. All this provoked M. Spencer so much that he determined to get away from them.79 It would seem that the high ideals of the founding Members of the Philharmonic Society had not penetrated to the chattering ladies—a convincing, if partial insight into early nineteenth-century concert behaviour. As to Viotti’s weak fourth string—one of the greatest violinists who ever lived, whose powerful tone was proverbial, playing on one of the finest of all Stradivari violins—Viotti would have had to be in very bad form indeed. But, as we shall see, Viotti himself had doubts about playing in public after so long an absence. Ayrton’s review of the concert in the Morning Chronicle contains a clue as to the identity of the Mozart symphony on the program: In the first part of the concert, Mozart’s beautiful Notturno was performed, and also his favourite symphony [that is, the favorite symphony by Mozart], which amply deserves the high character that it has gained throughout Europe—a character which does not admit of greater exultation [recte exaltation?]. The symphony was exquisitely performed. Ayrton is referring most probably to the Symphony no. 40 in G Minor, K. 550, since it is the symphony by Mozart that seems to have received the most attention in Europe in the early nineteenth century.80 Ayrton concludes his review with a remarkable eulogy of Viotti: Without attempting to offer any comparison of the leaders of this band,—which would be as invidious and difficult as it is unnecessary,— we hope that we may be allowed to express our approbation of the zeal which Mr. Viotti manifests in support of the views of this Society. We particularize this Gentleman, not because we mean to insinuate that he is more zealous than the other Members, nor from any partial feeling—for of that, in our public and critical capacity, we should be ashamed—but because having withdrawn himself, for many years past,

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as a professional performer, he cannot now derive the smallest reward, in any form, from the exertion of his wonderful talent, if we except the delight which a mind like his must feel in exciting emulation, and in contributing to the improvement of an art in which he holds so distinguished a rank as a professor, and has so highly graced as a man.81 The next day Viotti sent his thanks: “I am sure that the Philharmonic article in yesterday’s paper was traced by the hand of friendship, and I cannot refrain, my dear Sir, from thanking you. I had wished that my pen were as brilliant as yours to express my gratitude, but scribbler that I am, I will let you imagine it.”82 Not long after this concert, Viotti solved the Madame de Staël problem. At a General Meeting of the Society, on 15 April 1814, he proposed, seconded by Clementi, that, “entertaining a very high degree of respect for the talents of so distinguished a personage as Madame de Staël, [the Members] empower the director to admit this Lady and her Daughter to the four remaining Concerts of the present year. When upon a Ballot, there appearing Eleven Ayes & Two Nayes the proposition was decided in the affirmative.”83 Sometime in the spring of 1814, a former pupil of Pierre Baillot, François Fémy, came to London. Viotti wrote to Baillot that “I have had the pleasure of having your pupil Fémy play for me a few times. He is a good lad who is extremely attached to you and with whom I have often had the great satisfaction of speaking about you.”84 This can only mean that Viotti had begun giving lessons to Fémy, who played the second violin part in a string sextet by Bernhard Romberg, in the Philharmonic concert of 2 May 1814, with Mori playing first violin, and the composer playing the cello. Fémy also played chamber music in the Philharmonic concerts in 1816 and 1818. Bernhard Romberg, the cellist, frequented Viotti, as is shown by a letter he wrote to an unidentified friend (undated, but written from London and therefore dating from this time). Romberg invited his friend to dinner on behalf of Viotti, “and since I always think of Viotti as an artist on account of his talent, we shall make some music after dinner.”85 Another young violinist, Alexandre Boucher, came to London around this time. Ludwig Spohr met him a few years later, and on account of his mannerisms and banter was moved to write, “Boucher had the reputation of being a distinguished violinist, but a great charlatan also.”86 There is no mention of his visiting Charles Street, but he was announced to play one of his own concertos at Bernhard Romberg’s benefit concert in London on 27 June 1814.87 He seems to have considered playing one of Viotti’s concertos, and he must have got in touch with Viotti, for two days before the concert Viotti wrote to him—“Monsieur Boucher, at Mr Vaccari” (Boucher and Vaccari had been colleagues at the Madrid court):


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I ask you as a favor to take the greatest care of these four parts. If they are lost I would have no others. I do not include the wind parts, my dear Monsieur Boucher, as those, of course, you [already] have and you do not need doublings. For this concerto to have its proper effect, there should be a very large orchestra. Perhaps it would be better to play one of your pieces, which probably would give more pleasure.88 The four parts were probably the four orchestral string parts for a concerto. It is difficult to understand why Boucher would already have possessed the wind parts, unless he had previously played this concerto with an orchestra, and needed only an additional set of string parts. A concerto by Viotti needing a large orchestra is most likely to be one of those composed for the 1795 Opera Concert, excluding nos. 27, 28, and 29, which had not yet been published. In view of Boucher’s reputation for eccentricity in his performances, Viotti’s apparent diffidence about his concerto may have had other motives. After one of his performances in London (perhaps the one referred to above), Boucher wrote to his wife, “People do not hesitate to say that [ . . . ] Viotti never was as powerful as I am [n’a jamais été de ma force].”89 There is no record of Viotti having any further connection with Boucher.

Paris, Brussels, Lille (1814–18); the Phiharmonic Society (1815, 1816) What a moment for a young man! The four great sovereigns of Europe, united in that immense capital filled with the warriors of every country and awaiting the rightful descendant of St. Louis who will arrive to take his place! This Scene, which the imagination can perceive from afar, must be beautiful and I almost regret that the dear Padrona will not see it in person, and that she will not be witness to the thousands from every corner of the earth who will join hands to swear Friendship!90 It is Viotti who sounds this clarion call, vibrating with a sense of history in the making, and, in the last phrase, echoing Friedrich Schiller’s poem set by Beethoven ten years later. The war is over, the allied armies have entered Paris, Napoleon has abdicated (on 6 April), and eight days later Viotti is writing to William, ardently hopeful not only for a new Europe but for young George Chinnery’s place in it. In the same letter he wishes he knew who was to be the ambassador to France, so that he could rush to convince him to take George along. Viotti was convinced that a young man of George’s abilities deserved more than the drudgery of the Treasury Office. Within a week, his wishes, and the Chinnerys’, were brilliantly answered. George was appointed bursar in

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the retinue of Louis XVIII on his triumphant voyage from England to Paris. This of course was not a diplomatic post, and it was temporary, but it carried high responsibility. In his next letter to William, Viotti irreverently referred to George “guarding the money-bag” (le Magot), which was quite literally true— some of the money in George’s care was placed in small bags—and he fired off a typical salvo, which, though it loses something in the translation, is surely akin to hearing the man speak: What a pleasure it will be if, before I kick the bucket [graisser mes bottes pour l’autre monde, literally “grease my boots for the next world”], I can see [George] take flight majestically, leaving behind all those midges [moucherons] advanced by their family connections, and having no merit beyond their name, which most of them carry unworthily! . . . It will happen, and I hope it does, for Providence is just.91 If the irony of George being entrusted with very large amounts of money in the service of the government that had found his father guilty of embezzlement was felt by his parents or by Viotti, they refrained from mentioning it in their letters. While in Paris, George stayed with the Cherubinis, who were lodged in the premises of the Conservatoire in Cherubini’s capacity as teaching inspector. Viotti wrote to Madame Cherubini, worrying like an anxious father that the twenty-two-year-old George, “with his stay-at-home tendency, will not leave the beloved Conservatoire and that he will not do the things required of him in his limited time.”92 But George acquitted himself to everyone’s satisfaction, and that autumn his career did indeed take flight majestically, under the auspices of the distinguished member of Parliament and future Foreign Secretary, George Canning. With George’s career launched, at least for the time being, Viotti turned his attention to his own immediate future, and, inevitably, that of William and Margaret Chinnery. He admonished his friend in Sweden, whom he accused of resembling “those marmots who sleep six months of the year. Wake up, my friend, it is time you came back to a place nearer to us; you will be closer to the centers of commerce.”93 It was not long before William followed Viotti’s advice to go to Calais as the best place for business opportunities in the newly opened-up Europe. Viotti, Margaret, and George (who in the meantime had returned from his duties in France), after more than two years of separation from William, and twelve years since their last trip, went to the Continent early in August 1814 for the better part of three months. They stayed in St. Omer, only a few miles from Calais. Viotti had written to Baillot on 12 July (the letter carried by the pianist Kalkbrenner),94 telling him of his possible visit to Paris: “How I should like to see you, to be in the midst of that little circle of friends so dear to my heart!— Who knows? I leave next week for Holland, and if my affairs permit, it is not unlikely that I shall return to England by way of Paris.”95


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In fact, Viotti did get away from St. Omer to visit Paris for eight days, 19–27 September, staying with the Cherubinis. Baillot, who at this time also lived in the Conservatoire building, rue du Faubourg Poissonnière, writes, “Yesterday, after [Viotti’s] arrival, we played his manuscript quartets [the three tried out two years earlier] at General Dessolle’s; we are doing them again tomorrow at Cherubini’s.”96 In another letter: Viotti stayed here only for a week. We made music four times with him, during which he had us hear some quintets by Boccherini, his three manuscript quartets, a new concerto in C major [no. 27] and the one in G minor [no. 19] which he has arranged for quartet with some changes. His quartets are full of the most pleasing [heureuses] melodies and ideas. He has charming minuets, full of feeling and grace and he still has the same elegance and the same fire.97 Cherubini naturally was present at these gatherings.98 He tells his neighbor Baillot in a note that “I am returning the box of strings that you lent to Viotti, and this is to tell you that the musical evening will definitely take place at the general’s the evening after next. Let me know if you will inform your brother, Tario, Norblin and Baudiot, for eight o’clock.”99 These four were string players; two of them, the violist Antoine-Alexandre Tariot and the cellist Charles Nicolas Baudiot, had been Baillot’s regular quartet partners since at least as long before as 1809.100 Baillot’s “brother” (brother-in-law), the violinist Charles Guynemer, and the cellist Louis-Pierre Norblin were, with Tariot, members of Baillot’s string quartet in the chamber music series founded by Baillot in December 1814, which continued until 1840. The two cellists were needed at the general’s concerts, of course, for Boccherini’s quintets. We have considered earlier the question of Viotti’s familiarity with the music of Beethoven. Baillot had met Beethoven in Vienna in 1805, he had been playing Beethoven’s string quartets privately since the same year, and he was soon to become the foremost interpreter of these works in public concerts in Paris, as well as the first to perform Beethoven’s Violin Concerto in France. Surely Baillot shared his enthusiasm for Beethoven’s music with Viotti, if not on this occasion, when there was so little time, then on subsequent visits. Beethoven’s Violin Concerto had been published in London in 1810. Had Viotti noticed the striking echoes of his own concertos, and those of Rode and Kreutzer, in this work? The high point of Viotti’s visit was an exercice in his honor at the Conservatoire. Years later, Baillot remembered it: The Conservatoire had not been informed [of Viotti’s presence in Paris] until just before he was going to leave. The administration, which never missed an opportunity to keep alive the sacred flame, had a concert got up for him, in a few hours; nevertheless, since it had been possible to inform a rather large number of artists and amateurs, the

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hall was full, and Viotti appeared in this familial gathering like a father in the midst of his children. The pupils knew him only from his compositions, which, since the founding of the Conservatoire, have been the set pieces in the annual competitions for the violin prize. The sight of the man who had been their ideal model filled them with enthusiasm: he was welcomed with an explosion of sentiment and emotion.101 One old friend who may well have been present at this assembly was JeanLouis Duport, whom Viotti had not seen since 1789. Duport had returned to Paris from Berlin in 1806. He too had played in the imperial chapel and he taught the cello at the Conservatoire from 1813 to 1816. Viotti and he had exchanged letters at least once earlier in 1814.102 Another old friendship that Viotti would surely have renewed in Paris was with Madame Vigée-Lebrun. The celebrated painter had resumed her musical soirées; indeed, on 20 May 1814 the Comtesse Potocka had been to a concert at Madame Vigée-Lebrun’s at which “everyone was amused to see M. de Vaudreuil paying his respects [en faire les honneurs] as if it were twenty-five years ago.”103 Viotti would have had very little time to play at Vigée-Lebrun’s during this brief visit to Paris, though another of her friends, Charles Brifaut, relates in his memoirs that “our brilliant artist often gave concerts, in which Viotti, returned from London, enchanted us with the magic of his violin. The Comte de Vaudreuil did not miss one of these soirées.”104 The Comte de Vaudreuil had been appointed governor of the Louvre by Louis XVIII; in May he had invited George Chinnery to his lodgings in the Palace of the Tuileries, Pavillon Flore. Apparently he too gave concerts, in which, according to one historian, he had Viotti play.105 If so, it must have been either on this very hurried sojourn in Paris in 1814, or in 1815, since Viotti did not go to Paris in 1816, and Vaudreuil died in January 1817. On his return to St. Omer, Viotti wrote to thank Madame Cherubini, adding a long list of articles he wants her to buy and send to him in St. Omer: “12 pairs of Grenoble gloves for l’amico: grey, darker, or more or less like those we bought together”; “two dozen batiste handkerchiefs at 60 or 70 francs the dozen, as many as possible for this price and N.B. without borders, just simply in pieces. If it doesn’t take more than 24 hours to cut and hem them, it will be worth it as much as to send them to me all ready to dry my beautiful face”; and several other items for Margaret and George. Viotti has already arranged for his former pupil, “Lebon,” now apparently living in Paris,106 to send him a bow, for Cherubini to send violin strings, and for his brother to send Torinese chocolate. In the same letter, Margaret Chinnery tells how deeply touched Viotti had been by the reception given him at the Conservatoire: And the triumph, the beautiful fete of Saturday the 24th of this month! That day will always be dear to me, it was a wonderful day for our


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friend, and never, I believe, has he felt to the same degree the sweet sentiments of affection, of attachment, and of recognition. He paints his emotion very well for me, though claiming that it is inexpressible. [ . . . ] But the joys of the heart are as tiring as the pains; he returned very fatigued, the energy with which he recounts the interesting circumstances of his stay with you still tire him,—in two or three days he will be completely recovered,—for the rest his health is perfect. Margaret concludes with her strongly felt satisfaction at the great affection between Viotti and his “good brother”—that “it is a very lively added interest in our friend’s life,—it is a [source] of joy in his heart, because his brother is worthy of him in every way.”107 It was on this visit, then, that Viotti was reunited with André. Viotti had almost certainly not seen his half-brother, who was twenty-two years younger than he, since the summer of 1782 or 1783, when the latter was five or six years old. They had corresponded, however, as we have seen, and by as early as 1803 they had clearly developed an affectionate epistolary relationship. In his letter to Viotti of that year André had closed with the words “farewell dear brother, I go now to my post; take care so that I may embrace you as the most tender and beloved person that I have in the world.”108 André had shown himself to be a man of substance, and though, so far as we know, he never went to England, he was to renew his friendship with Viotti and the Chinnerys on each of their subsequent visits to Paris. Shortly after returning to St. Omer from Paris, Viotti wrote a long, chatty letter to William Ayrton, describing their “very good lodgings in the Enclosure of St. Berbue, formerly a famous abbey, now the most important Gothic ruin that mortal eye could admire”; the city of Lille, where they stayed for several days, with its “beautiful houses, a great deal of industry and activity,” and its fortifications; and the surrounding countryside (“not an inch of ground lost, everything cultivated with the greatest care”). Viotti also reveals the extent of his reputation on the Continent: If I needed satisfaction for my amour propre I would have had it there, for no sooner had people read the list of names which is taken every evening to the Commandant, than an immense crowd came running to our hotel, to see me, to thank me for my concertos, Duos, trios &&&—singing to me the beginning of those that had most helped them in their study. However, I wasn’t sorry to leave Lille. Having decided not to touch my instrument, it was too painful for me to be obliged to refuse constantly such good people who were so well disposed to me. We learn from this letter that Viotti and Ayrton had not yet given up on the idea of a Royal Academy of Music: “On my return I will bring you plenty of details on the Conservatoire. Perhaps they will be useful for our future projects.”109

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On 25 October 1814, two days before leaving St. Omer for England, Viotti wrote a farewell letter to Baillot, the address of which contains a sly joke: “To Monsieur Baillot the elder [l’ainé ].” Baillot had no brothers, and his only son, René, had been born almost exactly a year earlier. Viotti regrets not having visited Baillot at home, and he sends his thanks “to your good brother [Guynemer] for the strings which he has been so good as to let me have,” and closes with “your affectionate friend.”110 The reception given to Viotti by his peers and by the Conservatoire students— a whole generation of young violinists brought up on his music, the friendship and artistic stimulus of such musicians as Baillot, Cherubini, Jean-Louis Duport, and Hélène de Montgéroult, not to mention the presence of his own brother—must have given him food for thought on the trip home. In London he had nothing comparable, or very little: the younger generation of violinists (apart from his pupil Mori), headed by Charles Weichsel and Paolo Spagnoletti, though very accomplished, does not appear to have had any special rapport with Viotti, at least not to compare with that enjoyed by Rode and Baillot. Salomon had only a year to live, Janiewicz had settled in Edinburgh (though, it is true, he played in the Philharmonic concerts, at least occasionally, in 1813–15), and Vaccari was to leave England within the year. Dussek had left England in 1799, and in any case he had died, aged fifty-two, in 1812. Viotti seems to have drifted away from Nicolas-Joseph Hüllmandel, with whom he had been so friendly in the 1790s. At least there is no mention of him in the correspondence throughout this period until 1821, or of him or his wife attending any of Margaret’s musical gatherings. Domenico Dragonetti had been away from England between 1808 and 1814, and he did not play in the Philharmonic orchestra until the 1816 season. Viotti must have felt that London was a less attractive place than Paris for him in some respects. On the other hand, there was no place for him in the Paris Conservatoire. His pupils and followers occupied the top positions in the violin department, and would be his rivals were he to consider resuming a professional career in Paris. All the more reason, then, to pursue the idea of a Royal Academy in London. And, of course, Margaret Chinnery was in London. On 15 December Viotti received a letter (in Italian) from Clementi regarding the very thing that probably weighed most heavily on his mind on his return, namely his differences with the “stupid Philharmonics.” Clementi, whose smooth ability with difficult artistic personalities had long since been proved (in 1807 he had successfully negotiated a contract with Beethoven, “that haughty beauty,” to publish several of the latter’s works),111 pours oil on troubled waters regarding something (it is not clear what) that has upset Viotti: “You are quite right—but also a little wrong—it seems to me that your anger has prevented you from reading correctly the statement of awards.” He then enjoins Viotti to come to the meeting on the twenty-first to choose a director to replace Salomon.


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Clementi has promised Samuel Webbe (one of the founding Members) his vote, and asks Viotti to second him. Then, as far as you are concerned (and this is the main reason I have taken pen in hand), remember that I did not accept the Directorship before assuring myself that you were accepting it; as a result we have been convened by Dance &c, so in my opinion it would not be worthy of us to vacillate now. Think it over and consider it carefully, and I am sure that you will decide as the great man that you are.112 With this reasoning, and, perhaps, with this flattery, Clementi persuaded Viotti not to resign his directorship, which he had told William he wished to do. While in Paris Viotti must have discussed with Cherubini the possibility of the latter coming to London. Cherubini had already presented a new overture to the Society, performed at the eighth concert, 30 May 1814. Now, in December, he was offered £200 for a symphony, an overture, and an Italian vocal piece. It would have been Viotti who did the negotiating with his friend, for it was he who announced to the Society on 20 February 1815 that Cherubini intended leaving Paris five days later.113 Just before leaving, Cherubini asked Baillot to send him “the parts to my quartet, since I must have Viotti hear them.”114 This was his newly composed first string quartet, in E-flat, which Baillot and his colleagues had no doubt played through. Cherubini was the star attraction of the 1815 Philharmonic season. He conducted his overture to Anacreon at the third concert, and at the fourth, 3 April, led by Viotti, he conducted the premières of his Overture in G Major and the trio, “Et incarnatus est,” both composed for the Society. At the fifth concert, 17 April, his overture to Les Deux Journées was performed; at the sixth, 1 May, led by Viotti, his Symphony in D Major, composed for the Society, was premièred, and at the eighth and last, 29 May, a manuscript overture, probably the same one premièred at the fourth concert, was played. Cherubini also gave a benefit concert, on 24 April. For the arrangements, he told his wife a month beforehand, I shall rely on the advice of Amico; we must not expect a big profit, in case we are mistaken. [ . . . ] The only day for which I could obtain the permission of the Grand Chamberlain was 24 April. I think, if the room is full, at a half-guinea per person, (and this price cannot be increased without protests), the receipts will amount to 250 or 300 guineas, from which the indispensable expenses must be deducted. It is better to give the concert in the Philharmonic hall than in the Opera, which is much bigger and would cost more.115 The program of this concert as advertised in the Times contained one unusual item: “Messrs Mori, Rosquellas and Lindley will perform a Sinfonia Concertante by Viotti.” Since Viotti is not known to have composed a sinfonia concertante

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for three instruments, this may be a mistake, and the work in question was perhaps one of Viotti’s trios (trio concertante) for two violins and cello. The identity of Rosquellas has not been ascertained, beyond the fact that he was a violinist, probably Spanish, that he had played a concerto (and sung an aria) in the Hanover Square Rooms in 1812, and that in 1815 he was announced to play in the benefit concerts of Vaccari and Charles Philippe Lafont. In his own benefit on 2 June 1815, “under the immediate patronage of the Spanish Ambassador,” he was to play “a grand concerto on the violin, composed by the celebrated Viotti.” A Rosquellas sang in a trio in the Philharmonic Society concert of 31 May 1813, and he is listed among the male vocal soloists for the 1816 season at the King’s Theatre.116 Of the two Philharmonic concerts that he led in 1815, in that of 3 April Viotti played one of his trios with Mori and Lindley. Three pieces by Mozart were also programmed: the Notturno for wind instruments; the quintet, “Sento, o Dio” from Così fan tutte, in which Naldi and Mrs. Lacy (the former Mrs. Bianchi) sang; and, to conclude, the overture to Le nozze di Figaro. On 1 May Viotti played one of his string quartets with Mori, Moralt, and Lindley. This, according to the program, was “arranged, from Viotti’s Pianoforte Concerto in A minor, by himself,”117 by which was meant, surely, the arrangement of Viotti’s Violin Concerto no. 25 for piano and orchestra by Dussek, dedicated to Mrs. Chinnery. The arrangement for string quartet (an arrangement of an arrangement!) does not appear to have been published. Also appearing in this concert was the pianist-composer Camille Pleyel, playing his trio for piano, violin, and cello. Pleyel had arrived in London in March, and composed the trio for the Society. On 18 April he wrote to his parents (his father was Ignace Pleyel, the composer-publisher-piano manufacturer who had dedicated two of his string quartets to Viotti) that “I have finished the trio, which I shall play on Monday, May 1, with Viotti and Lindley.” In the event it was Mori, not Viotti, who played the trio. The reason for the change is not known; three of Pleyel’s letters, written between 22 April and 20 May, in which he would surely have discussed this concert, seem to be missing.118 Pleyel mentions a large dinner given sometime in May, by Johann Maelzel “for artists on behalf of his Chronometer at which Cramer, Ries, Kalkenbrenner, Bohrer, and others were present.”119 Pleyel does not mention Viotti, but neither does he say that he himself was present. Knowing, as we do, of Viotti’s interest in the new invention, soon to be called the metronome, it would be surprising if he had not attended. Two other musicians who appeared in the Philharmonic concerts of 1815 deserve mention for their connection with Viotti. In the third concert, 13 March, Friedrich Kalkbrenner played his own sextet for piano, violin, viola, cello, oboe, and bassoon. He played again in 1816 and in 1817. In the eighth and last concert of 1815, the violinist Charles Philippe Lafont (1781–1839) played his trio for violin, flute, and bassoon. Lafont had studied under Kreutzer and Rode in Paris in the 1790s,


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and by early in the new century he was recognized as one of the leading violinists of the French school. He had recently returned from six years in St. Petersburg as solo violinist to the tsar. Viotti would naturally have been interested to hear one of his most distinguished “descendants,” though there is no record of a friendship. Lafont toured a great deal—in 1816 he was to have a famous encounter in Milan with Paganini, often described, perhaps with exaggeration, as a “contest.” In the meantime, Clementi’s soothing letter to Viotti had turned out to be only a temporary palliative. Though details are lacking, it is clear that Viotti and several other Members were so unhappy with the Philharmonic that they decided to form a new organization, which they called the Professional Society. Things came to a head in May–June 1815. In the Times of 31 May the Philharmonic Society announced the treason in their midst with indignation, “pain and surprise.” At the General Meeting of 1 June, “the Secretary read letters from Mr Clementi, Mr Braham, Dr Crotch & delivered a message from Mr Viotti stating their desire of immediately resigning the office of Directors.”120 Two weeks later it was decided to replace these four dissidents, but by the twentyfirst the schism seems to have been partially healed, as Viotti was one of six Members reelected as directors.121 However, “the dispute rumbled on.”122 At the Meeting of 27 September it was decided “that a committee be appointed to meet a committee of the Professional Society relative to a proposal from the latter respecting a union of the two Societies.”123 One Member, the gifted but unstable Samuel Wesley, seems to have considered Viotti to be the ringleader of the breakaway group: “The persons stiling themselves the professional concert, in contradistinction & indeed in opposition to the Philharmonic have (through Viotti, whom I consider as an arch-hypocrite) made what I believe to be no better than a mock Proposal towards an union with the Society whom the former so treacherously left.” Wesley gloomily concludes that “the feud between [the two groups] will rather be increased than diminished, so that the ultimate Result will be the Annihilation of both.”124 By 22 November the crisis seems to have blown over, at least on the surface. Braham, with twenty votes, Clementi with nineteen, and Viotti with eighteen, were among the twelve members elected directors for the following season. But within a little over a month, Viotti had had another change of heart. On 3 January 1816 he wrote, in English (surely dictated by Margaret) to W. Watts, the Secretary, regretfully declining the post of director “both on account of the indifferent state of my health and the attention to my Commercial Concerns,” but assuring the Philharmonic Society that he will “remain one of its most zealous and devoted members.”125 Later that month he wrote, perhaps more truthfully, to William Ayrton, that the “concept of the [Philharmonic] Concert is no longer the same as previously,” that before it had been almost a private affair, in which the musicians had played the works of the great European composers, and the public was admitted, almost as a favor, to share the pleasure. But now

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it has become quite simply a subscription series, in which the players are paid, and in which everything depends on the favor of the public. Viotti then writes, with a candor unique in his letters, of his feelings about his own professional standard: Now, my dear Sir, you understand, that having been retired from the professional world for about twenty years, I can no longer permit myself to appear on the stage without being taxed for fecklessness and exposing myself to criticism. That is why I am going to write to the Directors to ask them not to rely on my feeble talent, and to assure them at the same time that I shall never cease to have the best wishes for a society of which I shall always be honored to be a member.126 It would appear from this letter that Viotti no longer played in the Philharmonic orchestra after the 1815 season, and, as it turned out, his performance in the concert of 1 May 1815 was the last time he was heard in a public concert in England, or indeed, anywhere. But he must have changed his mind again about his directorship, for in the ballot of 17 June 1816 he was once again elected a director, though with the lowest number of votes of those elected. Finally, in February 1817, Viotti resigned for the last time, to be replaced by Friedrich Kalkbrenner.127 Cherubini stayed with Viotti and Margaret in Charles Street for the duration of his visit, until early June 1815. He was among those present at a dinner given in May by Margaret, followed by music. “We had Kalkbrenner, the two Bohrers, & Ramorino to dinner,” after which eleven others came, including Sir Charles and Lady Flint, the St. Legers, William Spencer, and Naldi—“these with Cherubini and ourselves made our little room look & feel very small.”128 Kalkbrenner had clearly joined the charmed circle of Viotti’s and Margaret’s friends. Anton (1783–1852) and Maximilian (1785–1867) Bohrer, violinist and cellist, respectively, had been recommended to Viotti the preceding year by the Duke of Cambridge, who had heard them in Hanover.129 They visited England in 1815 and in 1818 but did not play in the Philharmonic concerts. Ramorino may have been the sea captain, the friend of a friend, whom Viotti recommended in the mid-1790s, as mentioned in his Précis. Margaret tells William that the guests stayed until half past one; she praises the playing of Kalkbrenner and the Bohrers, but is silent on what music they played. If there was a violist among the guests, there may well have been a reading of Cherubini’s string quartet, which he had brought to London expressly for Viotti to hear. On his return journey, Cherubini encountered Giuseppina Grassini at Dover, who was on her way to London. He arrived at the port of Calais at 10:30 P.M. on 4 June, and slept in the packet-boat, the city being closed at that hour. The next morning, he wrote to his wife at 8 A.M., “Since six o’clock I have had breakfast and I went to see Amico’s husband. At about ten o’clock the trunks will be inspected, and afterwards I should have nothing to do other than to think


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about continuing my journey.”130 William Chinnery would have been pleased to see the internationally acclaimed composer, now his friend as well as Viotti’s, though he might not have appreciated Cherubini’s slightly venomous allusion, were he to hear of it, which, of course, he wouldn’t have. In the summer of 1815 Viotti seems to have considered a moneymaking scheme, involving William, the details of which are unclear. He tells William that it had to do with what happened at Betz’s, the mutilator [l’estropieur] of Stradivariuses! In the position in which you were, having the right sort of friends, such as those whom I know to be friends of yours, and who were formerly the companions of my youth, most certainly there would have been the means to earn an immense profit from it, but for that, it would have been necessary for me to see you, for me to become a veritable Mercury, for me, for you, for us to have flown, so to speak, and that was impossible at the time when the matter was broached to me. Now, unfortunately, all has been revealed; he no longer produces those airs with variations that are so astonishing! And the game wouldn’t be worth the candle.131 The mutilator was John Betts, the prominent violin maker and dealer, whose shop was in the North Piazza of the Royal Exchange. Then, as now, some violin maker-dealers indulged in the dubious practice of creating two or more prestigiously labeled violins by combining parts of one good instrument with parts of an inferior instrument or instruments. As to what had happened at the Betts shop, what precisely the moneymaking scheme was, who the companions of Viotti’s youth were, and how the astonishing airs with variations were involved, of all this Viotti reveals nothing. However, it is possible that “airs with variations” was Viotti’s code for “variations” on Stradivarius violins, fabricated by Betts. That would explain “unfortunately, all has been revealed” (maintenant tout est dit malheureusement)—perhaps there had recently been a revelation of Betts’s underhand doings; and it would explain “he no longer produces” (il ne s’éxecute plus)—not “compose,” and not “perform” (exécute)—the astonishing airs (astonishing because Betts was very good at “cloning” Stradivarius instruments). So the moneymaking scheme would have involved selling Betts-made “Stradivarius” violins at Stradivarius prices. Viotti may have used this code language because he was very careful about such things (his letter might be intercepted and read) and wanted to remove any hint that he and William would have involved themselves in disreputable practices. If correct, this interpretation of Viotti’s enigmatic words casts him in a poor light; we can only be thankful that the scheme came to nothing. According to a not entirely reliable source, Arthur Betts (1775–1847), John’s younger brother, who was a violinist, was taught by Viotti.132 Arthur Betts was the composer of several published compositions. A “Mr Betts” played in the

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violin section of the Philharmonic Society orchestra for several years, beginning in 1816. In July 1815 Viotti and Margaret were undecided about where to go for their annual visit to the Continent. (George, though still holding his post in the Treasury, had been in Lisbon since March as the private secretary to George Canning, returning to England in October.) Though Napoleon’s Hundred Days had ended on 18 June with his defeat at Waterloo, followed by his second abdication on the twenty-second, and his capture on 15 July, and though Louis XVIII had returned to Paris on 8 July, there was still widespread concern about the stability of the political and social situation in France. Viotti, Margaret, William, and Matilda spent the month of August in the kingdom of the Netherlands, visiting Ghent, Antwerp, Brussels, and Lille. Then, perhaps reassured by the news that Napoleon had embarked in British custody for St. Helena, they continued on to Paris. They stayed in the Hôtel de Londres, rue du Mont Thabor, no doubt because Cherubini (and the other residents of the Conservatoire) had been evicted in January and may not have been able to offer accommodation to the four visitors. The Conservatoire, in fact, suffered in the early days of the Restoration—its Revolutionary origins were displeasing to the Bourbon monarch—and it was closed completely for about two years, before reopening in 1816 as the École royale de musique. Unfortunately, since Baillot left on a lengthy tour of the Netherlands and England on 19 September133 (Viotti would have been disappointed to see him go), we do not have his eloquent and precise accounts of music making with his revered colleague. But we are reassured as to Viotti’s having found at least one chamber music companion of the highest order, by a note from Jean-Louis Duport addressed to Viotti at “Rue Montabord”: “I’m not the one who has your duo in G minor [WIV: 29]. I put my music in my cello case, and so I am sending you the key to the case. Have a look behind my cello. Thank you very much for the beautiful music that you let me hear the evening before last.”134 Duport, Viotti’s old colleague from the 1780s, has left his cello in Viotti’s rooms in the Hôtel de Londres, meaning that there are plans to meet again soon for music making. While in Paris, Viotti received a letter from the Duke of Cambridge, in Hanover. The duke thanks Viotti for having “executed the errand for me concerning the bows.” Since he has two other bows that Viotti has already sent, he has no immediate need for them. I am certain [he continues] that your friends in Paris would have had much pleasure in seeing you again, and I rejoice that they have persuaded you to take up composing again. I await with great impatience the concerto that you so kindly are dedicating to me. I have been busy practicing the Quartets, which are very beautiful. I played


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one of them with Romberg, who was delighted with it. He stayed here a week.135 The quartets may have been the ones composed three years earlier (WII:13–15), dedicated to André, which Viotti had originally intended to dedicate to the duke. On the other hand, these were not published until 1817, and it was risky to circulate a manuscript work before publication. The duke does not say which Romberg it was he had played with, but it probably was the cellist, Bernhard, who had performed with Viotti’s pupils Mori and Fémy in London the year before, and who was a friend of Viotti’s. The concerto dedicated to the duke was no. 27, probably composed (and played by Viotti) in 1794 or 1795, but not published until 1815, the year of this letter. Chappell White has pointed out that it is one of the least technically demanding of Viotti’s London concertos, and that the crowded notation of the ornamentation of the solo violin part in the slow movement in the autograph score was an afterthought, suggesting that it may have been done for the instruction of the duke.136 The letter seems to indicate, since the duke was apparently not familiar with the work, that the ornamentation was added at this time. Perhaps Viotti sent the autograph score, or only this movement from it, as a complement to the published score, which bears the dedication. In December, Pierre Baillot arrived in England on the last leg of his concert tour. He played in three of the Philharmonic concerts of 1816. In the first, on 26 February, he played a Concertante for Violin (the ban on solos had been lifted), a Mozart quartet with his former pupil, Fémy, and a manuscript quintet by Klengel for piano ( played by the composer), violin, viola, cello, and double bass, played by Dragonetti. This performance was Dragonetti’s first in a Philharmonic Society concert, and it marks his return to the public platform in London after an absence of several years. From now on he was one of the pillars of London’s musical life (and indeed of England’s), both in concerts and in the Opera orchestra. Baillot’s next appearance was not until the sixth concert, 13 May. In the interim, he played in various centers in northern England. But apparently the Society had expected Baillot to play in all of its concerts. Viotti undertook to mediate in the misunderstanding. His letter (in French), hitherto unpublished, is interesting for its combination of diplomacy and forthrightness: 5 April 1816 Gentlemen I deeply regret not to be able to attend in person the meeting this evening. I would have been delighted to add my little knowledge to yours, to decide upon the choice of pieces for the next concert in order to avoid, or rather to take away from the subscribers their reason for complaining that the concerts are too long, much too long. No doubt

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your good sense enables you to recognize this truth and to remedy it; but anyway one more voice would have done no harm, I think. I regret still more, Gentlemen, that I should have found it necessary to involve myself in the matter of Monsieur Baillot! . . . It would seem that there is some misunderstanding between the Society and him which I do not understand! . . . Mr. Baillot is an utterly honest man, refined and sensitive. I have known him, as you may well imagine, for many years, intimately [au fond]. I can vouch for the fact that he will keep his word. But also, I cannot think that the Society expects that, for the slender sum of £80, he will undertake to play in all the concerts, and to be tied down in London without moving, as I have been led to believe! No, the Society has too many bright intellects [lumières], it knows all too well how to treat great talents, for me to believe that. I had intended to bring Mr Baillot to the committee myself, but being unable to break my previous engagement, I advised him to present himself alone, and I promised him that I would inform you. This I do with great pleasure, since when people see each other they come to an understanding more easily than by letter, and many difficulties disappear with conversation. Receive him, then, with the consideration he merits, and believe me to be always, Gentlemen Your very humble and very obedient servant, [signed] J. B. Viotti137 In the event the £80 was reduced to 50 guineas, implying that though £80 was considered (by Baillot and Viotti) to be too little for all the concerts, it was considered (by the Philharmonic Society) to be too much for only three. In the sixth concert, 13 May, Baillot led the orchestra, and played a Haydn quartet, with Fémy and his Parisian colleague, the cellist Baudiot, who also played his own quintet for cello, two violins, viola, and double bass, joined by, among others, Baillot and Dragonetti. Finally, Baillot led in the seventh Philharmonic concert, 27 May, in which he played a string quintet by Beethoven, again with Fémy. On 4 June he returned to Paris.138 Earlier that year, Matilda, observant as always, and with a penchant for gossip, wrote in a postscript to one of Viotti’s letters to William, “Amico is quite disconcerted,—he has lost all chance with Miss Keating—reports say she is married to an English Officer at Paris. It is said her mother is dead. I can hardly believe this to be true. This is a brilliant year for weddings!”139 Mrs. and Miss Keating had been frequent callers at the Charles Street house in 1814, according to Matilda, but there is no other mention of them in the Viotti-Chinnery correspondence.140 This is the only suggestion in the entire literature on Viotti of his considering marriage, and intriguing though it is, it is too fleeting, too offhand to be given much weight. If there is anything behind Matilda’s remarks, it is


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odd that neither Viotti, now sixty years old, nor Margaret makes any mention of it in their letters. In the meantime, William Chinnery appears to have acted as an agent in Calais for the wine business of Viotti and Charles Smith’s. Viotti, however, was not happy with his friend’s lack of initiative, and, in one of his admonishing letters, tells him that he should move to where there are greater commercial opportunities, such as Rouen or Bordeaux. He cautions William about relying on friends—advice, one feels, learned in the hard school of his own experience: Friends, however well-intentioned, do nothing, they sit back while the opportunity passes, if the one in whom they take an interest doesn’t put himself in a position in which he can be helped, and if he doesn’t get a move on himself ! [ . . . ] It’s up to you never to lose sight of the fact that you must do something, you must be on the lookout and seize everything that comes your way, and finally, to get it into your head that, come hell or high water, you definitely cannot live a life of idleness.141 William seems to have been roused by Viotti’s advice. Not long afterward he moved to Le Havre to set up in a trading business (wine, spirits, sugar, tea, and coffee)142 with a certain Joseph Cary. It was in 1816 that Viotti’s and Charles Smith’s wine business was dealt a serious blow. John Spencer, William’s brother, who was musical,143 and who had several times received Viotti and the Chinnerys at Petersham, his home in the country,144 had been one of the most valued customers of the wine business. But in March he had been issued an “extent” by the government, freezing his assets, and the apparently large amount of money he owed to Smith and Viotti was lost. Viotti, though put in a “bad humor” as he tells William Chinnery, is philosophical: “there is nothing left but to regret having had anything to do with these spendthrifts.”145 Yim has suggested that it was this loss that precipitated the dissolution of the wine business, which occurred two years later.146 If so, Viotti seems not yet to be aware of it. It is perhaps typical of Viotti, that, having vented his frustration at the beginning of his letter, he turns to more pleasant things: a surprise party for Giuseppe Naldi in his own home on his Saint’s Day. Viotti, George, Matilda, and other friends kept Naldi in the dark, and away from his house, until nine o’clock, whereupon he was presented with the spectacle of his drawing room turned into a theater. About 100 guests were there to greet him. First, there was a charming little French comedy, in which Naldi’s wife and daughter played the principal roles, followed by a brief Italian opera, words and music written especially for the occasion, with an orchestra composed of Vaccari, Spagnoletti, Sor,147 and Crouch. Naldi’s daughter, Caroline, was a promising soprano, who was to make her Paris début four years later. It is difficult to imagine who, other than Viotti, would have composed the music for this piece, though he modestly

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refrains from saying so, and though no trace of it has survived.148 The festivities, which brought tears to Naldi’s eyes, continued with waltzing, then “we ate an elephant—mind you, I mean a biscuit, and we went to bed.” Finally, in this cornucopia of a letter, Viotti asks William to have sent to him from Paris “a little bottle of Elixir Dentifrice from the chemist Chez Bés, rue de Grenelle St. Honoré no. 34. It is to kill an old tooth, in an old jaw, which Dumergue [ Viotti’s and the Chinnery’s dentist] doesn’t want to take out.”149 One has the distinct impression that Viotti had trouble with his teeth. He had obviously patronized the Parisian chemist previously. In early July 1816, Margaret gave one of her smart musical parties, which she proudly described to William: “The Demoiselles De Lihu [two sisters, who were to sing in a Philharmonic concert the next year, and again in 1818] sang together admirably well. Naldi & his daughter also sang well, & Amico played some Duetts with Vaccari in his very best stile of finish, tone & execution! Nothing could be more perfect.” The heat in the small room was “intolerable,” but the two violinists seem to have overcome the problems that this is likely to have caused (sweaty hands and adversely affected string tension). There were at least seventeen guests, including the Dunmores, St. Leger and his daughter, Count and Countess St. Antonio (the former Miss Sophia Johnstone), and members of the diplomatic community. Afterward, Margaret gave them tea, lemonade, cakes, and ices.150 That autumn Viotti and Margaret again went to the Continent (August to November). They had planned to visit Madame Vigée-Lebrun, who wrote to Margaret in July, including an eloquent testimonial to the strength of her feelings toward Viotti and his playing: “It has been such a long time since I have heard news of Amico. My God, if only you could be with me and I could hear him talk with such an expressive face, and the sweet sounds [of his playing] which I listened to with such pleasure. Why do I not hear them any more! They are still in my heart, but I say continually Encore, Encore!”151 In any event, Margaret and Viotti did not go to France that year, but to Brussels, where they joined William, and later George, who had been in Paris in August with George Canning. While in Brussels Viotti received a letter from the Duke of Cambridge. Viotti clearly has asked the duke to use his influence to advance Margaret’s interests, and, it would seem, to help find a larger house for her (and Viotti). The duke regrets that he is unable to do anything, that all the apartments in the various palaces are occupied, that there are already too many on the Grand Chamberlain’s waiting list, and that there are no honorary positions (such as that of a lady in waiting, one presumes) available in his sister’s household establishment (surely the duke means the eldest of his five surviving sisters, Charlotte, the princess royal).152 Whatever her real financial position, Margaret was able to maintain a lifestyle not noticeably inferior to that she enjoyed at Gillwell. Joseph Farington had asserted in his diary, after William Chinnery’s defalcation in 1812, that


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“Mrs. Chinnery (ci-devant Miss Tresilian) had settlements so made upon Her that she has now sufficient income to enable her to have a House in Charles st. Berkeley Sqre. [recte Manchester Square] and to keep two men and two maid servants.”153 This is corroborated by Margaret herself, for the period before the move from Gillwell, except that the second manservant, the footman, “whenever there happened to be one, was Amico’s servant, paid & clothed by him.” The second maidservant had been Caroline’s,154 but it seems likely that after the move to Charles Street these four servants were retained, that Caroline’s maid became Matilda’s, and that Viotti continued to pay for his own footman.155 Early in 1815, Margaret had obtained a settlement of £2,050 (see note 26), a sum equivalent in purchasing power to £127, 583 in 2007. Now, in 1816, before departing for Brussels, she had written to William that “I might perhaps find a good Swiss servant at Brussels, & bring him home with me. Here there is not one who will wear a livery, & a livery servant I must have.”156 Perhaps more significantly, by early in the following year she had bought a house at 17 Montagu Street in the fashionable Portman Square area, to which she, Viotti, George, and the two girls moved in the summer of 1817.157 It was almost certainly during this sojourn in Brussels that Viotti met the young Flemish violinist André Robberechts (1797–1860). According to Fétis, Robberechts had taken lessons from Baillot in Paris in 1814.158 After this meeting in Brussels he went to London to study with Viotti, and soon became Viotti’s regular partner in duet performances in Margaret’s concerts. The next spring, Robberechts received from his master a token of his esteem in the form of an unusual piece of music (figure 8.1), and, to explain it, a letter: 10 April 1817 I want to keep my promise, my dear Robberechts. You will receive from Mr. Smith a little trifle which really is nothing, but is scribbled by my own hand. It will serve at least to prove to you that I haven’t forgotten you and that I have the most sincere wishes for your success. I need not tell you that in playing this piece you must try as much as possible to imitate two violins. When you play it, have the maid stand behind the door to guess if there is one or two violins playing. If she says two, that’s it [c’est la chose]. We have not yet decided on our summer plans. I will take care to inform you in time of the place of our doings. In the meantime, believe me to be very sincerely, Your affectionate friend159 Other than this “March for two Violins to be played by one solo [violin]” and one other essay in the genre, Viotti seems not to have been particularly interested in the polyphonic possibilities of the violin. His use of double stops in his concertos, while sometimes quite extensive, is conventional and devoid of polyphonic implications.

Figure 8.1. Viotti: “Marcia a Due Violini da concertare [?] da un Solo” (March for two violins to be played by one solo [violin]) (Bibliothèque nationale de France, département de la musique; Lettre autograph Viotti (G. B.) 16). Another ms. copy, not in Viotti’s hand, titled “Marcia a Violino Solo Col accompagnamento da sè Stesso,” and inscribed “J. B. Viotti à Mr Geusse [? (unidentified)],” is held by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, Mus. Ms. 2983. Differing slightly from the Paris copy, including a B flat instead of a B natural on the third and fourth beats of m. 19, this version is stated in a covering sheet to have been copied from Viotti’s autograph, which was apparently owned by, or at least authenticated by, Joseph Joachim, as indicated by a note by Joachim, “Berlin, 30 September 1871.” The relationship between the Paris and the Munich copies has not been established, but it seems clear that Viotti himself wrote out the piece twice for his two recipients. Neither autograph is now traceable.


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Though Robberechts apparently continued studying with Viotti in the succeeding years, he had to wait until 1819 before Viotti permitted him to appear in public in a Philharmonic concert. On 10 January of that year a letter from Viotti was read at a directors’ meeting recommending his pupil, who was duly admitted to the first violin section at £1.11.6 per night.160 A little later, probably early in March, Viotti wrote asking at which point in the second concert (15 March) the directors thought Mori and Robberechts would be playing “the Concertante à grand orchestre which they are preparing.” In the event, it was at the end of the first half of the concert that his two pupils, one former, the other current, played what must have been one of his two symphonies concertantes, composed more than thirty years earlier. Robberechts also played first violin in a Haydn string quartet in the third concert, 29 March. In the same letter Viotti informs the Society that “the day before yesterday there has arrived from Munich the famous clarinettist, Mr. Böhrmann, in the service of the King of Bavaria. He has had the greatest success in Paris. If the Directors believe that this could be an excellent diversion for the Philharmonic Concerts, I shall gladly undertake to arrange things to the satisfaction of everyone.”161 Viotti did indeed arrange things, for in the same concert, “Herr Baermann” played his Fantasia for Clarinet and Orchestra, and in the fifth, 26 April, his Septette for Clarinet, Strings and Two Horns. Viotti was indefatigable in promoting the interests of his pupils. Early in 1818 the directors of the Philharmonic Society informed Viotti that Fémy would be

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written to, “assuring him that there will be another trial night on which his two M.S. Sym[phonies] shall be performed.”162 No work of Fémy’s was played in the Society’s public concerts, though he played chamber music several times in the concerts in 1814, 1816, and 1818. One has the distinct impression, that, just as he had in Paris, Viotti preferred to have his pupils play rather than appear himself, though the above-mentioned performance of a symphonie concertante was the only time there was a performance of one of his own works in a Philharmonic concert in which he did not play himself, and, in fact, it was the last time a work of his was played by the Philharmonic in his lifetime. On the other hand, Robberechts and Mori occasionally played works by Viotti in other concerts. Mori, for example, played a concerto by Viotti in a benefit concert on 7 June 1815; in oratorio nights at Covent Garden on 8, 13, and 27 March 1822; and between the acts of a Drury Lane oratorio evening on 31 March 1824, not long after Viotti’s death. Robberechts was announced to play a set of “MS variations” by Viotti on 19 May 1819 at the benefit concert of Rovedino and his son.163 One slight piece of evidence that Viotti was composing in this period is a letter from Margaret, unfortunately fragmentary, telling William that “[ John] Crosdill is delighted with Amico’s new Duets, which he [ . . . ]” (at this point the letter is torn off).164 It is not clear which duets these might have been. Viotti’s only known duets originally composed for cellos are the set of six, WIV:37–42, published several years earlier and dedicated to Crosdill. Margaret may have been speaking of a new arrangement, though there is no known arrangement for two cellos of any of the violin duets. On New Year’s Day 1817, Margaret Chinnery asked William Ayrton for “the pleasure of your company [ . . . ] next Wednesday evening the 8th, not later than nine o’clock,” when Madame Camporese, the new prima donna at the King’s Theatre, “has promised to be with us.”165 Violante Camporese made her London début in Cimarosa’s Penelope on the 11th—no doubt she sang an aria or two from this opera at Margaret’s soirée, and no doubt Viotti played. In June 1817 Viotti, Margaret, and Matilda went on their annual trip to the Continent, this time accompanied by George. They stayed in Lille, where Matilda’s mother, Mrs. John Chinnery, was visiting from India. They undoubtedly spent time with William. Viotti also spent some time in Paris; how much time is not known. On 7 July the Duke of Cambridge wrote to Viotti from Montbrillant, his palace in Hanover. The duke thanks Viotti for his two recent letters, and encloses a draft for 50 guineas for a violin Viotti has acquired for him, which he asks Viotti to deliver to his Mâitre d’Hôtel, Mr. Unlin, with instructions for it to be brought to Hanover. Since the duke says that Viotti had mentioned the violin in a letter of 26 May, we may presume that the latter had bought the violin in London. Perhaps this instrument was a Stradivari—three Stradivari violins are listed in Goodkind’s book (1972) as having been owned by the duke.


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The duke sends his best wishes to Margaret and George, and he is pleased to hear of the new house. He regrets having time to make music only rarely, though he sings occasionally, accompanied (very well) by a certain Balossi, a good composer.166 In mid-October Viotti and Margaret were in Lille, staying in the rue Royale. On the seventeenth of that month Viotti wrote to “mon cher Monsieur Vogel,” regretting that, due to Margaret’s indisposition, their concert planned for Sunday evening (“our enormous, harmonious noise”) would have to be called off.167 Mr. Vogel, a prominent local violinist, later made the acquaintance of Louis Spohr when the latter stopped in Lille in the spring of 1820 on his way to London. Early in 1818, after returning to London with Margaret,168 Viotti was honored with an invitation to a dinner given by the Philharmonic Society, despite the fact that he had hardly participated in the activities of the Society for some time. It must have been a gala event—the list of invitees included the Duke of Sussex, several ambassadors, Sir Thomas Lawrence, the actors Edmund Kean and John Philip Kemble, Samuel Coleridge, and John Soane.169 Margaret was able to entertain more lavishly in the new house in Montagu Street. She describes a large party given on 25 May 1818, at which some eighty guests were present, besides the “nine or ten professors” (musicians): The people began coming in about ten, & continued coming & going all the evening,—some went away & came back again. About two they were all gone but the professors. We began with a Symphony of Haydn’s, then a vocal Quintett from Rossini’s Barbiere di Seviglia,— then Amico and Robberecht played, then a vocal Duett by Miss Naldi and Garcia. After this the Bohers played (which they never shall do again here). Then a Duett by Naldi & Garcia,—after that a Duett by Lady Flint & Miss Naldi, which terminated the whole.170 The newcomer among the performers is Manuel Garcia, the Spanish tenor, now the leading tenor at the King’s Theatre, where, among other roles, he was singing Almaviva in Barbiere, with Naldi in the role of Figaro. Garcia had created the role of Almaviva in Rome two years earlier, and was soon to be the leading tenor at the Paris Opéra during Viotti’s directorship. The Duke of Cambridge had returned to England after another five years in Hanover (1813–18, except for a brief sojourn in England in the summer of 1816, when he certainly saw George, and, perhaps, Viotti).171 In June 1818 Viotti, Margaret, and George saw a great deal of him. On one occasion (10 June), Viotti dined with the duke and his bride of only a month, the twenty-year-old Princess Augusta of Hesse-Cassel. Viotti told Margaret that “nothing could be more amiable, or more delightful, than the young Duchess,—she has fair blue eyes with beautiful dark eye-lashes & eyebrows, good teeth. [ . . . ] After dinner the Duchess sang to Amico, & nothing could be pleasanter [ . . . ]. Tomorrow there is a probability of [the duke’s] having a Quartetto at Cambridge House.”172

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A few days later Viotti dined again with the duke. “He went by appointment to play Duetts, & the Duke desired he would dine there.” In the evening, after dinner, George arrived while Viotti and the duke were making music.173 On 22 June Margaret wrote to William, in the aftermath of a serious difference with the man whose life she had shared for more than twenty years. She begins abruptly, in a high emotional state, without the usual “my dearest Chin” or similar salutation: It is not always an easy thing to bear with Amico’s temper, at all times.—I have always regretted that among the many fine qualities he possesses there should be an over-bearingness that at times renders both his actions & expressions harsh. As to me,—I am now so often, so very often told that I am unjust, difficult to satisfy, &c&c&c, that I have lost all confidence in myself, and believe I shall adopt a new line of conduct, & letting things go their own way avoid this sort of painful discussion which destroys me, at least it destroys the peace of my mind. When we shall all find ourselves, when my vigilance is laid aside, I know not,—but as no one seems to thank me for it, or even to be of my opinion, it will be best to commit all to the stream & float down with it as I can. For a very long time past Amico hates music,—he never composes, would never touch a violin if he could avoid it,—his delight is in reading novels!—In this idle occupation he would spend his entire day, and a note or letter to write, a person calling upon him, anything in the world that takes him from these odious books, is a contretemps to him. Scarcely will he read a letter addressed to himself! Any other, he says he has not eyes to read. The moment I begin to reason with him a little upon this lamentable propensity, the cause of a thousand mistakes & omissions, he talks of being très malheureux, that he would mourir &c&c in the most violent strain. However, he must do as he likes, not as I like,—indeed my likings are of little consequence,—my day is over dearest Chinnery,— I am, as nothing in my own eyes—When I think of my former happiness, & my present situation,—I think there is still something to set off against my faults, in bearing it as I do!174 It would seem that the immediate cause of this extraordinary outpouring was Margaret’s having remonstrated with Viotti, and his responding sharply, too sharply—a typical disagreement, on the face of it, between any two persons living together. But there is more to it than that. Margaret, now in her mid-fifties, was aware of her long-standing position as the prime mover of the family. Her vigilance, which no one (she means Viotti, surely) thanks her for, is in the interests of her family. Perhaps Viotti had said something to cast doubt on this role. Though Viotti might have thought that Margaret herself could be overbearing (it would have been interesting to read his description of the discussion), it cannot be denied that Margaret was justified in her alarm at Viotti’s retreat from music, from life itself. On the other hand, she might have remembered that Viotti was


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given to periods of “hating” music, and that, thus far, he had emerged from them triumphantly. His giving himself over to novels—Viotti, who appreciated Plutarch, Racine, and Shakespeare—would nowadays no doubt be called an “escape mechanism.” One wonders what novels they were that Margaret thought odious. There was, at any rate, one perfectly simple reason for Viotti’s depression—his and Charles Smith’s wine business had been losing ground since 1816, and apparently failed utterly in 1818. A mere four days after the letter, however, on 26 June, Viotti roused himself to participate in another of Margaret’s glittering parties. Crosdill could not attend, but she was able to secure the services of Christopher Schram, Garcia, and the Naldis. About twenty-five guests attended, including “about a dozen men chiefly from the diplomatic corps,” and the Duke of Cambridge, who arrived at about 9:30 P.M. A quintet from Rossini’s Barber of Seville was sung. “This went off very well & tea having been handed round, the Duke took the second violin part in a Quintetto of Boccherini’s. I never heard him play better, but the heat was so over-powering that he declined playing any more.” Before the singers left at ten o’clock for a prior engagement, Caroline Naldi and Garcia sang a duet. Tea was handed round again, and the duke, just before leaving, heard Viotti and Robberechts play a duet. Madame de Montgéroult, who was in England for a visit of several months, also played, “but alas!—her execution & her taste are much fallen off!”175 One cannot but be curious about Madame de Montgéroult’s eight- or ninemonth sojourn in England.176 Did she stay with Margaret and Viotti at Montagu Street? Did she and Viotti make music together? Is Margaret’s criticism to be taken at face value? What had happened to the pianist’s execution and taste? Her letter to Margaret, written after returning to Paris, is cordial; she misses the musical evenings at Montagu Street: “I felt so at home in that beloved drawing room listening to and admiring dear Amico!”177 A week later Margaret gave still another party, which Glenbervie describes in his journal: In the evening I went to a select concert at Mrs Chinnery’s, where the amico, as she calls him, played on his violin, with and without accompaniment, to the great admiration of the connoisseurs. [Glenbervie goes on to list many of the guests, including “several diplomatic personages.”] Fiotti [sic] talked to me of Madame d’Esmangart, whom he had known last winter at his brother’s, who he told me is a colonel and Attorney General at Paris, a strange union of situations, but I found he meant that he has the same sort of office and duties with our Judge Advocate.178 Viotti played with accompaniment (no doubt provided by Matilda on the piano), but also, more unusually, without accompaniment—perhaps he improvised variations on a well-known tune, or perhaps it was the “duet” for solo violin that he had sent to Robberechts the year before. We exclude, for lack

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of evidence, the possibility that it was a movement from the six sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin by J. S. Bach, though this brings us to the interesting question of whether, indeed, Viotti was familiar with these works, now considered a touchstone of the violinist’s art. Viotti’s pupil, Jean Baptiste Cartier, included the Fugue from Bach’s Sonata in C Major in his L’art du violon, first published in Paris in 1798, of which Viotti surely owned a copy. The six sonatas and partitas had been published in 1802. J. P. Salomon had apparently played them “in exemplary fashion” during his years in London.179 George Bridgetower, we have learned from two independent contemporary sources, made music with Viotti and was influenced by his playing. According to Samuel Wesley, who was friendly with Bridgetower (less so with Viotti, as we have noted), and who himself was an important early advocate of the music of Bach, “It was a rich treat for a lover of the instrument to hear [ Bridgetower] perform the matchless and immortal Solos of Sebastian Bach, all of which he perfectly retained in his Memory and executed with the utmost Precision and without a single Error.”180 Bridgetower had held the post of first violinist in the private orchestra of the Prince of Wales from 1795 to 1809, and he was Viotti’s colleague in the Philharmonic Society—there was ample opportunity for contact between the two violinists, although there is no record of Bridgetower being a part of the Chinnery circle. Could there have been an influence exerted by the younger man, who had probably first met Viotti at the age of ten in Paris, on his older colleague? By July 1818 it was again time for the annual trip to the Continent. Again Viotti was honored with a memorable gathering of friends and fellow artists in Paris, reminiscent of the one that had so moved him in 1814. Both Baillot and Edme Miel describe it, Baillot about two weeks afterward: I saw M. de Louvois at a morning assembly at Viotti’s, whom I had the pleasure of hearing at two of these gatherings and at a little fête which we gave him on Sunday, October 25, two days before his departure. A young poet had composed a cantata in his honor, which the good Habeneck181 set to music with recitatives and choruses. I slipped in eight lines to which he composed a charming chorus that ended the cantata. We went to Viotti’s upon leaving the king’s Mass. No one had spoken a word of it to him. We had gathered together an orchestra and all our pupils. This surprise so moved him that on entering he was unable to walk or speak and he was overcome with tears. The ritornellos were made up of a dozen motives from his concertos, quartets, etc, and you can imagine how much, while playing them, I shared the emotion of he who was listening. Once he had recovered from the initial shock, the cantata was given a second time, then our dear Viotti, seeing himself in the midst of his children and his friends [about thirty persons in addition to the musicians],182 did not refuse to take his


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violin and we played a superb manuscript concerto in E minor. How could he not have played it with divine fire? His soul was vibrating in response to ours.183 Baillot modestly omits to say that the ritornellos were violin solos, played by him, as Miel, who most probably was present, informs us in his article on Viotti. The E minor concerto was no. 29, not published until 1824. Opinions differ as to whether Viotti composed this concerto to perform in the Opera Concert in the period 1795–98, or later, even as late as 1817. White points out that the middle movement (Andante sostenuto) was composed after the other two movements, and that “the outer two movements, both of which show signs of revision [in the autograph manuscript], were changed at this time.”184 This suggests that Viotti had been galvanized by Margaret’s remonstrances, and, during the Paris sojourn, had set himself the task of providing a middle movement for this concerto, lacking in the original version. And, as Denise Yim observes, since the fête was given at his and Margaret’s lodgings, she would have had a hand in the secret preparations, which suggests that it may have been an effort to “bring Viotti back to his art.”185 Seven years later, Baillot pointed out in his Notice sur J.-B. Viotti that on this occasion, no one in Paris, apart from a few friends, had heard Viotti play a concerto for more than thirty years. “Alas! It was his swan song; we were hearing him for the last time.” The day before this fête, Viotti wrote to Felice Radicati (1775–1820), a Torinese violinist-composer, and pupil of Pugnani’s, whom Viotti had met when Radicati came to England in 1810 with his wife, the soprano Teresa BertinottiRadicati. On 1 April 1811 Viotti attended a concert in which Mori played a “MS concerto” by Radicati.186 By 1814 the Radicatis had returned to Italy, settling in Bologna. To judge from this letter, Viotti and “cher et bon” Radicati had become close friends. Viotti regrets having received Radicati’s letter a whole year late—“poste restante truly restante.” He seems to have taken Radicati into his confidence regarding his failing wine business: “I thank you a thousand times for all the trouble you have taken on my behalf. I have written to Turin as a result of what you sent me on the subject of my unfortunate affairs.” This is difficult to interpret. Perhaps Radicati had told Viotti of some opportunity in Turin, or of someone in Turin who could be useful. Viotti continues with some revealing observations on musical tastes in Paris: As for your charming quartets, last autumn I had them played to the best of my ability [ je les ai fait entendre de mon mieux; presumably Viotti means that he had played them himself ], and this year I am told that this type of music doesn’t sell any more; that people in the societies want to hear only little fripperies [ petites betises] with piano accompaniment, and that they would be throwing away their money on them [et qu’on en serait pour les Fraix]. I was even told politely that it is the same with my own compositions. And so, my dear friend, I advise you to

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have them returned to you, to transform them into something else if you wish to sell them in Paris. They are all in the hands of Imbault,187 who is ready to hand them over to whomever you wish. As a year has passed since you wanted to have the collection of my concertos, I don’t know if you are still of the same mind. I hesitate to have you make this purchase, but I have deposited them with Mr. Janet and he is ready to follow any instructions that you wish to give him. I return to London the day after tomorrow—it is still a country in which music is going to the dogs, though there is the rage to make it everywhere. [ Viotti sends best wishes to “chere Madame Bertinotti” from Madame Chinnery, and asks his friend to “kiss her hands on the part of your compatriot.” By “compatriot,” he means not so much Italian as Torinese.]188 Viotti’s assertion about the market for string quartets in Paris does not ring entirely true, since Janet and Cotelle had published his last set of three, dedicated to André Viotti, only a year earlier. On the other hand, his low opinion of Parisian tastes was shared by Ludwig Spohr, who visited Paris in 1820–21 (“here you seldom hear a serious piece, nothing but airs varies, rondos favoris, nocturnes, and the like trifles”),189 and by Sophie Leo, who writes of the “deplorable state” of concerts at this time: “even the most capable artist dared not offer his unappreciative audience a quartet or quintet, much less an entire concerto with orchestral accompaniment, and in private circles where music was cultivated the display of ignorance and lack of taste was still more striking.”190 Viotti’s remark about the state of music in England shows that nothing has occurred in the Philharmonic Society to alter his gloomy opinion of that institution. While in Paris, Viotti was able to indulge his interest in the pedagogy of music. He visited a special music school in the Marais in which the monitorial system was used, that is, the brightest students were trained to instruct their fellow students in small groups. The Annales de la musique pour l’an 1819 reported this visit: Having closely observed the classroom exercises, charming to both eye and ear, he saw for himself that the success of such an establishment was due to the excellence of the method employed, and not to some transient fashionable fad for frivolous novelties that all too often appeal to idle minds. It is regrettable, he said, that such simple and ingenious methods were not applied earlier in the development of a charming art, the study of which has, in times gone by, wasted so many young people’s time and caused them to turn away from music.191 It is tempting to suppose that it was Madame de Genlis, and Margaret, who influenced Viotti to visit this school. The monitorial method bears a very close


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resemblance to Margaret’s practice at Gillwell of having Caroline help in the musical instruction of Matilda and little Margaret. Having returned to London, Margaret continued to give music parties, the guests consisting in large part of members of the foreign diplomatic circle. In one of these, given on 8 January 1819, she reports that she had not invited many professors, that Lady Flint sang her own compositions accompanied by Begrez, and that Matilda played the piano accompanied by Robberechts.192 In another, we were rich in poets [Samuel Rogers, Thomas Moore, Henry Luttrell, and William Spencer]. The music, which was to be instrumental by agreement, was very fine—some Quintetts of Boccherini’s—a Duett between Amico & Robberechts, a Trio by Amico. Amico played beautifully; he was accompanied by his pupil Guinemer, Col. West and Ashley.193 He was quite delightful, & in high good humour all the evening.194 Viotti’s pupil, “Guinemer,” is Charles Guynemer, Baillot’s brother-in-law and former pupil, who had gone to live in England in 1809 after his marriage,195 and with whom Viotti had played chamber music at the home of General Dessolle in 1814. It would have been sometime after that occasion that he became Viotti’s pupil, no doubt with the intercession of Baillot. Guynemer would play in the orchestra of the Philharmonic Society for the 1822 season, at the normal rankand-file rate of “one Guinea and half per night, and half price the Rehearsal.”196 He also played chamber music in four concerts of the Philharmonic Society in 1822. With Fémy and Robberechts, he brings to three the number of pupils Viotti received from Baillot. Thomas Moore spent an evening at a Montagu Street concert around this time. On Tuesday, 8 June 1819, “we went in the evening to Mrs Chinnery’s, where I heard Viotti, Ashley &c. play a beautiful Quintett of Boccherini’s, full of sweet melody—the Demoiselles Lihu sung too.”197 This would not seem to be the same concert as the all-instrumental one described by Margaret, though very similar. On his sixty-fourth birthday, 12 May 1819, Viotti wrote to William Ayrton from Petersham, “at William Spencer Esqu.re.” He is “in ecstasy over the song of an entire flock of nightingales” and is enjoying his birthday doing nothing: “Viva, il bel far niente.” He suggests that since most of the subscribers to Cherubini’s Requiem Mass are members of the Philharmonic Society, the directors be asked to have the composer send the scores in one package to the Argyll Rooms. Perhaps in this way the Customs will be “a little less greedy and less inexorable.” The subscribers can then pay each his share.198 Despite appearances, Margaret’s and particularly Viotti’s financial position never seems to have been very strong. In January of 1819 Margaret tells William, who has asked for money, that “I am very low myself, dearest Chinnery, and I have a little to go on with, which with Amico’s quarter, will I hope to go

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on hobblingly, somehow or other.”199 Viotti, who was contributing a quarter of the household budget, was able to lend £20 to William. But from 1819 onwards, their need for more money is evident, in a crescendo of urgency, becoming desperate in 1822 and 1823, not long before Viotti’s death.200 Viotti still owed Margaret 24,000 francs, a very large sum, lent as a contribution to his investment in the wine business, a debt that he never managed to repay, as he laments in his last will and testament. The failure of the wine business was undoubtedly what drove Viotti to look for a new source of income. As early as January 1819 he and Margaret were casting their eyes toward France. In her letter of 4 January to William, Margaret analyzes the political situation in France, and its effect upon their fortunes: she approves of Elie Decazes, who has risen to power under Louis XVIII, and with whose cousin she is on friendly terms, and “M. Desolles is an old friend of Amico’s you know,—so that upon the whole I do not think that we shall have lost ground at headquarters.”201 The Marquis Dessolle, the former General Dessolle, has been made Minister for Foreign Affairs. Margaret has her eye on the recent changes in the French government (“headquarters”) not only with regard to the possible benefits for William and his business but also for Viotti. The time is ripe. Viotti, sixty-four years old, decides to apply for the directorship of the Paris Opéra, the position he had coveted exactly thirty years earlier.202

chapter nine

Paris and the Opéra, 1819–21

W

e cannot know viotti’s true state of mind when he made this decision. Reluctance, certainly, at assuming a position that he knew would be vexatious, artistically frustrating, and extremely fatiguing for a man of his age. Already in 1816 he had turned down a much less onerous position because of “indifferent health” (in which he was surely sincere—if he had been in glowing health, it would have been noticed). But no doubt there was also the excitement of rising to a challenge, the satisfaction of achieving an ancient ambition. The incumbent director of the Opéra, or the Académie royale de musique, Louis Persius, had been seriously ill for some time. On 12 October 1819 he resigned. By a decree of 30 October, Viotti was appointed as Persius’s replacement.1 The letter of appointment from the Minister of the Maison du roi, the Comte de Pradel, dated 2 November, makes it clear that Viotti had applied for the position. It begins, “I have received with pleasure, Sir, the letter of [day of the month omitted] last October in which you offer to undertake the stage management and the direction of artistic personnel [direction de la scène et du personnel des artistes] of the Royal Academy of Music.”2 Viotti was to receive an annual salary of 12,000 francs, as well as 3,000 francs toward lodging expenses.3 His duties were to include the directorship of the Théâtre Italien, known familiarly as the Bouffons (which produced Italian opera), the administration of which had recently been joined to that of the Opéra, in the Théâtre de la rue de la Loi (now the rue de Richelieu—see figure 3.1), which, as always, produced French serious opera.4 This double function must have seemed to Viotti like a reincarnation of his directorship of the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau. Performances at the Opéra were given on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; at the Théâtre Italien, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The Opéra alone employed 486 persons full-time in 1820.5 317

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Among other contenders for the position was Luigi Cherubini, whose letter of application has been preserved in the national archives. Cherubini offers “to demonstrate my desire to be useful, to add to my request, that of being temporarily, and gratuitously named assistant to Mr. Persius, to the end of performing those functions which his state of health sometimes prevents him from fulfilling.”6 Cherubini had reason to think that he was the prime candidate for the position. He was seen favorably by Louis XVIII, who had nominated him co-superintendent of the royal chapel in 1814. He had been made a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur and elected a member of the Institut de France. But as a composer of operas he would always have been open to the charge of conflict of interest in selecting the repertory for the Opéra. At any rate, he was passed over in favor of his old friend. Viotti wrote to him on 5 November: I am told, my dear friend, that you are angry! . . . If it is against me, you are wrong, and it will not be difficult to convince you of it. Everything that my brother said to you about the Opéra is true. I did not by any means look for the position with which I have been honored, the position which puts an end to my peace of mind! It was all arranged I don’t know how, and it was only ten or fourteen days ago that I was called from Châtillon to give my consent. And so, without going into more details, my brother, I repeat, has told you everything. Naturally I am grateful beyond words to M. the comte de Pradel for his kindness; he deserves my gratitude by right, and I shall do everything possible to prove it to him; but I cannot help but feel extremely pained to have been the rival of a friend whom I love, of a friend whose genius I have always respected and appreciated and a person whom I will never cease to love, whatever may be the changes that take place in his heart. Your affectionate amico, Viotti7 Viotti’s almost obsessive desire to protect those he loved from unpleasant truths has here been taken to extremes. The lie, surely, was more unpalatable than the truth. Châtillon (sous-Bagneux), from where Viotti says he was called, was then a small village, about six miles south of Paris. Margaret had bought a residence there, probably in 1819, in the midst of fruit trees, grape vines, and gardens, on a rise of land commanding an extensive view of Paris. It was here that she lived for the next several years, in the spring-to-autumn months, returning to London for the winters, the Châtillon house being too cold. Viotti normally commuted on weekends from Paris. Margaret would occasionally go to Paris, to attend an opera or a play, and she resumed entertaining at Châtillon, “receiving a cosmopolitan mix of diplomats, French statesmen, musicians and personal friends and family for dinners and music just as she had done at Gillwell.” Madame Vigée-Lebrun had her own room at Châtillon.8 In 1819 Viotti and Margaret


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had left England for France sometime after 28 June, when Viotti attended a meeting of the Philharmonic Society. They lived at 38 rue Basse-du-Rempart until their move to Châtillon. Then, after Margaret returned to London for the winter, Viotti’s address was 46 rue Neuve-de-Mathurins, where he appears to have lived for most of 1820.9 It was not long before Viotti was plunged into the thick of administrative duties. On 18 November Rodolph Kreutzer sent a letter to an unnamed person in the Opéra administration: You are aware that for three years I have filled the functions of conductor of the orchestra [chef d’orchestre], with much zeal and care. Relying on your sense of justice, I can do no better than to ask you to have the [infinite? (indecipherable word)] goodness to support the request I have just made to the administration of the académie royale, to raise my salary to eight thousand francs for the year 1820, the normal salary for the position of orchestra conductor. The interest that you have been kind enough to show me on other occasions emboldens me to hope that, on this one, you will again be favorably disposed. Believe me [ . . . ], Kreutzer.10 Kreutzer had been deputy conductor since January 1816.11 If the recipient of the letter was someone other than Viotti, then it almost certainly would have been Viotti to whom Kreutzer had just applied, and who was responsible for approving such requests, for ratification by the Maison du roi. Kreutzer’s application was successful: six weeks later Viotti informed him that he had been appointed chief conductor, though with a salary of only 7,000 francs. It was brought up to 8,000 in May 1821.12 The Opéra orchestra contained nearly eighty musicians, including some of the best in Paris. François Habeneck had succeeded Kreutzer in 1817 as principal violin, and Viotti’s pupil Jean Baptiste Cartier had been assistant leader since 1791. The orchestra of the Théâtre Italien, on the other hand, was a little over half the size of the Opéra’s, and was “notoriously bad.”13 Another incident, again involving artistic personnel, required all of Viotti’s charm and diplomacy, as he reports, rather immodestly, to the intendant of the Menus Plaisirs, the Baron de La Ferté.14 For unknown reasons he has been forced to abandon the idea of engaging Madame Bonini as one of the prime donne of the Bouffons. Viotti is at pains to ensure that La Ferté first understands the significance of this “disagreeable certainty”: I assure you that this contretemps at this point in the season, the dreadfully awkward position of having to keep the company going with only one prima donna, and it must be said, the consequences which would seem to be the responsibility of the new Director, caused me, after having taken the advice of MM. Courtin15 and Grandsire,16 to pay a private visit to Mad.e Fodor, with whom I had very friendly relations

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in London. I introduced myself first as an old acquaintance, then the conversation imperceptibly took the turn I desired; I behaved like a Director. After a long discussion, I convinced M.r and Mad.e Fodor to accept a new contract of twenty-five thousand francs for next year with the promise of a benefit in the large opera house, with a guarantee of fifteen thousand francs net.17 Joséphine Fodor-Mainvielle, a soprano, was the daughter of the Dutch violinist Josephus Andreas Fodor, whose performance in the Concert spirituel on Christmas Day 1781 may have been heard by Viotti, and who was one of the several good violinists who were eclipsed by Viotti in the early 1780s in Paris. She had made her début at the Opéra-Comique in 1814, and had performed at the King’s Theatre from 1816 to 1818, singing Susanna in Mozart’s Figaro, Zerlina in Don Giovanni, and Rosina in the first London performance of Rossini’s Barbiere on 10 March 1818, with Manuel Garcia and Guiseppe Naldi. Viotti would have made her acquaintance during this period, and no doubt heard her in Barbiere. More recently, she had not been well received by audiences in Paris, which may explain a certain reluctance to return to the French stage, and, in turn, the need for Viotti’s “intelligent and supple diplomacy,”18 and a generous contract, to win her over. Viotti’s choice, in one way, was providentially astute. Madame Fodor triumphed as Rosina in Barbiere, with Garcia as Almaviva and Felice Pellegrini as Figaro, beginning with the second performance on 14 December (she replaced the soprano who had sung in the première). This, as Jean Mongrédien wrote, was “the beginning of the Rossini craze in France.”19 On the other hand, Madame FodorMainvielle soon proved herself to be a troublesome employee. She caused a scandal when she “manipulated an extra thirty thousand francs out of the administration by cancelling and then renegotiating annually a contract originally running from 1819 through 1821, all the while claiming her health kept her from the stage.”20 Another delicate encounter was soon to occupy the attentions of the new director. Gaspare Spontini’s Olympie had for some time been in preparation. Spontini had lived in Paris since 1803; his La Vestale (1807) had been his greatest success. In 1814 he had unsuccessfully applied for the position now occupied by Viotti. Rehearsals with piano for Olympie had begun in March 1819, but Spontini’s tendency to rewrite continually both the vocal and the orchestral parts had caused considerable delay and extra copying costs. There now began an acrimonious exchange between the two Italians. On 6 December Viotti, more in sorrow than in anger, regrets that the composer has not yet given the overture or the orchestration of Antigone’s aria to the copyist, and that he has not yet composed some ballet pieces nor orchestrated those he has composed. Pradel has confirmed his order that the première is irrevocably fixed for 15 December.


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Viotti should perhaps have finished his letter there, but, just as he had done thirty years before when he was struggling with the administration of the institution he now represents, he adds a threat, in fact, a double threat: that if by the morning of the tenth the copyist has not received all the music, he, the director, “against my will,” will have the necessary substitutions made, and, that “I am advertising the first performance for the fifteenth; thus, you and I are equally committed in the eyes of the public.”21 Spontini, notoriously proud and quick to take offence, replied the next day. He was both indignant—Viotti’s letter was unworthy of a distinguished artist— and defiant: he was washing his hands of the entire enterprise, and the responsibility for it was all Viotti’s. An alarmed Viotti convened an emergency meeting of the administration, chaired by La Ferté, and then sent Spontini a final threat: “If [ . . . ] you persist in this odd decision not to finish Olympie, I declare to you, that on the day of the performance, I will make known to the public the reasons we have been obliged to complete, by whatever means [d’une manière quelconque], the missing parts of your opera.”22 Spontini apparently asked Viotti for a postponement until the twentieth. Viotti, in his letter of 8 December to Pradel, hints at his distress over Spontini’s hostility, and his desire not only to resolve the problem practically but also to avoid a personal rupture: If you deign to consent to this respite of five days that M. Spontini has asked of me, if you will kindly grant me this tactful way of answering the impropriety of his letter, if my approaching you, Monsieur le Comte, proves to the Composer that I distinguish between his talent and his self-interest and conduct, I will have you to thank for this new mark of consideration.23 The respite was granted, longer, even, than was asked; Olympie received its première on 22 December. Alas, despite its merits (it contains some very fine music), it was very poorly received, and was withdrawn after eleven performances. Spontini left France soon afterward. In September he had signed a contract to be the Kapellmeister of Frederick William III of Prussia, the son of the prince with whom Viotti had played chamber music in Potsdam. Some relief from these vexations, and from his loneliness—this is the first time in many years that Viotti and Margaret had lived apart—would have been brought by the presence of Thomas Moore. The poet was now living in France, for reasons similar to those of William Chinnery: to escape his creditors. But, to judge from his journal, he had lost none of his wit and sociability, or his love of music. On Saturday, 18 December, when Viotti must have been in an anxious state with Olympie, Moore went to seek for Viotti in order to get permission to attend the Rehearsal of Spontini’s new Opera Olympie this evening—met him &

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he promised to admit Lord G., myself & Fitzgerald [ . . . ] the Rehearsal very singular—the stage lighted up, all the scenery in form & the actors in their every-day clothes—the Music too full of notes & overloaded harmonies, & the way it was squalled & mewled out by Mades. Branchia & Albert detestable.24 It was not only Moore who complained about the style of singing at the Opéra— there was widespread criticism. Viotti himself, we recall, had made unkind comments about the Opéra singers thirty years earlier. We shall see that he made at least one attempt to remedy this situation. On the twenty-fourth Moore attended a performance of Olympie: “nothing can be more poetically imagined than the scenery and ballet of this Opera.”25 At least there was something he could enjoy (in September he had been delighted with Spontini’s La Vestale). The following April Moore wrote in his journal that he had been to a private concert where he saw Viotti, “whom I always like to meet.”26 Moore was not alone among Viotti’s friends who applied to him for admission to rehearsals and free tickets to performances, just as they had for the Philharmonic concerts and for the King’s Theatre, and, no doubt, for the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau. Jane Porter, the novelist, an old friend of the Chinnerys’ and of Viotti’s, to whom Viotti had personally delivered a Philharmonic ticket in 1814, was the beneficiary of a “generous packet of tickets” for the opera in September 1820. She also gently chastised Viotti (“Faithless Amico!”) for not answering her request to see her, no doubt because he was pressed for time.27 Another bright spot in Viotti’s otherwise fraught winter of 1819–20 occurred sometime in December, when he was honored by a musical organization. All that we know is contained in an auctioneer’s resumé of a letter Viotti wrote on 21 December to “the Secretary of the Society of Amateurs thanking the Society for the praises bestowed on him.”28 In a note dated 18 April 1821 Viotti authorizes three of “his” singers to sing at a benefit concert for the poor “that the société des amateurs will give on the twenty-fifth of this month, that is if their health permits.”29 Margaret Chinnery had left for England in mid-November 1819. On the twenty-first Viotti wrote to William, relieved to have heard that she had reached Dover without incident. He sends his warmest greetings to William’s business partner in Le Havre, Joseph Cary, “our dear, our excellent Cary, and tell him not to forget how fond of him I am. I certainly won’t forget to send the [opera] tickets to the persons he is interested in.” Viotti reports that George has brought him violin strings from Naples (George has accompanied George Canning on an extended vacation trip), which, “good or bad, I shall share them with our good friend.”30 Cary, then, was an amateur violinist, who had become Viotti’s good friend. But herein lies a mystery. As early as 1803 Viotti had composed a set of three violin duets, which were published no later than 1810 in London and Bonn, with the inscription, “Hommage à l’amitié” (Homage to Friendship),


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dedicated to “Mr. Cary” (WIV:28–30). This is odd, since the Chinnerys, and therefore almost certainly Viotti, did not know Joseph Cary before William became his business partner. There seems to be no explanation other than that they were two different persons.31 Viotti’s relationship with Joseph Cary soon became more complicated. It must have seemed irresponsible to some, that, in mid-January 1820, a mere ten weeks after taking up his position, Viotti went to London, having been granted a two-month leave of absence.32 He had pressing reasons for doing so. Viotti was now embroiled in the legal and financial aftermath of the failure of the wine business. He had several “conversations” (Margaret’s word) with Charles Smith. By the terms of their association, the formal dissolution of their partnership, drawn up by Viotti’s lawyer, Henry Dance (and announced in the Times, 21 February 1820), required Smith to repay Viotti’s investment in three instalments, “at the periods of six, twelve & eighteen months.”33 This was desperately important for Viotti because he needed the money to reimburse Margaret’s loan. In the meantime, the business of the Opéra and the Théâtre Italien carried on—decisions about repertory; the hiring of singers, dancers, and orchestra musicians; salaries; contracts; disputes—from all of this Viotti absented himself for two months, or so it has been thought. So, too, is the impression given by the letter Viotti wrote early in February to La Ferté. Again, we have only an auctioneer’s resumé: “He is in the midst of old friends, all kind, all constant. He should be content, but he is not. The memory of all that he left in Paris is bitter-sweet. He asks for news of their work, of Trajan, of la Lampe merveilleuse.34 How he would like to have this magic lamp! What things he wishes that it would tell him about the Académie royale de musique!”35 However, there is some reason to think that Viotti continued to discharge his administrative duties while in London, at least to an extent. For one thing, at least two letters addressed to Viotti concerning administrative matters date from this period: on 1 February Pradel ordered Viotti and Courtin to provide a monthly statement of receipts and expenses for the two theaters, and three days later the minister advised Viotti of the assumption of a new lead singer, Mademoiselle Gaspari.36 For the rest, it is true that the copies of the director’s letters in the administration registers, now in the French national archives,37 are in a secretary’s hand, not Viotti’s, and therefore could have been composed by someone to whom Viotti’s authority was delegated. But one or two of these directives have all the earmarks of Viotti’s personal style, perhaps most strikingly the one dated 4 February to Madame Fodor-Mainvielle, cited below ( p. 329). It is possible, then, that Viotti was able to maintain some control over his directorship by correspondence, perhaps availing himself of the French diplomatic pouch. (This was a privilege he and the Chinnerys had enjoyed since 1814, when they met the then secretary of the French legation in London, François-Maximilien Gérard de Rayneval, who, in 1820, became the French

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undersecretary for foreign affairs.)38 At any rate, there is no sign in the registers of any change or interruption during these two months. The letters from Viotti’s office continue to be issued normally. That said, however, Viotti did find time for diversion in London: on 31 January he went with George and the two girls “to hear George the 4th proclaimed at Charing Cross.” Then, too, Margaret planned to give two or three music parties, at which, naturally, Viotti would be expected to participate.39 On 13 February the Duc de Berry, son of the Comte d’Artois (now “Monsieur”) and nephew of the king, was struck down by an assassin’s knife as he was reentering the Opéra after seeing his wife into a cab.40 Mortally wounded, the forty-one-year-old duke was taken to one of the administrative rooms—that is, one of Viotti’s offices—where he was placed on a mattress. A crowd of bystanders gathered, joined at dawn by the king. Since the news had not reached the auditorium, the show went on—that evening there were two ballets, Le Carnaval de Venise and Les Noces de Gamache, and an opera, Le Rossignol. According to an eyewitness, “The brother of Wiotti [sic], the administrator, absent in England on his own affairs, paced up and down from the anteroom to the door of the administrative offices.” Another contemporary account has it that he, Pradel, and Grandsire, the general secretary, “did what was required to provide relief to the Prince in his deplorable condition.”41 It is not clear whether André had been called to the scene, or was already in or near the offices, his brother perhaps having left him in a position of some responsibility. The death of the Duc de Berry convulsed Paris, laying bare the divide between Royalists and their enemies. All the theaters were closed for ten days, the Opéra building permanently, considered defiled by the murder. At the request of the archbishop of Paris, the building was destroyed. An entirely new theater was to be built; in the meantime the company was obliged to move to the Salle Favart on the Boulevard des Italiens, a catastrophic disruption. The news must have reached Viotti in a few days. Yet still he stayed on in England. The major event in the Philharmonic season was the appearance of Louis Spohr in six of the eight concerts. On 3 March, three days before the first concert, Spohr wrote to “Monsieur Vogel, artiste, Lille,” Viotti’s friend of three years earlier: London is an immense city. [ . . . ] everyone has treated me very well, and I find the English to be much friendlier than I had thought. The most interesting acquaintance I have made until now is that of Mr. Viotti. He is still here but will leave for Paris in a few days. He asked me to send you his best wishes. Next Monday, playing in the first Concert of the Philharmonic Society, I shall have the satisfaction of being heard by this Veteran and father of all Violinists.42 It was in Spohr’s performance of his Concerto no. 8, “in modo di scena cantante,” that Viotti heard the thirty-five-year-old violinist, now the leading representative of the German school, on 6 March. The Morning Chronicle thought


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that Spohr “laboured under great difficulties from his nervousness.” Spohr himself admitted as much in a letter to a friend: “I can explain it only through the presence of Viotti and other distinguished artists, whose possibly over-excited anticipation I had to satisfy.”43 Viotti would naturally have been curious to hear the violinist, who, as a boy about twenty years earlier, had wanted to study with him. He would have recognized in Spohr’s concerto some of his own stylistic characteristics: the martial opening theme, for example, the delicate tracery with which the solo violin embroiders the simple theme of the slow middle section, and, in the last section, even a passage where the “Viotti” bowing is called for.44 In other respects, Spohr builds upon Viotti’s example, but reaches beyond it. His rich harmonic palette, his daring modulations (for example, the unprepared plunge from C major into A-flat major, the key of the flattened submediant, in the first section), the structural innovation of linking the usual three movements of a concerto into a seamless whole,45 the mastery of detail in the orchestration, the originality of conceiving a concerto as an operatic “scene,” replete with recitatives, with the solo violin as the prima donna—in all of this Viotti would have recognized a musician of substance, who, while a master of the instrument (the technical difficulties of this work equal or surpass anything in Viotti’s concertos), was a composer to be reckoned with as much as a violinist. Spohr asserts in his autobiography that “old Viotti, who had always been my pattern, and was to have been my instructor in my youth, was among the auditory and spoke to me in great praise of my play.”46 For the older man was there a sense of ceding, an acknowledgement that his ascendancy was now a thing of the past? Viotti had left London by the time of the third concert on 10 April, when Spohr famously used a baton, the first time that this had been done in London, he claimed, though it is now thought to have been at the rehearsal, not the concert itself. On 16 March, the day after arriving in Paris Viotti wrote to “cher et bon Baillot”: “Here I am back since yesterday with a great wish to embrace you; the more so since I was prevented from seeing you last autumn and winter. Could you come to see me tomorrow at 4 o’clock at the opera? I shall be ready for my heart to be filled with joy.”47 Viotti returned to an Opéra in disarray. The expulsion and the forced move to the temporary theater must have brought back painful memories of the Théâtre de Monsieur. The differences, however, were even more painful. In 1789 Viotti was thirty-four years old; now he is sixty-four. In 1789 he was beholden to no one in artistic matters; now he is a functionary in a bureaucracy, taking orders from above. It was not until 19 April 1820 that the Opéra was able to give its first production in the Salle Favart, consisting of Sacchini’s Oedipe à Colonne and the ballet Nina. The stage of the Salle Favart was too small to do justice to the sort of grand spectacle that audiences had come to expect at the Opéra. Only with difficulty was it possible to produce a work such as Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride, for example; for the rest, the company was reduced to giving “opérettes.” Six works received their premières, none of them noteworthy successes.

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If Viotti’s performance as director of the two opera companies was not as successful as might be wished, as has been suggested, it was not because he lacked energy. The archives contain a veritable avalanche of directives emanating from his office, touching upon almost every aspect of artistic and personnel matters. Budget restrictions hung over Viotti’s directorship as an ever-present menace.48 By the middle of 1820 Viotti was obliged to make cuts in personnel, not only those who were ready for retirement. It is not known how Viotti decided which employees were to be sacrificed. On 30 June six orchestra musicians, including a deputy solo violinist, Kreutzer jeune, and the first cellist, Jean-Henri Levasseur, were informed by Viotti, “with regret,” that they would have to leave the following January.49 Two employees of the Théâtre Italien, Rinaldi, the promptor, and Barilli, attached to the staging department, had had their salaries reduced, and wrote to Viotti asking for his intercession. Barilli writes touchingly of his family of nine to support, and of his numerous debts. Rinaldi wishes Viotti to recognize that a salary of 1,200 francs is “insufficient to recompense a person occupied every day of the year in a position as hard as mine for the care I am pleased to bring to it.”50 Unfortunately, Viotti’s response has not been found, but dealing with such letters cannot have been the easiest part of his work. He would have passed them on to La Ferté, supporting them with his recommendation or not, as the case may be. The yearly salaries of the lead singers, as Viotti had had occasion to notice twice before in his theatrical career, were hardly calculated to reduce operating expenses, ranging as they did from 15,000 or 20,000 to 25,000 francs in the case of the Théâtre Italien.51 Viotti’s urgent letter to La Ferté, dated 27 January 1821, is revealing: You know with what anxiety we feared seeing M. Bordogni escape us. We were able to keep him only by means of a raise of 3,000 francs. The decision appears in the minutes of the 23rd. The same concern prompted me to send for Mlle Cinthie and her inevitable mother. I succeeded, if I may use that expression, in negotiating with her 11,000 f, instead of 8,000, as a supplement. I had scarcely finished this negotiation when I received from Mme Naldi, now in London, the news that the administration of this theater [the King’s Theatre], which is about to open, is going to send an agent to take away from us some Italian singers, among whom are M. Bordogni and Mlle Cinthie. We are likewise threatened to lose some dancers, but that is incidental for the moment. Profiting from the kindness of Mme Naldi, I have the honor, Monsieur le Baron, to ask you insistently, as a matter of urgency, to obtain from His Excellency the special authorisation to conclude with the two above-named artists, for once this agent arrives, the pretensions


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of M. Bordogni and Mlle Cinthie could become very different indeed, and it will perhaps not be possible to negotiate except by means of a considerably greater sacrifice. [Viotti names three other singers whose contractual positions are still unresolved.] As a favor, Monsieur le Baron, if it is possible, please obtain greater alacrity concerning a service in which we often cannot lose a day with impunity.52 Though Viotti was obliged to write many letters as part of his job, he seems to have preferred face-to-face conversation when possible. A request he made to the ballet master of the Opéra for a personal interview is reminiscent of his letter to the Philharmonic Society on behalf of Baillot four years earlier: “As I know from experience that a written report entails enormous longuers, I ask M. Milon to come tomorrow at noon to my office. A quarter-hour will suffice for the explanation I need.”53 Viotti’s concern for artistic standards is everywhere apparent. On 20 June 1820 he sent a detailed critique of a ballet, Clari, to the composer, Rodolphe Kreutzer, and the choreographer, Milon, praising them both and pointing out elements that could be improved, shortened, or removed.54 Similarly, a letter from the composer Louis Joseph Daussoigne to Viotti informs him that, following Viotti’s request, considerable reductions have been made in the dialogue of Méhul’s Stratonice, for which Daussoigne (Méhul’s nephew) had been charged to write recitatives.55 One of Viotti’s initiatives to improve standards was to issue passes to certain singers on the Opéra roster, among them the nineteen-year-old Adolphe Nourrit, soon to become one of the great tenors of the nineteenth century, to attend rehearsals and performances at the Théâtre Italien, as a veritable “école de perfectionnement.” In his proposal, Viotti clearly assumes that the Baron de La Ferté, to whom it is addressed, will understand that listening to their Italian counterparts will be, as he puts it, a musical education for the French singers.56 In September 1820 Viotti found himself involved in an exchange of letters with Ferdinando Paer (1771–1839), the opera composer, who, since 1813, was music director of the Théâtre Italien. Paer had finished two acts and begun the third act of a grand opera, Olinde et Sophronie, which had been accepted for production at the Opéra. The situation was a little too close for comfort to that involving Spontini the year before, and Viotti’s tone, it must be admitted, is perhaps unnecessarily peremptory. On the fourth he wrote to Paer, “M. Le Comte de Pradel charges me, Monsieur, to request your score in its entirety by 1 November at the latest, on pain, if you do not fulfill such an easy obligation, of losing your right of priority.”57 Paer replied the next day, asking for an extension of a month, and adding, “In general, I ask you, my dear Colleague, to treat me with less severity than that shown in your last letter.”58 Viotti, on the sixth, having obtained the extension, tells Paer, with perhaps a hint of irony,

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that the Committee of the Administration has “charged me to be its messenger on this occasion and to say to you that we will always seize every opportunity to be agreeable to you.”59 As things turned out, this project, like many others for the Opéra, was never realized. Despite this exchange, the two men apparently were on friendly terms, to judge from a letter Paer wrote to “mon très cher Viotti” sometime in this period, in which he explains that, since he will be making music with the Duc de Duras from one until a quarter to five the following Sunday, he would not be able to come to Châtillon to dine until six o’clock.60 At the Théâtre Italien things seemed better, thanks mainly to the increasing vogue for Rossini. Barbiere continued its triumphant progress. Il Turco in Italia was introduced in May 1820, and it too was very successful. Early in 1821, the Miroir des spectacles reported that “the orchestra seats and the balconies are already filled long before the curtain rises. The boxes have not lost a single subscriber, and tickets are still sold on the street [that is, by scalpers] for two or three francs above box-office price.”61 But even in the Théâtre Italien, Viotti had problems, from within and without. On 12 April 1820 he complains to Paer of the too frequent absences of the female chorus members on dubious pretexts. He has decided to “show myself to be severe, without ceasing to be fair.” He then delivers a remarkable artistic credo, which might usefully be posted in the theaters of the world: “It will not do to consider one’s employment as a burden of which one thinks oneself able to be relieved at whim; talent must be constantly balanced by zeal, ardor and correctness, because such is the undertaking of each and all, because duty, integrity and honor demand it.” Viotti reminds the music director that chorus members who declare themselves sick must stay at home, for if he sends the theater doctor who finds them not at home, they are liable to disciplinary measures. Lastly, he orders Paer to read his letter aloud (to the chorus, presumably) and enjoins him to redouble his attention to this problem.62 But the problem persisted. On 20 July he ordered Paer to see that the chorus attendance sheets were submitted each morning to the administration, “my intention being to examine them every day.”63 The caprices of the prime donne were no less vexatious. On 9 August Viotti had lost patience with Madame Debegnis, who refused to sing Donna Anna (in Don Giovanni ), saying that she had been promised the role of Zerlina. “I have not promised anything, and this declaration is sufficient to refute the pretext of Mme Debegnis. I am weary, beset, disgusted, by the annoyances [tracasseries] I am subjected to by these women; my patience is at an end, and since they have provoked me to be harsh, I shall not use half measures.” He instructs Paer to tell the offending soprano that if she continues in her recalcitrance he will discontinue her salary.64 Perhaps in an effort to obtain authority or precedence in handling such problems, Viotti asked a diplomat friend who was traveling to Turin to obtain a copy of a certain regulation from La Scala opera house in Milan. The Scala not having it, Viotti’s friend was able to get a copy from the Turin opera house.65


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But Viotti was also capable of using more subtle techniques to bring a prima donna into line. Having learned that Madame Fodor-Mainvielle was absent from a rehearsal, he wrote to her on 4 February 1820: I must attribute this absence to the need to look after your health, for I could never be persuaded that any other motive could be the cause. I don’t suppose that the opera La Gazza Ladra of which the production at the theater has definitely not yet been fixed, would be the object of discussion, for that would be not only to take the initiative on a work which the administration has not at all decided upon, but also to declare oneself against whatever measure it might take on this point. I am far from believing that to be your intention. Your character is a guarantee of it to me.66 We are reminded of Viotti’s letter from Schönfeld to the seven-year-old Caroline, who had been misbehaving. Viotti concludes his letter by enjoining the wayward soprano to attend rehearsals. The administrative difficulties with her, however, did not prevent Viotti, and Margaret Chinnery, from being on friendly terms with Madame Fodor-Mainvielle and her husband, as a cordial letter from the latter to Viotti attests.67 The tenor Manuel Garcia also enjoyed the friendship of his director, as shown in a warmly worded letter to him, “mon cher Ami,” dated 10 January 1820.68 The orchestras of both opera companies also came under Viotti’s scrutiny— attendance, musical standards, auditions, discipline—nothing escaped him. On 17 January 1821 he reminded La Ferté that “we have a rather urgent meeting: that of a competition for the violins, violas and cellos to replace the temporary and regular players at Louvois.”69 In fact Viotti seems to have attended all the auditions of singers (chorus and soloists) and orchestra members, and to have signed the reports of the vocal auditions, each with brief summaries of the good and bad points of the candidates.70 On 2 April 1820 he wrote to Kreutzer, the chief conductor of the Opéra orchestra, concerning the reproaches that he “was forced to make” of negligence on the part of some (absent) orchestra members. “It is you, Monsieur, whom I charge with the task of informing them [ . . . ]. I am on the point of exercising a severity that [the guilty orchestra members] have provoked all the more because I have found them to be deaf to the advice of their conductor and their friend.”71 On 20 May Viotti reminds Kreutzer of a disagreeable incident: You bemoaned, as I did, Monsieur, what happened yesterday in the orchestra which certainly is not at all accustomed to such a disgrace. Neither you nor I place in doubt the great talent of M. Lefebvre, but you and I and all who know him have been lamenting his extreme timidity. I foresee only one way of remedying this infelicity, which is

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to require M. Lefebvre to rehearse in the mornings the solos that he has not performed for a long time. This indispensable practice will not, I know, add to his merit, but will give him the one thing that he lacks, confidence. I charge you to see to the execution of this arrangement, and to communicate to M. Lefebvre my intentions and my regret.72 On 24 May Viotti complains to Kreutzer of the orchestra, which “slumbers to the point of being insensitive to the just criticisms of the public” and of “indolence and brusqueness of execution according to the whim of the moment. That today is the orchestra you conduct and it is time that you bring it back to its duty and to the rank from which it seems to be trying to descend.”73 A young violinist, Monsieur Barbereau, smarted under the lash of Viotti’s wrath, though the rebuke was tempered, at least momentarily, with an almost paternal turn of phrase: Monsieur, I had not yet officially informed you of your nomination as an artist of the orchestra of the Académie, when already your conductor brought me complaints of your negligence. Not twenty days have passed since this nomination was written and these complaints have been renewed more seriously even than before. One is not in an orchestra, Monsieur, to do nothing. A young man who like you begins with laziness, for I must needs use the word, will finish in worthlessness [nullité ]. Since I hear only that bad examples of your conduct repeat themselves, I warn you that at the first complaint you will be discharged.74 Kreutzer himself, along with the deputy conductor, Henri Valentino, was not immune from Viotti’s criticism: Gentlemen, on taking note of the attendance sheet for yesterday’s performance, I note that you have written in your own hand the names of several persons who were not in service that evening. Since, according to the last decision taken regarding orchestra discipline, all artists who sign the sheet must be present, I charge you to see to it that this formality is observed without exception.75 Not only singers and orchestra members but also dancers occasionally needed to be reminded of their responsibilities. Again, Viotti returns to his credo, that talent imposes moral obligations. One feels that, between the lines, Viotti is not only admonishing but also advising, teaching: To Mlle Aimée, artiste de la danse. Mlle, since you left me yesterday seeming to be convinced of the correctness of the explanation I gave you regarding the little foundation of your demands on the subject of the rejected pas from Clari, I was far from imagining that you had just behaved towards M. Milon with a completely unpardonable lack of consideration, and that you even had insulted this director in the


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presence of the assembled artists. To be remiss to a director, Mlle, is to be remiss to me, it is to be remiss to the entire administration. I inform you that, consequently, you have been fined one day of your salary. Had it been possible, I would have wished to find a penalty less financial in nature; my intention was to make you feel your transgression by directing myself not to your purse but to your pride, which will suffer, I hope, to a degree that will always leave a painful memory. In addition I have ordered M. Milon to employ you, until further orders, in the ballet Clari, and I advise you not to omit to honor the rules of decency which must always accompany talent.76 Viotti could be punctilious to a fault. One of the first letters he wrote as the new director, to Alexandre Choron, director of the École primaire de chant, the school created in 1818 to train singers for the Opéra, must have irritated Choron. Viotti exercises his authority over what seems a very small point: I have seen yesterday with surprise that you sent a dozen students from your establishment to watch the rehearsal of Olympie, though according to the letter that you received on the 10th, No. 149, in which an excerpt from the minutes of the meeting the evening before was enclosed, you saw that the number of your pupils allowed to attend these rehearsals, by the decision of the Count de Pradel, was only three, namely MM. Ducauvry, Buloz and Lemery. I will be obliged, Sir, if from now on you see to it that only the three above mentioned persons come.77 Viotti was not intimidated by his superiors. On 3 October 1821 he wrote to La Ferté, correcting in no uncertain terms his errors regarding the amount of preparation time needed for forthcoming productions. Viotti uses such turns of phrase as “you do not understand,” “this conjecture is in error,” and “another error in your calculations,” while explaining to the baron the rather arcane institutional calculations of days and half-days of service required for rehearsals for new productions, interspersed with performances of works already in the repertory.78 Viotti was called upon to intervene in a dispute involving his old friend, the bass Naldi, who, after his last season at the King’s Theatre in London in 1818, had come to Paris the following year. Naldi wished to insert an aria from Rossini’s Elisabetta into the same composer’s Torvaldo, for his daughter Caroline. M. Mainvielle objected on behalf of his wife Joséphine Fodor, who wished to use the former opera for her benefit performance. Viotti had sent a letter on 27 October 1820 to Paer, reminding him that he had “formally forbidden” drawing upon works of Rossini as yet unperformed in Paris, for pieces to be inserted into current productions of Rossini’s operas. Paer had permitted the insertion in this case, but in his reply to Viotti admits that the latter “is the judge in this affair.”79 Scarcely two weeks passed before Viotti climbed down from his

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position, explaining rather lamely to Paer that the administration reserved the right to make exceptions, that it should on the one hand preserve intact for the French public those works worthy of its attention and on the other that it offer at least in part those which it cannot present in their entirety. By this reasoning, I see no objection to the insertion of the Duo from the oratorio Möise into the opera Torvaldo et Dorliska. This latitude will have only a limited effect and will never be subject to abuse, since the Copyist may not copy any piece without special authorisation from me.80 But the practice of dismembering Rossini’s scores was too tempting to resist—Viotti had opened the floodgates, however unwillingly. The production of La pietra del paragone, given its Paris première on 3 April 1821, caused a scandal because only seven numbers from the original score were used—the rest was “cut and pasted” from other operas, including those of Rossini.81 Caroline Naldi had made her début at the Théâtre Italien in Così fan tutte in September 1820. Margaret Chinnery, who had returned to France in April, wrote sympathetically of her performance—she was nervous in the first act, but improved afterward—but thought it was “the most disagreeable opera I ever heard in my life,—the poem detestable, all the characters odious, and the music heavy.”82 The notion of the immorality of Da Ponte’s libretto was common throughout the nineteenth century, and even the criticism of “heaviness” in Mozart’s music was not uncommon. Mozart’s orchestral writing in his operas was too rich, too elaborate for listeners brought up on Cimarosa and Paisiello. Only three months after his daughter’s début, Naldi was killed in a bizarre accident. On 4 December, at the home of Garcia, he was using a newly invented pressure cooker that exploded, killing him instantly. As to problems from without, the Théâtre Italien was not exempt from severe criticism. A pamphlet titled Disinterested Observations on the Administration of the Théâtre Royal Italien, Addressed to M. Viotti, Director of This Theater, by a Dilettante, dated 6 February 1821, though ostensibly sympathetic, is an attack on how the theater was being run. The unidentified writer claims to know Viotti intimately: “I enjoyed the first fruits of his precocious talent; I saw the illustrious master Pugnani himself applauding the success of the young Viotti, his pupil; and these two names, which are inseparable in Piedmont, bring back only sweet memories to me.” His main point is that the Théâtre Italien should make a greater effort to hire better Italian singers. He blames the failure of Così on Mademoiselle Naldi, “the weakness of her voice [ . . . ], the insecurity of her intonation, her lack of acting experience, and her complete inadequacy, thus far, to fill a leading role.”83 From further afield, Viotti and Paer were both severely criticized by the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung for producing Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro with the part of Count Almaviva, for bass, transposed for the tenor voice of Garcia, an unforgivable sin against Mozart.84 On another front, Stendhal decried the


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secrecy surrounding the annual royal subsidy of the Théâtre Italien: “What happens to the profit?”85 The press was no less forthcoming in criticizing Viotti’s stewardship of the Académie royale de musique: M. Viotti, who has arrived from London, is the Director of Personnel, but he occupies himself so little with the persons of the Académie, that it would be unjust to reproach him with the faults of an administration that he does not administer. One should not be amazed that an Italian is interested only in Italian opera; the preference he accords to his compatriots is completely natural. Rossini must seem to him preferable to Gluck, the Turk in Italy better than Armide, the staging of the Gazza Ladra (the Thieving Magpie) which he is busying himself with, of much greater importance in his eyes than the Lampe Merveilleuse de Nicolo, which he is not busying himself with.86 It is easy now to see the obtuseness, or the hypocrisy, of this criticism, tinged as it is with xenophobia—we know of Viotti’s fondness for Gluck, and the critic knew perfectly well that it was the French public that preferred Rossini—but it would not have helped Viotti’s state of mind. Certainly, Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) and his works could never have been very far from Viotti’s thoughts in his role as director of the Opéra and of the Théâtre Italien. Several months before Viotti’s appointment, in May 1819, an unsuccessful attempt had been made by one of his diplomat friends, Rayneval, via the French envoy in Rome, to lure the lion of the Italian lyric stage to Paris.87 On 1 November 1820, Jacques-Alexandre-Bernard Law, Marquis de Lauriston (1768–1828), replaced Pradel as Minister of the Maison du roi.88 This man was soon to play an important role in Viotti’s life, and would be honored with the dedication of one of Viotti’s concertos. At present, however, apart from his interest in the “nymphs” of the Opéra, and in lowering the standard pitch of the orchestra,89 he was also, with La Ferté, a strong advocate for the performance of Rossini’s works not only at the Théâtre Italien but also at the Opéra (that is, serious operas, in French translation, since no other language was permitted there). At the same time, there was, and still is, a widespread belief that certain persons, prominent among whom was Ferdinando Paer, apparently did everything in their power, from motives of spiteful jealousy, to sabotage, or at least delay, any attempt to have Rossini’s works performed in Paris. (However, this view, put forward in a publication of 1820 titled De MM Paer et Rossini [Concerning MM Paer and Rossini ], given wide publicity in Stendhal’s Life of Rossini (1824), and repeated ever since, has been contested.)90 Early in 1821, the Baron de La Ferté wrote to a French diplomat in Rome ( possibly the same one who had negotiated with Rossini in 1819), asking him to persuade Rossini to agree to have his works performed at the Opéra, “the sooner the better, for our Grand Opéra is threatened by total eclipse. Rossini

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is the only one who could bring glamour and warmth back to it.”91 On 2 February La Ferté informed Viotti and Courtin of Lauriston’s decision to prepare Rossini’s Tancredi for the Opéra.92 F. H. J. Castil-Blaze, the house translator, critic, and author of books on music, was set to work on the translation. In all of this it is not clear what role Viotti played. In the meantime, Viotti sent Ferdinand Hérold, the répetiteur and chorus master at the Théâtre Italien, to Italy in search of a prima donna: The minister of the Maison du roi, having been kind enough to comply with the request I had the honor of making to him, authorises your departure for Italy, for the purpose of negotiating with a prima donna. Your expenses will be paid on receipt of memoranda and you will be given, in addition, a daily allowance of ten francs per day. This honorable mission requires zeal, speed and discretion. Come to see me, and I will give you specific instructions orally. You must not lose a moment in obtaining your passport, and to take care to give to your trip the pretext of a personal affair. You have, Monsieur, the assurance of my high respect, J. B. Viotti93 Viotti wrote at least six letters to Hérold while he was in Italy, encouraging and instructing him in his delicate task. The negotiations with the rising star soprano Giuditta Pasta were of particular concern. In his first letter he tells Hérold to “try to obtain the best possible terms. Don’t make yourself known to her until you have already been able to judge her incognito.”94 On 22 February he advises: [ Y ]ou should only gradually come around to [the substance of] your propositions. At first offer to Mme Pasta what she asks, that is eighteen thousand francs, but for a year, since contracts in Paris do not exist for a shorter period, and refuse flatly the eight months [ Pasta had asked for an eight-month contract]. Discuss the benefit performance only as an exception. [ . . . ] In sum, defend your ground foot by foot, to the maximum, as set forth in both my letters and your instructions, something that must always be done in your relations with all singers. Do not agree to the opera for her début until you have examined the score. You know the taste of the public; persuade Mme Pasta that what is most in her interests will also be in the interests of the Administration.95 In March, Hérold was in Florence, from where he reports that “I have just seen here your faithful pupil, Libon, who has come from Naples where he had much success, which he also has had in Florence. He sends you a million compliments.”96 From Naples, Hérold tells Viotti on 13 April that “I have seen Paganini, who has never ceased to ask me in every way about the first and


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greatest of violinist-composers. He also wishes to come to Paris, above all when he will be sure to meet there the man he most admires.”97 Hérold has heard the bass (buffo cantante) Filippo Galli several times, and has a low opinion of his singing. (Nevertheless, Viotti hired Galli, writing to him in June regarding his advance of 3,000 francs and asking him to choose from a list the opera he would prefer for his Paris début.98 Galli appeared for the first time at the Théâtre Italien on 18 September in Rossini’s Gazza Ladra.) In the same letter Hérold reports that he sees Rossini every day, and though he has not received instructions from Viotti regarding Rossini, he suggests the composer’s Mosè in Egitto, which he has heard three times in Florence, as a strong possibility for performance as an oratorio during Holy Week the next year at the new Opéra theater in the rue Le Peletier. Rossini was clearly interested in Hérold’s proposal. Within two weeks he wrote to Viotti with ingratiating charm and modesty: You will be surprised to receive a letter from a man who has not had the honor of knowing you personally; but the arts are liberal, and I take advantage of the freedom they give to send these lines to you, with, as messenger, my good friend Hérold, who has told me of the good opinion that you have of me, though I do not believe myself to be worthy of it. The oratorio Moyse, which I composed three years ago, seems to our mutual friend to be the score most adaptable to French words. Since I have the greatest confidence in Hérold’s taste, and in his friendship for me, I shall gladly collaborate to make this score as little imperfect as possible; that is, I shall compose new pieces in a more religious style than those my oratorio contains, and I shall do my utmost so that the result will not bring shame to the composer nor to him who, in a way, will be the putative father. Yes, M. Viotti, you who enjoy a great reputation, would that you be my Maecenas and the interpreter of my notes, and you would be assured of the gratitude of &c &c. P.S. Within a month, I shall send you the corrections of the poem of Moyse, so that you may judge if they are in a style suitable to the work. If not, you could send me ones that are better adapted. [Gioacchino Rossini]99 It was not long, considering the official channels that had to be navigated, before Viotti acted on Hérold’s suggestion, as recounted by the translator Castil-Blaze: “the administration [ . . . ] changed its mind and wished to substitute Mosè for Tancredi. M. Viotti proposed it to me; the reasons he gave me seemed excellent, I thought the new score was superb, and [ . . . ] I abandoned Tancredi for Mosè.” Castil-Blaze began the work of translating on 2 August and finished in February 1822.100 But Mosè, too, was put aside; it was destined not to be heard at the Opéra until 1827 (though an Italian version was premièred at the Théâtre Italien in 1822). It fell to Viotti, as director, to tie up the loose

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ends in this affair: on 24 July 1821 he wrote to La Ferté requesting reimbursement of 60 francs to Castil-Blaze for his costs in the abortive copying of Tancredi. A week later La Ferté, who, in turn, had to ask permission from Lauriston, sent his approval, telling Viotti to give orders to the cashier that the sum be paid.101 Viotti was learning the truth of the words “c’est une bien grande machine que l’opéra!” In the meantime, Viotti’s personal life was not without incident. One of his great joys, and Margaret’s, was the burgeoning career of George, now twentynine years old. George arrived in Paris, in the entourage of Canning, at the end of September 1820, and stayed for six weeks. As he had the previous year on his tour of the Continent with Canning, he kept a detailed record in his travel journal of all that he did and saw.102 From Venice, where the Canning party spent a week, he had written to Viotti asking him to find accommodations for the Cannings in Paris, which Viotti did, at the Hotel Bristol in the Place Vendôme. George and the Cannings attended many performances at the various theaters, including, of course, the Opéra and the Bouffons, where, for example, on Tuesday, 3 October, they saw Paer’s Agnese; on Thursday, Rossini’s Barbiere; and on Saturday, George and his mother saw Mozart’s Don Giovanni. On 8 October the Cannings (Canning, his wife, daughter, and youngest son) paid a visit to Margaret at Châtillon. Matilda, Viotti, and André were present, and there were other guests, including the cellist Norblin.103 George introduced Viotti to Canning: “They both talked together a little, always on the opposite side of the room—Amico begged leave to present his brother, & Mr C entered into conversation with André and made many enquiries of him with regard to the military courts of justice here.” The Cannings stayed about one-and-a-half hours. Margaret thought that “the exterior of George’s best and kindest friend, is not encouraging,—it is reserved, cold, and retiring.”104 (Perhaps Viotti and the Chinnerys were unaware of the fact that George Canning had been one of the chief contributors to the London newspaper, The Anti-Jacobin, which, in 1798, had published an ironic and decidedly unfriendly comment on the sympathetic report of Viotti’s exile in the Morning Herald.)105 George wrote in his travel journal that “we had afterwards a party to dinner & music in the Evening.”106 Viotti would have played, perhaps together with Matilda and Norblin. The piano trio literature in 1820 was rich with the works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, but, as we have already noted, our knowledge of Viotti’s participation in the chamber music of these composers is too scanty to allow for any secure comment. On 25 October George dined with Canning. Among the other guests were Thomas Moore and William Wordsworth. On Wednesday, 8 November, Margaret and Viotti were the dinner guests of the Cannings, and afterward they and George went to the Opéra. During this period William Chinnery spent some time at Châtillon, but it would not have been appropriate for Canning to see him socially. Canning and George left Paris for England on 14 November.


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On almost every other front, Viotti’s personal life was going poorly. Margaret left for England not long after George’s departure, accompanied as far as Calais by William. As always, Viotti missed his friends, but now his unhappiness is compounded by his other problems. He writes to William, “How angry I am, dear friend, that you have left me! How lonely I am! I can well say that I spend my life amidst sorrows which renew themselves every day.”107 Viotti’s attempts to recoup his investment with Charles Smith were unsuccessful. In October 1820 he refers to Smith as “that infernal egoist”; by January 1821 it is “the infamous Smith.”108 In December 1820 he informs his lawyer, Henry Dance, in London that Smith has defaulted on the first of the three stipulated payments (“a bad prelude for the remainder!”), and instructs Dance to take Smith to court. He asks that in all his discussions with Smith, the lawyer refrain from naming Mr. or Mrs. Chinnery—“say that all your instructions come directly from me.”109 Margaret had several meetings with Henry Dance, and explained the situation to William: “[ N ]othing can be done in Amico’s unfortunate case. He says that if Amico refuses to release Charles Smith from his promissory note, the great creditors will agree to make a bankrupt of C. S. and exclude Amico from the benefit of the bankruptcy, retaining his liability to all unpaid debts.”110 Her efforts to claim her loan to the firm were unsuccessful despite strenuous efforts. In mid-February she suffered another loss—Matilda left England to join her parents in India. Margaret described the tearful parting, and her sadness at losing her constant companion for the nine years that had passed since Caroline’s death.111 As of 28 November 1820 Viotti still did not have furniture in his lodgings provided by the Académie royale de musique. He wrote to the Baron de La Ferté, soliciting his intervention: I have no means other than the salary of my position. In this state of affairs I am unable to afford the furnishing of the apartment which I must occupy as Director of the Académie royale de musique, composed of An antechamber or dining room Two master bedrooms A salon of about 24 by 18 pieds A work or study office Three rooms for the servant A kitchen.112 The baron promptly wrote to Lauriston, supporting Viotti’s request, with the condition that Viotti pay the fire insurance on the furniture, which was the property of the Crown.113 By 27 January 1821 nothing had been done. Viotti again wrote to the baron, “Everyone who comes to live in the administration [lodgings] has furniture; I alone, returned after twenty-nine years of absence,

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have none at all and no means with which to purchase any!”114 Though no record has been found, we must presume that Viotti’s apartment was eventually furnished. In February 1821, as she is preparing to leave London for France, Margaret writes to Viotti, pouring out her heart to him. She is concerned to hear from him that he is even more depressed than he was last year, and she herself is overwhelmed by the vicissitudes of life. Between the lines, there is the need for ready cash—has he news of the carpet she wanted sold?115 She is anxious that, sharing the house with George, she has become a nuisance to him, and that Viotti may be worried that her presence in Paris will keep him from his work. “However, dear Amico, do not fear the slightest indiscretion of this kind,—I no longer expect anything, my spirit is broken, I desire nothing. [ . . . ] You will find that I have noticeably aged, and that I no longer have that resilience of spirit which used to revivify me when I suffered. Fate has treated me too harshly—I have fought against a thousand calamities, but I am tired of fighting, and my only wish is an eternal rest in a better world than this one.”116 Viotti replied: No, beloved friend, I am no longer sad. Your departure from London on the seventh [of March] removes all the coldness in my heart, and makes me happy again. How could I not have been sad all winter, knowing that you suffered unendurably and being unable to relieve you? But you are leaving that land where you have suffered so much, you will be near me, and I feel reborn. Ah, you’ll see how I can soothe your grief, lighten your sorrows. Don’t worry about my mood, it will be everything you could desire. As for my courage, nothing could defeat me even in your absence, judge then with you near me! [ He has found her a servant, who will prepare the house at Châtillon for her, who can cook, and who has a “good temper” (these last two words in English). He will look after her trunk, and has written to William to ensure that her carriage will be ready.] Adieu my dear, my kind one, my most beloved friend. In order for this letter to get away I must finish this sweet conversation with you. My God, my God, how I want to have you here already! Hurry, take the first boat that sails and arrive swiftly at Calais where you will find another few words from Your Amico who has recovered all his vigor—117 In January 1821 it was announced in the press that there would be a series of Sunday concerts in the foyer of the Salle Favart, and in February Le miroir des spectacles alluded to the social cachet of the concerts in the Salle Louvois, the home of the Théâtre Italien: “what person of the bon ton believes he can do without going at least once a week to hear the delightful concerts at the Salle Louvois?”118 Indeed, concerts proliferated: “Concerts at M. Baillot’s; concerts of MM. Guillon, Dauprat and company, in the Favart foyer; concerts at


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M. Pape’s;119 concerts at M. Erard’s; concerts des amateurs, at the Vauxhall; concerts of MM. Fontaine et Peyronnet; perpetual concerts at the OpéraBuffa; public concerts; private concerts. Do you like concerts? They are given everywhere.”120 December 1820 saw the arrival in Paris of two musicians of the first rank, Louis Spohr and Ignaz Moscheles. Spohr made his Parisian début at the Opéra on 10 January 1821,121 playing a new concerto, no. 9, in D minor. This concert would have been arranged by Viotti, via the usual bureaucratic process. Spohr’s success was qualified, apparently because he had neglected to bribe the press, as was customary.122 Spohr also played at private concerts. Baillot “had the pleasure of hearing him play at Kreutzer’s home, where there was our dear Viotti.” Baillot was impressed with Spohr’s beautiful tone and his “very modulatory and difficult,” but well-constructed string quartets, and thought that his “almost gigantic” stature was advantageous for the violin.123 Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870), the Bohemian born, Vienna-trained pianist, now remembered as one of the great pianists of the nineteenth century, was on a tour that would take him in June to London. He made his Parisian public début at the Favart on 25 February 1821, and he played in another concert at the Favart on 18 March, at which Habeneck conducted the orchestra, two arias were sung, Moscheles improvised, and Charles Philippe Lafont played a concerto.124 Moscheles and Spohr became friends (Moscheles played the piano part of Spohr’s quintet in E-flat, with winds, at a private soirée), though there is no record of their playing together. On one occasion, wrote the pianist in his diary, at Baillot’s, “who had got up for Spohr and myself a genuine soirée of artists, [Spohr] was greeted with real enthusiasm. I also played and improvised. He played, I played, and we each shared in a brotherly way the applause of this select audience.” On 28 January Moscheles rehearsed at Paer’s at 11 A.M. with Baillot, heard a mass by Cherubini at the royal chapel in the Tuileries, went to a rehearsal of Lafont’s concert in the Théâtre Favart, then, at a large evening party given by the Duchess of Orleans, he played his Potpourri with Baillot, and was obliged to improvise twice. Moscheles also apparently played at a soirée given by Madame de Montgéroult. Since Viotti’s name appears in Moscheles’s diary for this year, we may assume that Viotti attended some of these gatherings.125 The task of organizing the Concerts spirituels for Holy Week of 1821 at the Salle Favart seems to have been something of a headache for Viotti. He wrote to Muzio Clementi in London requesting him to come to Paris to have one or two of his symphonies performed. However, Clementi’s plans to do this were apparently changed at the last minute, as he did not come to Paris until the summer.126 On 30 March Viotti was juggling a change of plans for Moscheles’s performances during Holy Week: two concerts for 1940 francs. Viotti asked the Baron de La Ferté to get permission from the minister, “so that I may respond to this artist, and organize definitively our concerts.”127

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A note of anxiety creeps into his letter of 6 April to the baron, concerning a request for an extra concert: We are approaching so quickly to the time of our concerts, we are so overwhelmed with rehearsals for the pièce de circonstance and all that we must have for Holy Week, that it seems to me impossible to find a day and the means to have an extra concert. I should like with all my heart to help Mlle Bertrand, who has a distinguished talent and who is excellent for her relatives, but what to do? For the rest, I shall follow your orders on this as on all other things. I am, respectfully, Monsieur le Baron, Your very humble and obedient servant J. B. Viotti128 The pièce de circonstance was a three-act opera, Blanche de Provence, written jointly by Henri Berton, Boïeldieu, Cherubini, Kreutzer, and Paer, and performed three times in early May at the Opéra to celebrate the baptism of the Duc de Bordeaux, the child of the Duchess of Berry and her late husband, assassinated the year before. Cherubini also composed a cantata for the occasion; Moscheles and Lafont heard the composer rehearsing it at the Hôtel de Ville. “His squeaky, sharp little voice was sometimes heard in the midst of his conducting.”129 On 8 April Viotti wrote a letter to the baron that, beneath the apologetic surface, clearly reflects his chafing at the sluggishness of the wheels of the Académie machine: The more I think about it, the more I think that I must wear myself out! I have never gone back on my word in serious matters; how could I go back on it in this disagreeable situation? Perhaps I was too hasty to write to the artists of the Bohrer Orchestra; perhaps my impetuousness, my wounded amour propre made me propose too precipitously to pay them out of my pocket; however, it is done, I must follow through on what I proposed. Thus I beg of you, Monsieur le Baron, tomorrow at the Committee, not to prevent me from fulfilling my promise. However hard and embarrassing the sacrifice, I prefer it a thousand times to laying myself open to being blamed by those who have entrusted me with the direction. I am, with respect, Monsieur le Baron, [ . . . ].130 As it turned out, neither Moscheles nor the Bohrers played in the four Concerts spirituels given in Holy Week of 1821. In the first, on Monday, 16 April, the program included a symphonie concertante of Viotti’s played by two of Kreutzer’s pupils, Théophile Tilmant and Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Tolbeque, both recently appointed to the orchestra of the Théâtre Italien.131 In the third, on the twentieth, Habeneck ainé played an unpublished concerto by Viotti, which must have been either no. 28 or no. 29. For the rest, the programs closely resembled


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those Viotti had presented thirty years earlier at the Théâtre Feydeau, including symphonies by Haydn, the inevitable Démophone overture, along with a few newer names, such as Paer (an overture and an “Alleluia”), Reicha (wind quintets), Beethoven (an “Ouverture”), and Rossini (a vocal duo and a cavatina for soprano, “Di piacer mi balza il core”). Viotti apparently authorized the performance of a one-act “grand opera” titled Corinne au capitole, text by Etiénne Gosse, music by Jacques Mazas (1782– 1849), a former pupil of Baillot’s. A draft manuscript copy, and a fair copy of the first five scenes of the libretto, signed on 4 April 1821 by Mazas, Gosse, and Viotti, are held in the Royal College of Music Library.132 The fair copy, and a list of the distribution of the roles to various Opéra singers, including the tenor Adolphe Nourrit, indicates that the project had reached a fairly advanced stage. According to Fétis, the music received applause when it was given a preliminary hearing at the Opéra in October 1820,133 but the work was never produced. Viotti’s position and fame made him the target of requests from aspiring musicians—for advice, and for endorsements or blurbs. An amateur composer, one Lamorlière, wrote to Viotti in November 1820 asking permission to use a phrase from a letter Viotti had written praising his concerto. Viotti may not have replied—Lamorlière had thoughtfully told Viotti that he would take the absence of a reply as assent.134 Friends and music would have provided some respite from Viotti’s hectic life and his recalcitrant financial problems. It is not certain if Cherubini ever completely forgave Viotti for having taken the directorship of the Académie royale de musique. Viotti dedicated a “duet” for a solo violin (WV:23) to his old friend in March 1821, perhaps in an effort to heal the wound: “This production has no merit other than as the homage I make to a friend of thirty-seven years, who will accept it in the same spirit as I offer it. Paris, 15 March 1821. J. B. Viotti.”135 There must have been a reconciliation of sorts; at any rate they were fellow members of the admissions jury for the École primaire de chant, which was replaced at the end of 1820 by the École royale et spéciale du chant, with Alexandre Choron at its head. On 14 September 1821 Viotti wrote to Choron concerning two young persons, whom Choron has sent to the Académie to be auditioned. Viotti had assembled a jury and arranged to have a string quartet to accompany the auditions.136 Viotti also continued to be professionally involved with the Conservatoire, as the École royale de musique was still popularly known. Indeed, his responsibilities at the Conservatoire seem to have been considerably greater than commonly thought, and greater than what one might assume to be the case in his role as director of the Opéra. The Conservatoire provided most of the musicians for the orchestras of the Opéra and the Théâtre Italien, who typically received the minimum salary of 600 francs as extra players, and then filled the permanent places when they became vacant.137 Viotti wrote a letter on 17 January 1821, unfortunately known to us only from a very sketchy auctioneer’s

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resumé, “requesting a date for (and advertisement of ) a competition for string places at the Paris Conservatoire.”138 On a letter to William Chinnery of 29 June 1821, Viotti wrote the heading “from the Conservatoire at the examination of students”—if he wrote the letter while listening to a student, we trust he did so discreetly. But Viotti may be forgiven; it was an urgent letter. He tells William that he and Margaret are living in a state of perpetual anxiety over the lack of news and the sudden changes that occur in their finances. He asks William to keep them better informed.139 George Chinnery, now in London, wrote several letters to his mother at Châtillon in the period March–July 1821. In them he occasionally refers to the arrangement by which singers and dancers from the Paris Opéra were “lent” to the King’s Theatre (their defection, feared by Viotti [see above, pp. 326–27], had been transmuted into something less hostile, no doubt aided by the fact that William Ayrton was now the music director, and another friend, Count St. Antonio, was on the five-man managerial committee, at the London theater). On 21 March George describes the reception of a French dancer, Mademoiselle Noblet: “The public will however be very unwilling to part with her whenever Amico sends his summons over.” In another letter, he tells his mother that he had written to Amico, reporting that the various French singers and dancers sent over had been well liked, except Madame Albert (a singer), and that “Amico had better send for her back.”140 Despite what one might infer from George’s words, the available evidence suggests that it was not Viotti who was actively involved, from the French side, in the transaction between the two theaters, but the Baron de La Ferté, who, for example, went to London in July to negotiate “terms of accommodation with the manager of [the King’s Theatre] with respect to the Corps de Ballet,” in particular the “restoration of the two absentees” (the dancers François Albert and Lise Noblet).141 George also performed many errands for Viotti in London in the spring seasons of both 1820 and 1821. One in particular is of great musical interest. On 21 March 1821 he tells Viotti, “I have just signed and sent to Collard 100 copies of the immortal Concerto in G.” Viotti had authorized George to act as signatory to this work to enable Viotti to obtain royalties, as opposed to the singletransaction sale of his works to Cherubini’s firm, for example. George signed the title pages of a hundred copies of the concerto and sent them to Clementi’s partner. The work in question is Concerto no. 23 in G Major, not in the version for violin, which was not published by Clementi and Company, but the arrangement by Dussek as a piano concerto. This arrangement seems to have been the most popular, at least in England, of all Viotti’s concertos throughout his lifetime and well into the nineteenth century. In the same letter, George describes Caroline Naldi’s benefit concert on 19 March in the Argyll Rooms, at which Mori played an unidentified concerto by Viotti. George thought that Mori’s performance lacked the “grandioso” manner of his master, a not uncommon criticism of performers of Viotti’s concertos, as we have seen. George also


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wrote that “Beethoven’s Sinfonia was execrable, to my taste, as a composition & intolerably long.”142 We can only conjecture the extent to which George and his mother’s conservative tastes in music reflected Viotti’s influence. In May 1821 Viotti was signally honored in two different ways. On 1 May he was named a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur. It has long been known that Viotti had been thus honored, but the certificate is missing from the archives of the Légion, unlike that of André, awarded more than eight years before. Viotti’s own copy is in the Viotti-Chinnery collection in the New York Public Library. In another document Viotti is invited to attend the reception, given by the Minister of the Maison du roi for persons newly named Chevalier, on Monday 14 May at 11 A.M.143 The other occasion was one of the concerts regularly given by the Masonic Société des Enfants d’Apollon. Viotti is listed as having entered the Société in 1809, though he was not in France that year. Habeneck was the society’s orchestra conductor. At the concert on 31 May 1821, in the Salle des Menus Plaisirs in the Conservatoire, after a Haydn symphony, a Fantasie espagnole played by Mazas, a “duo italien” by Rossini, and several other pieces, the last item on the program was a “Homage” of the Société to Viotti, with solos composed by Habeneck, sung by MM Chenard and Garcia.144 This was the second time that Habeneck showed his esteem for Viotti in this way. On 11 May 1821, after thirteen months in the Salle Favart, the Opéra moved once again, inexplicably, to the Salle Louvois, occupied by the Théâtre Italien. The reason for this time-consuming and costly change, only three months before the new building in the rue Le Peletier was ready to open, has not been established. It hardly seems possible that, sharing the premises with the other company, anything could have been achieved. But, in fact, on 5 June there took place at the Théâtre Italien the Paris première of Rossini’s Otello, one of the triumphs of Viotti’s tenure. This serious opera had already enjoyed great success in Italy and elsewhere since its première in Naples in 1816. Lord Byron heard it in Venice in 1818 and met the composer. He wrote to Samuel Rogers, “They have been crucifying Othello into an opera (Otello by Rossini): the music good, but lugubrious; but as for the words, all the real scenes cut out, and the greatest nonsense inserted.”145 In Paris, Garcia sang the title role, and Giuditta Pasta, soon to become the most celebrated soprano in Europe, sang Desdemona (Viotti’s instructions to Ferdinand Hérold nine months earlier had borne fruit). Lady Bessborough attended; her enthusiasm was qualified: L’Otello fa furore and Garcia has started forth a second Kean, and sings, acts, writhes, and stabs Desdemona beautifully. I do not like Madame Pasta so well, yet there are two or three things she sings delightfully, but there is a huskiness in her voice, and sometimes a French sort of élan that displeases me. It is necessary to have good

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friends at the Opera, for the boxes are taken for weeks before, but between the Duc de Mouchy and Viotti, who is Manager, and in raptures at seeing me, I manage pretty well.146 On 6 July 1821 Viotti tells William Chinnery in Le Havre how impatient he is for the new theater in the rue Le Peletier to be finished: “The theater progresses rapidly; I think that the keys will be handed over on the twenty-fifth of this month. So much the better, for this blasted job is placing us in a terribly awkward position.”147 On 16 August the long-awaited opening took place with a gala operatic performance and concert. The new premises boasted gas lighting, which Viotti had been able to arrange with the help of George Chinnery in London. George had negotiated with “Collins the Chandelier man” to have a drawing and specifications of the King’s Theatre gas chandelier sent to Paris, so that an identical one could be installed in the rue Le Peletier.148 On the very day of the opening, Viotti received a nasty surprise: Monseigneur, [ . . . ] Today I learn, to my great astonishment, that being lodged in the new theater, my salary has been reduced to twelve thousand. The reverses of fortune that I have suffered in my life do not allow me to occupy an apartment of a thousand écus; my last losses in England, losses which I had because of not having had enough time to put my affairs in order, require that I observe the strictest economy. I therefore beg of Your Excellence to grant me permission to return to my humble lodging of nine hundred or a thousand francs.149 Viotti had moved into the director’s apartment in the new Opéra building in June or July, the address of which was the Hôtel Choiseul, rue Grange Batelier.150 Clearly his accommodation supplement of 3,000 francs had been discontinued (an écu had the value of 3 francs), leaving him with only the base salary of 12,000 francs. No action was taken on Viotti’s request until after his retirement on 1 November 1821, and he seems to have continued to live in the Hôtel Choiseul at least until near the end of 1821.151 On 14 November he wrote to Lauriston (again, the letter is in his hand) asking that the second and third trimesters of the supplement, as well as the month of October, be paid to him.152 The next day Viotti was granted a lump sum payment (“gratification”) of 3,000 francs for the period since 1 April 1821, a more generous amount, even, than he had requested.153 A note from Viotti to André Robberechts, written on Friday, 6 July 1821, shows that the twenty-three-year-old Robberechts was now living in Paris, perhaps having followed Viotti in 1819 (he is not listed in the Philharmonic Society accounts after 1819), and that he was still Viotti’s pupil. Viotti asks him to come to Châtillon on Sunday evening around eight o’clock—“we will study the next


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morning with all our might.”154 Another, recently uncovered note from Viotti to Robberechts, of no great import in itself, is nevertheless interesting as it must be typical of dozens of notes he wrote at this time concerning social engagements. It is written on Viotti’s official stationery, “Académie Royale de Musique. Division du Personnel des Artistes,” and is dated 24 August 1821: Monsieur Roberechz, rue de Provence no. 37 I hope that you have no engagement for Sunday next; if you do have one, unless it is pressing, you will break it, my dear Robberechts, and you will go to dine at Mad.me de Les Pine’s and spend the evening there—my friend Garnier will see to taking you there. [signed] J. B. Viotti155 This note, brief as it is, is testimony to the sheer number of Viotti’s friends and acquaintances. He no doubt thought that it would be useful to Robberechts to attend Madame de Lespine’s soirée. Her husband died a few months later, leaving 15 million francs, as Viotti reported to Margaret.156 The friend, Garnier, cannot be identified with certainty.157 In a letter she wrote around this time to Margaret Chinnery, Madame de Lespine tells how much she would like to hear Viotti.158 Another of Viotti’s Paris friends was the extremely fashionable painter François Gérard (1770–1837), whose studio and salon were frequented by the elite of European society: the aristocracy, artists and musicians, and diplomats, including George Canning and the Duke of Wellington. In a warmly worded letter to Viotti dated only “30 j.er,” which may have been written as early as 1803, Gérard expresses the desire of seeing and hearing “mon cher Amphion.”159 On 1 September Viotti and William and Margaret Chinnery were witnesses to the wedding of Maria Philipps to an old diplomatic friend, the Baron Christian Hubert von Pfeffel. Maria had stayed at Gillwell as one of Margaret’s pupils until 1806, and in 1814 had sung in a concert of the Philharmonic Society. Pfeffel, the Bavarian charge d’affairs in London in the years around 1815–16, had attended Margaret’s music parties, and had become a good friend of Viotti’s.160 One of Viotti’s last letters to the Baron de La Ferté, typical of his workaday correspondence, shows that he was working with undiminished resolve right up to the time of his departure, and looking to future productions. There is no hint that he will soon be leaving his post: I have just come from having been convened by the Minister to settle with him the day of the performance of [Paer’s] Camilla. His Excellency leaves me latitude until the sixteenth [of October], and I have given orders that the performance will take place on the thirteenth. Concerning the works to be produced at the Grand Opera, Monseigneur, having turned the conversation to this point, has

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understood perfectly that the rehearsals were a category of service distinct from the performances. His Excellency is far from excluding [Spontini’s] Fernand Cortez, which would require only a little time and which should enrich our repertory advantageously. Therefore I shall have this work produced. I asked Monseigneur, and I ask you, Monsieur le Baron, to rely for the above on my zeal.161 Viotti’s optimism for Fernand Cortez was premature. A week later, on 13 October, he was begging Lauriston’s support regarding another disagreeable caprice of a singer, this time Mademoiselle Saintville, who, having been assigned the role of Amazilly in the opera, at first refused it, then, when it had been given to Mademoiselle Leroux, wanted it back and threatened to apply directly to Lauriston. Viotti hoped that His Excellency would understand the delicacy of the position in which he found himself, and his embarrassment if his directives were overturned.162 At the end of the month it was given out that the production was “once again delayed by Mlle Sainville’s cold,”163 the time-honored excuse in such cases. But in the end Viotti was vindicated—when Fernand Cortez was given in December, it was Mademoiselle Leroux, now Madame Dabadie, who sang Amazilly. On 31 October an article titled “Académie royale de musique” appeared in the Miroir des spectacles. The critic laments that, though the lead singers and dancers have retained their former glory, and though all these soldiers have lost none of their enthusiasm, what is the use of the finest army commanded by an unskillful general? [ . . . ] The replacement of M. Viotti has for a long time been indispensable. It is not one of our principles to speak ill of those who lose their places; M. Viotti, though a foreigner, has honored France; he is at once the most skilled composer, and the most brilliant executant of his time. The Nestor of our concert artists deserves the respect that we have never omitted to pay him, even when criticizing his administration; we have always separated the musician from the director. Moreover, M. Viotti remains responsible for the direction of the Théâtre Italien, and as enterprises should always be judged by their results, M. Viotti, by this standard, has the right to our praise; the Opéra-Italien has never seemed to us better administrated.164 The Hercules of nineteen years ago is now a Nestor. On 1 November Viotti was indeed relieved of his position as director of the Académie royale de musique. He attended the administration committee meeting of 29 October, as always at 2 P.M., but at the next, 5 November, François Habeneck has taken his place. The substitution was effected without comment in the official minutes.165 As the article cited above indicates, Viotti is thought to have continued for a time as director of the Théâtre Italien, at least nominally, though I have found nothing in the archives of the Théâtre Italien to support this supposition. There is still


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much to be discovered about this phase in the administration of both theaters. It is not certain, for example, whether Viotti resigned for his own reasons, or was asked to resign, nor do we know the extent of his responsibilities at the Théâtre Italien after 1 November 1821, nor for how long he continued there. Regarding the first point, the only evidence, by no means conclusive, is a letter of application for the directorship, from the violinist-composer Henri Berton, written in mid-October, which includes the words, “I have learned from public clamor that M. Viotti, of his own volition [de son propre mouvement], has given up the directorship of the Académie royale de musique.”166 The second point we shall consider in the next chapter; as for the third, a fairly reliable terminus ad quem is provided by a letter from the tenor Garcia, dated 6 June 1822, addressed to “M. Habeneck, Directeur du Théâtre Royal Italien.”167 Unfortunately, Viotti left too soon to enjoy for very long the fruits of the enormous popularity of Rossini’s operas in Paris, for which he was partly responsible. A species of musical chairs was played by Viotti’s followers and their pupils at the Opéra orchestra in 1821, coinciding with Viotti’s resignation, and in the years immediately following. Habeneck named his former teacher, Baillot, as principal violinist, to replace himself in that position. Cartier ceased to be assistant leader. Kreutzer remained as chief conductor, but in 1824 he and Habeneck exchanged roles: Kreutzer became director, and Habeneck became co-chief conductor with Henri Valentino, who had become deputy conductor in about 1820. The seventeen-year-old medical student, Hector Berlioz, freshly arrived in Paris, attended the Opéra for the first time on 14 November 1821, again on the eighteenth and the twenty-sixth, and from then on haunted the rue Le Peletier. The incident, memorably described in his Memoirs, in which he and his friends, outraged at the suppression of a ballet pas in which Baillot was to play the solo violin part, created havoc in the orchestra, is also described by Castil-Blaze. Berlioz remembers this near-riot as having taken place during the ballet Nina, Castil-Blaze as during the ballet Les Pages du duc de Vendôme on 7 December 1821. Otherwise, their descriptions tally in every detail.168 At any rate, it must have occurred during Habeneck’s watch, not Viotti’s.

chapter ten

Last Years, Death, and Aftermath

F

rom now until his death two things dominate viotti’s life: his increasing preoccupation with his financial security, and his deep affection for Margaret Chinnery, who has recently departed for England. In a letter of 1 November 1821, the day of his resignation, Viotti pours out his thoughts to the woman who has shared his life for more than twenty-five years, and the two themes become intermingled. Viotti apparently left the Opéra with the understanding, or the hope, that he would be awarded a pension of 6,000 francs a year. But “my affair,” as Viotti calls it, would require the intervention of “the minister,” the Marquis de Lauriston: Alas, for four months, the blackest of the year, I must know that you are alone! It will be for the last time, I assure you. We shall live and die together, almost never separating. Every day I become more certain of it. We are approaching the moment when my fate will be decided. I saw the minister yesterday, I see him often, I find him always kind and pleasant; he swears that I will be pleased, liberated and tranquil—that I will have nothing more to do than make a few trips to Italy. . . . Who knows whether you and I cannot make this little excursion together!!! My affair will be completely decided in a few days, and I certainly hope that soon I shall be able to send you good news. I foresee that I will not be able to keep the apartment. It is only natural that whoever comes into this galley1 should at least have a place to live. But it makes no difference; I have never liked it, except latterly, when it was embellished by [the presence of] a dear friend. So, after all, we shall have the opportunity to put our plan into effect. We shall look for a little apartment that will suit only us and where we will be entirely the masters, free of histrionics.2 348


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A week later, Viotti is anxious that he has not heard from Margaret—as he so often has been in his letters to her, beginning as long ago as 1793. He has been to Châtillon, where “everything is in perfect order,” but, worryingly, he has an unspecified ailment (his heart murmur again?): “If my little attack, which however I must get rid of with my [medicine] drops tonight, goes better, I’ll return there Saturday and stay Sunday.” He soothingly assures Margaret that the evening before, at half past eight, as he was descending the stairs of the opera to leave, he had met the general secretary of the Ministry of the Maison du roi, the Vicomte de Sorconnes, who had promised him that everything was being done to bring his affair to a satisfactory conclusion.3 But we detect in these lines the familiar tendency of Viotti to put a good face on a situation that in fact was not turning out as he hoped. Margaret seems to have guessed that all was not well. She complains that “I am completely in the dark as to what is happening” and asks, “Did they take away your apartment?—where are you?” She worries about Viotti’s situation at the Théâtre Italien. “I have always said and thought that they should not have taken away one position from you without placing you securely in another,” and, “It seems from one paragraph of your letter that you have nothing at all to do,—so they have taken away les Bouffes as well!” She wonders about his relations with his colleagues: “How is Habeneck conducting himself ? And all those who recently were your subjects?”4 In fact, Viotti and François Habeneck seem to have remained on cordial terms. It fell to the new director, however, to write to Viotti that “it is with the greatest regret that I have the painful task of informing you myself that the minister has just placed at the disposal of the hereditary prince of Denmark the loge of which you had the use in the Théâtre Royal Italien.”5 Viotti was permitted to retain his personal billets d’entrée, of which he had two in the orchestra and two in the first gallery (in the Opéra he had had ten personal tickets).6 By 12 December the hoped for news of the pension had still not arrived. Viotti again reassured Margaret that the possible changes in the Maison du roi should not adversely affect his “affair.” His “Patron” (Viotti surely means the Marquis de Lauriston) is entirely independent, and only asks for a little patience. It is in this letter that we encounter a new preoccupation—Viotti reports at length on the Paris stock market. He and Margaret have invested in shares, and the political instability in France is cause for worrisome uncertainty: “We must wait, and again wait,—it is detestable, for me, who loves decisiveness, even for whatever misfortunes befall me.” In a postscript the next day, Viotti makes one of his rare references to his compositions: How I regret, my amica, that you didn’t take with you my little manuscript trifles for violin and piano! Do you want me to send them to you? I’m not doing anything with them; they are there just as I brought

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them from Châtillon, without ever having touched them. The few moments when you place your pretty fingers on the piano, what do you play? You should borrow something from Hullmandel or Kalkbrenner [or] Mad:me de Montgéroult.7 Viotti meant for Margaret to practice these pieces so that they could play them together. They do not seem to correspond to any known unpublished work of his for violin and piano. However, in the national library of France in Paris, there is an undated autograph of an unpublished serenade for piano with violin obbligato and cello, on which Viotti has written, “Serenata. Chi sa se non divertira La Padrona!” (Who knows if the Padrona will not be amused!)8 Or, as Denise Yim points out,9 Viotti could be referring to the as yet unpublished Andante et rondo pour le pianoforte et le violon (Bonn: Simrock, 1823), arranged from the revised edition of Concerto no. 19. Viotti had indeed taken up composing again. Margaret tells him how happy she is to hear of it: “I rejoice at the thought that you are occupied with music. Heaven be praised! It will do a world of good to your health, to your peace of mind, to your taste, and, finally, it will be a very great benefit to the entire world. Happy is the man of genius who possesses so many things, without having to go outside himself.”10 All of Viotti’s known published works were almost certainly composed before 1821, so we cannot know what he was composing at this time, other than the “manuscript trifles” for violin and piano. It is possible that it was one or both of the slow movements of Concertos nos. 28 and 29, which were composed, in both cases, after the outer two movements, probably in France.11 However, it is also possible that he began one or more new works, but left them unfinished, and that they have not survived. By late in 1821 Viotti was desperately looking for money wherever he could find it. On 11 November he wrote to an old diplomatic friend, Dom Lourenço da Lima in Portugal, begging him to pay a considerable debt that Lima owed him. In this letter Viotti reveals in heartrending terms what he has kept hidden from Margaret—that he is in great need.12 But, despite George’s attempts to help through his diplomatic connections in Portugal, this debt was never paid. Again, on 23 December, Viotti was concerned about share prices, which were dropping. Now he tells Margaret that he will not send his “musical scribblings” to her. “I shall keep them for us to amuse ourselves with here, or I shall take them to you if, as I hope, Heaven allows me to go to fetch you. My life is very hard, aimless and isolated as I am! I say isolated as I count for nothing all that I see or might see. You, dear Amica, George and Chin, are all I have in the world.”13 In December the Duke of Cambridge wrote from Gotha recommending the bearer of the note, a young violinist from Hamburg, Mr. Petersen, and asking Viotti to send him some bows by Tourte le Jeune. The duke reminds Viotti that the kind used by Viotti will suit him perfectly.14 What normally might have been


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a tedious errand may at this point in Viotti’s life have been instead a welcome distraction from his troubles. Early in January 1822 Viotti would have received cold comfort from the Baron de La Fertè’s note, replying to Viotti’s of 25 December “concerning the requests that you had already put to me; I have not lost sight of your affair, and I still hope that it can be concluded to your satisfaction.”15 By February 1822 Viotti had joined Margaret at Montagu Street. Later that month he received a cordial and respectful letter, full of news, from André Robberechts. The young man’s “bon et cher Maître” has written to him, telling him that Madame Chinnery had still not recovered her health, which Robberechts regrets. Robberechts clearly enjoys the confidence of his master, and has been entrusted with some important errands. He has been to see André Viotti, not finding him in, but was assured that the reply to Viotti’s letter had been sent. Mr. [Achille-Alexandre-Alphonse] de Cailleux sends word that he has written to Viotti twice, and Robberechts is at this moment awaiting a letter from him to send to Viotti. Mr. de Cailleux was an associate of the Marquis de Lauriston, and no doubt Viotti was hoping to hear news of his pension from him. Robberechts has also seen Madame Vigée-Lebrun; he has received her reply to Viotti’s letter that he had taken to her. Mr. Janet (of the music publishers Janet and Cotelle) sends his “hommages respecteux,” and asks if the subscribers to Boccherini still intend to receive their copies when this collection is completely finished (which will not take long), by what means he should send them, and how he will be paid for them. Apparently, Viotti was acting as a kind of agent for Janet and Cotelle with English subscribers to an edition of Boccherini’s works.16 It would be interesting to know how lucrative this venture was for Viotti, and what his responsibilities were. It will be recalled that, more than twenty years earlier, Viotti had attempted to buy a collection of Boccherini’s works from the composer himself. Robberechts and a friend have been to a soirée at Pierre Baillot’s, where they found themselves in a group of enthusiastic amateurs. “Two persons spoke of their memories, I saw the astonishment on many faces, but no one dared to raise his voice to dispute the truth.” This enigmatic passage may refer to the two amateurs’ memories of Viotti’s directorship of the Opéra, or of the circumstances surrounding his resignation, about which there had no doubt been differences of opinion. At a “grande soirée” given by Madame de la Briche, attended by the Duc de Duras,17 Robberechts was asked to play the same piece twice. The young man’s playing would surely have stirred Madame de la Briche’s memories of Viotti’s playing at her salon more than thirty years before. Robberechts tells Viotti that he is beginning to have more confidence from the experience of playing before audiences, and that he manages to practice his concertos despite giving as many as six lessons a day. These pupils, of whose names we are ignorant, were thus all direct heirs of the Viotti school. And, finally, one

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welcome piece of news: “Mme de la Briche told me positively that you will have a pension (which seemed to me better than average). She also spoke to me of a certain position, but it seems to me that an enlightened Minister must know that it is not worthy of Viotti.” Robberechts closes with, “I embrace you with the warmest affection and I will hold you in my heart all my life.”18 Two months later Robberechts paid homage to his master by playing one of his concertos in a Concert spirituel in the Salle Louvois.19 On 10 February Viotti obtained from the directors of the Philharmonic Society “an admission for a friend” to the first concert on 25 February 1822.20 This is not likely to have been Margaret, who was suffering from an unidentified illness, and though Viotti, solicitous as always, was at her side, she convalesced only very slowly. Two eminent doctors attended—Henry Holland (no relation, apparently, to Margaret’s uncle, the architect), later to be physician in ordinary to Queen Victoria, and Sir Henry Halford, friend and physician to George IV. Viotti grumbled about them, in a manner reminiscent of his impatience with Margaret’s lawyer in 1812. The two doctors, he thought, were equally useless.21 He may have been right, at least as regards Holland, whose reputation, apparently, was that he was “unfit to attend a sick cat.”22 As winter became spring, and as summer approached, Viotti must have been anxious to return to Paris to pursue the elusive pension, for no official word arrived, despite the efforts of friends on his behalf. In February Gustave Gasslar, a trusted friend, wrote from Paris, assuring Viotti that the unrest in the provinces should not adversely affect the value of Margaret’s shares in the stock exchange. Gasslar had been entrusted with discretionary powers to buy and sell these shares. He also urges Viotti to keep reminding the minister of his affair, for even with the best intentions, he might forget about it.23 Another person whom Viotti had enlisted for help, the Vicomte de Sorconnes, general secretary of the Maison du roi, wrote in April, replying to a letter from Viotti. He assured Viotti that he would speak to the minister again and he hoped to be able to inform Viotti soon of the minister’s intentions.24 But the weeks dragged on, and the bien grande machine, or, rather, the Maison du roi, apparently kept its own counsel. In May Viotti tells William, with a show of determined bravado, that he intends to hound the minister for his pension. “Let us begin by eliminating all bureaucratic standing on ceremony concerning the pension of six thousand francs. After that I will summon forth all the importuning heavy artillery in my power.” For the rest, the letter is a litany of financial woes. He asks William for money for Margaret, who, by not renting the house in Montagu Street during her absence, finds herself financially embarrassed. Viotti himself is unable to help, with no hope now of recuperating his money from the “infamous Smith.” Moreover, as he now reveals to William, he owes 2,500 francs that he has borrowed from Joseph Cary, William’s business partner in Le Havre. Viotti is confident that he will earn something, be it “a little or a lot,” from the sale of his box at the Théâtre Feydeau, which he still owns. He has won a lawsuit over


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his ownership of the box, but someone, “a demon, a villain,” has contested it, and it will take time to free himself from this difficult situation. Again he wishes to protect Margaret—he asks William not to mention Viotti’s affairs to her: “We know of them, details serve no purpose.”25 Later that month, more bad news: Viotti has heard from Cary in Le Havre that the business with William has not done well this year—“misfortunes from every quarter!”26 By June 1822, Margaret’s health had improved sufficiently for them to return to France. On the way, they stopped over in Sittingbourne, from where Viotti wrote to George, evoking the glories of an English summer: “the weather is superb, the air infused with the most delightful exhalations possible, the beans are flowering, the clover is perfect, the roses in garlands in the hedges.” Margaret added a note: she still suffers somewhat from her malady, but “[Amico] is all kindness and attention to my wants and wishes, and is never tired of doing everything he can to make me comfortable.”27 Viotti and Margaret spent the summer months at Châtillon, probably joined by William, to judge from the paucity of correspondence among them from this period. In August Viotti wrote to Cailleux, in an agony of uncertainty: Dear friend If my affair is truly decided and concluded, not only are you the first to tell me, but the only one, for I have not received a word from anyone on this interesting subject. For the rest, I am grateful for the solicitude of your heart in consoling mine. You no doubt can guess how very sensible I am to it; I would be all the more, were it possible, if, as you had promised me, you had come to tell us yourself. Patience, I shall visit you very shortly in Paris, and we will arrange the day when we can have you here. The poor patient is better and she hopes very much to see you again soon. Her husband also wishes to meet you! If by chance you know where I can present myself to receive [the pension], let me know. Adieu dear good and kind friend, I embrace you with the loving sentiments that you know I have towards you. Your Amico [signed] J. B. Viotti28 Cailleux (1788–1876), was now the Director of Museums under Lauriston. Though more than thirty years younger than Viotti, he was the person on whom Viotti seemed to depend by virtue of his closeness to the minister, and, in the process, had become a personal friend. Viotti has perhaps forgotten Robberecht’s report of a few months earlier, which, after all, was not official. It is as if he cannot believe that the news of his pension is true. Now, all of this is puzzling, for on 15 November 1821, Viotti had been granted not only a retroactive lodging supplement of 3,000 francs, as we have seen, but also an annual “non-activity salary” (traitement de non activité ) of 3,000 francs, “which in case of prolongation of non-activity, will be converted into a pension

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of three thousand francs.”29 Then, on 1 May 1822, this annual amount was confirmed, but with the change that, to date from 1 April, it was to take the form of a salary (as opposed to a pension) for the position of “Special examiner of persons called to various services of the Musique du Roi” (Examineur particulier des sujets à appeler aux divers services de la Musique du Roi). Another clause in this report stipulated that Viotti would receive instructions from the minister himself as to his duties in this position, but these instructions have not come down to us.30 In the national archives there is also the draft of a letter from the minister, Lauriston, to Viotti, dated 8 May 1822, informing him of this appointment.31 It is odd that Viotti says in the letter given above that he has not received word from the Maison du roi. Perhaps he was referring to a pension or salary of 6,000 francs (not 3,000), that he had been hoping for. The position of Special Examiner is vague enough to allow a certain latitude of interpretation, but it would seem that Viotti was expected to interview or audition singers and instrumentalists for employment by the Opéra/Théâtre Italien. This would explain Viotti’s mention of “a few trips to Italy” in his letter to Margaret six months earlier. There is no record, however, of his ever performing any tasks in this new position. We may note that Viotti was not alone in seeking a government pension at precisely this time. On 25 September 1822, after about two years of begging, the young Victor Hugo (1802–85) received a royal annual pension of a thousand francs, followed by another pension from the Ministry of the Interior on 23 June 1823. Hugo had published an ode on the death of the Duc de Berry, and “equally ecstatic” odes on the birth and baptism of the duke’s posthumous son,32 the latter event, we recall, having been the object of Viotti’s attentions as well. Margaret and Viotti spent the winter of 1822–23 in Paris,33 joined for some of the time by William. On 30 October Viotti was struck by another blow— the premature and apparently sudden death of his half-brother André, aged forty-five.34 Nothing in the correspondence prepares us for this; it may have been a sudden illness, or possibly a violent death. André Viotti’s position as a military judge advocate may have made him enemies. Twice in 1816 he was the “Reporter” ( prosecutor) in courts-martial for treason in Paris, in both of which he demanded and obtained the death sentence.35 The two men had grown close over the years; Viotti’s dedication in 1817 of his string quartets, WII:13–15, was a mark of his esteem. At ten o’clock on the mornings of 6 and 8 November, Viotti, as André’s sole heir, attended an inventory of his brother’s belongings.36 Viotti spent part of the winter living alone at Châtillon, recovering from an unspecified illness (again!): “I’m feeling better, much better. But though I am in a condition to roam around in the garden, in the granaries and the courtyards, I don’t believe I should leave so soon.” Viotti thanks William and Margaret for their letters that “have brought balm to my heart,” and goes on to mention Edme-François Miel in terms that suggest that he had been the bearer of the tidings of the circumstances surrounding André’s death. He includes a detailed list of the food and household articles he is sending.37


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Within a week, Viotti had returned to Paris, where he wrote his will on 13 December (see appendix 5 for a full translation). He names Gustave Gasslar and William, or in his absence, George, to be his executors. In this document, now in the library of the Royal College of Music, London, Viotti unrestrainedly bemoans his fate: “Not only do I die without riches but what is more I die leaving a debt that torments my soul.” This is his debt to Margaret, amounting to 24,000 francs, equal to double his former yearly salary. Viotti asks only that his debt of 800 francs to André be paid,38 everything else is to go to Margaret. He desires that nothing be spent on his burial: “A little earth will suffice for a miserable creature like me.” Viotti lists his possessions: “Two manuscript concertos will be found among my music; two violins will be found, of which one, by Clotz, belongs already to Mad. Chinnery, but the other, a Stradivarius is mine; it is excellent and should obtain a good little sum. I also have two or three gold snuff boxes, as well as a gold watch. All of that must belong to the above-mentioned Lady.” He knows that Madame Chinnery, “this perfect creature,” will forgive him and that “she will shed bitter tears at my memory and that she will never cease praying to the Supreme Being for the repose of my soul.”39 Viotti had little time for self-pity. In January 1823 he was at the stock exchange, buying and selling shares, using money sent by William. It is difficult to imagine Viotti, who had had no experience, participating in this risky, gruelling, sometimes ferocious activity. Not surprisingly, he complained to William, “I am completely crumpled [ froissez (sic)] by the knocks I’ve been given at that infernal Bourse.”40 Viotti continued to go to the Bourse, and his letters to William from now on were dominated by financial matters. But, as always, he was a tower of strength, not only for Margaret, whose ill health persisted, compounded by a constant toothache, but also for William. In early 1823 there were fears of a war between France and Spain, with possible harmful consequences for the business in Le Havre. Viotti attempted to raise William’s spirits: “No one in Paris shows the anxiety that seems to obsess you. I don’t say what must or might happen, one would have to be more than a soothsayer for that, but while waiting for fate to take its course, we are remaining tranquil and we foresee nothing very black. Calm your spirits as well, my good friend; your judgement will be clearer.”41 We do not have the relevant letters from William, but clearly Viotti thought he was too pessimistic, and again took him to task: “Your business is going well to judge from your letters, the wind is filling your sails, the dear Padrona’s health is better, thank Heaven. What good, then, is so much moaning, so much sadness? Come, come my dear Chin—revive your spirits.”42 But no amount of philosophy could mitigate Viotti’s own precarious financial situation. On 23 February the treasurer of the Philharmonic Society in London reported that Viotti (and two other members), “having failed to pay their Subscriptions were no longer in the Society.”43 On the twenty-fifth Viotti

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told William, “I have written a few words to Cary by this post, nothing more than to inform him that I will send him two new concertos, and to speak to him about my debt. But in answering this don’t say anything of all that. You know that Amica must know nothing. Not even about the poor concertos.”44 The two concertos can only be nos. 28 and 29, which, though the last he wrote, were not new, no. 28 having been composed probably around 1804, no. 29 as early as 1795. They must be the same two that Viotti mentioned in his will, the only ones still in manuscript, not to be published until late in 1823 and in 1824, respectively. It is disturbing to think that Viotti was reduced to offering his two concertos as compensation for a debt he was unable to pay.45 As to what Viotti himself thought, “poor concertos” ( pauvres concertos) surely says it all. The story of Joseph Cary and the two concertos does not end here, however. In the early autumn of 1823 it was discovered that Cary had been siphoning off money from the business in Le Havre for his own use, bringing it to the point of bankruptcy, and causing William’s financial ruin. Viotti, no doubt doubly, triply wounded, because of the similarity of this debacle to his own ruin a few years earlier, and also, perhaps, because just as he had been forced to change his mind about the character of Charles Smith, so did he now about “our dear, our excellent Cary.” In fact, however, Viotti had begun to have doubts about Cary as early as October 1820, when he told William, “Do you know, this long absence of Cary worries me? Have you learned of his activities, did he inform you of them, do you know where he is, and what he has been doing? It seems impossible to me that he could stay away from you for such a long time without there being something extraordinary!”46 Now, in late September 1823, he confronted Cary in the street and vented his rage on him, calling down the “vengeance of heaven and earth.”47 If Viotti had intended to dedicate one or both of the two concertos to Cary, he would have quickly changed his mind. In any event, no. 28 was dedicated to the Marquis de Lauriston, no. 29 almost certainly to George Chinnery. George Chinnery, in one of several letters to his mother in the first half of 1823, mentions some music that he has received from Viotti. Apparently it was a piece by Viotti carrying a dedication to George: “Amico’s titre is indeed [ . . . ] a titre de gloire for me, of which I feel unworthy—thank him a thousand times for this token of affection, & for having immortalized me.” Then, later in the letter: “Pray send me Amico’s instructions as to what I am to do with the music. Is it for Collard?”48 Two weeks later, he tells his mother that “the Presentation Copy of Amico’s new publication, since I am to consider it as such, shall be bound & deposited in my library. Pray tell him so with renewed and additional thanks. The other copy I think of giving to Chas Staniforth.”49 There is no published work by Viotti dedicated to George Chinnery. Probably, as Denise Yim suggests, the work in question was Concerto no. 29, and the dedication to Mr. and Mrs. Chinnery in the Janet and Cotelle publication was a mistake.50 This is rendered more plausible by the date of publication, ca.


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July 1824, after Viotti’s death, and by Baillot’s assertion that the concerto was dedicated to George.51 In March–April George sent two consignments of a pound of snuff to Viotti. “I hope caro Amico will like his snuff,” he writes to his mother on 4 April. Then, ten days later, “I shall be glad to hear of Amico’s being in possession of the 6 bottles of Wilson,” and, on the eighteenth, “[I am] very glad indeed to find that not one of the six Wilson bottles got a fracture—I was a little afraid of it.”52 Viotti apparently preferred English snuff to the French variety. I have been unable to ascertain what Wilson was—perhaps a medicine? The knowledge of this might provide a clue as to the nature of Viotti’s final illness. In August George reported that he had been reading about the Diamond Necklace Affair and the branding of Madame de Lamotte as told in Madame Campan’s Memoirs of the Private Life of Marie-Antoinette, recently published: “Pray ask Amico if he recollects all this.” Since these events had taken place in 1785–86, there is no doubt that Viotti would have remembered them. We can only regret that his reply, which would have been passed on by Margaret, has not survived. George also raises a more present and urgent matter: he inquires after Viotti’s lumbago.53 Whether or not Viotti’s ailment had been correctly diagnosed, it was symptomatic of his declining health in the last half-year of his life. George continued to fulfill his responsibility as signatory for Viotti’s Concerto no. 23 with the London publisher Clementi and Collard. On 19 September he asked his mother to inform Viotti that he “went immediately to Cheapside, got a packet of 100 title pages, and signed them the same evening, so that by now they would be ready for sale.”54 It would appear from this that sales were brisk, but since we are ignorant of the terms of Viotti’s contract, we cannot know whether his royalties were likely to be substantial. Viotti and Margaret moved from Paris to Châtillon in May of 1823. It was from there, at the end of July, that he wrote to the man with whom, over the years, he had had the closest personal and musical rapport: My dear good Baillot, I feel a very great need to play a duo with you, and an even greater need to embrace you. Would you be able to sacrifice one of your Sundays for us, and come next Sunday to dine with us? That would be delightful, and the good Mrs. Chinnery, who thank heaven is beginning to feel better, would be enchanted to see you again at last, and to hear your interesting instrument again. Reply immediately with a word, I beg you. Address it to the Hôtel des Iles Britanniques, rue de la Paix no. 5, where I shall go to pick it up Thursday morning. Remember me to your dear family, and believe me always to be Your affectionate Amico JB Viotti55

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It is heartening to know that Viotti was well enough, and able to forget his problems enough, to enjoy making music. Perhaps he thought, indeed, that making music would help him forget. Did Viotti have in mind any particular duos, perhaps the one in F minor that he and Baillot had played so many times in 1802? The interesting instrument is not likely to have been Baillot’s Stradivari violin, which he had owned since 1805, and which he had played in England in 1816. Perhaps it is the one Baillot acquired sometime after he had been given the Stradivari instrument—“a large-toned instrument, a Boquet of the French school”—which appears to be the one now on display in the Musée de la musique in Paris.56 In his Notice of 1825, Baillot reports that, when he last saw Viotti, in 1823, “he spoke to us of an elementary work that he had begun,” meaning a violin method. Baillot hopes that “the executors of his last will and testament will yield to our wishes, and publish soon this precious work.”57 In fact, Viotti left only an unfinished rough draft, a mere five pages long; it was nearly twenty years before Habeneck published this fragment in facsimile in his Méthode.58 We have another indication that Viotti and Margaret had musical evenings at Châtillon at this time. It is a letter Viotti wrote to Joseph Turcas, Cherubini’s son-in-law, a military officer and amateur composer: “You were a naughty boy [un méchant] last Sunday. We waited for you until after six o’clock and you didn’t keep your promise. A pity—you would have heard a little nine-year-old German girl at the piano who is truly astonishing.”59 In the meantime Viotti had been alternately encouraging William and reproaching him for his pessimism and for failing to respect their agreement not to upset Margaret with despairing letters regarding finances. A month or so before the discovery of Cary’s defalcation, Viotti writes, “I don’t see why you have so despised your condition. [ . . . ] After all, trade is assuredly not so unpleasant as you make it out to be. [ . . . ] Let us stand firm, dear Chin. Let us overcome and defy the causes of affliction.”60 But when William has evidently written about “an extraordinary loss” suffered by his business, in terms intended not to alarm Margaret, Viotti takes him to task: As a favor, my friend, don’t speak to me in metaphors; say to me straight out and clearly in few words what it is, and what the thing is all about. The state of our ignorance and of uncertainty in which you keep me is worse than the misfortunes themselves. It is unendurable and a crucifixion. Speak clearly, then, or my anxiety is such that one of these days you will see me arriving to inform myself personally with you and Cary.61 In October, after Cary’s confession of theft, Viotti outlines a scheme for reducing their losses, from which it is clear that not only William but also George and Viotti himself would be hurt by the failure of the business. Viotti reminds William that the 100,000 livres (Viotti presumably means francs) of capital that William invested in the firm of Cary and Company was money advanced by Viotti, that


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George had lent. Viotti proposes that therefore he, Viotti, would become a creditor, who would stand to receive 20,000 francs, if by the terms of its bankruptcy the firm were to pay 20 percent on the debt. It is not known what transpired in this affair. What seems clear is that the intricate web of investments, loans, and counter-loans in which, over the years, Viotti, William, and Margaret Chinnery (and now George) enmeshed themselves with one another and with others, came out, in the end, against all of them. In the years from 1793 to 1807 William had lent Viotti a total of more than £2,000, which there is no record of Viotti ever having repaid.62 In this same letter, Viotti, perhaps at the end of his tether from the accumulated stress and his declining health, directs one last, terrible blast at William: Madame is reading a letter from you that tears out her soul. Is it possible that you can keep coming back endlessly to the same expressions repeated a thousand times, and for which I have already criticized you so much? In God’s name use your brain, and consider the situation a little more carefully!!! P.S. I took hold of your letter and threw it into the fire. If you don’t like it you can have it out with your Amico.63 In November 1823 Viotti and Margaret left Châtillon and returned to London for the winter. On the fourteenth Viotti wrote yet another castigating letter to William, for a different transgression: I was dying to know, my dear Chin, what action you took with Cailleux, and of which you ask me if I approve! Today you have let us know about it and I hasten to reply. I approve of it so little, my friend, that I am seriously considering leaving London for Paris, to remedy the harm that could result, namely of losing three thousand francs of income, which are indispensable to me. I don’t at all like Mr. de Sorconne’s statement, that I can live in London instead of Paris—I prided myself that it was thought that I could still be useful to them. If they think otherwise, goodbye to the three thousand that I receive from the administration, for this sum is a salary, not a pension. What a pity! I had arranged everything so well before my departure!!! Now, dear Chin, you no doubt understand all the impropriety and even the danger of your action—anyway, what remains is to remedy it now, and that is what I shall try to do—[ . . . ] PS. I must ask you not to say a word of this to anyone again—I know Cailleux better than you, and I shall consider whether or not I can put the pieces of this miserable affair back together by letter.64 We cannot know precisely what William’s gaffe had been that so alarmed Viotti. For his proposed letter to Cailleux, Viotti would have needed to summon up all his charm and diplomacy. The outcome of this affair is not known.65 Three days later Viotti tells William that Margaret’s health is holding up, but “for my part, I’m not as well as I would wish: not the gout, but a cough, a cold,

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a devil-if-I-know, that makes me as listless as an old nag.”66 This is the last letter of Viotti’s that has come down to us. On 2 December, the house on Montagu Street having been let, he and Margaret moved to a rented house at 5 Upper Berkeley Street, Portman Square.67 Some time afterward, Margaret wrote to William: You will have understood that I have little hope of saving Amico—in fact he breathes, and that is all! But he says he is perfectly comfortable, has no pain any where, sleeps a great deal, indeed almost always, but his strength diminishes daily, & and his countenance is dreadful to behold! [ . . . ] I am collecting all the fortitude I can muster for this [ . . . ] great trial, and I feel that I shall go through it if God continues the support & inward strength now granted to me. I dare not complain, or bewail, or think of any past days or things that would soften me,—we must say but little about it, for it will not bear dwelling upon. Your reflections upon the evils of our lives would kill me, were I to do more than hurry through them, as one would walk upon hot cinders!68 Who would have come to visit Viotti as he lay dying? His glamorous aristocratic acquaintances?69 William Spencer? Herr Trumpf ? His dedicatees: John Crosdill? William Shield?70 Lady Dunmore? His colleagues and former pupils: Muzio Clementi? William Ayrton? Domenico Dragonetti? Nicolas Mori? Gioachino Rossini had arrived in London on 7 December 1823 and stayed for about six months. He produced several of his operas at the King’s Theatre, and was caressed by George IV. Did he finally meet his “Maecenas,” now no longer able to be of service to him? There is no record of it. On 4 March 1824, Margaret wrote to William: For your sake, and for George’s I am exerting myself to the utmost to bear up against this afflicting dispensation of Providence: Amico died yesterday morning at 7 o’clock,—I wish I could say he died easily or comfortably, but quite the reverse of that was the case. However it is all over now,—the deep impression the horrid sounds have left, can only wear off by degrees, and by my endeavours & prayers to Heaven. Remember that I have no companion nor present comfort but yourself,— Therefore if you give way to grief, all will soon be over with us both! Keep up your courage for my sake and for George’s. I have long been aware that the sad event was inevitable,—or at least very probable.71 He was sixty-nine years and almost ten months old—about six months older than his father, Felice Viotto, had been at his death. Viotti’s death was announced in the press, but it does not seem to have attracted much attention.72 The burial service took place on 11 March at the church of St. Marylebone, conducted by the Reverend R. H. Chapman.73 According to the parish records


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he was buried in “Vault no. 6 under Paddington Street,”74 now Paddington Street Gardens. Due to overcrowding, this site was abandoned as a burial ground in the late nineteenth century. After Viotti’s death Margaret sold her house in Montagu Street and, in May, after a period of mourning, went to live in Châtillon with William. George was in Spain at the time of Viotti’s death, having been posted to Madrid by the Foreign Office at the beginning of 1824 as British commissioner of claims in a dispute between British merchants and the Spanish government. Among the condolences that Margaret received was a letter from HuguesBernard Maret, now the Duc de Bassano, who had been a victim, with Madame de Montgéroult and her husband, in that long-ago incident in the summer of 1793. After being exiled in 1815, he had returned to Paris in 1820, when he would have renewed his friendship with Viotti and the Chinnerys. Bassano reveals that he has known Viotti since 1790: “It seems impossible to be condemned never to see again a friend of thirty-four years. [ . . . ] After weeping for this friend who was so lovable, so good, so true, so dear, all my sad thoughts turned to you.”75 Several others paid their respects. Viotti’s friend Cailleux visited Margaret in the summer of 1824, and, in May of 1825, Pierre Rode visited her.76 Strangely, there is no letter and no record of a visit from Baillot, though his Notice sur J.-B. Viotti, written in 1825, is one of the most eloquent obituaries for a musician ever written. Not long after Viotti’s death, Margaret received a letter from G. Duport, the son of Viotti’s old friend Jean-Louis Duport, who had died in September 1819, and to whom Viotti had dedicated his three divertimenti/nocturnes for cello with piano accompaniment (WV:19–21) and arrangements thereof for violin with piano accompaniment (WVa:7–9), published in the same year.77 The young Duport, who identifies himself as “Professeur de Violoncelle,” whose father was Viotti’s “oldest and best friend,” pays his respects to the memory of Viotti, and asks if he could buy his violin, and at what price, so that he might “reunite his instrument with my father’s cello in order to conserve them carefully.”78 Written only eleven days after Viotti’s death ( perhaps a little too soon for Margaret’s taste), this letter fell on deaf ears, insofar as Viotti’s “Buttero” was sold at auction at the Hôtel Bullion in Paris, probably in August, for 3,816 francs.79 George mentions another of Viotti’s belongings in his letters to Margaret after Viotti’s death. His secretaire, presumably one of the items salvaged from Gillwell, or possibly acquired afterward, was to “resume its original place” at Châtillon. George also suggests using Viotti’s name to sell the Broadwood grand piano at Châtillon, though it had not belonged to Viotti.80 Margaret Chinnery, just as she had to contend with the legal aftermath of her husband’s defalcation in 1812, now, as Viotti’s sole heir, found herself the litigant in three lawsuits, of which two, or possibly all three, were the legacy of Viotti’s Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau. The first was the appeal against Viotti’s successful defense of his contested ownership of his box at the theater, already mentioned (more precisely, it was a one-eighth share in the box). This was finally

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resolved in Margaret’s favor in the autumn of 1824, and she was able to realize 6,614 francs from its sale on 30 December.81 George, in his letter to his mother congratulating her on this result, mentions another sum: “I am willing to hope, since it is part of the same property, that what you are entitled to on the score of the other 8th may not fall short of the additional 2,000.”82 Viotti had also owned another one-eighth share in the same box, which he had sold.83 George seems to be referring to money still owing to Margaret from that transaction. Thus, with the proceeds from the sale of Viotti’s shares in the Feydeau box and his violin, Margaret would have recuperated from Viotti’s estate approximately half of the 24,000 francs he owed to her on his death. The Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau left still another, more unfortunate legacy that plagued Viotti for long after he left France in 1792, and followed him beyond the grave. According to a lawyer’s brief, M. Bertrand Du Chailla des Arènes, a wealthy manufacturer, one of the three “Administrators and Owners” of the theater (along with Léonard Autié and Viotti), and apparently the chief surety, was held accountable for a debt of 60,000 livres owed by the theater to the Baron de Nyvenheim. One of Chailla’s establishments was seized, the proceeds from which were used to pay Nyvenheim more than 20,000 livres. The details are obscure, but a letter of 1806 from Viotti to his banker and friend in Paris, Frédéric Perregaux, reveals that at that time he was making ten regular payments of 1,500 francs to Nyvenheim, for a total of 15,000 francs.84 But worse was to come. At some point, most probably after he had returned to France in 1814, Autié was sued successfully by Chailla. This, no doubt, was one of the debts that Louis XVIII paid off for Autié (see above, p. 156). Chailla’s rights holder (cessionnaire des droits de Chailla) attempted to take a similar action against Viotti, before the same tribunal, with the threat of appropriating his salary (opposition sur les appointements de Viotti, directeur de l’Académie royale de musique), but it was rejected on 12 August 1823. We can only imagine the distress this would have caused the ailing Viotti in the last summer of his life, facing the possibility of losing his salary. In 1825, a renewed attempt was made against Viotti’s heirs (Margaret was the sole heir).85 The outcome of this suit is not known. On 3 March 1825 George began a letter to his mother with the words, “What a date, dearest mother, to have to put to a letter! & yet it may be a comfort to you to think again, when you unfold this sheet of paper, that I was specially in mental communication with you on this sad anniversary!”86 It was in the same month that the first volume of the Mémoires of Madame de Genlis appeared, in which she pays tribute to her old friend: “The year after, I heard with admiration the famous Pugnani, one of whose greatest claims to glory is that he was the teacher of Viotti, an artist who will serve forever as a model for those who devote themselves to the arts, by his prodigious talent, the culture of his mind, his manners, his noble and pure conduct at all times, and the qualities of his heart.”87


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In the third volume, however, Madame de Genlis accuses Margaret Chinnery of having lost a precious private journal that Margaret had borrowed from Casimir Baecker in 1807.88 Already, in his indignant letter to Casimir of 1814 (see above, p. 243), Viotti had repudiated this accusation, which apparently Casimir had led his adopted mother to believe. But there had been no communication between Margaret and Madame de Genlis between 1814 and 1825. Now, in a letter of 1 July 1825, it is Margaret’s turn to be indignant. She tells Madame de Genlis that a few months before dying, and feeling his health to be weakening, Viotti had written to Genlis from Châtillon explaining once again the truth. He had been so anxious that all the troubles Casimir had caused him would not continue to vex Mr. and Mrs. Chinnery that he had consigned a copy of his letter to his lawyer, Henry Dance, in London. “When he was on his deathbed in London, he said to me more than once, Madame, that you had never replied to him!”89 Madame de Genlis did eventually publish a retraction in the eighth volume of her Mémoires, invoking a “misunderstanding.” George Chinnery, in his letter to his mother of 4 July, brings back old memories. He had sent a letter and an impression of “Amico’s Print” (a portrait of Viotti) to Francesco Vaccari, Viotti’s old duet and quartet partner, who had left London probably in 1816 and was now in Madrid: [He] is very low in health & spirits, so much so that his dejection nearly amounts to an alienation of intellect—His undeserved expulsion from the King’s service through the intrigues of rivals who are unfit to rosin his bow, has been the cause of it; but my present letter gave Mad. V. (who is just the same as when you knew her) sincere pleasure, & she immediately invited me to a private concert at their home given yesterday morning, where for the first time since I have been in Madrid I heard something like music. Vaccari himself though distressingly grave & silent plays as well as ever, & Mad. Vaccari’s brother, Brunetti, is a prodigy on the Violoncello, quite equal to Duport & Crosdill & very superior to Linley. A female pupil of Vaccari’s executed one of Amico’s concertos on the violin, & this was almost too much for me, those sounds not having vibrated on my ear since they last came from the “parent lyre.” Amico’s print occupies the most distinguished place in Vaccari’s drawing room, & although the poor man’s finances are probably slender his habitation is excellent, being the ground floor of the hotel of the Duque de Tamame’s.90 This was one of George’s last letters to his mother. In October he died suddenly in Madrid of unknown causes, aged thirty-four. George Canning wrote a letter of condolence to Margaret, which is now in the Viotti Papers in the Royal College of Music. Margaret Chinnery thus outlived her three children, and her husband, who died in Paris on 3 March 1827, three years to the day after the death of his truest, best friend.

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Most of Viotti’s closest friends survived him. William Spencer, Viotti’s brilliant, witty, but slightly feckless companion, the much-loved mentor of Caroline Chinnery, and the adornment of Margaret’s dinner parties, was forced to retire to France to escape his creditors in 1825. He kept up his friendship with the Chinnerys in Paris until the time of his death in 1834. Clementi, Cherubini, and Dragonetti all lived into their eighties. Hélène de Montgéroult died in Florence in 1836. Her grave is in the First Cloister of the church of Santa Croce. Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun outlived all her contemporaries: born in 1755, the same year as Viotti, she died in 1842. Margaret Chinnery, alone with her memories and the vast collection of her family’s and Viotti’s correspondence, which she had preserved, died in Paris on 5 November 1840. Her remains, and those of her husband, were removed from the Père-Lachaise cemetery to the grounds of Gillwell House in August 2002.

Epilogue In August 1829, Vincent and Mary Novello, returning from their “Mozart Pilgrimage” to Salzburg and Vienna, stopped over in Paris for a week. On the morning of Tuesday, the eleventh, they attended the violin examinations at the Conservatoire, which began at nine o’clock. There were eleven players, of whom the Novellos heard five, and all of whom played an (unidentified) duet in D major and the first and second movements of Viotti’s Concerto no. 2, accompanied by four violins, two violas, two cellos, and a double bass. Wrote Novello in his diary: Very fair playing but nothing of very superior genius; mechanically correct but deficient in feeling. Best players Mr Bonnai and a young lad. List of prizes fixed up at the gate. Cherubini presided in the Committee Box; made notes during and after every performance. Fine head with long hair and long, grave and intelligent face, but careworn as if he was not happy. Reminded me of the bust of Homer in Townley marbles.91 As he sat listening to the music of his old friend, dead these five years, perhaps Cherubini’s memories were stirred: of their lives together in the rue NotreDame-des-Victoires, so long ago, of their wonderfully fruitful collaboration at the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau, of that memorable reunion in 1802, of their publisher-composer relationship, of Viotti’s and the Chinnerys’ visits in Paris, of his own London visit in 1815, of their rivalry, of Viotti’s dedication of his Concerto no. 22 and his Duet for solo violin to him. Cherubini, almost at the moment of Viotti’s fall from grace at the Académie royale de musique, had risen: in April 1822 he had become director of the Conservatoire. In the 1820s and 1830s he continued to frequent Margaret Chinnery,92 whom he outlived by two years.

chapter eleven

Viotti’s Achievement and Legacy This leader of a school, on whom heaven had lavished its favors, whose talent always followed the noble impulses of his soul, who combined grace and sublimity, sweetness and strength, unity and variety, naturalness and elegance, and who showed, without dreaming of it, the goodness of his heart in everything he did; an excellent man as well as an admirable artist, whom we have constantly honored and now miss as a father. —Pierre M. F. de Sales Baillot, Notice sur J.-B. Viotti, 1825

V

iotti’s life is instructive as an exemplum of musicians caught up in the social and economic upheavals of the French Revolution and its aftermath—the change from aristocratic and court patronage of the ancien régime to the increasingly commercial, box office–centered institutions of the nineteenth century. Viewed from a strictly professional point of view, Viotti’s career may be seen as a partial failure. As a soloist, he was active for scarcely seven years; he met with only mixed success as the administrative director of opera houses in Paris and London; he was a failed wine merchant, and he died in debt, having outlived his fame. Unlike his friends Luigi Cherubini and Muzio Clementi, who succeeded in the commercial world as music publishers, Viotti was not able to fill the gap left by his renunciation of public performance with a financially satisfactory alternative, both in 1783 and after his return from exile. Chappell White summed up Viotti’s career thus: The factors that brought Viotti’s career to a sad close are not alone the result of his own poor judgement in leaving the fields in which his superb talent lay. He was caught, as were a number of other musicians, in a changing social and economic climate that brought increasing personal pressure for acceptance as a social equal among his patrons but did not provide the means in music for achieving the necessary affluence. His career came too late to settle into the subservient position of

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a court musician but too early to enjoy the fortune and prestige of the next generation of virtuosos.1 And yet, Viotti’s fame and influence has scarcely been equaled by any violinist before or since. His influence made itself felt through his playing, his compositions, and his teaching. It may be overstating the case to say that the Viotti style of playing represented a revolution in the history of violin playing. It would be more accurate to say that his role was that of a catalyst, who, as an especially distinguished player, gathered up into his playing the progressive characteristics then current in the Italian and French schools. It was chiefly he who transmitted to posterity the glorious tradition of the Italian school of violin playing, originating 100 years earlier in Arcangelo Corelli. At the same time, his way of playing, his school, more than that of any other single executant, was the way of the future. It is possible to discern an evolution in Viotti’s playing. Pierre Baillot, probably the most acute contemporary observer of Viotti’s career, remarked that Viotti’s early performances in Paris, characterized by “boiling ardor, which reflection had not yet tempered,” lacked the finish that he later acquired, but that by 1802, his playing had “an exquisite naturalness, and, if one may so express it, a complete lack of ambition.” This development was reflected in the compositions of his London period, in which Viotti “renounced the too daring difficulties of his first works,” and which “were all the more agreeable for being less audacious.”2 By 1820 the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung could refer to Viotti as “Europe’s first and most Classical violinist.”3 Viotti’s compositional career, though within the confines of the Classical period of music history, spanned a period of change. He was born five years after the death of J. S. Bach, and died five years before the first performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. We do not know what glimpses he may have had of German Romanticism in music, still less what he would have thought of it. It is unlikely that he heard Schubert’s “Die Forelle” (The Trout), for example, or Weber’s Der Freischütz,4 though both were composed well within his lifetime. But he might well have been receptive to the evocations of nature in these works, not to mention in Haydn’s The Creation (1798) and The Seasons (1801), and Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony (1808). His own compositions reflected the evolution of the Classical style, from galant to pre-Romantic, but in an entirely original and unpredictable way. White and several other authorities have pointed out what is perhaps the most significant difference between Viotti’s Paris and London concertos: that the former, especially the last four, nos. 16–19, are generally more brilliant, more dramatic, whereas the latter are more restrained, more classical, perhaps partly in response to the English distaste for excessive showiness. White postulates that it was the boldness and minor-key drama of the late Paris concertos, partly derived from Viotti’s operatic associations in 1789–92, that were precursors

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of Romanticism, “seized upon” by his successors. The London concertos, on the other hand, “are mature Classical works in texture and in structure,”5 and “seem to have been regarded rather as monuments to Viotti’s classic status than as progressive contributions to the concert literature.”6 As if obeying a historical imperative, Viotti, in about 1818, when extensively revising his Concerto no. 19 in G Minor, one of his most dramatic works, chose to remove “its most daring and unusual tonal relationship, and brought its texture and instrumentation into conformity with the symphonic conventions of the 1780s. In short, he made the concerto, not more Romantic, but more Classical.”7 Against this, however, it has been pointed out, notably by Robin Stowell, that in his London concertos Viotti “introduced into his fundamentally Classical approach modifications of structure and style sufficiently progressive to justify the description of some of his later works as ‘pre-romantic.’ ” Stowell singles out the “lyrical melodic qualities, particularly of the last two concertos,” which “foreshadow the Romantic ideal.”8 Two memorable and characteristic melodic passages, one from the first movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, the other from the first movement of Schumann’s Piano Concerto, are highly reminiscent of the opening of Viotti’s Concerto no. 29.9 In three of his London concertos, nos. 20, 26, and 29, Viotti experiments with linking the slow movement directly to the last movement, and in the first movement of no. 27 the opening theme of the Allegro vivace is derived from the theme of the slow introduction. Number 21 is even more progressive in that a striking minore melody from the first movement is twice recalled in the rondo finale. Viotti’s Concerto no. 22, the only one that has remained in the concert violinist’s repertory, was especially favored by Johannes Brahms: “It is a marvellous piece, showing a remarkable freedom of invention; indeed it sounds as though the soloist is improvising. Every detail is conceived in masterly style.”10 Not surprisingly, traces of Viotti’s influence have been found in Brahms’s own Violin Concerto and in the first movement of his Double Concerto for violin and cello, in the same key, A minor, as Viotti’s no. 22.11 Historians of violin playing have long been fond of drawing or describing “genealogical trees” of violinists, a kind of book of Genesis of teacher-pupil lines of descent and influences, from Corelli to the present day. Most of these constructs have one thing in common: Arcangelo Corelli and Antonio Vivaldi, Giuseppe Tartini and Giovanni Battista Somis are the roots, but the great trunk, from which all the branches issue forth, is Viotti. What follows is a summary of these connections, bearing in mind, however, that there is a risk of oversimplification, that the extent to which a teacher influences his pupils is a matter of degree, that all distinguished executants are individuals in their own right, not merely the products of a teacher or of a school—they assimilate and integrate various influences during the course of their development, and make them their own.

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Furthermore, the technique of violin playing (including the use of the chinrest, probably introduced by Ludwig Spohr) as well as ideas of performance practice and style have evolved to the extent that they would now be scarcely recognizable to Viotti himself. Nevertheless, it is clear that Viotti, as a seminal figure, in various ways and to varying degrees, directly and indirectly, exerted a uniquely powerful influence on violin playing, certainly through the first half of the nineteenth century, and, though no doubt dissipating with time, arguably even into the twentieth century. The most immediate and direct line of descent was the French school: Pierre Rode, Baillot, and Rodolphe Kreutzer, and the Paris Conservatoire. Of these three violinists, only Rode was a pupil. Rode’s peripatetic lifestyle was not conducive to long teacher-pupil relationships, but he did give lessons to Joseph Böhm beginning in 1808, on his way home from a four-year stint as solo violinist to the tsar of Russia. Böhm, in turn, became professor of violin at the Vienna Conservatory in 1819, and replaced Ignaz Schuppanzigh as the leader of the quartet that first performed Beethoven’s string quartets. Three of Böhm’s most distinguished pupils were Joseph Hellmesberger, Joseph Joachim, and Jacob Dont, whose pupils and pupils’ pupils may be traced down to players active in the twentieth century. Leopold Auer, the teacher of Mischa Elman, Jascha Heifetz, and Nathan Milstein and other representatives of the Russian school, was a pupil of Dont’s (as well as of Joachim’s), for example. The other line of descent from Rode was through his influence on Spohr, already mentioned in chapter 5. Spohr was the teacher of Ferdinand David, Mendelssohn’s friend and colleague, and collaborator on his Violin Concerto in E Minor, op. 64 (1844). (Mendelssohn himself was an accomplished violinist, who had taken lessons from Baillot and from Eduard Rietz, a pupil of Rode’s.)12 David, in turn, as the professor of violin at the Leipzig Conservatory (directed by Mendelssohn), gave lessons to Joachim, one of the towering figures of late nineteenth-century violin playing, and collaborator with Brahms on several of his works for the violin. As to Baillot and Kreutzer, we are on less secure ground. They were not pupils but “followers,” and we are entering the extremely difficult realm of “influence,” which is difficult to assess. Baillot, as we have seen, was much closer to Viotti than was Kreutzer, who is not recorded as having played any work by Viotti in public. Baillot went on record, in his letters, his Notice of 1825, and his method of 1834, as admiring the playing and the compositions of Viotti. But already in Rode’s, Kreutzer’s, and Baillot’s Méthode of 1803, we find the following words, repeated in Baillot’s L’art du violon: “Although we have for too long been deprived of hearing the expressive sounds of Viotti, we have been so moved by them that nothing can ever make us forget them; their echoes will not die away, they remain forever in the memory as well as in the heart.” It is possible that it was Baillot who actually composed this encomium, but it could not have been printed without Kreutzer’s assent.


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Kreutzer and Baillot were each the progenitors of several generations of violinists continuing into the twentieth century. Kreutzer taught Lambert Joseph Massart, who taught Henryk Wieniawski and Fritz Kreisler. Baillot’s pupil Habeneck taught Delphin Alard and Hubert Léonard. Alard, in turn, taught Pablo de Sarasate, and Léonard taught Martin Marsick, who taught Jacques Thibaud, Georges Enescu, and Carl Flesch, whose violinistic descendants are still among us. Another line emanating from Baillot was through his pupil J. P. Maurin, the teacher of Lucien Capet, whose pupil Ivan Galamian was one of the most influential teachers of the mid-twentieth century. We may trace with more confidence the lines of descent from Viotti’s actual pupils, as opposed to followers or disciples. Two of these, besides Rode, fathered violinistic dynasties: F. W. Pixis and André Robberechts. Pixis, who had studied with Viotti during the latter’s exile, became professor of violin at the Prague conservatory, where his “descendants” included Otakar Sévcˇ ík, whose systematic treatise on violin technique remains influential to this day. Robberechts, as the violin professor at the Brussels Conservatory, was the teacher of Charles de Bériot, who is considered the founder of the Belgian school of violin playing. De Bériot (1802–70), like most talented violinists of his generation, had been raised partly on a diet of Viotti’s music—at the age of nine he had played one of Viotti’s concertos in public. In 1821 he apparently went to Paris and played for Viotti, who, so the story goes, told him, “You have a fine style; endeavor to perfect it. Hear all men of talent—profit by all but imitate no one.”13 De Bériot then took lessons from Baillot at the Paris Conservatoire, followed by a highly successful début in Paris, and a brilliant career as a performer and teacher. De Bériot was the teacher of Henri Vieuxtemps, one of the great violinists of the nineteenth century. The Belgian school, like many dynasties, benefited from outside marriage. One of Kreutzer’s pupils, Massart, was the teacher of the Polish-born Wieniawski at the Paris Conservatoire. Wieniawski, in turn, taught at the Brussels Conservatory for two years, beginning in 1873, and among his pupils was the Belgian Eugène Ysaÿe, who also studied with Vieuxtemps. Through this and similar examples of cross-fertilization, there arose by the second half of the nineteenth century the so-called Franco-Belgian school, which, along with, and in some respects opposed to, the German school, dominated the nineteenth century. The former was known for its technical brilliance and facility, and its repertory, as the century wore on, tended toward a certain lightness, in the form of short brilliant salon pieces, as well as concertos. The German school was more conservative, and eschewed such techniques as ricochet bowings, left-hand pizzicato, and excessive use of harmonics, some of them popularized by Niccolò Paganini, considered flashy and meretricious. Joachim’s treatise contains a critique of the “excesses” of the Franco-Belgian school, alleging its emphasis on left-hand technique and tonal sensuousness, to the detriment of the singing characteristics of the violin.14 The German artistic credo was one

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of high seriousness: technique should be at the service of the music, not an end in itself. Partly through Joachim’s prestige and his association with Brahms, and partly through the pronouncements of Joachim’s pupil, biographer, and collaborator on his violin method, Andreas Moser, the German school had assumed the moral high ground by late in the nineteenth century. It was the German school, not the Franco-Belgian, that was the true heir to the Viotti tradition. This is not the place to argue the merits of the case.15 What is certain is that, insofar as a teacher-pupil lineage is concerned, the Viotti-Robberechts-de Bériot-Vieuxtemps-Ysaÿe line was at least as direct as the Viotti-Rode-Böhm/ Spohr-David-Joachim line. Another point to consider is that these violinistic bloodlines were often mixed, not pure. For example, Martin Marsick (1847– 1924), a Belgian, studied with Léonard, another Belgian, and pupil of Habeneck, and with Lambert Massart (also Belgian, who had studied with Kreutzer), and lastly, with Joachim, before eventually becoming a violin teacher at the Paris Conservatory in 1892. The violinistic progeny of Viotti’s other pupils, such as Paul Alday, Philippe Libon, Nicolas Mori, and François Fémy, has not been investigated or documented as thoroughly as that of the French triumvirate. Alday was reported as being in Edinburgh in 1806 as a music director and professor of music, and in Dublin where he opened a music academy in 1812, and was still listed as a professor in 1820.16 Libon surely had pupils in Spain and in Paris, where he lived from 1800 until his death in 1838. Francesco Vaccari, though not Viotti’s pupil, was his playing partner for several years in London both in private concerts and at the Philharmonic Society. We have learned of his admiration for Viotti, and that he taught a Viotti concerto to at least one pupil in Madrid. Thus, we may place him in the same category as Baillot, as a follower of Viotti, though his influence cannot be considered as comparable. This Spanish line of succession remains to be investigated. Mori was “respected as a teacher.” From 1819 to 1826 he taught Joseph Dando, who was later to become a prominent leader and chamber music musician. In 1823 Mori became a violin teacher at the newly formed Royal Academy of Music in London. His pupils there included Oury, C. A. Patey, Richards, Musgrove, and his own younger son, Nicholas.17 Patey later became a violin teacher at the Royal Academy of Music. The English line of succession after this point has not been ascertained, though it surely continued. Fémy taught John Ella in London in about 1819. Ella, though a minor violinist, who played in the King’s Theatre and Philharmonic orchestras, became a prominent figure in London’s concert life as a concert manager and music critic. Even the largely self-taught Paganini, who burst upon the international scene in the late 1820s and 1830s with his spectacular feats of virtuosity, did not interrupt the Viotti lineage, for he left no descendants, and founded no school. It may surprise some to learn that Paganini’s technique, which seemed to come from a different world, was grounded, in part, in the Viotti tradition.


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Paganini’s youthful concert repertory was centered around the concertos of Rode and of Kreutzer, and to a slightly lesser extent, those of Viotti, including nos. 17, 18, 22, and either 25 or 26—one of these last two was probably the “nuovissimo Concerto” he played in Reggio Emilia in June 1811, for example. Paganini continued to play the concertos of the Viotti school well into the 1820s; even at his sensationally successful concerts in Paris in the spring of 1831, he played movements from the concertos of Kreutzer and of Rode. There are unmistakable echoes of the concertos of Viotti in Paganini’s own concertos. In particular, the opening theme of Paganini’s Grande Concerto in E Minor, the second and third movements of no. 2 in B Minor, and the last movement of no. 4 in D Minor were clearly inspired by, respectively, the opening theme of Viotti’s no. 18, the second and third movements of no. 24, and the last movement of no. 25.18 The same reservations that have been expressed about teacher-pupil connections should be made about treatises and methods. No doubt Baillot’s ideas about violin playing, as set forth in his L’Art du violon of 1834, had evolved considerably in the thirty years since the publication of the method on which he had collaborated with Rode and Kreutzer. By 1834 Viotti had been dead for ten years, and Baillot had heard Paganini play. The extent to which the violin technique described in Baillot’s treatise reflects Viotti’s manner of playing is open to question. For example, who can say that the often-reproduced illustration of the position of the right arm with the bow at the frog, the elbow tucked in to the side, the wrist bent almost to its maximum capacity, was the way Viotti held the bow? This, of course, is crucially relevant to the whole matter of tone production. At any rate, this position of the bow arm has long since been superseded. On the other hand, Baillot’s L’art contains numerous musical examples taken from the works of Viotti to illustrate matters both of left-hand and bowing technique and of expression (as does Habeneck in his method of 1840). In at least one case Baillot refers specifically to Viotti’s own manner of playing: his practice of using vibrato on certain notes in his Concerto no. 19 and in his Quartet no. 15 (WII:15).19 In most of the examples, Viotti’s manner of playing is implied, if not stated explicitly. It seems reasonable to suppose that Baillot, who played chamber music with Viotti on numerous occasions over a period of twenty years, and thus had ample opportunity to observe Viotti’s manner of playing, would have been able to transmit the Viotti style to his pupils, and desirous of doing so. It should be added that, besides the several violin methods produced by the French school, Rode’s and Kreutzer’s studies for the violin are still considered essential for the training of violinists. The reports and critiques of Viotti’s playing in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung and the Berliner Musikzeitung served to disseminate Viotti’s reputation in Germanspeaking countries, and helped to establish his historical role. As early as 1784,

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Amico

a German almanac mentioned Viotti, but only in reference to his Parisian reputation: “In Paris he is preferred to all other violinists.”20 After Viotti’s move to London, the AMZ and other German periodicals often reviewed his performances. On 29 June 1793, the London correspondent of the Berliner Musikzeitung reported, “[ Viotti] is probably the greatest violinist in Europe today.” The same article described Viotti’s style in some detail: “A strong, full tone, indescribable fluency, purity, precision, shadow and light, combined with the most charming simplicity—these make up the characteristics of his performing style.”21 Eighteen years later, the AMZ of July 1811 described the characteristics of the Pugnani-Viotti school in remarkably similar terms (see above, p. 79), and named four performers recently heard in Warsaw, the violinists Eloy, Rode, and August Durand, and the cellist Jacques-Michel Hurel de Lamare, who, “even if not all of them are actually Viotti’s pupils [Rode and Durand were Viotti’s pupils], are nevertheless of his school, as one says of painters. They play in his spirit; and, more particularly, they handle their instruments according to his principles, which he in turn took from Pugnani’s school and developed in a creative manner.”22 Here we have the extension of the Viotti school beyond the violin to the cello,23 and, again, the notion of a genealogy of playing style. Not only his playing but also several of Viotti’s London concertos and other works were reviewed, sometimes in great detail, in the AMZ. For example, Concerto no. 20 was reviewed in the issue of 17 July 1799, Concerto no. 21 in that of 7 September 1803, no. 26 on 5 October 1808, and no. 27 on 22 May 1816. These reviews, though not lacking in criticisms, were generally very favorable. Apart from any consideration of the transmission of Viotti’s style and technique of violin playing, which remains elusive, his concertos continued to be published by prominent violinists and teachers throughout the nineteenth century in new editions, some of them intended as pedagogical vehicles. For example: Massart in the mid-1840s in Paris; David in around 1860 (nos. 23, 28, 29, and 22), “for use at the Conservatorium der Musik in Leipzig”; Alard (nos. 22 and 24) in 1868; and on into the twentieth century, notably with Joachim’s edition of no. 22 in his and Moser’s Violinschule of 1905.24 We have earlier quoted Edme Miel’s prophecy, “The fame of Viotti endures and will endure forever.” Viotti’s music has not yet, even remotely, regained the respect and popularity it enjoyed 200 years ago. Viotti belongs, for the rare concertgoer who has heard of him, not to the first or second rank of composers, but to the third or fourth. Of his twenty-nine concertos, only one, no. 22, remains precariously on the fringe of the concert violinist’s repertory. Violinists, in fact, to their everlasting shame, tend to think of him as a composer of student concertos. The established string quartet ensembles have been similarly reticent with regard to Viotti’s works in that genre. There have recently been encouraging signs of renewed interest in Viotti’s music. Many of his major works, including all the concertos, have been recorded by enterprising musicians on equally enterprising labels in the last ten years. While not amounting to a major revival,


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this initiative will perhaps contribute to a wider appreciation of Viotti’s works. One thing is certain. If Viotti’s music is to endure forever, it must be played. In chapter 5 it was noted that Viotti’s choice of friends, associates, and patrons in Paris was not always fortunate. In England it was much the same. Two of his closest friends had flawed personalities. William Chinnery, whom Viotti calls his “most intimate confidant” in his Précis, and “one of the best mortals who exist” in a letter of 1814,25 was forced to leave England in 1812 for having defrauded the Treasury of £80,000 in public funds. William Spencer was a kind of English counterpart of the Comte de Vaudreuil—charming, but perhaps lacking in substance. Charles Smith, Viotti’s partner in his wine business from 1796 to about 1818, turned out to be improvident, if not thoroughly dishonest. Viotti’s last years were tormented by his inability to recover the money that Smith owed him and Margaret Chinnery, the loss of which he attributed to Smith’s perfidy.26 But in his Précis of 1798 Viotti had referred to him as “one of the most perfect, honest men there ever was in the world, an excellent character.” Viotti made a similarly disastrous misjudgment of Joseph Cary. As early as 1805, Viotti apparently enjoyed the personal friendship of the Prince of Wales, who, though he was an intelligent and refined patron of the arts, was far better known for his vices than his virtues. In 1805 Viotti was not looking for a patron for himself—it was almost as if, by force of habit, he gravitated to the royal family. It was through his friendship with the prince, and with the Duke of Cambridge, that he was able to obtain British denizenship in 1811. By 1812, however, he was attempting to turn his friendship with the prince to the advantage of both William Chinnery and young George Chinnery, without success. Even the duke confined himself to words, not deeds, as Margaret complained to her husband in 1818.27 There is something terribly ironic about all of this in view of Viotti’s outstanding quality of constancy in friendship. Was he a poor judge of character, eager to see virtues, blind to faults? This would hardly seem to be the case—we have only to recall his peremptory treatment of his correspondents in the Opéra incident in 1789, his unflattering remarks about Haydn and about Johann Salomon, his excoriation of John Crosdill, his disdain for two or three lawyers and doctors, and his haughty tone with Gaspare Spontini and Ferdinando Paer. The one friendship that remained at the core of his existence, and never faltered, was with Margaret Chinnery. It is likely that they were lovers. His letters to her, for thirty years, are love letters. Toward the end of his life, one or two of these letters reveal a depth of feeling, a passion, that, if anything, had increased, not diminished, with the passing of time. Viotti was remarkably prescient when, in April 1794, having known her for less than two years, he wrote, “Adieu my dear, my good friend. Everything is transient, everything passes in life, but nothing will replace the attachment I feel toward you and all your family, and it will pass only with my life.”28


appendix one

375 Appendix 1. Map of Europe Showing Viotti’s Places of Activity

appendix two

G. B. Negri’s Biographical Note

R. GIAN BATTISTA VIOTTI, CELEBRATED COMPOSER AND VIOLIN virtuoso, who is believed to be living now in England, was born in Fontanetto in the province of Vercelli on 23 May 1753 [the date in a different hand, recte 12 May 1755], the son of Felice Viotti and Maddalena née Milano.* His father, though a blacksmith by trade, this being his only source of income [unico suo appannaggio], was a cultured man, who appreciated genteel and cultivated company; and as he was witty and something of a wag, he was well liked by everyone, and the gentlemen of the area, laymen and clergy alike, delighted in gathering in front of his shop to have a talk with him, and at not too late an hour they would also come into his house to be of the company [ far partita]. Indeed, since several of them were amateur players of one or another instrument it was a rare evening that they didn’t gather in the Viotti home to make music, in which Master Felice himself also played the horn [corno di caccia] reasonably well. Thus one may say that little Giambattista was born and grew up in the midst of music. Already at the age of eight or nine he could play the violin, though the poor boy had only the feeble and inexpert instruction that his father was able to give him. But fortunately there turned up in Fontanetto an Italian adventurer [venturiere] named Mr. Giovanni (his surname is unknown), who was a very good lutenist, not only in practice but also in his knowledge of music. So the gentlemen amateurs of music made it worth his while to stay here to give lessons, and he agreed to their terms. It was under this maestro that Viotti profited more than all the others from the lessons, began to make progress in the art, and to show signs of his great musical talent, and consequently of the success that he might achieve. Mr. Giovanni, after over a year in Fontanetto,

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was admitted to the chapel of the cathedral of Ivrea, having left the little Viotti quite capable of performing, indeed in a most praiseworthy fashion. All of this took place before 1764. It is not known whether in the year 1766 Mr. Giovanni, Viotti’s teacher, was still in Ivrea; it is known that in that year Giambattista was taken to that city by a certain Giovanni Pavia, an oboist and a member of the philharmonic society of Fontanetto, which had been invited to go there to play for a church feast day. It was not easy to persuade the young Viotti’s father to undertake this trip, but finally he agreed, convinced that it would not cost him anything and that it was in his interest for his son to be put to the test and to become known. Some say that this ceremony did not take place in the city itself, but in Strambino, which may well be so. In any case what is certain is that present at that ceremony was the bishop of Ivrea, who at that time was Monsignor Francesco Rorà, later to become the archbishop of Turin, and it is absolutely certain that after the church ceremony the entire orchestra, including the little Viotti, went to play dinner music for Monsignor the Bishop. From this moment we may say that Viotti’s good fortune began, for that most worthy prelate, marveling at the grace with which the lad played his part, and charmed by his surpassing modesty and his pleasing appearance, told him in so many words that he could make his fortune for him if he was willing to go to Turin to a great house, where a young nobleman was looking for a companion with whom to study the violin. There was no need to return to Fontanetto to ask permission of his father, since the latter was at his side, so, thanking the bishop for his generous good offices, and after having been given a beautiful reliquary, they left immediately for Turin with letters of recommendation to the Marchesa [ Marchioness] di Voghera. It was the Prince della Cisterna, only son of the Illustrious Marchesa, at that time about thirteen [recte eighteen] years old, who wished to have a companion, and so both the Marchesa and her son the little Marquis welcomed Viotti with great gratification and joy, and treated him kindly [lo aggradirono], and cherished him like a gift to them from the Mons. Rorà. Thus, the immediate provision of polite attendants [un compito equipaggio], the assigning of his rooms, his being entrusted to Mr. D. Eno, formerly the tutor of the little Marquis, as his teacher in the humanities, and especially in religion, his introduction to the entire family as a family friend, the providing of a music teacher in the person of one of the Ceronietti [recte Celoniat] brothers, the celebrated violin virtuosos, the promise of patronage for the entire Viotti family—all these were things that our little Giambattista’s father could see and appreciate in the ten or twelve days during which he stayed in Turin. From such good beginnings there could only be a good continuation, and an excellent conclusion. In fact, as the young Giovanni grew older he grew also in virtue and in the good graces of his patrons, and just as he owed so much of his wonderful success to the Pozzo della Cisterna family, so they never had

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occasion to regret having helped that virtuoso, and such was Viotti’s fineness of character and such the respect he felt for his benefactors, that they always looked upon him as a son; there were no endearments that the little Marquis did not bestow upon him, as witnessed by the students from Fontanetto who were in Turin, who, on the insistence of that most amicable gentleman, often went to visit their townsman; and such was the care taken of Viotti by that family that for all his early years he never came to his native town without being accompanied by a servant. Giambattista’s brother german, Giuseppe, could have enjoyed similar advantages, he also having a natural bent for the violin, if only he had been less scatter-brained, but such was the state of affairs that Giambattista, who with the blessing of his patrons had taken his brother under his wing to teach him, in the end was forced to send him away as incorrigible, and it was this Viotti who for many years led an utterly irregular [romanzesca] life and finally ended up living with a married sister in Montiglio. To return to Giambattista: he not only had as a teacher the above-mentioned Mr. Cerionetti, but also latterly perfected himself under the famous Pugnani, not long after which he was admitted among the virtuosi of the Chapel of the King of Sardinia, and the news of his skill became known, not only in Turin, but also all over the country. And since it was only right that his reputation be spread further afield, he undertook a trip to the North in the company of Mr. Pugnani, from which he profited considerably, having brought home money and jewels and gifts received in the various courts in which he had the honor to be heard, principally that of the King of Poland, of Catherine the Great, Tsarina of Russia, and of many other princes of Germany. He undertook another voyage, again with Mr. Pugnani, to France and Italy, on the occasion of the latter’s traveling to London to produce an opera, and it is known that on this trip they earned as much as they could have wished; but Viotti in particular had such success in Paris that upon returning from London he remained there, leaving Pugnani, who returned alone to Piedmont. However, after a few months Viotti also returned to his homeland, but only to ask for leave from the royal chapel and to look after his good elderly father, and to provide for his family, resolved, once having done all of this, to go back to France. In fact Viotti was seen for the last time in Fontanetto in the summer of 1783. He moved his family to another house, furnished the new house in a refined style, received several of his friends on the feast day of St. Bononio, gave a ball in the evening, and gave several hunting parties. During this visit to Fontanetto Viotti renewed his ties with all his relatives and old friends, and, on simply being asked, he played the violin. Then he went to the fair at Alessandria, having been invited, and was received and presented with gifts at the home of the Ghillini family. Finally, having returned to his home town and having bought a country house in the territory of Salussola, toward Bariano, he left for Turin and from there returned to France, where it seems likely that he enjoyed the patronage of


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some important persons. In 1784 his father Felice Viotti died, leaving his second wife a widow with two sons and two daughters. Giambattista entrusted this family to Mr. D. Reale, then the curate of the sub-parish [succursale] of St. Maria da Po, with whom he subsequently corresponded about affairs as the need arose. But in the end the revolution in France broke out, and our Viotti, sickened by the wretched terroristic times, managed to flee to London. From that time on there has rarely been news of him here. It was said that he married and it was also said that once he was robbed, but these things have never been confirmed. It was also said that, intending to return to Piedmont, he got as far as Hamburg, but learning of the troubles in Piedmont at that time, he decided to return to England. In the meantime his widowed stepmother died here, the sisters married away from the town, and the two sons joined the army.^ [Here four lines are struck out.] To conclude, no one speaks anymore of the Viotti family here because not one of them is left. But the memory lingers of Mr. Giambattista, who brought honor to his homeland [ patria], making his mark in the world, and of whom we gladly hear news when the newspapers occasionally make honorable mention of his name. [ The following lines, replacing those struck out, are in a different hand, shown by Romana Raina to be that of Negri]: ^ The last of these, that is Gio˜ Maria, as captain in the light infantry [tirailleurs] of the Po and a member of the Legion of Honor,1 died on the field of honor in the battle of Wagram, and the other, that is Gio˜ Andrea, after having as an officer obtained his recall to headquarters [? ritirata] [interlinear and marginal insertion: “and he remains so at present [?]”] [and] after the death of the brother, was promoted to major-adjutant in the first regiment [?] of the Guard in Paris.

appendix three

“Précis of the Life of J. B. Viotti since His Entrance into the World until March 6, 1798”

HE IDEA OF HAVING BEEN MISUNDERSTOOD, OF HAVING BEEN

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judged unfavorably, weighs too heavily on my heart for me not to attempt by every means possible to erase the fatal impression that mischance has cast upon my actions.* One of the best seems to me to give a perfectly ingenuous and sincere précis of my life, since my entry into the world until today. I shall do this, then, and I shall relate faithfully the good and the bad of my actions; and God, who sees into everyone’s soul, will be the severe witness of the sincerity of mine. Oh, you who hold the scales of justice in your hands, you who desire only to make good use of them, you who are repulsed by evil, deign to cast your eyes on these lines, to read them with benevolence and pronounce impartially if I am guilty or not. Born into an honest family, which intended another way of life [état] for me, in spite of them I chose the musical profession. I came from Lombardy, my birthplace, to study in Turin. And there, under the protection of the Prince de la Cisterna, at whose home I lodged, I passed my youth in heedless play and endless study. Having reached the age when I believed myself to be capable of something, I left that city with the intention of traveling and of gradually developing my talent. Geneva was the first place where I was heard. That was, I believe, in 1780, and thanks to the encouragement that I received there I resolved to continue my travels. A slight celebrity had already preceded me in Berne; I did not delay in following it. I was received there with all the benevolence that I could have desired, and my taste for travel became stronger and stronger. 380

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I departed from Switzerland and arrived in Dresden. I had the honor of being presented to the Elector and he had the goodness to applaud my talent. Then I went to Berlin. Monsieur the Count Fontana, then Ambassador of the King of Sardinia at the Prussian court, had the goodness to receive me and to lodge me in his home. No opportunity was missed to have entrance to the respectable houses of that capital. It was there that I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Liston, now one of His Britannic Majesty’s ministers, who has always manifested a sincere interest in me. Frederick the Great did me the honor of listening to me, and I had the honor of often making music with the last, deceased King. I left that country, and, armed with letters of recommendation, I presented myself at Warsaw where I was received as I had been in Prussia. From there I departed for St. Petersburg; Prince Potemkin introduced me to the Empress, she deigned to hear me, and the present Emperor also honored me with his approval. I departed that Empire toward the end of 1781. I visited again some of those Northern courts to which I owed such recognition, and I finally arrived in Paris, with the intention of staying there two or three months to be heard in a large theater. I had the good fortune (perhaps I should say bad fortune) to be well received, and, still young and inexperienced, month by month, year by year, I allowed myself to be led on, and I remained for ten years. It was after I had lived for two years in that city that Her Majesty the Queen of France desired to hear me. She honored me with her approbation, and from then on I decided not to play in public again, and to devote myself entirely to the service of that sovereign, who recompensed me by obtaining for me, when Monsieur de Calonne was the minister, a pension of 150 pounds, which I was not able to enjoy for long. Favored by the good will of Her Majesty and of all the royal family, invited everywhere, and careful to conduct myself in such a manner as to enable the invitations to continue, I led a life, if not completely happy, at least very agreeable, when that dreadful revolution began and disrupted everything, setting everything back from top to bottom. Having placed almost all my money in the enterprise of an Italian theater, with what fear must I not have been struck at the approach of that terrible scourge, what stratagems must I not have used to pull myself back from the precipice that yawned! Ah, it is easy to imagine. Everyone wore the uniform of the National Guard. I did the same. I was obliged to all the more because my theater was known to be under the patronage of the Queen, the rendezvous of aristocrats. Everyone mounted guard; I was forced to do so like the others. Everyone tried, in this frightful confusion, to have the support of a member of the Assembly; I also tried—my fortune and my life depended on it, and I must admit that it seemed to me that I knew good and honest men.

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Appendix Three

Finally the emigration began. My acquaintances, my friends, all fled in fear. Perhaps, had I fled as they did, I could have saved my possessions, but that was not at all within my power, and besides it is an act that I have always condemned, a form of cowardliness which I declared myself against. A man must die at his post, and good sense has always dictated that if honest people, educated people, leave their places, evil and ignorant people will undoubtedly triumph. Anxious, tormented, living in a continual trance, my existence was truly a burden. However, despite all the measures that my extremely critical situation forced me to take, despite the fear for my life and my fortune that assailed me incessantly, I must here declare, as I have already declared, that I was never involved in the revolution nor in politics directly or indirectly, that my statements have never been blameworthy, and finally, that, up to the moment of my departure, I lived in alternating fear and hope, having done nothing reprehensible to diminish my anxieties. In 1792, the state of my affairs becoming progressively worse, anticipating the new misfortunes, the new horrors of that second assembly which replaced the first, and of which I had the good luck not to know a single member, I decided to sell what I owned, to liquidate the debts of my unfortunate theater, and to abandon a country in which an honest man could no longer live in peace, where I had suffered so many persecutions and where I had lost almost everything. I departed from it indeed before the distressing arrest of its Sovereigns, and arrived in England on the twenty-first or twenty-second of July of the same year. I was engaged to play in Mr. Salomon’s Concert, I had the satisfaction of having success there, and since then I have planned to end my days in that beautiful country where I found everything in accordance with my intentions. However, I was obliged to absent myself again. The death of my mother in Italy necessitated it. I left on 21 July 1793, I crossed over Germany, the Tyrol, and I arrived in my homeland by way of Venice. I organized my affairs, and those of my brothers, still children, and I journeyed back through Switzerland, Germany and Flanders, then belonging to the Emperor, and toward the end of December was back in London, resolved to establish myself so as never to leave again. Alas, I was far from being able to prevent what then happened to me. Although my fate has almost always been to live in the great world, I have never liked it, and a small number of good and sensitive friends is all that my heart ardently desires. After I had traveled so much in Europe, so much lived among others, the heavens finally granted me my wish. I made the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Chinnery, two beings who possess the most estimable qualities in the highest degree. Good, compassionate, faithful friends, their excellent souls lack nothing. As soon as I met them I loved them, and as soon as they met me they cherished me equally. Since that happy moment I have devoted my life to them. The world, society, amusements,

“Précis of the Life of J. B. Viotti”

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nothing of all that has had any attraction without them, and their house, where I lived as a family member, as a brother, has become mine, where I would have always wished to be, which I would never have wanted to leave. Mr. Chinnery, that tender friend of whom I can never think without great emotion, became my closest confidant. From him I have never ventured to hide anything, to him I have confided everything, said everything. He could read the slightest of my thoughts, he knew of all my actions, and I can say that my soul is as well known to him as it is to me. If he is questioned he will answer to the truth of what I say. Living thus in the bosom of friendship, I was, however, frustrated by the pursuit of my career, and the irritation it caused me made me decide to renounce it and to follow another path. I informed my friend, he approved, and we agreed that I should collect all of my small fortune, put it into business, and establish myself as a wine merchant. It is again that rare friend, that good Mr. Chinnery, to whom I am indebted for being associated with one of the most perfect, honest men in the world, an excellent character, Mr. Charles Smith, with whom I invested all that I possessed, and with whom I lived peaceably for fourteen months which passed by as if in a day. Dear friends who know me so well, in all fairness, have you ever had cause to complain about my conduct? Possessing all that I could wish in England, I have maintained no connections whatsoever with France. I have written only four letters to that country: my friends know of them, and they know that I never received a reply to them. May it be permitted to give their contents here. It will serve to dispel any misunderstanding, which is probably the cause of the dreadful misfortune that has befallen me. The first I wrote to Mr. Cherubini, the famous composer, to ask of him all the scores of his masterpieces. That, along with protestations of friendship, composed the content. The second was to a private individual in Dijon to ask him for wine from Burgundy and Champagne. Mr. Smith dictated it to me and it was sent only with his consent. These two letters were carried by a certain Mr. Goti, an Italian painter who was returning to France. The third was written at the request of Mr. Borgo, minister from Genoa, to recommend a Mr. Ramorino, his friend, the captain of a vessel, who was in Paris to initiate proceedings to have his goods restituted which a French corsair had stolen from him returning from the Indies. In this I was eager to be of service, for his situation was deserving of pity, and to direct it if possible to the authorities, whom I did not know, who had it within their power to help this unfortunate person. The fourth and last was again written to oblige a person whom I love and esteem, desiring information from France about an affair that concerned her personally. She herself wrote the details and asked me to copy them.

384

Appendix Three

I transcribed these details, putting them in letter-form, and that is all that this letter contained. The same person is ready to certify the truth of this whenever it might be required. These two last-named letters were sent by the [diplomatic] pouch of the above-mentioned minister of Genoa, to whom I delivered them personally. That is all that has come from my pen, to which I can swear from the bottom of my heart. If it is this [i.e., the writing of these letters] that could have cast suspicion upon me, that could have obscured the purity of my actions, and bring about my disgrace, I regret it, shedding bitter tears at my ingenuousness. With a little reflection upon the circumstances, I could have suppressed these unfortunate letters, but such was my innocence, such my unawareness of evil, that it did not even occur to me that I had done something foolish. Supreme judge to whom I direct these lines, you upon whom depend my wellbeing and my happiness, deign, I beg of you, to examine the facts; and may your accustomed integrity bring you to discern my innocence, through this fateful veil in which it has been enveloped. Here I end this Précis, and, full of confidence in your goodness, perfectly certain of my irreproachable conduct, sustained by hope, I shall await the end of my misfortunes. May it arrive soon, may I soon see again the happy Isle where I left all my affections, where I left all my possessions. Then I will praise the heavens and my liberators, and I shall live ever after as I have always lived, as a loyal and faithful subject of His Britannic Majesty. Hamburg, 23 March 1798 [signed] J. B. Viotti

appendix four

Viotti’s Letter to the Prince della Cisterna

SCHÖNFELDZ THIS 30 JUNE 1798* My Prince I have learned with the greatest emotion of the sincere interest that Your Excellence has deigned to take in my miserable disaster; and the assurance that my friend Cerruti gave me of it, proving to me that the compassionate heart of my Benefactor remains unchanged, moved me to tears. No, my Prince, believe me, I have never been unworthy of your kindnesses, and however much it may seem that my youth was perhaps a little too high spirited, I venture to think that if ever I have the pleasure of recounting to Your Excellence all the circumstances of my life, of describing faithfully the good and the bad, of weighing the faults of fortune against my own, I venture to think, I say, that you will pity me rather than blame me. O my Prince, would that you had granted me your protection to be a good peasant, instead of to acquire a skill! My gratitude and your benevolence would have been the same, and my suffering so much less that I would have been spared the heartbreak. The time we pass on this earth is not worth the effort, and to eat the cabbages that one has planted oneself,1 to lead a simple and modest life amidst one’s children, is worth infinitely more, I believe, than the vain hope for fame and fortune, by which I have let myself be carried away. It is once again this miserable talent that is the cause of my present disgrace. The Supreme Being, that Being who sees everything, who judges everything, knows whether I have deserved it or not. My Prince, I am innocent, I have nothing for which to reproach myself, not even an indiscretion. But such was the power of those who wished to bring me down, that a pure and spotless conduct of six years could not save me from [their] traps of the blackest 385

386

Appendix Four

maliciousness. There is a Providence, however, and justice will be done. Confident of the purity of my actions, I await with resignation the end of my sufferings. That happy hour will not, I hope, be long in coming; the friends I left in England, and the general tokens of attachment and esteem that I received there before my departure, assure me that this hope is well founded: but were it to be mistaken, may I yet find some consolation in the depths of my heart, since it is beyond reproach. This consolation will be all the greater, my Prince, if I have the pleasure of convincing Your Excellence of this truth. Your opinion means more to me than any other, and it will be a great relief if it reaches me [here] in my retreat such as I wish for and as I deserve. Your Excellence will see from the date of this letter that I am lodged in the country, nine miles from Hamburg, at the home of a rich English merchant, a good, faithful friend. We lead the life of two good farmers; he busies himself with the fields, I work in the gardens. The city rarely sees me. Excepting those days when my wine business (which thank heaven for the care taken by my partner in London proceeds just as if I were there) obliges me to go there, I am never tempted to set foot there. The people we receive here are all good and worthy merchants. I almost never concern myself with music because it has caused me too much pain, and thus the bitter days pass, that end only very slowly. I hope that Your Excellence is well, that you enjoy all the happiness that a man can hope to enjoy. If Heaven heeds my wishes, no one on earth will be happier than you, my Prince. Deign to pardon all the details that my heavy heart has forced me to describe, and believe that, for all my life, I will be, with the deepest gratitude, and the most profound attachment and respect, of your Excellence, the most humble and most obedient servant, [signed] G.B. Viotti

appendix five

Viotti’s Will

PARIS, 13 DECEMBER 1822* Testament, or, my last wishes. In the presence of my Creator, before whom I stand to have my unhappy life weighed in the balance, herewith I declare my last wishes, beseeching my friends Gustave Gasslar, residing at n. 17 Boulevard Poissonière, and William Chinnery, residing in Le Havre, or, in his absence, his son, George Robert Chinnery, residing in London, to be the executors of my will and to carry out in every detail what follows. Not only do I die without riches but what is more I die leaving a debt that torments my soul, that is, one which my misfortunes caused me to incur from Madame Chinnery, née Tresilian. . . . This good, excellent being, in order to help me in my business, was kind enough to put at my disposal the sum of twentyfour thousand francs. The business went bankrupt and I was forced to give up not only my own funds, but also the twenty-four thousand francs lent with such unselfishness and generosity. This sacred debt is the misfortune of my life and will disturb the repose of my eternal soul, if I am so unlucky as to be unable to repay it. I wish, if God calls me before Him before I have been able to acquit this debt owed to the purest of friendships, that all I have in the world be sold, liquidated and made over to Mad. Chinnery née Tresilian or to her heirs, asking her only to pay my brother the sum of eight hundred francs that I owe him. All the remainder she will take as a small recompense for the large sum that I owe her. I wish also that nothing be put aside for my burial: a little earth will suffice for a miserable creature like me. Two manuscript concertos will be found among my music; two violins will be found, of which one, by Clotz, already belongs to Mad. Chinnery, but the 387

388

Appendix Five

other, a Stradivarius, is mine; it is excellent and should obtain a good little sum. I also have two or three gold snuff boxes, as well as a gold watch. All of that must belong to the above-mentioned Lady, and I expect my good friends to carry out my wishes. Alas! After all I will be far from being able to acquit this sacred debt which weighs so heavily upon my heart. But if God does not answer my prayers, if He does not allow me enough time to fulfill my obligations entirely, my friend, that perfect creature, whom I know only too well how to treat as she deserves [à qui je sait si bien rendre justice], will forgive me. She well knows that it is not my fault if I die miserably, and if I find myself in the position of being unable to repay all that I owe her. I am also sure that she will shed bitter tears at my memory and that she will never cease praying to the Supreme Being for the repose of my soul. It is with this conviction, tears in my eyes, that I bid her an eternal farewell. I say this to you, my dear good friends, even though well aware that I will not be witness when you read these lines. Farewell, shed a tear, breathe a sigh for the unfortunate one who addresses to you his last prayers. Done in Paris, 13 December 1822. signed [signé] J. B. Viotti1

appendix six

Viotti’s Siblings

Name

Date of Birth

Date of Death

1. Anna Margarita 2. Anna Caterina Adelaide 3. Domenica Maria 4. Domenica Matilda 5. Giovanni Battista 6. Giovanni Battista 7. Domenica Matilda 8. Domenica Maria Celestina 9. Giuseppe Antonio Giacinto

29 Nov. (?)11746 16 August 1748 10 February 1750 13 February 1752 23 May 1753 12 May 1755 14 March 1758 1 July 1760 16 February 1763

16 June 1748 after 9 April 18032 19 August 1751 23 May 1752 10 July 1754 3 March 1824 1 July 1759 ? before 26 Feb. 17723 after 1810 (?)

10. Francesca Maddalena 11. Domenica Appolonia 12. Giovanni Andrea 13. Anna Margarita 14. Domenica Maria 15. Domenica Maria 16. Giovanni Andrea 17. Francesco Giovanni Andrea 18. Giovanni Maria 19. Teresa Margarita Domenica

24 August 1764 9–10 February 1767 4 February 1768 16 January 1769 26 February 1772 27 May 1775 27 May 1775 28 January 1777 27 November 1779 13 December 1782

after 5 September 17864 ? before 27 May 1775 after 17795 before 27 May 1775 ? before 28 January 1777 30 October 18226 5–6 July 18097 ?

The Fontanetto register of deaths for the period after 1759 appears to be missing.

389

390

Appendix Six

According to the Negri biographical sketch (see appendix 2), two sons and two daughters of Felice Viotto by his second wife survived their mother, who died in 1793, according to Viotti’s Précis. The two sons, whom Negri calls “l’ultimo [fratello] Gio˜[vanni] Maria” and “l’altro [fratello] Gio˜[vanni] Andrea,” must have been, respectively, no. 18, above, and, almost certainly, no. 17 (that is, not no. 16, for the reason analogous to that in note 3 below; the first of two or three given names was often ignored in everyday usage). Of the two daughters, who, according to Negri, married away from the town, one was no. 10, and the other was most likely no. 13, since she lived well beyond infancy, though of course that is not an infallible indication.

appendix seven

Viotti’s Places of Residence in Paris and London

Listed with first sources when available, and with page references to the present book in square brackets.

Paris Ca. Jan.–March 1782

Home of Baron de Bagge? Rue de la Feuillade, at the Place des Victoires. AMZ, 16 September 1801, cols 840–41. [ p. 69]

By 8 April 1782

Rue du Doyenné. Journal de Paris, 8 April 1782. [ p. 69]

1785

Rue de Richelieu, Hôtel de Chartres (site today no. 40). Tablettes de renommée, 1785. [ p. 132]

1786

20 rue Notre-Dame-des-Victoires. Concert olympique directory of 1786. [ p. 132]

By 12 April 1789

27 rue Royale, Place Louis XV. Viotti’s letter to “Monseigneur,” 12 April 1789. F-Pan O1 613, no. 123. [ p. 138]

1791

8 rue de La Michodière. Aaad, 29 January 1791: announcement giving this address as that of the Bureau de la Direction of the Théâtre de Monsieur; Pougin 1888, p. 50n. [ p. 148]

391

392

Appendix Seven

Note: Anne Chastel 1976, in a “List of publishers, dealers or musicians selling music,” gives Viotti’s and Cherubini’s address as “rue de Valois” (pp. 70, 64). But she provides neither dates nor a source other than a list of six newspapers dated 1774–89 and the Almanach de Paris dated 1787. I have been unable to corroborate this information. I know of no other reference to Viotti selling music in the period 1782–92.

London By 15 April 1793

47 Curzon Street, Mayfair (Hüllmandel residence). Times, 15 April 1793. [ p. 176]

1794

Corner of Wells Street (no. 34) and Charles Street (no. 16). Doane’s A Musical Directory for the Year 1794; newspaper advertisements for Viotti’s benefit concert of 23 May 1794. [ p. 187]

By 19 Aug. 1796

Edward Street, Cavendish Square, no 27. Pleyel contract. [ p. 208]

1796–1812

Gillwell (1798–ca. 1799 in Schönfeld). [ p. 208]

Ca. Jan. 1797–March 1798

3 Duke Street. Viotti’s Précis. [ p. 209]

Ca. Aug. 1812–ca. June 1817

10 Charles Street, Manchester Square. Chinnery Family Papers (CFP). [ p. 273]

Ca. June 1817–2 Dec. 1823

17 Montagu Street, Portman Square. CFP. [ p. 305]

2 Dec. 1823–3 March 1824

5 Upper Berkeley Street, Portman Square. CFP. [ p. 360]

Paris After 28 June 1819

Temporary residence at 38 rue Bassedu-Rempart. CFP. [ pp. 318–19 and n. 9]

1819–23

Châtillon. CFP. [ pp. 318–19]

Late 1819–at least 1 Sept. 1820

46 rue Neuve-des-Mathurins. CFP. [ p. 319]

By 2 March 1821

9 rue Taitbout. CFP. [ p. 479n114]

Viotti’s Places of Residence in Paris and London

June/July 1821–ca. Dec. 1821

Hôtel de Choiseul, rue Grange Batellier. CFP. [ p. 344 and n. 150]

Winter 1822–23

Rue d’Artois, and [46] rue Neuvedes-Mathurins. CFP. [ p. 354 and n. 33]

393

appendix eight

Viotti’s Violins

Viotti’s First Violin According to Gaspare DeGregori,1 followed by Fétis, Viotti’s father bought a “bad violin” (cattivo violino) for his eight-year-old son at the fair at Crescentino, very near Fontanetto Po. At the present writing, there is a violin (normal sized, unlabeled), said to be this violin, held in the Fontanetto parochial archive, to be placed eventually in a planned Viotti museum in the village. In 2001 this violin was restored by Lando Fanfani, Florence, its condition having deteriorated badly. According to Mr. Fanfani, this instrument is indeed a “study violin” (violino di studio) of the mid-eighteenth century. Romana Raina, in her dissertation of 1985 (pp. 21–28), citing an article by Mario Ferrarotti in the Vercellese newspaper Sesia, 25 October 1955, gives an account of how the violin, after having been given by Viotti, or by his father, to G. B. Negri, was kept in the Negri family for about 150 years, before being turned over to the parish. The bow that is now kept with the violin is of a relatively recent construction, and its provenance is unknown.

Viotti’s “Best Violin” Almost certainly the Stradivari violin mentioned by Viotti in his will of 13 December 1822 (“it is excellent and should obtain a good little sum”) is the one that was sold at the Hôtel Bullion auction in 1824 for 3,816 francs, and which George Chinnery refers to in a letter to his mother of 23 August 1824 (“poor dear Amico’s best violin appears from your statement to have sold tolerably 394

Viotti’s Violins

395

well”).2 The question is, which Stradivari violin was it? Denise Yim makes the plausible assumption that it was the violin purchased by Viotti in February 1810 from the Sicilian nobleman Prince Butera, and known among the members of the Chinnery family as the “Buttera.”3 Since there is no mention in the subsequent Viotti-Chinnery correspondence of Viotti selling this violin, or of his acquiring another, this indeed seems to be a reasonable assumption. The subsequent history of this violin can be traced with reasonable certainty, perhaps most securely in reverse chronological order: a remarkably well-preserved Stradivari violin, dated 1709, commonly called the “Viotti,” now in the collection of the Royal Academy of Music, London, was acquired in 1897 by the violin experts and dealers W. E. Hill and Sons, also the authors of a book on Stradivari. At this time, Alfred Hill wrote a private note about this violin: This violin was sold after Viotti’s death at the Hotel Bouillion in 1824, the sale was recorded in the Harmonicon for September 1824, No. 21, page 174, it is also mentioned in Dubourg[4] page 239, the price stated is 3,800 francs. The following guarantee given by Vuillaume in 1862 also mentions this fact: “Je soussigné certifie que le violon designé cicontre par le reçus de Madame Brochant de Villiers est parfaitement authentique de Stradivarius et entièrement de l’auteur. Il a appartenu à Viotti et a été vendu à sa vente en ma présence 3,816 francs à Monsieur Menessier qui l’a cédé plus tard à Monsieur Brochant de Villiers. Cet instrument a toujours été considéré comme un des plus parfait de Stradivarius. À mon avis c’est aussi un des plus beaux. Paris le 12 Octobre 1862.”5 Vuillaume’s testimony that the violin in his hands in 1862 was the same instrument that had been sold in 1824, in his presence, is crucial. Vuillaume was one of the most prominent violin makers of the nineteenth century, and an expert on Stradivari’s violins. It is inconceivable that he could have been mistaken in this identification. Fétis, in his book on Stradivari of 1856, lists “Viotti’s violin, which belongs to M. Brochant de Villiers” as among the five “most beautiful known instruments” of Stradivari.6 According to the Hill book, “in 1860 it changed hands at the price of 5,500 francs.”7 Charles Beare has provided further details: “In 1860 the widow of Monsieur Brochant de Villiers sold it to a Monsieur Meunié (Meunier?—I have both spellings), and it came from his family [to Hill and Sons] via H.C. Silvestre of Paris in 1897.”8 The history of this violin after its acquisition by Hill and Sons in 1897 is clear and straightforward.9 There is a misprint in the first edition (1902) of the Hill book, by which “the violin used by Viotti until his death” and sold in Paris by public auction, is dated from the year 1712.10 In the second edition (1909, 161) this date is corrected to 1709, but unfortunately the error has led to some confusion, including, probably,

396

Appendix Eight

the garbling of the information about this instrument in the otherwise admirable book by H. Goodkind. The pre-Viotti history of the “Viotti” Strad remains unknown. ErcoleMichele Branciforte e Pignatelli, on the death of his father on 10 June 1800, became Prince Butera, one of the two or three most highly placed noblemen in Sicily. At the time of the sale of the violin in February 1810 he was certainly resident in Palermo, so that the transaction with Viotti must have involved an intermediary.11 According to an English visitor, the prince “lives in the most magnificent manner; […] he is liberal, hospitable, and generous, and shows great attention to all Englishmen.” Despite his immense income, “he is, however, much in debt.”12 We may surmise that Prince Butera sold the violin to raise some much-needed cash. According to Denise Yim, the transaction with Viotti may have involved a friend in common in England.13 The prince died in Naples on 9 June 1814.

Two Further References to Violins Connected with Viotti’s Name 1. An announcement in the Correspondance des amateurs musiciens, 25 December 1802, under the rubric “Commercial announcements”: “An excellent Cremonese violin, by Bautista [sic] Ruggiero, with his name and the date 1704 inside, perfectly preserved and for a long time played by the celebrated Viotti. Apply to Citizen Pique, luthier, rue des Deux Sens, entering to the right by rue de Grenelle-Saint Honoré, corner house, third floor, where it may be seen and played.” François-Louis Pique (1758–1822) was one of the most prominent violin makers in Paris. The violins of Giovanni Battista Rugeri (Ruggieri) (1653–1711) are now highly regarded. The claim that this instrument was played by Viotti of course cannot be verified. The announcement was placed about two months after Viotti’s departure from Paris after a sojourn of two and a half months. 2. According to Antoine Vidal,14 Viotti owned a violin made in about 1817 by François Chanot, which was later acquired by the Conservatoire of Paris, and is now in the collection of the Musée Cité de la Musique. Chanot’s instruments were experimental, with an unusual, guitar-like shape and construction, described in some detail by Vidal, who also says that Chanot’s system is explained in the Moniteur universel of Friday, 22 August 1817. Cozio di Salabue, in a memorandum dated 23 January 1819, gives his opinion (largely unfavorable) of this model, based on a description sent to him, not having seen it in person. Near the beginning of this memorandum Cozio writes that he “intends no disrespect to the opinion which it is said has been made by the celebrated performer [suonatore] monsieur Viotti, whom I respect highly, but in his own art [i.e., area of expertise]” (che molto venero, però nell’arte sua).15 Apparently, then, Viotti’s opinion had been favorable. The instrument now in the Musée Cité de la Musique collection is illustrated in Giazotto 1956 (Tav. XXVIII). On

Viotti’s Violins

397

the table of the violin is inscribed “A Viotti/P. I. T.” (Primiero Intra Tutti), and, according to Pougin,16 the label inside the instrument bears the words “Chanot, par brevet d’invention, 21 janvier 1818. Paris et Mirecourt, C. I. D. N° 26.” According to Vidal, the letters “C. I. D.” are the initials of Chanot’s position as “capitaine-ingénieur de deuxième classe.”

appendix nine

Notes on Viotti’s Violin Method

P

ierre baillot reports that when he last spoke with viotti in 1823, Viotti had just begun this work. Viotti’s writing is slightly crabbed in places, showing signs of haste or infirmity. François Habeneck seems to have reproduced the two main parts of this fragment not in the order intended by Viotti. In section no. 4 of the first part (Habeneck’s numbering), Viotti refers to “the reasons already stated” that the scale to be studied first should be that of G (major), not of C. But Habeneck places the part titled “Of the Scale,” containing the relevant passage, after, not before this reference. Are we justified in supposing that some or all of the didactic principles in this fragment reflect Viotti’s own early training, under Celoniat and Gaetano Pugnani? It should be pointed out that, as far as we know, Viotti’s only violin pupils who were beginners were the two Chinnery boys. All the others were more or less advanced students who had begun under other teachers.

Selected Excerpts (translated from the original French) No. 1. A brief paragraph on the irrelevance to his purposes of a learned disquisition on the origins of the violin. No. 2. Heading: “My opinion on the manner of teaching and of learning to play the violin.” “The most appropriate time to begin to play the violin is at the age of seven. Before that, the faculties are not developed enough, and later, the muscles acquire a degree of strength that is detrimental to flexibility and delicacy of movement.” 398

Notes on Viotti’s Violin Method

399

One naturally wonders whether Viotti himself began to play the violin at the age of seven. Negri says that Giambattista was scarcely eight or nine years old when he could already play, which lends credence to the supposition. No. 3. The pupil should take the violin in hand only after having acquired a thorough knowledge of the theory of music, “which I believe I have sufficiently treated in an earlier section.” This section Viotti apparently never wrote. See also section no. 6 below. No. 4. “Before beginning scales, the teacher will train the pupil to place the bow precisely at the halfway point between the bridge and the fingerboard, [and] to draw it up and down for its entire length on the four open strings, one at a time, never on two at the same time, always slowly. He should also take care that for each note the bow is raised above the string” (à chaque note l’archet soit levé de dessus la corde). Viotti presumably means to lift the bow slightly between bow strokes. No. 5. Recommends that the teacher and the pupil play the G major scale together, two, three, or four times, “until the pupil has a sufficient idea of it,” after which the pupil may be permitted to play it by himself. No. 6. “The teacher will ensure that the pupil draws the bow according to the rules.” Here Viotti refers to a separate chapter, which he says in section no. 3 will be devoted to the bow grip and stroke, along with another chapter on the handling of the violin—chapters he apparently never wrote. His comments would have thrown much light on Viotti’s fabled tone production; particularly revealing would have been his description of the placement of the fingers on the bow, and the movements of the arm in drawing the bow. He recommends that the pupil in the early stages never practice alone, and that he be allowed to do so (“accorded this favor”) only when the teacher is certain that he will practice systematically and carefully. This principle may well reflect the influence of the didactic method of Margaret Chinnery and/or Madame de Genlis, that is, the idea of constant, or near-constant supervision of a child’s learning process, akin to the modern Suzuki method of having the parent(s) participate much more actively than traditionally in the early stages of a child’s learning to play a musical instrument. No. 7. The study of the simple scale (G major) will probably take a year or two, especially if one adds to it the principles of music theory. Then the student may begin to play simple melodies or studies, “easier than scales, so that, not being obliged to pay attention to the notes, the pupil can progressively gain control over the instrument and acquire good intonation.” These studies should at first be step-wise, with very few skips, and always two notes to a bar, so that each bar begins with a down-bow. “[Then] the teacher can write other [studies] in the same key, including a few eighth notes and then dotted notes, increasing the difficulty little by little, without, however, ever neglecting in any lesson the scale, which must always be

400

Appendix Nine

the cornerstone of [acquiring good] intonation, and the chief object of study. Therefore the key of G should not be abandoned until the intonation is perfect. One should not be in any hurry whatsoever—three or four months if necessary—the scales in the other keys will be learnt all the more readily. Everyone knows that certain teachers, who are in too much of a hurry, allow their pupils to acquire faults that can never be eradicated, and that is why I strongly condemn those who believe that any mediocre musician is good enough for a beginner.” Then follows the part (designated no. 8 by Habeneck) devoted to the scale (see chapter 1 in the present work), concluding with the reason for beginning with the scale in G, rather than C, namely that it entails a more consistent placement of the fingers on the whole tones and semitones from string to string.

appendix ten

A Selection of Withdrawals from William Chinnery’s Account at Drummonds Bank

1793*

1794

1795

1796

1797

1798

8 April 22 June 20 July 29 Aug. 5 Sept. 16 Sept. 20 Sept. 15 Mar. 30 May 2 Sept. 26 Jan. 2 April 22 Aug. 20 Feb. 26 April 20 Sept. 7 Nov. 22 Nov. 23 Dec. 28 Jan. 13 April 7 May 3 June 5 July 3 Aug. 17 Aug.

Mr Salomon Viotti Viotti Viotti Mons[ieur] de Viotti1 M. Duport Mr Broadwood Viotti Salomon Yaniewicz Salomon Musical Fund2 M. Duport [?] J. P. Salomon Viotti Viotti Viotti Viotti Viotti Viotti Viotti Smith & Viotti John Crosdill Smith & Viotti John Crosdill Ph. Libon

£ 46.7.6 293.5.7 153.15.6 200.-.10.10.-

DR/427/136 DR/427/136 DR/427/136 DR/427/136 DR/427/136

50.-.73.10.35.-.35.14.26.5.8.8.3.3.100.-.10.10.100.-.20.-.30.-.30.-.64.17.4 55.-.430.-.50.-.63.2.6 250.-.31.5.10.10.-

DR/427/136 DR/427/136 DR/427/140 DR/427/140 DR/427/140 DR/427/144 DR/427/144 DR/427/144 DR/427/148 DR/427/148 DR/427/148 DR/427/148 DR/427/148 DR/427/148 DR/427/152 DR/427/152 DR/427/152 DR/427/152 DR/427/152 DR/427/156 DR/427/156

(Continued ) 401

402

Appendix Ten 13 Dec.

1799

18 July 15 Nov. 22 Nov.

1800 1801 1802 1803 1804

1805

1806

9 Dec. 26 Mar. 29 July 15 May 24 Jan. 20 Dec. 2 Feb. 31 May 15 Nov. 19 Jan. 28 Mar. 4 April 26 Oct. 11 Dec. [11 Dec.] 24 Feb. 13 Mar. 14 April 17 April 2 June 4 June 4 Oct.

1807

7 April 15 April 18 July 19 Aug. 22 Aug. 18 Sept.

1808

24 Mar. 11 April

1809 1810

29 April 9 May 21 June 25 Sept. 3 Dec. 13 July 10 Mar. 18 June

Hammersley & Co. [for Viotti?]3 G. Schmeissen’s bill Thomas Moore Broadwood and Son Geo. Schmeissen John Crosdill John Crosdill Thom. Moore Tho. Moore J. B. Viotti Mr Bianchi John Crosdill J. B. Viotti Madame LeBrun Mr Onorati Mr Spagnoleti Tho. Moore Mr Viotti Ditto Mr Dize [Dizi] Mrs Bianchi Mr Viotti Mr Asioli Mr Viotti Mr Onorati Le Comte de Vaudreuil M. Asioli Mr Spagnoletti Sam. Rogers Mr Viotti Tho. Moore Mr Casimir [Baecker] Tho. Moore Mr Dumergue [dentist] Mrs Bianchi Chev. La Cainea J. P. Salomon Mr Dumergue Musical Fund Mr Asioli S. Erard Mr Raimondi

200.-.-

DR/427/156

25.-.-

DR/427/160

165.-.114.4.10

DR/427/160 DR/427/160

36.10.7.9.135.-.136.10.68.10.65.4.4 270.-.96.5.62.10.100.-.6.16.6 5.5.108.2.62.10.274.4.6 26.5.8.8.23.6.8.8.9.10.4.4.37.10.-

DR/427/160 DR/427/164 DR/427/168 DR/427/172 DR/427/177 DR/427/177 DR/427/183 DR/427/183 DR/427/183 DR/427/189 DR/427/189 DR/427/189 DR/427/189 DR/427/189 DR/427/189 DR/427/195 DR/427/195 DR/427/195 DR/427/195 DR/427/195 DR/427/195 DR/427/195

4.4.3.3.14.14.15.-.20.14.3.5.8

DR/427/201 DR/427/201 DR/427/201 DR/427/201 DR/427/201 DR/427/201

26.11.5.5.-

DR/427/207 DR/427/207

4.4.4.4.4.4.5.5.3.3.4.4.600.-.6.6.-

DR/427/207 DR/427/207 DR/427/207 DR/427/207 DR/427/207 DR/427/213 DR/427/219 DR/427/219

A Selection of Withdrawals from William Chinnery’s Account 16 Sept.

1811 1812

17 Sept. 12 Oct. 26 Oct. 1 Nov. 9 Nov. 19 June 4 Jan. 16 Jan. 10 Feb.

Comte de Vaudreuil Mr Erard S. Erard S. Erard S. Erard S. Erard Tho. Moore S. Erard S. Erard S. Erard

403

12.10.-

DR/427/219

105.-.600.-.150.-.150.-.150.-.63.13.6 200.-.300.-.150.-.-

DR/427/219 DR/427/219 DR/427/219 DR/427/219 DR/427/219 DR/427/225 DR/427/231 DR/427/231 DR/427/231

Source: The Royal Bank of Scotland Group Archives, London, Records of Messrs Drummond, GB 1502 DR/427 (customer account ledgers, 1793–1812) (microfilm). The figures represent pounds, shillings, and pence.

WBC was not systematic in his financial affairs. The above list is highly selective, but includes all the withdrawals in the period 1793–1812 that seem to be for payments to musicians or music teachers, as well as those to several other persons known to Viotti, who are mentioned in the present book. But WBC surely made many other payments to musicians for performing in the Chinnery concerts, which are not shown in these records. And it cannot be assumed, for example, that because there are no withdrawals for Salomon between 1796 and 1808, he did not play in any Chinnery concerts in the intervening years. WBC could have withdrawn money in his own name (which he often did) and paid musicians from ready cash. Noteworthy omissions from this list are Giuseppina Grassini, Angelica Catalani, Muzio Clementi, and Domenico Dragonetti, who are known to have performed at the Chinnery concerts. As to what these payments to musicians represent in terms of fees per concert, no definite conclusions can be drawn. William Parke claimed to have been offered only 1 guinea (£1.1.-) to play at a Chinnery concert. If this was the usual fee paid by the Chinnerys, then the sums of £10.10 (to Johann Salomon and Philippe Libon, though he was Viotti’s pupil), £8.8 (to Salomon, Mrs. Bianchi, and Luigi Asioli), £6.6 (to Raimondi, possibly Ignazio Raimondi [ca. 17354– 1813], a violinist and composer), £5.5 (to Paolo Spagnoletti), £4.4 (to Salomon, Asioli, Mrs. Bianchi, and the Chevalier La Cainea), and £3.3 (to Spagnoletti) would represent payments for ten, eight, six, five, four, and three concerts, respectively, assuming that all the musicians were paid the same fee. It is more likely, however, that the fee varied according to the performer’s reputation. Salomon may have been paid to act as an agent, if only informally, to hire other players.5 It is possible that the Feliks Yaniewicz payment (2 September 1794: £26.5) represents twenty-five performances at £1.1. Perhaps more likely is seven performances at £3.15, in view of his status as a soloist, but the figure may include money for something else altogether. The payments to John Crosdill, or

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Appendix Ten

at least a portion thereof, were undoubtedly for WBC’s cello lessons, and those to Francesco Bianchi and François Dizi, for Caroline’s music theory and harp lessons, respectively. Dizi’s payment of £26.5 in 1806 was probably for twentyfive lessons at 1 guinea, or fifty lessons at a half-guinea. A certain Onorati (see 1805 and 1806) was the ballet master at the King’s Theatre in 1794–96. Perhaps he gave dancing lessons to Caroline and George. The 10 guineas for Libon (1798) may simply be a gift, whereas the withdrawal for Casimir Baecker (1807) appears to have been for a specific need. The two payments to John Broadwood (1793, 1799) are surely for pianos, the prices indicating that probably both were grand pianos. In 1812 a “piano forte in mahogany case, by Broadwood and Son” and a stool fetched the rather low price of £18 at the Mathew auction (see chapter 7). This cannot be the piano bought in 1793 since Broadwood’s son, James, did not become a partner until 1795. Perhaps it was a square piano that WBC had purchased with ready cash. The Broadwood grand piano sold at the Christie auction for £64.1.0 may well be the piano WBC paid for in 1799, which may have been the new (1794) six-octave type. It should be remembered that this was a time when the piano was changing rapidly, and both pianos might have been considered somewhat outdated in 1812. The payments to Duport in 1793 and 1795 (possibly Adrien Duport, known to Viotti) and the Comte de Vaudreuil (1806 and 1811) are typical of the many gifts or loans WBC made to his friends, acquaintances, and relatives. The payment of £100 to Madame Vigée-LeBrun in 1805 may well have been for her portrait of Margaret Chinnery, painted in 1803. The seven payments (1799–1811) to Thomas Moore, though it is a common name, may have been for the poet, who was chronically impecunious. On the other hand, the withdrawal of 14 guineas in 1807 for Samuel Rogers, a wealthy banker and art collector (as well as a poet), was perhaps more likely payment for an antiquity or a painting. The payments to George Schmeissen (a friend of Viotti’s), given the year, 1799, may well have had something to do with Viotti in exile. Sébastien Erard had posted a £5,000 bond as one of WBC’s sureties, which he paid on 15 April 1812, after WBC’s defalcation.6 WBC’s withdrawals in 1810–12 for Erard were apparently in addition to the £6,000 he had lent him (see above, p. 265). WBC made irregular monthly payments to MC, amounting to about £50 a month in the early 1790s, rising gradually, though not consistently, to about £100 a month by 1803. He also made many payments to his brothers, George, the artist, and John, a Madras merchant, as well as, beginning in 1808, to his son George. Most of the withdrawals for Viotti are lump sums, though a few seem to be for specific costs or purchases, including the first three in 1793 (see chapter 6, n. 47), and including the identical payments of £62.10 in 1804 and 1805. The two payments to Smith and Viotti in 1797 could be for wine. There are many payments over the years to Charles Smith, beginning at least as early as 1792, ranging from around £200 to more than £700 per year. But these decline

A Selection of Withdrawals from William Chinnery’s Account

405

sharply beginning in 1807. The loan of £1,200 to Viotti and Smith, discovered in 1812, which had been repaid (see chapter 7, n. 185), is not to be found in these accounts, nor is there any trace of a payment to Viotti in late 1809 or early 1810 toward his purchase of the “Buttera.” A Stradivari violin commanded a selling price of about 100 guineas in London around the year 1810.7 The total of all the withdrawals for Viotti, including that for “Mons de Viotti” and the two for Smith and Viotti, is £2,234.13.3. It is not known whether Viotti or the others repaid these loans (gifts?), apart from the above-mentioned £1,200.

appendix eleven

A Mystery Letter

T

he following recently uncovered letter, which viotti wrote to an unknown recipient at an unknown time, defies secure interpretation. It may be of interest to outline briefly the process of elimination by which the most plausible possible recipients and dates were considered and rejected, or at least deemed unlikely, and the questions that remain. Sunday the 19th.* Dear good friend, I waited all day yesterday for a word from you. Will you please send it to me today by the bearer of this message, and would that this word will be a “Yes”! However, I repeat, I do not wish to thwart your plans nor annoy you, so tell me without embarrassment what you have decided. It is necessary only that I know what to count on as soon as possible, and that you tell me your intentions regarding this blasted money so that I may inform the administration. Goodbye dear friend. I embrace you. [signed] J. B. Viotti We know of Viotti’s urgent preoccupation with money in the last three years of his life, and this letter fits the pattern. Viotti seems to be asking for a decision about his salary or his pension from the Maison du roi. The letter could thus plausibly date from 19 August 1821, regarding his salary (see above, p. 344), or 19 May 1822, regarding his pension (see above, p. 353), these being the only months in those two years in which the nineteenth fell on a Sunday.

406

A Mystery Letter

407

(We are assuming, of course, that Viotti has not mistaken the day.) The May 1822 date, however, is not possible because Viotti was in England at that time, which leaves the August 1821 date. But in that case, to whom is it addressed? Problems arise immediately. The person who would have made this decision was Viotti’s “Patron,” the Marquis de Lauriston, the minister of the Maison du roi. But all of the known letters from Viotti to Lauriston are extremely formal (“Monseigneur,” “Your Excellency,” and the like), whereas the present letter is clearly addressed to a close friend. Besides, if it were Lauriston, why would Viotti need to inform the administration (by which he presumably means that of the Académie Royale de Musique), which was under the control of the Maison du roi, and normally would have received its directives from the Maison, hence from Lauriston himself? Achille-Alexandre-Alphonse de Cailleux, on whom Viotti seemed to depend for information regarding his pension, was a close friend, but could not be the recipient of this letter because it was not he who decided these matters. Could there have been some other high-ranking person in the French government, who Viotti hoped could bring influence to bear? Perhaps, but the most likely person, the Marquis Dessolle, had been replaced as Minister for Foreign Affairs in November 1819. Could the letter date from another period of Viotti’s life, and could he be referring to another administration altogether, that of the Philharmonic Society, for example, perhaps concerning money owed to Cherubini or Baillot in 1815–16? The answer to this must be in the negative, for the same reason as that given above, namely that Viotti would hardly need to inform the administration of the Society if he were asking for a decision from someone in the administration. Besides, he would have referred to the “Directors,” not the “administration.” The Théâtre de Monsieur comes to mind—could Viotti be awaiting a reply from one of the sponsors of the theater in October 1788 (the only month in that year in which the nineteenth fell on a Sunday)? Or had he asked his good friend, the banker Perregaux, for a loan toward his own investment in the theater? But Viotti himself was an administrator of this theater. Could he be referring to money from one of his backers in the spring of 1789 in his attempt to become director of the Opéra? The nineteenth of April 1789 indeed fell on a Sunday—precisely when Viotti complained to Villedeuil and Necker that he was on tenterhooks about his “Company.” In any case his addressee cannot be Madame la Marquise de Rouget, since the letter is written to a man, “cher bon ami.” The letter remains a mystery—a pity, since it means that we are ignorant both of the identity of a close friend of Viotti’s, and of a subject of great importance to him.


Notes

Chapter One: Fontanetto and Turin, 1755–79 1. Fontanetto Po is so named to distinguish it from another Fontanetto, also Piedmontese, not on the Po. 2. “Giovan Battista” and “Giambattista” are familiar forms of “Giovanni Battista.” 3. The birth, death, and marriage registers for Fontanetto are in the Archivio Parrocchiale, housed in the parish residence. The register of deaths for the period after 1759, containing the entries for Felice’s, Maddalena’s, presumably Teresa’s, and several of their children’s deaths, appears to be lost. Transcriptions of the entries for Maddalena and Felice are in Giazotto 1956, 17n1, and 34n1, respectively. See also appendix 6. Regarding the presumed date of Teresa’s death (1793), we have as evidence only Viotti’s assertion in his autobiographical Précis of 1798 (see appendix 3). 4. Viotto had always been the family name. It was the violinist who first was styled Viotti. Why this change was made is not clear. The documentary confirmation of the long-held tradition that Viotti’s father was a blacksmith, as well as other information about Viotti’s ancestors in the parochial and civic archives of Fontanetto, was uncovered by Raina 1994, 251–53. 5. See appendix 2 for a full translation. Raina 1994, 254–55, ascertained the authorship of this document. Negri’s account of Viotti’s early years in Fontanetto and Turin is supported by the existing documentary evidence, apart from one or two inaccurate details, such as the age of the Prince della Cisterna, and therefore it may be considered as generally reliable. An entry in the membership calendar of a religious confraternity in Fontanetto, the Società di Suffragio (see chapter 3), dated 13 April 1815, announces the death on that day of “our Brother, Doctor Giovanni Battista Negri, Mayor of this community” (il Confratello Sig. Med.co Gio. Batt.a Negri Sindaco della presente commune). This surely was the same Negri, who would have become mayor of the village after 1810.

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410

Notes to Pages 4–9

6. Her birth certificate (21 May 1742) is in Trino, Archivio Parrocchiale di S. Bartolomeo. She was baptised Teresa Maria and is so called in the Fontanetto register of births until the birth of Francesco Giovanni Andrea in 1777, whereupon she is named Maria Teresa. In her birth certificate her family name is given as Muzzetti, but by the time of her first marriage it had become Musetti. The record of her marriage to Felice Viotto on 30 October 1763 is in the Trino archive, as is that of her first marriage on 7 October 1760 to one Carlo Olivero, who died at the age of twenty, three months to the day after their marriage. 7. Negri seems to have been the first to confuse Viotti’s date of birth with that of his older brother, also named Giovanni Battista, who was born on 23 May 1753, and died on 10 July 1754. Negri’s notion of Giovan Battista’s age at this time may therefore be somewhat askew, though he seems sure of the year 1764. 8. Degregori 1824, 409. Degregori’s reliability has been called into question by Allorto 1951, 243, because of his overeagerness to praise his fellow Vercellese. On these grounds there may be some reason to doubt this account, since Testori was Vercellese. 9. In the summer of 1770, Charles Burney, on his way from Turin to Milan, stopped in Vercelli, where he “met with a book on the subject of music, and with its author, Signor Carlo Geo. Testori, with whom I had the pleasure of conversing” (Burney 1773, 78–79). 10. Fontanetto Po, Archivio Storico Comunale, Serie I, Registri Ordinati, mazzo 14:1. 11. In the first instance Degregori 1824, 410–11, who claims to have this information from the Prince della Cisterna himself, and in this case there seems no reason to doubt his word, since some of the details (Celoniat’s name, etc.) are verifiable. FétisB, 8:360, also claims to have his information on Viotti’s early years directly from the prince, but follows Degregori, in places almost word for word. 12. Probably Alessandro Besozzi (1702–93), oboist, a colleague of Celoniat’s in the Royal Chapel, with an international reputation and several published trio sonatas and at least one set of six sonatas for flute/violin and continuo to his name. Burney heard him play duets with his brother, the bassoonist Paolo Girolamo, in their home in Turin in 1770. 13. Domenico Ferrari (1722–80), violinist-composer, pupil of Tartini’s, composer of many published sonatas with continuo. 14. FétisB, 8:360. 15. I base this on an acceptance of the year 1766 and of the Prince Dal Pozzo della Cisterna’s age as “18 circa” (he was born on 8 October 1748) as given in Degregori 1824, 410, which names both Negri and the prince as sources. However, the first documented presence of Viotti in the Palazzo della Cisterna is not until 29 April 1767. 16. See appendix 3. 17. [Anne, Lady Miller] 1776, 1:154. 18. Cited in Black 1992, 39. 19. Charles Burney 1773, 75. 20. Biella, Archivio di Stato, Famiglia Dal Pozzo della Cisterna, Beni e feudi, Beni diversi, mazzi 21–26: Conti di tutela del Principe della Cisterna 1761–66 [recte 1768]. These and other relevant documents were first revealed in Lister 2003, 232–46. 21. It is now the seat of the Province of Turin, Via Maria Vittoria, 12. The structure was thoroughly renovated in the late nineteenth century, though one wing remains much as it was in Viotti’s time.


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22. Beni diversi, mazzi 22, 24, and 26, under the rubric Spese diverse, except for the horsemanship lessons, which I infer from a reference in a summary of the prince’s expenses for 1764–65 (“maestri di cavalerizza”), mazzo 27, fascicolo 6. 23. Beni diversi, mazzo 22, Spese Riparazione di Stabili e Mobili ed accompr.a d’essi. 24. This and the following entries: Beni diversi, mazzo 26, Indumenti, fols.57r–60r. 25. “Al Sigr. Celoniat suonatore per lessioni di violino al Sigr. Principe ed a Vioto suonatore del Vo. Principe, inclusi vari esposti in copiatura di suonate come da Nota e ricevuta—80.10.” This and the following entries: Beni diversi, mazzo 26, Spese diverse, fols.79v–85v. 26. There seems to be an error in the article “Celoniati” in MGG2, Personenteil 4:532–36. Two violinists, Giambattista (no. 6 in the list) and Battista (no. 10) are given exactly the same dates and very similar biographies. 27. The existing literature, including the “Viotti” articles in MGG1, MGG2 (“probably”), NG1, NG2, and the “Celoniati” article in MGG2, gives (Carlo) Antonio as Viotti’s teacher (and therefore as the prince’s), but to my knowledge this attribution has no basis other than that given in Giazotto 1956, 27, namely the citation of what I can only believe to be a fictitious letter. See Lister 2003, 236 and n19. 28. See chapter 3. 29. Beni diversi, mazzo 27, fascicolo 6. 30. Clearly the four clothing purchases for Viotti cited above cannot represent all the clothing bought for him in this period. In the Indumenti section there are several entries of more than L.100 for clothing for “the Prince and those who serve him” or “for the servants and others in his service.” Similarly, under Spese diverse (Sundry expenses) there are several entries of up to L.600 in the prince’s name “to spend at his discretion.” We cannot exclude the possibility that some of this money was spent on Viotti. 31. There is no mention of this person in the account registers, in which the prince’s tutor is referred to consistently as “D.[i.e., Don] Martino Sfenzi.” 32. See appendix 6 for a complete listing of Viotti’s siblings. 33. See Raina 1985, 368, for a photocopy of an unidentified document in which the amount of the dowry appears to be L.350. 34. Felice Giardini (1716–96), who was the leading violinist in England for a quartercentury after his arrival in 1751. 35. The term leader is used in the present work in preference to “concertmaster,” since it was the term used in England in Viotti’s time (and still is). It is often stated that Pugnani joined the Teatro orchestra at the age of ten, that is, for the 1741–42 season (e.g., in Cordero di Pamperato 1930, 44; in NG2, 20:589 and in MGG2, Personenteil 13:1036). But this is not borne out by the yearly orchestra lists, in which his name first appears for the 1742–43 season. He was appointed to the Chapel orchestra on 19 April 1748. (NG2, 20:589, 590, confuses the two appointments, and mistakenly combines the leadership of the two orchestras as one post.) For the Teatro orchestra, see I-Tasct, Collezione IX, 16 (1741–42): f. 65r; 17 (1742–43): f. 45r; and 35 (1757–58): f. 53r. Pugnani’s name is absent from the Teatro orchestra lists for four years beginning with the 1753–54 season, which suggests that he may have travelled elsewhere after Paris. 36. Miel 1827, 184. Miel asserts, p. 195, that he obtained most of the biographical details in this article from Viotti’s pupil Pierre Rode.

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37. The Torinese Envoy Extraordinary to the King of Great Britain, in his dispatch of 16 October, gives notice of having received the recently arrived “Sieur Pugnan.” (The Torinese diplomatic correspondence was conducted in French.) He makes no mention of Viotti, but there is perhaps no reason to suppose that he should have even known of the presence of a twelve-year-old boy in the entourage of the celebrated virtuoso. I-Taps, Lettere Ministri, Gran Bretagna, mazzo 73. 38. Burrows and Dunhill 2002, 558. 39. Jascha Heifetz expressed a very similar opinion in an interview published in Applebaum 1972–75, 1:74: “If I had a half-hour’s time to practise, I would work for twenty minutes on scales in various forms, and on trills. The next ten minutes I would work on pieces, but then I would choose the difficult passages only.” 40. Viotti’s unfinished manuscript violin method, ca. 1823, a facsimile of which was published in Habeneck 1842. See also appendix 9. Leopold Mozart 1756/1985, 97–99 gives instructions similar to the first three on Viotti’s list, though without specifically referring to the scale. 41. Cited in NG1, 17:476 and NG2, 20:590. 42. Baillot et al. 1803, 3; Baillot 1834 cited in Stowell 1985, 270. To judge from the remarks of Leopold Mozart and his son, as well as Charles Burney, Tartini school violinists “had a reputation for tidy but perhaps rather understated playing” (Walls 1992, 23). One dissenting voice is that of C. F. D. Schubart (1806) (but written in 1770–80), 59, who writes of the great “strength and vigor” of the bowing of Tartini’s pupils. And again, in 1791, Pierre-Louis Ginguené, an influential writer on music and a friend of Viotti’s, observed that Viotti “was nourished [sucé] since childhood by the great principles of the Tartini school,” that is, the principles of aesthetic and stylistic balance evidenced in Tartini’s violin concertos. See Keefe 2006, 300–301, citing Ginguené’s article, “Concerto,” in Nicolas-Etienne Framery and P. L. Ginguené, eds., Encyclopédie méthodique, Musique [Paris: Pankouke, 1791–1818], 2 vols., repr. New York: Da Capo, 1971, 1:321. 43. Letter of 22 June 1768 from Quirino Gasparini to Padre Martini, cited in Arnold and Baldauf-Berdes 2002, 50. 44. Miel 1827, 194–95. Domenico Ferrari had been a pupil of Tartini, though according to Newman 1972, 236, Ferrari’s sonatas are “more in the manner of Locatelli than Tartini.” 45. Bauer, Deutsch, and Eibl 1962–75, 1:416. 46. If Wolfgang had given a performance in the theater the relevant deliberations of the directors would have been recorded. 47. On 2 February Leopold wrote to his wife from Milan, having just returned from Turin, “where we saw a really beautiful opera” (Bauer, Deutsch, and Eibl 1962–75, 1:416). 48. Leopold remembers the marchesa as “Conte Caron e la sua bella Sig.ra Principessa [recte Marchesa] di Voghera e le sua [recte sue] figlie.” In Bauer, Deutsch, and Eibl 1962–75, 5:292, “Conte Caron” is identified as Conte Francesco Teodoro Carron di Brianzone, appointed a senator in 1771. The same source is unable to identify the “Principessa di Voghera”; I have corrected what I presume to be Mozart’s mistake. Mozart’s wording suggests a close relationship between the two persons, about which I have no information. As for Celoniat, we cannot be sure which one they met. Eibl, followed by others, suggests that it was probably Ignazio.


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49. It would in any case be extremely surprising if Leopold had not organized any private concerts during their two-week stay in Turin, to judge from the record of their visits to other Italian centers (see Zaslaw 1989b, 159, 184, and especially 202). See also Woodfield 1995, 207. Woodfield suggests that “the names Leopold entered [in his London travel diary or Reisennotizien] were not simply those of casual acquaintances but of individuals with whom he had actual dealings.” On the other hand, the Torinese may have had little time for the Mozarts amid the flurry of carnival operas and balls. 50. Leopold Mozart, Rome, 21 April 1770, to his wife (Anderson 1966, 1:130). Leopold and Wolfgang had arrived in Florence on 30 March, and stayed for about a week. 51. The theater was severely damaged by fire in 1936, but was rebuilt in the same location. 52. See, for example, Basso, vol. 1: Bouquet 1976, 176. 53. Diderot and D’Alembert 2002, 1–3, planches I–X. 54. “L’opera va son train, mais avec de grands parties [sic] en fait de musique à cause de la mésintelligence de Pugnani et du maître de chapelle, d’Aprile premier homme, et de la Guierini première femme. Celle ci emporte les suffrages du parterre et de nous autres ignorants à qui cependant cela ne fait rien; mais n’importe notre parti est le plus fort” (Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères de France (Quay d’Orsay), Correspondance politique Sardaigne, 251). The music director was Giuseppe Colla, maestro di cappella at the court of Parma, the composer of Andromeda, the first opera of the 1771–72 carnival season. As was customary, Colla would have conducted the first few performances of his opera from the harpsichord, and in this capacity was referred to as the maestro di cappella, or maître de chapelle. Lucrezia Agujari, the lead female singer for the two 1771–72 carnival operas, was his wife. Giuseppe Aprile was a much-admired castrato. 55. [Anne, Lady Miller] 1776, 106. 56. Planche IX. 57. Lalande 1790, 1:148. Lalande does not mention these tubes in the first edition of 1769. 58. It will be remembered that in eighteenth-century theaters the orchestra was seated at the level of the parterre. It was Wagner who, at Bayreuth in 1876, first sank the orchestra out of sight into a pit. 59. Galeazzi 1791–96, vol. 1, Tavola IV. There is no reason of which I am aware to suppose that the seating plan changed materially between 1773 and 1791. I am assuming a linear arrangement of the section according to rank. 60. I-Tasct, Collezione IX, Ordinati, 7:178, deliberation of 14 May 1770. 61. Apparently the standard pitch in northern Italy, that is, the “A” given by the oboe, had for some time been at 440 Hz (the approximate modern standard orchestral pitch), and by 1770 was normal in Europe. This may well have been partly owing to the influence of Torinese oboists in their solo appearances and orchestral positions abroad. See NG2, 18:267. 62. Rangoni 1790, 62. 63. See Basso, vol. 1: Bouquet 1976, 153. 64. Ibid., 222, 173, 320, respectively. 65. I-Tasct, Collezione IX, Ordinati, 8:238. 66. Francesco Galeazzi, who admittedly was Torinese, claimed that it was “without contradiction the best in Europe” (1791–96, 1:222).

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67. Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères de France (Quay d’Orsay), Correspondance politique Sardaigne, 255. 68. I-Tasct, Collezione IX, Ordinati, 8:255: “2 January 1774, since the public is not pleased with the Ballerino Martini [. . .] Sig Rasetti will take his place.” 69. I-Tasct, Collezione IX, Ordinati, 8:258. 70. Basso, vol. 1: Bouquet 1976, 364n152. 71. According to one traveler who saw the theater in 1770, “sixty horses at a time have been brought upon the stage and have manoeuvred with ease in representations of battles” ([Anne, Lady Miller], 106). For the first opera of the 1778–79 season a man was paid L.80 to bring two cows and six rams on stage. See Basso, vol. 1: Bouquet 1976, 386. 72. Coke 1889–96, 4:305. She also describes the court ceremonial, religious services in the cathedral, including that for Holy Thursday, the balls, and her walks in the city. 73. I-Tasct, Collezione IX, Carte sciolte, no. 6206. Altogether, eighteen performances of L’Aurora were given between 2 and 25 October. 74. Turin, Biblioteca Reale, Azienda Real Casa, Recapiti, 1775, 3:845. 75. I-Tasct, Collezione IX, Carte sciolte, no. 6188: “Capitolazione per la pastorale da rappresentarsi in quest’autunno nel regio Teatro,” 1775. 76. As a matter of fact, the first surviving orchestra contract to have this clause is that of 1760–61; Pugnani had become the leader of the Teatro orchestra three years earlier. Cordero di Pamperato 1930, 354, correctly asserts that this rule was in force by 1761, but incorrectly concludes that it could not have been Pugnani who was responsible, under the mistaken impression that Pugnani was not yet the leader of the orchestra. See also p. 351, where he incorrectly asserts that Paolo Canavasso became the leader after the death of Somis in 1763. 77. Mozart 1756/1985, 54, 96–97. Of course, the sound of a string section depends upon much more than the thickness of the strings. We may well suppose that several of the violinists and violists in both the Chapel and Teatro orchestras were students of Somis’s or of Pugnani’s, and that the others came under the influence of this Piedmontese school, so that there would have been a certain uniformity in their playing style, particularly in their bowing technique and tone production. 78. I-Tasct, Collezione IX, Conti, 58, 60, 62; Carte sciolte, no. 6188. 79. Pugnani’s talents were not limited to the violin and composition. On two occasions he stage-directed (messo in scena) a carnival opera: Pelopida, by Giuseppe Scarlatti (the second opera of the 1762–63 season), and Olimpiade, by J. A. Hasse/Metastasio (the first opera of the 1764–65 season). Both times he was paid L.150, above and beyond his regular salary. See Basso, vol. 1: Bouquet 1976, 309, 315. 80. The five-volume Storia del Teatro Regio, ed. A. Basso, is based on the extensive archives of the Teatro Regio in I-Tasct. 81. See Arnold and Baldauf-Berdes 2002, 49–50. 82. I was unable to find any orchestra list for the opere buffe from Viotti’s time, but the three surviving lists closest in time, those for 1762 (twenty-three players) (I-Tasct, Collezione IX, Conti, 44:14–15), 1763 (twenty-four players) (Ordinati, 5, no. 374), and 1764 (twenty-five players) (Conti, 48, no. 77), show a consistent pattern. In each case all except one or two of the players are from the orchestra of the Teatro Regio. The players are almost all the same from year to year, and the fifth chair player of the first


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violins is always the occupant of the third chair of the second violins of the Teatro Regio orchestra—the chair Viotti was to occupy. Pugnani, the leader, was paid L.400, his Teatro Regio salary at the time being L.600. On the other hand, the two oboists were paid much higher salaries than the ones they received in the Teatro Regio orchestra, where neither of them was the first oboist. Tamburini 1989, 29, indicates a complement of twenty-two players, but does not specify the time period for which this figure is relevant, nor does he provide a source. 83. Beni diversi, mazzo 27, fascicolo 6. 84. Recapiti, 1775, 1348. 85. Two years later, in about October of 1773, one of the Marchesa di Voghera’s daughters was attacked with a knife and nearly killed while kneeling at Mass in a church in Turin. The assailant had apparently mistaken her for her mother, but his motive is unknown. Coke 1889–96, 4:309. 86. Biella, Archivio di Stato, Famiglia Dal Pozzo della Cisterna, Torino, mazzo 13. 87. Lady Mary Coke (1889–96, 4:306–7) describes this masquerade, or another very like it of a few days earlier, consisting partly of a kind of elaborate pantomime, which ended at three o’clock in the morning. 88. I-Tr, Bel[giojoso] 1774: La Mascarade[. . .] Recueillie & publiée Par M.r le Marquis de Bel ***. Ferrero 1980, 277 (Basso, ed., vol. 3), tentatively identifies the “Marquis de Bel***” as Belgiojoso, who in all probability was a kinsman of the Principe Alberico di Belgiojoso d’Este, a Milanese nobleman whose daughter the Prince della Cisterna married in 1780, and whose collection of letters to the prince is in Biella, Archivio di Stato, Storia della Famiglia II, mazzo 9. 89. See Negri, biographical note (appendix 2) and DeGregori 1824, 411. Both authors, as well as FétisB, imply that this London visit took place after Pugnani and Viotti’s grand tour of 1780–81. 90. See McVeigh 1989b, 70–71. The concert was given on the day after Viotti’s eighteenth birthday. Jansen was one of two brothers, both French cellists. In the same advertisement “Mr. Helmandel” is announced to play a harpsichord concerto. Later, in Paris, and still later, in London, Nicolas-Joseph Hüllmandel (1756–1823) became an associate and close friend of Viotti’s. 91. I-Taps, Lettere Ministri, Gran Bretagna, mazzo 78. Comte de Scarnasis to Comte de Lascaris, 20 October 1772. 92. Miel 1827, 184. 93. Burney 1773, 258–59. Entry of 10 September 1770. 94. Sharp 1767, 275. 95. These, although labeled “basso d’hautbois” or “basautbois,” may have been bassoons. One of the players, Girolamo Besozzi, was a well-known bassoonist. The orchestra lists of the Teatro Regio of the period always contained two bassoons, and, beginning in 1773, two clarinets. Flutes are never listed in the chapel rosters, but there is secure evidence that one of the oboists played the flute. See Bouquet 1968, 26. 96. On Somis’s death in 1763, Pugnani had been placed at the head of the second violins, with Paolo Canavasso at the head of the first violins. However, one wonders whether Pugnani was the leader in all but name—we recall that Samuel Sharp had heard him play a solo at chapel in 1766. In 1770, with Pugnani’s promotion, he and Canavasso exchanged positions.

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97. Burney 1773, 64, 74. I know of no reason to suppose that the conditions or the ceremonial routine described by Burney changed on the accession to the throne of Victor Amadeus III in 1773. 98. A letter from Gasparini to the famous theorist and teacher Padre Martini, dated 24 May 1765, hints at tensions in the upper echelons of Turin’s musical establishment. He accuses Giai and Pugnani, “an excellent violinist, but a hare-brained man, full of prejudices,” of having a “bad reputation,” and of “introducing the theatrical style into church music” (Bologna, Civico Museo Bibliografico Musicale: Carteggio G. B. Martini, I.28.105 [inventory no. 2199]). 99. Entry in Burney’s journal of 12 July 1770 (Burney 1974, 41). 100. The Chapel of the Holy Shroud is elevated several feet above the floor of the cathedral. The glass partition separating the chapel from the cathedral was introduced in 1825–26. See Scott 1995, 610. I am grateful to Professor Scott for sharing his knowledge of the chapel, and to Nathan Randall for information about organs. Since the disastrous fire in 1997, it has been impossible to visit the chapel. 101. See Bouquet 1968, 28–30, for the uncertainty surrounding this point. One possibility is that there were originally two organs, but that only one remained in Burney’s time. 102. Lalande 1790, 1:128. This assertion does not appear in the first edition of 1769. Lalande, who visited Turin in August (?) 1765, is not as reliable a source as one would wish. He reports incorrectly, in the third edition of his work (1790), that the opere buffe were performed in Torino in the summer, and that Viotti was living in Torino in 1790. 103. Turin, Archivio Capitolare, catalogued in Demaria 2000 and in Demaria 2001. Some 157 compositions by Giay are listed in the Royal Chapel collection, more than by any other composer. 104. See, for example, [Giay] 1979. One of the pieces, a Miserere, contains passages for four horns and concertato writing for solo oboe and solo violin. 105. Demaria 2000, 330–33. 106. NG2, 20:590. 107. Earlier that year, Viotti would have been able to hear Pugnani play the violin obbligato solo accompanying an aria of the prima donna in Anfossi’s Armida, premièred in the Teatro Regio on 27 January and given twenty-two performances. 108. This was the Hanover Square concert of 7 April 1794. 109. I-Taps, Materie Politiche per Rapporto all’Interno, Provvedimenti sovrani, Cariche, 11:709. 110. I-Taps, Materie Politiche per Rapporto all’Interno, Cerimoniale, Cariche di Corte, mazzo 5, 20/22 December 1775. 111. Cariche di Corte, mazzo 5, 18 December 1775/19 January 1776. 112. Cariche, 12:46. 113. Storia della Famiglia II, mazzo 11, fascicolo 77. 114. The archbishop died a little over a year later, on 4 March 1778. 115. I-Tr, Recapiti, 1776, 75, 463, 840, 1172. The other relevant source, I-Tasr, Articolo 217, Tesoreria Real Casa, Terzo Conto Camerale del 1776, entry no. 317: orchestra list, confirms this information. 116. Recapiti, 1773, 58; 1774, 24–25; 1776, 54–55; 1777, 57; 1778, 63; 1779, 69. The register for 1775 does not seem to contain a list. 117. See, for example, I-Tasct, Collezione IX, Conti, 59 (1775):119 and 63 (1779):38.


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118. I-Tasr, Articolo 217, Tesoreria Real Casa, Terzo Conto Camerale del 1776, entry no. 55. 119. I-Tr, Recapiti, 1779, 81. 120. See Demaria 2000. 121. I-Tasct, Collezione IX, Ordinati, 8:127. S. Cordero di Pamperato 1930, 558, incorrectly asserts that these occurred in 1774. 122. “1774 li 15 Giugno ricevuto da Felice Viotto per aver a Lui venduto quatro vecchi movi L: 9.” Fontanetto, Archivio Parrocchiale: Chiesa di S. Maria, Reg. 32. Inventario dei mobili e descrizione delle spese fatto dall’anno 1736 al 1802. 123. The citation in Giazotto 1956, 31 and n4, purportedly from the Gazzetta [recte Giornale—there was no Gazzetta] di Torino of 30 May 1778, reporting on Viotti’s playing, and alluded to in MGG2, Personenteil, 17:25, is almost certainly a fabrication of Giazotto’s, since the Giornale di Torino e delle province began publication in 1780. 124. There is very little information about private concerts in Turin. The French diplomatic secretary, Louis Dutens, gives a description in his memoirs of a very private after-dinner concert in the home of the Marquis de Prié (Marchese Turinetti di Priero), at which he, his host, and one other person were the only listeners. The soprano Catterina Gabrielli sang, Pugnani and the two Besozzis played. Afterward refreshments were served, “and a valet brought in a large covered basket, the marquis removed the cloth, and took from the basket a golden snuffbox which he gave to Gabrielli, a richly decorated sword to Pugnani, a case and a watch to the two Besozzis, and he sent them on their way as satisfied as he himself appeared to be.” This concert probably took place around carnival time in 1761–62, when Gabrielli sang the two operas in the Teatro Regio (Dutens 1806, 1:155–56). 125. Mozart 1985, 217. 126. Giazotto 1956, 229, mistakenly gives “Villa” instead of “Ville” in his transcription. 127. Comte de Perron to Fontana, 5 December 1779, I-Taps, Lettere Ministri, Prussia, mazzo 4.

Chapter Two: Grand Tour, 1780–81 1. Charles Burney, in 1770, had made the same journey in reverse. He left Geneva at six o’clock on the morning of 6 July and arrived in Turin on the evening of the eleventh (Burney 1974, iii, 32, 40). 2. Miel 1827, 185. 3. Johnson 1995, 74–75. 4. Quoy-Bodin 1984, 98. 5. Medlin, David, and LeClerc 1991, 1:92n1. Chabanon’s autobiographical Tableau de quelques circonstances de ma vie (1795), is not precise about the times of his sojourns at Ferney. 6. Besterman 1953–64, vol. 91, letters 18420, 18459. 7. See above, p. 24. 8. Miel 1827, 185. Miel also reports that the series consisted of twelve weekly concerts. 9. Durham University Library, Wharton Papers, no. 529. 10. The letter was first published in Lister 2002, 419.

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11. Eymar 1801, 19. 12. In a letter of 8 August 1803, Rode asks Baillot “to embrace” Miel and several other friends (Rode and Lamare to Baillot, AUS-Sphm E.A. and V. I. Crome collection, A8213). See also below, pp. 313 and 354. 13. Miel 1827, 191. I am grateful to Denise Yim for her translation of this passage. 14. A picture, titled Portrait of Viotti, attributed to Chardin, was in the Robert Hoe Collection, before probably being sold at auction in 1910 or 1911. It is described in Mather 1910, 316, an article that also contains a reproduction of the portrait. However, the portrait is not listed in any of the standard catalogues of Chardin’s works. Since Chardin died in December 1779, the attribution must be doubted if indeed it is a portrait of Viotti. Otherwise, it would constitute evidence that Viotti had been in Paris before 1780. The sitter is a very young man, with delicate, almost girlish features, seated, holding a rolled sheaf of music in his left hand. A photograph of the work is held by the British Museum. 15. In his autobiographical Précis, written in 1798, Viotti describes this tour of 1780– 81 without mentioning Pugnani’s name, an omission perhaps more easily understood in the light of the present letter. 16. Wharton Papers, no. 530. Both excerpts used by kind permission. I first learned of these two letters and of the Wharton Papers from a brief reference in Black 1992, 260. 17. White 1973, 116; White 1992, 333. For the publication data in this and the succeeding paragraphs I am indebted to White 1985 and to the list of works in the same author’s excellent “Viotti” in NG2, 26:769–71. 18. It is not the same melody as the ranz des vaches described by Viotti and transcribed in Eymar 1801, 43. 19. White 1957, 1:113. 20. Three of the citations from this newspaper in Giazotto 1956 (37n3; 38nn1, 2) are fictitious, that is, in the 8 March issue there is no mention of Pugnani or Viotti; there is no issue for 30 April 1780, nor for 6 May 1780, nor is there any other mention of Pugnani or Viotti in any issue from January through May 1780. 21. Genlis 1825, 5:50–51. 22. Rousseau 1953, 267–69. 23. Miel 1827, 191. 24. Dansk Biografisk Lexicon 1899, 13:185–86. 25. NG2, 7:575. 26. Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden: 10006 Oberhofmarschallamt, O IV, Nr. 177. I am grateful to Dr. Lorenz Beck of the Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden for his help in obtaining this citation. 27. Landmann 1976, 134. 28. I-Taps, Lettere Ministri, Prussia, mazzo 5 (1780). 29. Biella, Archivio di Stato, Storia della Famiglia II, mazzo 11, fasc. 26. 30. Lettere Ministri, Prussia, mazzo 6: 24 August, 5 November 1781. 31. Helm 1960, 37, citing J. F. Reichardt, “Musikalische Anekdoten von Friedrich dem Grossen,” Musikalisches Kunstmagazin 2 (1791): 40. 32. Fontana dispatch, 26 February 1780, I-Taps, Lettere Ministri, Prussia, mazzo 5; Liston dispatches, 21 March, 1 April, 28 April 1780; and Eliot dispatches, 6 May and 21 October 1780, GB-Lna SP 90/104. 33. Letter to Maria Antonia of Saxony, January 1777. Cited in Yorke-Long 1954, 147.


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34. Though Sans Souci was ostensibly a summer palace, it was Frederick’s favorite residence, and it is probable that by the end of April he had moved there from his main winter residence, Potsdam Schloss. In 1786, the last year of his life, he returned to Sans Souci in April. The soprano Elisabeth Schmeling (Mara) sang for Frederick (who was seated on a sofa, according to her account) apparently in February 1771 at Sans Souci (see Helm 1960, 129 and Yorke-Long 1954, 139). 35. Lettere Ministri, Prussia, mazzo 5. 36. The title page reads, “La Scomessa/a due soprani composta per S. A. R./il Prencipe di Prussia/da Gaetano Pugnani/Originale.” I am grateful to Dr. Helmut Hell of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Musikabteilung, for his help in identifying this work. 37. Elliot’s dispatch of 2 May 1780. GB-Lna SP 90/104. 38. In 1782 the orchestra had about twenty-three members, including eight violins, two violas, three cellos, one double bass, two flutes, two oboes, two bassoons, two horns, and one keyboard. “It is likely that at the same time, [Frederick William] could call upon musicians from his uncle’s orchestra,” which comprised some thirty-eight players (Parker 1994, 1:41–44). According to Dr. John Moore, who visited Berlin and Potsdam in the spring of 1775, the prince’s palace in the town of Potsdam was relatively modest. Moore, who with his charge, the Duke of Hamilton, “supped there two or three times a week,” thought the prince “displays a spirit of hospitality far more obliging than magnificence; and doubly meritorious, considering the very moderate revenue allowed him” (Moore 1780, 2:180). The palace, now known as the “Kabinettshaus,” Am Neuen Markt 1 (restored in 1999, now an office building), incorporated a neighboring house at Schwerfegergasse 8, which contained the public rooms, including a room for concerts that presumably was large enough to accommodate Frederick William’s orchestra. I am grateful to Anne de Tarr-Lasius and Roland and Julian Lasius for investigating this building. 39. In 1789 Mozart was probably presented to Frederick William in Potsdam, and composed his three “Prussian” string quartets, K.575, 589, 590, with their prominent cello parts, for Frederick William (as well as his piano sonata, K. 576, for the king’s eldest daughter, Frederika Charlotte). When the three quartets and the piano sonata were eventually published they contained no dedications. Frederika Charlotte (1767–1820), Frederick William’s only child by his first wife, must have been an able pianist, as Mozart’s sonata is far from easy. One wonders whether, at the age of thirteen or fourteen, she came to the attention of Pugnani and Viotti. In 1791 she married the Duke of York, and spent the rest of her days in England, where she charmed Haydn with her musicianship and her enthusiasm for his music. 40. Cited in Rothschild 1965, 48. 41. For a complete list, see Parker 1993, 167, 173. 42. Mozart’s letter to his wife, Constanze, 23 May 1789. Bauer, Deutsch, Eibl 1962– 75, 4:89. 43. Ambassador Elliot, noting King Frederick’s recent acquisition of the young, cultivated Italian, the Marquis Lucchesini, as his companion “to attend his person at Potsdam,” observes that “the company of professed men of letters seems to be as necessary to the King as connections of a different nature to the Heir apparent.” Dispatch of 13 May 1780, GB-Lna SP 90/104. William Wraxall, who visited the Prussian court in 1778,

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thought that the princess was “an amiable, virtuous, and pleasing woman,” and that “her character [was] estimable” (Wraxall 1806, 1:242–43). On the other hand, Lady Mary Coke, who was in Potsdam in August 1773, thought that the princess had a “wretched Character, not only with regard to her abandoned conduct, but in every respect,” and reports that she “wou’d have gone off with a fiddler who was then her lover,” without specifying when this was supposed to have occurred, or who the fiddler was (Coke 1889–96, 4:213). 44. In the former case, again, one might think that it would have been the king to whom he would have dedicated this opus. (On the other hand, Frederika Louisa, in exchange, as it were, for tolerating her husband’s behavior, could expect certain concessions from him.) In the latter case, surely there would have been correspondence between Viotti and Frederika Louisa. If so, it has not come to light. 45. Moore 1780, 2:99. It is now the seat of Humboldt University. 46. Schletterer 1865/1972, 647. 47. Moore 1780, 2:98–99. 48. I-Taps, Lettere Ministri, Prussia, mazzo 5: 2 May 1780. 49. I-Taps, Lettere Ministri, Prussia, mazzo 5: Richeri to Turin, 25 July 1780. 50. This and all subsequent dates are given in New Style. Poland and Russia used the Julian calendar (Old Style), which was eleven days behind the Gregorian calendar (New Style) used in western Europe. 51. The Gazette of Wilna, 1780. Cited in Witkowska 1995?, 87. 52. See below, p. 89. 53. See below, p. 177, and McVeigh 1993, 205. 54. DeGregori 1824, 411. Negri, DeGregori’s source, says that Viotti brought home gifts and money. 55. Fabre 1952, 386. 56. Zamoyski 1998, 48, 118. 57. Witkowska 1995?, 371. 58. Miel 1827, 185. 59. Cited in Witkowska 1995?, 87, giving in note 8 the following archival sources: AK III/884 i 913; ARP 413; AK III/884. (AK = Archiwum Kameralne, AGAD; ARP = Archiwum Rodzinne Poniatowskich, AGAD; AGAD = Archiwum Glowne Akt Dawnych). 60. Cited in Witkowska 1995?, 87–88, 323, 206. 61. One early Polish source asserts that Viotti played for a time in the second violins of the orchestra of the Italian opera company in Warsaw. This has not been verified by the archival sources. Witkowska 1995?, 87–88, citing L. Golebiowski, Gry i zabawy roznych. . . . (1831; reprint, Warsaw: 1983), 260. 62. According to Witkowska 1995?, 87–88, which, however, provides no documentary evidence of the two Italians’ presence in Warsaw after the payment to Pugnani on 16 November 1780. 63. Court Journal (Kamer-Furierskii Zhurnal). The original volumes are in St. Petersburg, Russian State Historical Archive; published versions: St. Petersburg 1890, 65–66. 64. Letter 8/19 January 1778. Gertrude Harris to Elizabeth Harris. Cited in Burrows and Dunhill 2002, 967. 65. A letter from Catherine II to the Baron Grimm, 19 November 1778, cited in Basso, ed., vol. 1: Bouquet 1976, 327.


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66. Potemkin’s name does not appear in the Court Journal on the list of the empress’s dinner guests for that evening. 67. NG2, 22:115. The article makes no further comment on this extraordinary piece of information. 68. Mooser 1948, 234n2. 69. This was a French children’s theatrical group resident in St. Petersburg from 1780 until the autumn of 1781. Basso, ed., vol. 1: Bouquet 1976, 327n10. 70. Probably the opera of that name by Francesco Araia (1755), though there was a Céphal et Procris (1773) by André Ernest Modeste Grétry. 71. Probably the opera of that name by Grétry (1773). 72. Daniel Bachmann, a cellist of German origin, who since 1768 had been first cellist of the Court orchestra. 73. Antoine Bullant, a French bassoonist who had settled in St. Petersburg in 1780. In 1783 he became first bassoonist of the Court orchestra. 74. Mooser 1948–51, 2:309. 75. White 1992, 142. 76. Issue of 4 April 1781. Mooser 1948–51, 2:310. 77. Within a year of Pugnani and Viotti’s sojourn in Russia, Paisible, apparently in despair at his inability to recoup his gambling debts, committed suicide in March 1782. 78. Gertrude Harris to Elizabeth Harris, 2 (recte 13) March 1779. Cited in Burrows and Dunhill 2002, 1014. 79. Burrows and Dunhill 2002, 1014. 80. See Mooser 1948, 232n4, and Basso, vol. 1: Bouquet 1976, 326, who follows Mooser, but erroneously asserts that this announcement came after the departure of the two violinists, rather than after the announcement of their forthcoming departure. Both authors say that the law applied to persons leaving Russia. According to another visitor to St. Petersburg in 1781, “no Person can leave the Russian Dominions without giving Notice three times in the publick Papers, or obtaining a Pass from the General of the Police, which must be countersigned at the Admiralty” (Dimsdale 1989, 83). I have been unable to find precise confirmation of the details of this law, as it appears to be vaguely worded—whether it applied only to foreigners, and above all whether it applied to persons leaving St. Petersburg, not Russia. The evidence of Pugnani’s and Viotti’s movements in the period mid-March to early September, as presented below, suggests that the law referred to persons leaving St. Petersburg, not necessarily Russia. Or was it permissible to give notice in March for a departure five months later? Still another possibility is that the two Italians, after making the announcement, changed their minds and decided to prolong their stay in Russia. 81. See Mooser 1948, 232. 82. Pamiatniki arkitektury Leningrada (Monuments of Architecture of Leningrad) 1972, 83. 83. London Gazette, number 10888, “St. James, 25 November [1768]. This Day his Excellency the Count de Czernicheff, Ambassador Extraordinary from the Empress of Russia, had his first Private Audience of His Majesty, to deliver his Credentials.” 84. St. Petersburg, Russian National Library, Manuscript Department, Fond 682 (Selifontov collection), file 454: letters of I. G. Chernyshev to Ivan Osipovich Selifontov. 85. Comte de la Marmora to Turin, 5 and 9 July, 1773. I-Taps, Lettere Ministri, Francia, mazzo 214.

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86. Mandariaga 2001, 521. 87. The Address Calendar [Mesiaceslov] of the Russian Empire, for the years 1779, 1783. The Moscow Orphanage, with a women’s lying-in hospital attached, and with responsibility for widows’ pensions, had opened in 1764. It was supported chiefly by private donations and “various privileges it had been granted such as the proceeds of taxes on playing cards” (Mandariaga 2001, 492). 88. St. Petersburg, Russian State Historical Archive, Fond 758 (Trustee Council of the Institutions of the Empress Maria), inventory 5, file 540: Correspondence on various subjects, p. 1: “Relative to extending courtesy to the celebrated musician Puniani in the Moscow Orphanage. Year 1781.” Ivan Ivanovich Betskoi to Grigori Grigorievich Gogel. Regrettably, parts of this document are indecipherable due to water damage from burst pipes in the archives in 2002. 89. Russian State Historical Archive, Fond 758, files 506, 541. 90. Seaman 1966, 251, 253. 91. Lepskaia 1996, 23, 130, 151. 92. Seaman 1966, 249. 93. In an earlier publication (2002, 421–22) I referred to a letter purportedly written by Viotti in St. Petersburg on 27 October, as cited in Giazotto 1956, 42–43. I have since concluded that this letter may well be an invention of Giazotto, because the source given is suspiciously incomplete, and in any case is untraceable, the date of the letter is impossible in the light of his known movements at the time, and there are inexplicable anomalies. For example, Viotti twice refers to the “Emperor of Russia,” which, of course, is impossible. 94. Zamoyski 1998, 235. 95. Witkowska 1995?, 88, 324. 96. James Harris to Gertrude Harris, Merton College, Oxford, SC/MP/MAL/1, F33(1), 64 and 66. 97. Malmesbury 1845, 1:386–87. 98. Annonces et Avis divers de Varsovie (a French language weekly), Nr. 8, 22 September 1781, 7. Cited in Szwedowska 1984, 93. I am grateful to Agnieszka Jelewska for tracking down this source, and for the citation in n. 101. 99. Zamoyski 1998, 134, 261. 100. Witkowska 1995?, 60. 101. The Gazeta Warszawska, Nr. 89, 7 November 1781, announced that in Wisniowiec “at seven in the evening there [had been] a concert with the participation of Pugnani and Viotti, and then there were fireworks.” Cited in Szwedowska 1984, 94. 102. Cited in Witkowska 1995?, 88. 103. Bernacki 1925, 1:222, citing the Journal du théâtre de Varsovie commencé de l’année 1781. 104. I-Taps, Lettere Ministri, Prussia, mazzo 6 (1781). 105. According to White 1957, 71n2, the only known copy of this edition, originally in Berlin, was lost or relocated during World War II. 106. See White 1957, 109–12 and White 1992, 333, 336. 107. See White 1992, 129–31. 108. We cannot in all fairness omit to report that Giornovichi seems to have enjoyed a greater success in Warsaw than either Pugnani or Viotti when, still in the service of the Prince of Prussia, he played there on 1 September 1782. According to a local newspaper, he “surpassed Mr Pugnani and all the foreigners who have come to this city to play the


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violin, during this reign” (Annonces et Avis divers de Varsovie, Nr. 11, 7 September 1782. Cited in Bernacki 1925, 1:242). 109. I have not found documentation in the Turin archives of any communication regarding this matter—a request from the two musicians for an extension of their leave, for example. 110. I-Taps, Lettere Ministri, Gran Bretagna, mazzo 73. It is possible that the minister had Pugnani’s interests at heart, but in my opinion the likelihood is stronger that, in his official capacity, he was worried that Pugnani might overstay his leave. 111. See below, p. 90. 112. Gaetano Pugnani to GBV, 16 October 1793, US-NYp JOB 97–52, item 1. Transcribed and translated in Yim 2004, 271–73. See also below, p. 186. 113. He resumed his duties as first violinist and orchestra conductor at the Royal Chapel, and at the Teatro Regio, for the second opera of the carnival opera season, the rehearsals for which began in mid-January 1782. I-Tasct, Collezione IX, Conti, 66: 26, 64. 114. I-Taps, Lettere Ministri, Prussia, mazzo 6, 8 December 1781.

Chapter Three: Paris, 1782–92: Performer, Composer, Teacher 1. The Parisian post couriers took ten days for the Paris–Berlin run. Tablettes de renommée ou de vrai mérite 1791. 2. Bachaumont 1780–89, 20:122, entry of 13 March 1782. 3. Eymar 1801 (first published 1792); Choron and Fayolle 1811/1971; Miel 1827; FétisB (first edition published 1834–44). 4. AMZ, 16 September 1801, cols. 840–41. 5. Fayolle 1831, 1n1. 6. Much historical and architectural detail about the palace, as well as many illustrations, are to be found in Jacquin 1990. 7. This and other details in this section regarding the Salle des Suisses and the Concert spirituel are to be found in Pierre 1975, especially 69–75, 319–24. A fine cutaway model of the Salle des Suisses is one of the exhibits in the Musée de la Musique in Paris. 8. More than one modern writer (e.g., Zaslaw 1976–77, 166; Heartz 1993, 242) translates the measurements in the eighteenth-century sources (59 G by 52 H pieds) as identical in modern English feet. But the old French pied was fractionally longer than the English foot. See Charlton 1985, 88. 9. The box seats cost 6 livres, the gallery 4 livres, the parquet, 3 livres. These prices, according to Pierre 1975, 75, were “within the means of only a small number.” 10. Pierre 1975, 319. 11. Baillot 1825, 4, 6, 8. Baillot (1 October 1771–15 September 1842) was only ten years old at the time of Viotti’s début, but he would have had ample opportunity to hear Viotti several times before he left France with his parents in August 1783. He did not return to Paris until February 1791. 12. Almanach musicale (1783), 8:175. 13. Pierre 1975, 320. 14. Bachaumont 1780–89, 20:211, 29 April 1782.

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15. Almanach musicale (1783), 8:195. According to Brenet 1900, 373n1, the prices for tickets to benefit concerts varied considerably; Viotti charged the Concert spirituel prices for his. 16. AMZ, 3 July 1811, col. 452. 17. As far as I am aware, the earliest author to make this assertion is Gallay 1869, 175, 178. However, some doubt is cast on Gallay’s credibility by his assertion that Viotti first arrived in Paris in 1796! 18. Hill 1963, 153, 256–59. 19. See appendix 8. 20. Rosengard 2000, 126. 21. Bacchetta 1950, 28. 22. For example, in a list he made of owners of valuable instruments, dated 1820, he writes, “London: Viotti music director of the theater of Turin is going to Paris” (Bacchetta 1950), 333. 23. White 1957, 1:50. 24. Fétis 1856, 122. Baillot 1835 illustrates the “Viotti” bow as about two centimetres shorter than the Tourte model. Boyden 1980, 211, produces evidence that Viotti may have played with a bow by John Dodd, as well as a Tourte bow. 25. Pougin 1888, 43; Cucuel 1911, 160. 26. Della Croce 1983–86, 1:209n4, citing Jacques François Halévy, Études sur la vie et les travaux de Cherubini (Paris, 1845). 27. Giovanni Giornovichi was probably the leader from 1777 until he left Paris in 1779, to be replaced, apparently, by his pupil Dieudonné-Pascal Pieltain, who, in turn, left France in 1780. Métra 1787–90, 4:169 (entry of 22 February 1777), mentions both players as “belonging” to the Prince de Guémené. Two others thought to have played in Guémené’s concert were Marie Alexandre Guénin (1780–1801), later leader of the Opéra orchestra, who dedicated his op. IV, Trois Symphonies ( pub. November 1776) to the prince, and the cellist Jean-Louis Duport (le jeune). See Vidal 1876–78, 2:352. 28. Letter of 25 January 1782 to his patron Count Wallenstein, quoted in full in Kaul 1912, pp. xxi–xxii. He mentions no names, however. 29. Viotti’s only other dedication to a member of the aristocracy in this period is that of Concerto no. 7, published 1783–86, to “Mademoiselle la Comtesse Marie Solticoff ” [Saltykov], who, to my knowledge, has not been identified. She could have resided in Paris, or Viotti could have made her acquaintance in Russia. Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun did a portrait of “Monsieur de Solticoff,” a young boy, in Russia in 1801. George Chinnery met the Russian diplomat Prince Solticoff in Paris in the autumn of 1820 (see Yim 1999, 2:695), and a Prince Solticoff held a box at the Théâtre Italien, directed by Viotti in 1819–21 (see Johnson 1988, appendix I, “Subscriptions and Entrées to the Théâtre Italien, 1819–1827”). According to White 1973, 117, this concerto was probably written for Viotti’s second season (1783) at the Concert spirituel. 30. Ginguené An IX [1801]), 144. 31. Edward Dillon (1750–1839) was Master of the Wardrobe (gentillhomme de la chamber) to the Comte d’Artois, and a member of Marie Antoinette’s intimate circle. He later (1807 and 1814) renewed his acquaintance with Viotti at Gillwell. (See Yim 2004, 31, 169). 32. On citait, entre autres concerts, celui du prince de Guéméné. Un défie eut lieu entre Viotti et Berthaume, à qui tiendrait le premier violon à l’hôtel Soubise; le titre de chef d’orchestre était ambitionné [. . .] Viotti l’emporta (Miel 1827, 186).


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33. FétisB, 8:361: “[ Le] concert de l’hôtel de Soubise.” Fétis could be referring to the orchestra of Soubise, or of Guémené, neither of which existed, I believe, in late 1783 or in 1784, which is when he places the event. Pougin 1888, 34, definitely places the incident in the context of Soubise’s orchestra. Fétis adds that, since Viotti won the position of “chef d’orchestre,” Berthaume “ne put prétendre qu’à le seconder comme premier violon [!]” An extraordinary confusion of terminology still plagues this area of music-historical discourse. Banat 2006, 316–17, asserts incongruously that the competition took place in 1789 and that it was for “Saint-Georges’ position as music director of the Concert Olympique.” 34. The splendid palace, on the rue des Francs-Bourgeois, now houses the Archives nationales and the Musée de l’Histoire de France. 35. Besenval 1805, 2:44. See Couty 1988, 27, regarding the lodgings in the Tuileries palace. The prince also had lodgings in the royal palace at Versailles. 36. Boigne 1907, 1:31. 37. Browne 1989 gives much background material on Guémené and Soubise in this period. 38. La Tour du Pin Gouvernet 1914, 1:19. 39. Besenval 1805, 2:43. Mme Dillon was the vocal soloist at the concert of Guémené’s orchestra in the Ginguené anecdote cited above. 40. La Tour du Pin Gouvernet 1914, 1:24. 41. NG2, 19:725. 42. Bachaumont 1780–89, 10:59, entry of 6 March 1777. These remarks imply that the Concert des amateurs did not charge admission or subscription fees, which surely was not the case. The Journal de Paris had carried a notice, on 3 March 1777, announcing the cancellation of the forthcoming concert of the Concert des amateurs, allowing Giornovichi the use of their room. 43. Consulted were: F-Pan Archives Rohan-Bouillon, 273 AP43, 44, 45, and 46 (account registers 1782–87); Fonds Rohan de Sichrow, carton 22, 286Mi3 (correspondence of the Prince de Soubise, including many letters to his daughter). 44. F-Pan O1 2910, volume, Mandements de l’Exercice, 1781–87: 1782, item 84. 45. “Au Sr. Viotty, musicien, la somme de 600. [livres], pour avoir chanté [sic] au concert dans la Gallerie de Versailles lors de l’arrivée du Comte et de la Comtesse du Nord.” F-Pan O1 3061, carton, Pièces justificatives et Minutes des Dépenses de tout le département: extraits, copies, mèmoires, comptes de toute sorte, ordres de paiements, Quartier d’avril 1782. Com[édies] et Conc[erts], no. 167. 46. Bachaumont 1780–89, 20:12, entry of 5 January 1782. 47. Sutcliffe 1992, 28. An edition carrying a dedication to the grand duke did not appear until 1796 (Artaria) ( Jones 2002, 348). 48. Archive of the Prince Vorontsov 1897, 29:230–34: letter from Franz Lafermier (the grand duke’s librarian), Turin, to Prince Vorontsov, St. Petersburg, 25 April 1782: “Pour ici Pougnani nous avait annoncé de merveilles de l’opera qu’on y donne.” An entry in the Conto Camerale of 1782 (no. 170, 22 May) shows a payment to Pugnani of L.208 for him and other players in concerts for “I Sig. Conte e Contessa del Nord.” 49. F-Pan O1 3061, nos. 191, 193. 50. Panareo 1910, 28. 51. Oberkirch 1989, 155–56. 52. The entry in O1 3061 (no. 166) for Mara’s payment is almost identical to that of Viotti: “Au Dlle. Mara, cantatrice italienne, la some de 600. pour avoir chanté au

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concert dans la Gallerie de Versailles, lors de l’arrivée du Comte et la Comtesse du Nord.” I was unable to find any such document for Legros, however, perhaps because, being on the payroll of the Concert de la Reine, he was paid through a different channel. Bachaumont ed., 1780–89, 20:277–78, entry of 31 May 1782, mentions only Mara as having sung in this concert. Perhaps Oberkirch was mistaken about Legros. 53. O1 3061, no. 198: A payment to two “garçons de la musique, le lunedi 20 may Grand concert de la gallerie pour M. et Mde. La Comtesse du Nord et répétition—12 [livres].” Lest there be any doubt, this document, giving the date, would seem to confirm that the concert in which Viotti played was the one described by the Baroness d’Oberkirch. 54. White 1973, 116–17. 55. Bachaumont 1780–89, 20:277, entry of 31 May 31 1782. 56. See below, p. 236. 57. La Tour du Pin Gouvernet 1914, 1:25. 58. It was Romana Raina who made this discovery. See Raina 1994, 254. 59. According to Raina 1985, 28–30, this house is located in Via Apostoli, but there is no documentary evidence. 60. The Ghillini family was one of the richest and most prominent of Alessandria, with ties through marriage to the Dal Pozzo della Cisterna family. Their superb palace in the heart of the city is now the seat of the Prefettura and the Province of Alessandria. I could find no trace of Viotti’s visit or of his friendship with the Ghillinis in the Ghillini family archive in the Archivio di Stato in Alessandria. 61. DeGregori 1824, 412. 62. In a search of the relevant cadastral registers in the Salussola town archives, I was unable to find any trace of this transaction. 63. Saint Bononio, from Bologna (“Bononio”), after a period as an ascetic hermit in Egypt, was the abbot of a monastery near Crescentino (not far from Fontanetto) until his death on 31 August 1026. He is still a much-venerated figure in this region of Piedmont. 64. The identity of this confraternity has not been ascertained, the title page of the membership catalogue having been removed. Both Felice Viotti and his daughter Adelaide were members of the Confraternity Società di Suffragio, the former until his death in 1784, the latter until her resignation in 1793. I have been unable to ascertain whether this is the same confraternity. 65. Viotto, Gio Battista di Felice in età d’anni 20 circa per essere virtuoso di violino fu ammesso alla regia capella nella qualità di p[rim]o. viol. e dichiarato virtuoso di Sua Maestà Vittorio Amedeo. 1776. 66. Viotto, Giuseppe di Felice, virtuoso pur anche di violino, e d’ottima riuscita sotto la p[rotezione?] del di lui fratello, benché in età d’anni 15 circa. 1776. 67. Società di Suffragio, membership calendar, entry of 3 May 1793: “La consorella Carbonero Viotti Adelaide se note a questo M.o Revd.o Sig.or Preposto non aver più essa a chi si potesse appoggiare per la celebrazione della Messa in occasione di qualche defunto della Veneranda compagnia del suffraggio; ha fatto instanza pertanto la sudetta di rimuoverla, e di fare subentrare a chi per anzianità aspetti [. . .].” 68. J[ean] A[ndrè] Viotti, Torino (who signs an added note as “Giovanni Viotti”), to Jean Baptiste Viotti, No. 3 Duke Street Adelphi, London, 9 April 1803, in Italian (US-NYp JOB 97–52, item 8). The oncia in Piedmont was equivalent to 42.814 mm (1.685 inches). 69. Negri, biographical notice (the last paragraph, in Negri’s hand). See appendix 2.


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70. A friend, Ignazio Brun, who adds a note to André’s letter, undertakes to offset the immediate financial needs of Giuseppe, in the amount of 250 livres, in expectation of Viotti’s reimbursement. There is a sequel to this affair: in a letter of 23 July 1819 (USNYp JOB 97–52, item 42), Louise Brun, who was probably the widow of Ignazio, or possibly his sister, informed Viotti that he still owed her 420 francs of a twenty-year-old debt totalling 1,920 francs, because of the difference between old and new Piedmontese livres, and, significantly, because Viotti’s funds had not been sufficient to pay the full amount. It is possible that this debt, at a time when Viotti was hard-pressed financially, was in connection with money paid to support Giuseppe, allowing for an inaccuracy of Louise Brun’s memory as to the time the debt was incurred. 71. Fontanetto, Archivio Comunale: cadastral certificate headed “Viotto Felice fu Gio Batta [. . .],” showing two scarcely legible entries, dated 1 December 1807 and 1 December 1810, indicating the sale by Giuseppe of a “canapale” (a field of hemp) in Santa Maria del Pozzo (a quarter of the village), a forested area, and other land. Photocopy in Raina 1985, 323. 72. Fontanetto, Archivio Parrocchiale, Register of Marriages, 1763–1805, f. 53v, no. 23. 73. See also appendix 6. Viotti mentions only his brothers, “still children,” in his Précis, which suggests that Teresa Margarita Domenica had died by 1793. 74. Biella, Archivio di Stato, Beni diversi, mazzo 27, fasc. 12. 75. Cassetti and Signorelli 1994, 119, 121, 124. The autograph of Cimarosa’s letter is in Biella, Archivio di Stato, Famiglia Dal Pozzo della Cisterna, Storia della Famiglia II, mazzo 11. 76. DeGregori 1824, 411. Fétis, presumably following DeGregori, makes the same claim. 77. Four letters from the Torinese ambassador in Naples throw light on Pugnani’s activities: 15 October 1782: “We also have with us the immortal Pugnan”; 29 October: “It is now six days since this Piedmontese Orpheus has been at Caserte at the home of Count Rosamousky who used to be his pupil; Saturday evening he played at court, and the Chevalier Hamilton told me that he gave great pleasure to everyone, so much so that he will play there again and perhaps he will be asked to compose or at any rate accompany an air in the Grand Theater on the Feast of San Carlo”; 5 November: “Pugnani played again before their majesties in the evening at Caserte, and he presented a sonata for harpsichord to Her Royal Highness, Madame Marie Thérèse, and once again his skill was loudly applauded. I cannot yet speak of the presents which this will bring him, these, as far as I know, not yet having been distributed to him”; 11 November: “Pugnani, who played at court for the third time yesterday evening, leaves Naples Tuesday [12 November]; he will stop over in Rome and then in Florence and Parma, so as to be in Turin around mid-December. I have been informed that he received about 800 ducats in presents [de present] from the Court.” Lettere Ministri, Due Sicilie, mazzo 30. 78. Rosengard 2000, 74, 87, 96, 115. Perhaps Guadagnini told Viotti that La Houssaye had been summarily dismissed from the ducal court at Parma because of his “irregular habits and scandalous conduct.” Viotti, however, apparently had a high opinion of the gifted French violinist’s abilities, and later became his chief employer. 79. The Registri Recapiti (I-Tr) show all of the quarterly payments to Viotti made regularly throughout this period until the entry for the second quarter of 1786 (1 July,

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p. 379), when the following marginal note appears: “Gio. Batt. Viotti. His stipend from the first of April to the end of last May is due to him, his having been released by His Majesty from his service, as noted in my memorandum dated the 14th of this past June, herewith attached as an authenticated copy—33.6.8.” I was unable to find this memorandum. The file in which it was most likely located, Materia Politiche per Rapporto all’Interno, Cerimoniale, Cariche di Corte, mazzo 6, stops at the year 1782. The registers of the Conto Camerale tell the same story as the Recapiti, with a few discrepancies and interruptions: the last two quarters of 1783 are deducted (not paid), (though Viotti is not on the 1783 orchestra list to begin with—surely a clerical error) as are the last quarter of 1784 and all four quarters of 1785. In both cases the money was paid the following year: I-Tasr, Articolo 217, 1784, Capo. III, pp. unnumbered, no. 323, ordered 2 October, L.200 ([sic], though only two quarters were owed him); 1786, Capo. III, pp. unnumbered, No. 251, L.250. All four quarters of 1786 are shown as paid, or at least as not deducted. I am inclined to consider the Registri Recapiti as being the more accurate of these two sources, since they contain more day-to-day administrative detail concerning the orchestra. 80. A touching example is the case of Carlo Toso, who was appointed a supernumerary violinist on 31 December 1781, replacing his father, Francesco, who had died. “His Majesty, wishing to recognize the long service of forty years” of Francesco, and since Carlo was left “without any means of sustenance,” exceptionally awarded him a stipend of L.200, to be drawn, however, upon the “Secret Treasury” (Tesoreria segreta) so that “it will not be an example to others in the same category.” Cariche di Corte, mazzo 6. 81. I-Taps, Materie Politiche per Rapporto all’Interno, Provvedimenti sovrani, Cariche, 14:436, 437–38. 82. “Gio. Battà Viotti, con quittanza del di lui padre Felice—50” (Registri Recapiti: 1780, 86, 314, 546, 718; 1781, 181, 405, 702, 953; 1782, 151, 503). The first of these marginal entries reads as follows: “For him [Viotti] by hand and with a receipt from his father Felice Viotti to whom His Majesty, by means of the above-named letter of the Secretary of War, has ordered that the above sum [i.e., L.50] be paid, and also in future the entire stipend.” (Per esso a mani e con quittanza del di lui genitore Felice Viotti al quale S.M. per via della sud.ta lettera della Segre[teria] di Guerra ha ordinato venisse pagato [la] sud.a somma, ed anche in avvenire l’intiero stipendio.) The “above-named letter” refers to a letter, dated 23 April 1780, mentioned in an almost identical marginal note for Pugnani, to whose father his salary was paid. The War Ministry concerned itself with expenditures in certain areas having no obvious relevance to its function. For example, there are several payments for repairs to the fabric of the Teatro Regio entered in the “Bilanci” (accounts) of the Archive of the Ministry of War (Secretary of War), housed in I-Tasr. See Basso, ed., vol. 4: Tamburini 1983, 220–27. My search of the various relevant archives has failed to uncover this letter. Perhaps the most likely location is I-Tasr, Segreteria di Guerra, Lettere all Ufficio Generale del Soldo e al Consiglio di Finanze, of which, however, the register for the relevant period is missing. 83. F-Pn Baylot FM/3 4, Registre de la R\L\du Contrat Social, 112. 84. Basso 1994, 525. 85. Tocchini 1998, 215n88. 86. Tocchini 1998, 209, 215–16, and 223n110. 87. For the presumed chronology, first performances and publication dates of these concertos, see White 1973, 114–17. See also White 1992, 332–34.


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88. Viano 1983, 1:78–79. Milligan 1983, 46, and McVeigh 1993, 96–98, give similar data and conclusions regarding London in the late eighteenth century. 89. JdP, 8 April 1783. 90. Mercure de France, 19 April 1783. 91. Viotti’s Précis. 92. F-Pan O1 2910. 93. Consulted by the present author: F-Pan: C 184; K 161; K 505; K 530/21; O1 425, 426, 427, 428, 429, 430, 650, 651, 652, 653, 655, 656, 657, 658, 659, 663, 664, 688, 702–7, 842, 2806, 2910, 3061, 3062, 3066, 3786, 3791, 3792, 3793, 3794. 94. The references in Giazotto 1956, 61 (“contabilità di casa reale”; “registri dell’amministrazione di Versailles”), are so vague as to cast serious doubt on their authenticity. “Correspondence [sic] diplomatique de cour” is not traceable in the Archives nationales or in the Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères de France (Quay d’Orsay). It is my melancholy duty to report that it is highly likely that these references are among the numerous “sources,” “documents,” “letters,” “newspaper announcements,” and “events” in Giazotto’s book that are figments of his imagination. 95. F-Pan O1 425: Table de l’année 1784. 96. Livre rouge 1790, 9, 17: “Seconde classe, sixième et septième livraisons.” 97. Ferrari 1830, 220. The favor, granted by Viotti and Sapio, the queen’s voice teacher, consisted in procuring for Ferrari free entrance to performances at the Opéra. It seems unlikely that Viotti would have had such influence at this institution, except through the queen. 98. Egli si trova benissimo, e mi disse che attende dal favor della Regina un impiego, e che frattanto, finchè questo li venga impartito, gode una pensione di tremila lire di Francia l’anno. Queste sono sue voci. Mi disse anche che in questo ordinario avrebbe fatto se[condo] il suo d[o]vere ( page damaged in the original). Biella, Archivio di Stato: Famiglia Dal Pozzo, Storie famiglie II, mazzo 11, fasc. 27. Three thousand is no doubt closer to the mark than 6,000, as Fétis has it, not only because Filistri is a more direct source, but also because it is closer to Viotti’s figure of 150 sterling. Or perhaps the pension was doubled when (and if) he was finally given an active position. Within a year of this visit, Antonio Filistri de’ Caramondari was hired as the court poet by Frederick William II of Prussia. He wrote about fifteen librettos for the royal opera house in Berlin, set by Reichardt, Alessandri, Naumann, Righini, and others. It is puzzling that Filistri writes of Viotti as if he thinks it will be news to the Prince della Cisterna. Surely, Viotti has been writing to his former patron. It is unthinkable that he would have neglected this elementary courtesy to the man who had done so much for him. And yet, in the family archive in Biella there is only one letter from Viotti to Cisterna, written much later, from his exile in 1798. Was it only a coincidence that Viotti’s dismissal from the Turin Cappella e Camera occurred so soon after Filistri’s letter (memorandum of 14 June; see above p. 90 and n. 79)? Did the administration learn from the Prince della Cisterna of Viotti’s pension, and was it this knowledge that convinced them that Viotti had no intention of returning? 99. NG2, 5:211, and MGG2, Personenteil 4, col. 305. 100. Govion Broglio Solari 1826, 1:189. 101. An autobiographical notice, Notice biographique sur M. Cherubini, dictated by Cherubini in 1831, originally published by Arthur Pougin in Le Ménestrel, 1881–82, cited in Della

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Croce 1983–86, 2:574. Several writers assert that it was Viotti who introduced Cherubini to the queen of France, though there is no evidence. 102. Lever 2001, 110. 103. Beaussant and Bouchenot-Déchin 1996, 223. 104. Michon 1954, 245–59. This article provides very few precise musical details. I have not been able to consult the collection. Two pieces by Viotti, a “Rondeau del Sig.r Viotti” and a “Polonaise by the same,” both for harpsichord or pianoforte, arranged from the last movements of Concertos no. 3 and no. 2, respectively, are contained in a collection of manuscript pieces for harpsichord or piano by various composers, dated 1782, probably originally in the library of the Musique du Roi or a “princely collection.” This collection is now housed in the Bibliothèque de Versailles (Manuscript musical 259). See Herlin 1995, xv and 582, in which the rondeau is identified as “G.[iazotto] 25,” and the polonaise as “G.[iazotto] 24” (recte G. 44). 105. F-Pan O1 3792: Extrait des Dépenses faites pendant le Cours de l’Anée 1787 à Trianon et aux Thuilleries par ordre de La Reine. The entry for the fortepiano seems to have been added later, after the rest of the abstract had been written, which suggests that the payment was made in the first half of 1788 (the document was certified on 31 August 1788). 106. See Scott 1972, 390–99. 107. Comtesse de Provence to the King and Queen of Sardinia, 5 December 1773. Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères de France (Quay d’Orsay), Correspondance politique Sardaigne, vol. 255. 108. Apparently, Michault was one of four young musicians (including Paul Alday, who later became a pupil of Viotti’s) who played on “tryout days.” The Mercure de France, 10 May: “On the days given over to try-outs, several young persons were heard who show considerable aptitude” (On a entendu, dans les jours consacrés auz essais, plusieurs jeunes gens qui annoncent beaucoup de dispositions). However, the programs of the concerts in which they performed seem to be otherwise quite normal. 109. White 1957, 14–15. 110. Eymar 1801, 20–21. 111. Hans 1953, 518, gives the name as “T. B. Sue,” which does not correspond to the given names of any known member of this family. 112. Hans 1953, 515, 522. 113. Morellet 1822, 1:252, 281. It might be thought that Viotti and Benjamin Franklin would have been occasionally brought together through their close common acquaintance with Morellet. However, Franklin, apart from his fondness for Scottish folk songs, and his invention and playing of the glass harmonica, was not particularly interested in music, though he apparently “knew somewhat how to play the harp, the guitar, and the violin.” Neither Franklin nor Morellet mentions Viotti in their correspondence. Franklin was on friendly terms with the violinist André Noël Pagin (1721–after 1785), a pupil of Tartini’s and a member of the entourage of Mme Brillon, an accomplished harpsichordist and pianist, who was one of Franklin’s closest friends in France, and to whom Boccherini had dedicated a set of keyboard and violin sonatas. Viotti is not known to have been acquainted with her. Franklin occasionally arranged to have Mme Brillon’s piano borrowed for Mme Helvetius’s salon, and “invitations for ‘good music and tea with ice’ went back and forth” (Lopez 1966, 25, 290). 114. Burney 1974, 222, entry in Burney’s journal of 13 December 1770.


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115. Norvins 1897 [but completed by Norvins in 1847], 1:79. 116. Oberkirch 1989, 314. 117. Morellet to Albaret, February 1773. Medlin, David, LeClerc 1991, 1:192–94. 118. Kelly 1968, 2:84–87. Kelly also asserts that Aiguillon was banished from England, and went to Hamburg where he was “condemned to be shot” (at all events he did die in Hamburg on 4 May 1800). It is possible that he and Viotti saw each other in or near Hamburg during the violinist’s exile. 119. La Laurencie 1934, 231, names four musicians in the elder Aiguillon’s employ: Baillon, Barthélemi, Alexandre, and Tarail. On the death of Louis XV in 1774 the duke was disgraced and exiled from the Versailles court, but he and his wife continued to maintain their hôtel d’Agénois in the rue de l’Université in Paris and their chateau outside Paris. 120. Vigée-Lebrun 1835–37, 1:60. 121. Le Brun [1793], 12. 122. Vigée-Lebrun 1835–37, 1:61–62. Nicolo Mestrino became the leader of the orchestra of Viotti’s Théâtre de Monsieur. François Sallentin was the principal oboist of the orchestra of the Opéra and of the Société olympique. Nicolas-Joseph Hüllmandel (1756–1823) was Mme de Montgéroult’s teacher and a close friend of Viotti’s. Johann Baptist Cramer (1771–1858), the son of the violinist Wilhelm Cramer, became one of the most prominent pianists of his time. He lived in London but made visits to Paris. In the 1780s he was of course still very young. 123. Easum 1942, 320, 325, 340, 345. According to Basso 1994, 247n9, the prince’s first violinists in 1784 and 1788–89 (successors to Salomon) were Abraham Peter Schulz and Johann Samuel Karl Possin, respectively. 124. Vigée-Lebrun 1835–37, 2:270. 125. Madame Vigée-Lebrun to MC, 7 July 1816. AUS-Sfl 2000–8/2. 126. It is not clear who this was. Emmanuel-Félicité de Durfort, Maréchal Duc de Duras was named premier gentilhomme de la chambre et surveillant des théâtres royaux in 1757, and in this capacity was involved in the unsuccessful attempts of the ComédieFrançaise, in late 1788 and early 1789, to prevent the Théâtre de Monsieur from giving spoken plays (see Di Profio 2003, 258, 261–62, 264). It seems extraordinary that at this very time he would be making music with Viotti. Duras was seventy-three years old in 1789. He had two sons, either of which is also a possibility as the baritone in question, as is his grandson, Amédée-Bretagne-Malo (5 April 1771–1 August 1838), who was only seventeen or eighteen years old at the time, but who is known to have been musically inclined, and whom Mme de La Tour du Pin mentions as her friend (La Tour du Pin Gouvernet 1914, 1:184). 127. La Tour du Pin Gouvernet 1914, 1:156–59. 128. Viotti was the codirector of the Théâtre de Monsieur (see below, p. 125). 129. There were four tenors employed in Viotti’s Italian troupe in 1789: Giuseppe Viganoni, soon to be the primo tenore (Mandini and Viganoni made their débuts on 15 June in F. Bianchi’s La Villanella rapita); Bernardo Mengozzi, who was already known in Paris for his performances in the Concert spirituel and the Concert olympique; and Filippo Scalzi and Antonio Bianchi, second tenors. 130. Giazotto’s assertion (1956, 90), that Viotti conducted a performance of Paisiello’s Il Re Teodoro in Venezia in February 1789, is unsubstantiated and probably false. There is no mention of it in the newspapers. 131. Norvins 1897, 1:166.

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132. Zurich 1934, 176. 133. Ibid. 134. Norvins 1897, 1:166–68. The Noailles wedding apparently took place sometime between 19 May and the end of July 1790 (see La Tour du Pin Gouvernet 1914, 239–40, 247). 135. See below, p. 352. 136. Zurich 1934, 254–55, quoting the unpublished journal of the Comte de Diesbach. 137. Eymar An VIII [1801] (first published in 1792), 24–27. 138. Unpublished letters, Boccherini to Pleyel, 17 July 1797, 11 October 1796, 4 January 1798. Quoted in Rothschild 1965, 126, 104, 69, respectively. In the letter of 11 October 1796, Boccherini says that these pieces number 200, but this is presumably an error, as he subsequently always gives the number as 110, and his autograph thematic catalogue of these works, Nota della Musica mandata a Parigi l’anno 1790 o 1791, drawn up during the negotiations with Pleyel, contains 110 works. See Gérard 1969, 753 and illust. 4. 139. Eymar An VIII [1801], 23; Miel 1827, 186n4. Neither Eymar nor Miel gives a date for the wedding. 140. Banat 2006, 5, 117, 143, 251, refutes the widely held belief that the violinist Chevalier de Saint-Georges was the son of a highly placed member of the Boullongne family. 141. See Medlin 1991, 2:190n14, and 222n12, and Tableau des members qui composent la R%L% de la Parfaite-Estime et Société Olympique avec leurs qualités civiles et demeures, année 1788, F-Pn Baylot FM3 153, p. 22. 142. Antonio Bruni, État Gènéral/des/Instruments de Musique/saisis chez les émigrés et condamnés/et mis en réserve pour la Nation/ Par la Commission temporaine des Arts depuis son Établissement/par Bruni, transcribed in Gallay 1890, 28. According to Gallay, Boulogne was still living in rue Bergère in 1789. Bruni indicates the inventory as having taken place in a dwelling on the Place de la Révolution (formerly Place Louis XV, now the Place de la Concorde); Boulogne apparently had moved house sometime after 1789. Gallay criticizes Bruni as sloppy and incompetent in his methods. The inventories are indeed cursory and show signs of haste. 143. NG2, 19:920. An edition of Mozart’s six quartets dedicated to Haydn was available in Paris by the end of 1785. We have no evidence as to whether Viotti knew these works at this time; we shall learn in a later chapter of his interest in Mozart’s orchestral music. 144. For the presumed chronology and first performances of Viotti’s concertos in this paragraph, see White 1973, 117–20, and White 1992, 332–34. 145. There is no reason, however, why Viotti would not have felt at liberty to repeat at Versailles concertos he had already played at the Concert spirituel in 1782–83. 146. Pierre 1975, 336, 338. Of course these could have been performed by Viotti at Versailles first—they were “new” only for the Concert spirituel. 147. Confalonieri 1948, 1:129–30. 148. Cited in Della Croce 1983–86, 2:574. 149. See chapter 1, n. 124; p. 54; and pp. 207 and 241, for evidence from Turin, Warsaw, and London, respectively. The amounts paid no doubt varied according to the prestige or status of the musician. Estimates of the average amount earned by Mozart in salon appearances vary from 50 to 200 florins. Solomon 1995, 521–25, surmises an


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average of 100 florins per salon concert in Vienna in the years 1781 through 1791, which, according to the same author’s “Table of Money Values,” xi, would have been the equivalent of about 10 English pounds. However, Mozart, when in Paris in 1778, complained that the French “consider their applause sufficient reward.” (Sadie 2006, 455, citing Mozart’s letter to his father, 1 May 1778.) 150. François-Sappey 1978, 185. 151. See François-Sappey, 1978, 182–84: Baillot to Montbeillard, 29 October 1802, 20 September 1814, 9 November 1814; Pincherle 1924, 108–9, letters 6, 7: Viotti to Baillot, [n.d.]; Schwarz 1958, facing p. 443: GBV to Baillot, 29 July 1823. 152. Di Profio 2003, 427. 153. Letter to La Gazette nationale, 24 December 1791. Cited in Gregoir 1888–89, 102–3. 154. See Yim 2004, 34. 155. Eymar 1801, 29–37. 156. A critical edition is in White 1976, part 2: Concertos 18 and 27, including the extra staff in the slow movement. Fayolle 1831, 40, notes that Viotti’s pupil Labarre “played solos in a superior fashion, above all in adagios, improvising embroideries [broderies] on the example of his master.” 157. Goldberg 1991, 281–83 and 284, respectively. 158. White 1976, 1:x. 159. Goldberg 1991, 238–39. 160. Eymar 1801, 43; There are two manuscript versions of Viotti’s description, neither in Viotti’s hand: F-Pn (Musique), Lettres autographs, G. B. Viotti, no. 12: “Note de Viotti sur le Ranz-des-Vaches,” and GB-Lcm Viotti Papers. The notated music is not included in the latter copy. 161. Fayolle 1824, 55, which, however, contains several inaccuracies. 162. Stowell 1985, 355, citing Baillot 1835, 183–90. 163. Montgéroult 1822, 3:283. 164. See below, chapter 6. 165. Based on the worklist in NG2, 26:769–70. 166. In the accompanying notes for several compact disc recordings of Viotti’s works, issued around the year 2000, it is claimed that “important unpublished works by Viotti” have been rediscovered (“practically his entire unpublished production”), including a work titled Meditazione in preghiera for violin and orchestra (mention is also made of a letter in which Viotti refers to this piece of music), and, presumably, three hitherto unknown violin concertos, bringing the total number up to thirty-two, as well as a collection, Souvenirs de violon, containing Viotti’s cadenzas for all his concertos. However, to the present author’s knowledge, no further information has been made public regarding these items, including such elementary facts as their location, nor have any of the three “new” concertos been recorded. Until some form of substantiation is forthcoming, the authenticity of all this material must remain in doubt. 167. White 1992, 338, 341, and 339. 168. In 1812 Viotti performed one of his duets, with Francesco Vaccari, in a private home in London, for the Prince Regent. (See below, p. 271.) This shows that he considered the duets suitable for such events, allowing the inference that he might have done the same in Paris and at Versailles. 169. Parker 2006, 317–27.

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170. The “solo” for violin with piano accompaniment, WV:24, is in the key of E-flat major, not E major as given in the worklist in NG2, 26:770, and MGG2, 17:29. It is an arrangement, in the same key, of the second movement of the cello duet, WIV:39. 171. Of course, there was a large repertory of sonatas for keyboard with violin accompaniment by other composers, including Viotti himself, but for their sheer musical quality and equal participation of the two instruments, Mozart’s sonatas were surely unique. 172. See also below, p. 183. 173. See Mongrédien 1996, 280. 174. NG2, 1:335. 175. Choron and Fayolle 1811/1971, 2:411. 176. FétisB, 8:290. 177. Roquefort 1812, 223. This article is uneven in its accuracy. According to NG2, 1:334, “in 1789 [Paul Alday] performed a symphonie concertante with ‘Vauthy’ ( Viotti) in Lyons.” This is an error. Vauthy was another violinist (not Viotti), who played with Alday a symphonie concertante by Alday on 11 March at the Concert spirituel in Paris. 178. FétisB, 5:146–47. Roquefort 1812, 223, states that Labarre received lessons from Viotti around 1782. 179. According to Roquefort 1812, 223, it was not until 1789. 180. Giazotto 1956, 49. Giazotto also claims (49n5) that, according to Baillot, Eck was the purest representative of Viotti’s violin technique, citing a “brief notice” by Baillot, titled Le violon en France, Paris, 1818, which, however, is untraceable. See also Schwarz 1985, 244, who cites Giazotto, and Walls 1992, 21, who cites Schwarz. 181. The title page of no. 1 bears the words “performed by the composer at the Concert olympique and at the Concert spirituel,” one of the few references to the specific repertory of the Concert olympique that have come down to us. 182. See NG2, 18:359–60. 183. FétisB, 6:451. Roquefort 1812, 223, also states that Paravicini was a pupil of Viotti’s. 184. See NG2, 4:592, s.v. “Bull, Ole.” 185. See NG2, 7:255, and MGG2, Personenteil 5:925, s.v. “Deszcyn´ski, Józef.” 186. Four examples: (1) Roquefort 1812, 223, asserts that [Gaetano] Brunetti was sent to Paris in 1782 to study with Viotti. But Brunetti (1744–98), who studied with Nardini, had moved to Madrid by 1762, and would have been thirty-eight years old in 1782. FétisB, 2:98, makes no mention of Viotti in connection with Brunetti. (2) Elwart 1860, 53, asserts that “Viotti had his second symphonie concertante performed [at the Concert olympique] by the violinists [Henri] Guérillot and [ Jean-Jacques] Grasset, his pupils,” but he provides evidence neither for this performance nor for the two violinists being Viotti’s pupils. According to NG2, 10:302, Grasset was a pupil of Isidore Berthaume. (3) Fayolle 1831, 40, asserts that Mme Gerbini was a pupil of Viotti’s, but according to Viotti himself she was a pupil of Pugnani’s. (4) Alexandre Boucher (1778–1861), according to his biographer ( Vallat 1890, 66–69), began receiving “quelques conseils” from Viotti in Paris after the Battle of Valmy (20 September 1792), which is impossible since Viotti had left Paris by then. In any case, Boucher’s teachers had been Gaviniès, and, following on the death of the latter in 1800, Guillaume Navoigille.


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187. The first three performances, including the first by someone other than Viotti himself, on 15 August 1784, were by [Pierre-Noël] Gervais, who, according to White 1957, 16, citing the JdP, 15 August 1784, was sixteen years old. In that case, it seems likely that he would have been coached by Viotti. But according to FétisB and NG2, he was born around 1746. 188. On 8 September 1785 Giuseppe Bouvier (1764–1823), “musician in the chapel of the Duke of Parma,” made his début at the Concert spirituel with a concerto by Viotti. Bouvier had been sent to Turin sometime after 1778 to study with Pugnani (Pelicelli 1935, 28). Viotti may well have met him before he and Pugnani left Italy in December 1779. Bouvier is probably the “Parmigiano” listed among the second violins of the Teatro Regio orchestra in 1780–81. According to FétisB, 2:47, Pugnani “recommended him to Viotti when he went to Paris; the latter arranged Bouvier’s début [le fit débuter] at the Concert spirituel, in 1785.” Though Fétis, as usual, provides no source, his information seems plausible since Bouvier played a concerto by Viotti at his début, and again at the Concert spirituel on 11 April 1786. Later he joined the orchestra of the Théâtre Italien, where he remained until his death. It may be presumed that he remained in Viotti’s orbit of followers or acquaintances. He did not become a member of the orchestra of the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau, however. 189. According to Place 1989, 232, the “old” Concert spirituel was held in the salle de l’Opéra in 1790, but only at Easter time, 28 March–11 April. See also Di Profio 2003, 93. However, Pierre and Bloch-Michel 1975, 343–44, lists in addition two other concerts, in both of which a work by Viotti was played: that of 2 February, in the Théâtre Italien, and that of 13 May, in the Panthéon. By 1790, in fact, there was more than one “Concert spirituel.” 190. However, she had played a concerto by Viotti at least once previously, at her benefit concert on 26 December 1785 ( JdP, 26 December 1785, as cited in Eisen 1991, 131). 191. Mercure de France, 14 May 1785, 469/76. 192. White 1985, appendix 4. The list is in F-Pn, ms. 2223. According to Goldberg 1991, 514, Viotti sent this list to Baillot, who copied the tempo markings into his copies of the Viotti works, which now are also in the Bibliothèque nationale. 193. The Sues were a veritable dynasty of anatomists and surgeons. Perhaps the most likely one to have known Viotti was Jean-Joseph (ca. 1760–1830), or possibly his cousin Pierre (1739–1816). Jean-Joseph was the author of a book on anatomy for the use of painters and sculptors (1788), and the timely Opinion sur la guillotine ou sur la douleur qui survit la décollation (1796). Whichever Sue it was, almost certainly it was the same one who was the Chinnery family doctor in Paris in 1802 (see Yim 2004, 116). 194. Miel 1827, 191. 195. Liste de toutes les personnes qui composent le Premier Musée . . . [1785]. 196. See Quoy-Bodin 1984, 98. There are two copies of this document (Liste des membres qui composent la Société Olympique. Avec leurs qualités et demeures pour l’année 1786 ): in Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris (Imprimé no. 14 718), and in F-Pn (H18 751). 197. “L’orchestre était dirigé par le fameux Viotti” (the orchestra was conducted by the famous Viotti). Norvins 1897, 1:159. Norvins (17 June 1769–30 July 1854) was only seventeen or eighteen years old in 1787, but his description of the Concert olympique seems generally accurate, except for one egregious, inexplicable lapse: he claims to have seen Haydn at a performance of his symphonies by the olympique orchestra ( p. 159). But his account of having attended one of its concerts on Ash Wednesday, probably in

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1789 ( p. 157), rings true. Norvins is followed by, among others, Brenet 1900, 365 (“Viotti often conducted it”); Schwarz, “Viotti,” MGG1, 13:1792 (“In addition he conducted some concerts of the newly founded Loge Olympique in 1786”); and Jean Mongrédien, “Paris: The End of the Ancien Régime,” in Neal Zaslaw, 1989a, 69 (“Viotti became its conductor when he settled in Paris”). Viotti’s earliest biographers, Eymar (1801, but first published in 1792), Choron and Fayolle (1811/1971), Miel (1827), and Fétis (1844), do not mention the Concert olympique. 198. Tableau des membres qui composent la R.L. de la Parfaite-Estime et Société Olympique, avec leurs qualitiés civiles et demeures. Année 1788, F-Pn Baylot FM2 153. 199. Barbedette 1871 was, as far as I can determine, the first to do so (“It was the chevalier de Saint-Georges, then the first violin-conductor [ premier violon conducteur]of this Society, who had been charged with this negotiation [with Haydn, for the commissioning of the six symphonies in 1784–85].” Again, no source is given), followed by Landon 1978, 592 (“chef d’orchestre”); Quoy-Bodin 1984, 96 (“directeur”—this term is as ambiguous as “director” is in English: does it mean “administrative director” or “orchestra conductor”? The confusion is not helped by the promiscuous use of the term by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers, nor by the fact that many violinist-conductors became administrative directors of concert series and theaters. A modest proposal: that the unqualified use of “director” be abolished from musicological discourse in this context); White 1992, 243; and most recently and at greatest length, but unconvincingly in my opinion, Banat 2006, 258–72, 275, 312, 316–18, who also asserts, with no supporting evidence, that it was Saint-Georges who premièred Haydn’s “Paris” symphonies. 200. Gaudart de Soulages and Lamant 1995, 802–3. 201. Norvins 1897, 1:159. The question arises as to which members of the orchestra were so attired—possibly only the Masonic amateurs? It is sometimes stated (for example, in Landon 1978, 593) that these costumes were sky blue in color, which is not borne out by Norvins’s description. Perhaps there has been a conflation with the ornament required to be worn by the subscribers attending the concerts: a silver lyre on a sky blue field. 202. Norvins 1897, 1:159. 203. GBV to WBC, 12 February 1816, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/27. 204. Harrison 1998, 21–23. 205. Brook 1983, p. lxxiii. 206. Lassabathie 1860, 63. See also above, n186 (Elwart 1860). Note the similarity of Elwart’s title, and the identical date of publication. Neither author gives a source. 207. Not the Salle des Suisses, as stated by Quoy-Bodin 1984, 97, who misreads Thiéry 1786, 383 and n1. Brook 1962, 1:340, shows an illustration of the “Salle de spectacle de la Société Olympique” (woodcut, collection André Meyer, n.d.) that, however, cannot be the Salle des Gardes, since it represents an actual theater, with boxes. It probably is the theater, built in 1795, used beginning in 1801 by the “Société Olympique” for Italian opera. (See Mongrédien 1996, 112, 114.) Landon 1978, 593, equally mistaken, apparently refers to the same theater in his discussion of Haydn’s “Paris” symphonies. 208. Thiéry 1786, 383 and n1. 209. Norvins 1897, 1:158. The queen’s staunch companion, the Princess de Lamballe, was a subscribing member. 210. See Yim 2004, 94n10, 224, 266.


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211. I have been unable to determine how the comte and the baron were related. The most likely possibility is that the comte was the baron’s older brother, René-Louis, Comte (?), later Marquis de Menou. 212. Mme de Menou to MC [2 September 1802], AUS-Sfl 2000–4/2. I am grateful to Denise Yim for bringing this letter to my attention. 213. According to Decourcelle 1881, Viotti is not on the list of members of the Société academique des Enfants d’Apollon before its dissolution in 1790, but is shown ( p. 15) as having joined in 1809 (the Société was reconstituted in 1806). It seems to have been possible to join when not physically present. Haydn was made a member in 1807.

Chapter Four: Paris, 1789 –92: Entrepreneur 1. See Di Profio 2003, 44–45 for details. Di Profio provides by far the most thorough account of the background, the establishment, the internal organization, the personnel and the repertoire of the theater, in particular of the Italian troupe, as well as transcriptions of the important archival material and press notices. An important earlier source is Babeau 1895, 130–88. 2. Bord 1909, 52–53, 56–57. Such a specific date as this would suggest the existence of a document, but Bord provides no evidence for it. 3. Tablettes, 1791. 4. The letter reporting this meeting is in F-Pan O1 1683/156. Pierre 1975, 74, gives a summary. 5. That this was intended is made explicit in a letter to the Directeur des Batiments of 6 September 1788: “Her Majesty would reach the guards’ room without being seen by anyone, as far as the projected box.” F-Pan O1 1683/163. 6. See Jacquin 1990, 196n32. 7. Agts, pour l’année 1791, 58; Agts, pour l’année 1792, 67. 8. See Di Profio 2003, 84–87, 95–97, 256–58, 261–64, for details and documents. 9. JdP, 27 January 1789. 10. Di Profio 2003, 59, 61. 11. Morichelli had been a prima buffa at the Teatro Carignano in Turin in the autumn of 1778, and she had been given permission to give a concert in the same theater on 20 November. Viotti would surely have heard her. 12. Agts 1791, 53. Agts 1792, 62–63, says much the same thing, adding that the chorus served equally for the Italian and French companies, but omitting mention of the school. 13. Théâtre de Monsieur. Reglemens Generaux sanctionnés par Monsieur, concernant son théâtre. Bibliothèque de la Comédie-Française, transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 276–82. 14. Tablettes de renommée, 1785. The present address of this building is 40 rue de Richelieu (Hillairet 1997, 2:343). Lady Mary Coke had lodged in an apartment in the Hôtel de Chartres in April 1774. “It looks upon the Garden of the Palais Royale, which is fuller of birds than ever. The blackbirds are at this moment singing delightfully” (Coke 1889–96, 4:331). 15. See Le Bihan 1966, 124. 16. See Cherubini, Note relative à L. Cherubini, rédigée par lui même (Della Croce 1983–86, 2:575).

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17. Miel 1842, 8, says that Cherubini was a kind of artistic director (la direction d’ensemble) who oversaw the rehearsals and performances. 18. F. Bianchi’s La Villanella rapita (opened 15 June 1789): terzetto, “Mandina amabile,” K. 480 (apparently the first time a vocal work by Mozart was performed in Paris; this piece, as well as K. 479, had been composed by Mozart for a performance of this opera in Vienna, 28 November 1785); Cimarosa’s Le Vendemmie (opened 1 June 1791): quartetto K. 479; Gazzaniga’s Il Convitato di pietra (opened 24 October 1791): probably the overture to Don Giovanni, and the aria of Donna Elvira, “Mi tradi quell’alma ingrate.” Information from Di Profio 2003, 485, 479, 445–46. 19. “Mr Viotti & Mr Cherubini added several pieces [to the opera]. A Polonaise by the former, & a three-voiced canon were noticed and strongly applauded.” (MM Viotti & Cherubini on[t] ajouté quelques morceaux. On distingue & on applaudit vivement une Polonnoise du premier, & un canon à trios dessus.) Aaad, 30 December 1791, 1362. It is not clear from this whether the canon was by Viotti or by Cherubini. Two three-voiced canons by Viotti are listed in White 1985, 149 (WVIII:2, “Two canons for two violins (?) with piano accompaniment”). 20. Mercure de France, 14 February 1789. Transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 290. 21. See Di Profio 2003, 60, 66–67. 22. They were: the violinists Vandick, Fondesky (Fonteski), Lepreux, Rousseau, and Robert; the cellist Bréval; the double bassists Simon and, possibly, Plantade; the flautist Hugot; and the flautist/bassoonist Devienne. 23. Mercure de France, 14 March 1789. 24. There is a gap in our knowledge of Janiewicz’s activities in 1789–90: first performance in the Concert spirituel, 25 December 1787, last performance 28 March 1788 (Pierre 1975, 337); he is listed as an orchestra member in the Concert olympique in 1788. We next hear of him in a concert on 25 December 1790, Salle de l’Opéra, Porte–St. Martin, and again in concerts in the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau in April and November 1791 (see below). He was in England by January 1792 (see McVeigh 2006, 92). 25. See Cesari et al. 1931, 24, and Di Profio 2003, 310. 26. Pougin 1888, 49. 27. Journal général de la Cour et de la Ville, 6 December 1789, 632: “We have noticed, after the death of Mestrino, that the orchestra of this theater has lost a large number of its members; this has not improved it.” Moniteur universel, 20 January 1790, 86: “This theater is once again the best in Paris, provided that the orchestra revives, recovers its former glory, and brings back the great times obscured since Mestrino.” Transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 320 and 330–31, respectively. 28. Roquefort 1812, 222. 29. Ferrari 1920, 230; Mercure de France, 14 February 1789, 14 March 1789; Agts 1792, 65. 30. Agts 1791 [1790], 53–54. 31. Charlton 1985, 92–93. 32. Di Profio 2003, 73n110, citing Castil-Blaze, “Bâton de mesure,” Dictionnaire de musique moderne (Brussels: Académie de musique, 1828), 25. 33. Ferrari 1920, 231–32. 34. In Les Spectacles de Paris 1790–93, Agts 1791, and Agts 1792, cited in Di Profio 2003, 68–69.


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35. Baillot’s letter, dated 17 September, is cited in François-Sappey 1978, 134–35, Viotti’s, dated 19 September, in Pincherle 1924, 105 (Pincherle’s private collection, present location unknown). 36. Agts 1791, 55. 37. Péricaud 1908, 30–32; Giazotto 1956, 89–91. 38. Ferrari 1830, 214–15. 39. F-Pan O1 613 116. 40. Except where noted, all of the documents cited are in Viotti’s printed Mémoire au Roi (Paris, 1789). 41. Di Profio 2003, 88. 42. In the printed version the words “Mad. la Marquise de Rouget” are omitted both in Viotti’s letter and in the “Objections.” They are present in the original versions in Paris, F-Pan, O1 613 123 and 124 f. 2r. 43. See above, p. 123. In 1791 Viotti’s home address was apparently the same as that of the administrative offices of his theater. 44. F-Pan, O1 613 110. 45. F-Pan, O1 613 125. 46. Lettre du sieur Viotti au comité de l’Opéra, Paris, 20 Avril 1789. A copy is in GB-Lbl R.397. (19.). It probably appeared later than this date, since 20 April is only a day after the letter in the JdP to which it replies. 47. Letter from Viotti to a certain monseigneur ( possibly Necker?), 22 April 1789. Transcribed in Giazotto 1956, 265. See also Pougin 1888, 56n1. See also the letter, presumably from the same monseigneur, to Villedeuil (?), enquiring about the prohibition. F-Pan O1 613 114. 48. F-Pan O1 613 120. 49. Twelve years later these words were echoed, in remarkably similar language, by Viotti’s friend, Pierre-Louis Ginguené: “the barbarous psalmody that was called French music [of the ancien régime], and the ponderous [lourde] and somnolent machine known as the Opéra” and, further, the “heavy and bulky [volumineuses] voices, a cold and grandiloquent declamation, of the so-called Lead Singers; discordant and immobile choruses; an incompetent orchestra, deafening and monotone [ Viotti had refrained from criticizing the orchestra]; and lastly, a public accustomed to screaming [des cris] devoid of melody, rhythm and metre” (Ginguené 1801, 28–30). 50. F-Pan O1 613 138. 51. F-Pan O1 613 118. 52. F-Pan O1 613 130. 53. According to Di Profio 2003, 89n33. 54. Pougin 1888, 56n1 (“très nerveuse, très vive, très serre”). 55. It is confirmed in La Ferté’s letter to Villedeuil of 16 April (F-Pan O1 613 125). 56. Diesbach says clearly in his journal that Viotti was at the dinner, so there is no question of his having been brought in to play afterward. 57. See Di Profio 2003, 150–63. 58. James 1987, 264, 498, 1016. 59. Agts 1791, 69. 60. See Di Profio 2003, 75, 331. The St. Germain Fair was an enclave of several blocks, filled with stalls and entertainments of every description, traditionally the haunt of “le bas

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peuple.” Though frequented as well by the upper classes, its atmosphere of “low” entertainment was not in keeping with the aristocratic and royalist tone of the Théâtre de Monsieur. 61. Paris, F-Pan O1 842 265 (unsigned and undated). Transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 267–68. 62. See Di Profio 2003, 76. 63. Reviews in six different newspapers transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 370–73. 64. JdP, 2 May 1790. Cited in Pougin 1888, 67n2. Rode had played a concerto by Viotti at the Concert spirituel on 5 April. 65. Moniteur universel, 24 October 1790, 1232. Transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 382. 66. See Di Profio 2003, 382–85, for transcriptions of several reviews. 67. JdP, 28 December 1790. 68. Feuille du jour, 31 December 1790, 243. Transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 388. 69. JdP, 24 November 1790; 14 December 1790. 70. See Di Profio 2003, 392 and 391 for transcriptions from the CdP, 8 January 1791 and the JdP, 7 January 1791, respectively. See also Di Profio 2003, 77. 71. Moniteur universel, 24 January 1791, 100. Transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 394. 72. Aaad, 29 January 1791 (supplément), 355. Transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 395. In an autobiographical notice, Note relative à L. Cherubini, rédigée par lui même, originally published by A. Pougin in Le Ménestrel, 1881–82 and cited in Della Croce 1983–86, 2:575, Cherubini says he lived with Viotti until 1791, but in a contract he signed on 29 March 1792 he gives his address as 8 rue de La Michodière (Della Croce 1983–86, 2:22). 73. CdP, signed Louis de May, 3 March 1791. Transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 399. 74. Letter transcribed in Lenôtre n.d., 103, citing l’Echo de Paris, 11 November 1890. 75. The contract is (apparently) transcribed in Giazotto 1956, 259–60. Giazotto does not reveal the location of the original document. 76. Aaad, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 April 1791; CdP, 17, 20 April 1791. 77. According to FétisB, s.v. “Rode,” 7:283, Rode played Viotti’s Concertos nos. 3, 13, 14, 17, and 18 at the Holy Week concerts of 1791 and 1792. 78. Feuille du jour, 26 April 1791. Transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 402–3. 79. CdP, 20 April 1791. 80. JdP, 24 April 1791. 81. Place 1989, 235–36. 82. Agts, année 2. 1792, Additions et Errata, 346. 83. Aaad, 8 December 1791. 84. Devienne, Sallentin, Ozi, and LeBrun had been the principal flautist, oboist, bassoonist, and hornist, respectively, of the orchestra of the Concert olympique; only Devienne’s name appears in the orchestra lists of the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau, but as a bassoonist rather than as a flautist. 85. Agts 1792, 346. Clearly the writer was not an enemy of Viotti; he may not have known that Durand was Viotti’s pupil. 86. Place 1989, 236–37, citing the Feuille du jour, 25 December 1791, but omitting the concerto by Kreutzer, which is included in the announcement in the Aaad, of the same date. 87. Aaad, 31 January 1792. 88. Probably Symphony no. 83, from the “Paris” symphonies, or possibly no. 39, composed around 1770.


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89. Aaad, 4 February 1792. This review also refers to the Dussek piece as a concerto. 90. Pougin 1874, 9n1. This appears to be the first notice of a performance of Pugnani’s music in Paris since Mme Mara sang an “Italian air” by the Torinese master at the Concert spirituel on 19 March 1782. 91. Reichardt 1892, 364: letter 28 March 1792. Reichardt refers to the concert as having occurred “yesterday,” which does not agree with Pougin’s dating. 92. See Pougin 1874, 9. 93. Moniteur universel, 16 April 1792. Transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 430. 94. CdP, 21 April 1792. Transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 431. FétisB, s.v. “Rode,” says that Rode played this concerto in three consecutive concerts. 95. Baillot 1825, 6, places these performances in 1791, which seems to be a memory slip. 96. Moniteur universel, 16 April 1792. Transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 430. 97. Aaad, 21 April 1792, 1654–55. Cited in Place 1989, 238. 98. Aaad, 28 March 1790. 99. Place 1989, 229, citing the JdP, 27 March 1790, and the CdP, 2 April 1790, 367. 100. CdP, 2, 3, 4, and 6 April 1790. 101. Aaad, 13 May 1790. 102. Aaad, 23 May, 3 June 1790. The CdP of 3 June, however, announces for the concert in the Cirque on that evening that “M. Chol le jeune will play a violin concerto of M. Janieveck.” 103. CdP, 23 March 1790. The Concert spirituel, like the Théâtre de Monsieur, had been obliged to vacate the Palace of the Tuileries. Its venue in 1790 was the Opéra, Porte-St. Martin. 104. JdP, 23 January 1791. 105. Schama 1989, 542. The story appears for the first time to my knowledge in Vallentin 1947, 511–12. The highly regarded Mirabeau by Guy Chaussinnand-Nogaret (1982) recounts in some detail the last days of Mirabeau, without mention of this incident. 106. Aaad, 9 April 1791, reports that Morichelli will reappear on the eleventh in I Viaggiatori felici, whereas Di Profio 2003, 63, says it was La Scuola de’ gelosi on 20 May. 107. There is some confusion, and no little disagreement, as to which of the Autié brothers was the messenger. There is a considerable literature on the event. Bord 1909 plumps for Léonard, the queen’s hairdresser, and Viotti’s associate, which seems to the present author to be the most convincing argument. See however, Place 1989, 48, which asserts that Léonard, Viotti’s associate, was “the brother of the Queen’s hairdresser.” 108. CdP, 28 June 1791, 718. 109. Autié 1838, 3:158. 110. F-Pan F17 1299D. Transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 270–71. 111. The relevant documents are in F-Pan O3 1649/I (February–July 1818). 112. See Bord 1909, 52–57. 113. Moniteur universel, 31 July 1791, 836. Transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 410. 114. The contract is transcribed in Della Croce 1983–86, 2:21. 115. McClellan 2004, 249–63, gives an excellent account of the background and details of the Nina affair. 116. The letter is transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 134–35.

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117. Petition addressed to the National Assembly by the playwrights, on the performance, in France, of French plays translated into foreign languages (Paris: Du Pont, 1791). This controversy remained temporarily unresolved in the political turmoil soon to engulf France. It was only after Viotti’s departure, and the disbandment of the Italian troupe of his theater, that the law-making process regarding authors’ rights and literary piracy was resumed; it continued well into the nineteenth century. 118. L’administration de ce theatre ayant toujours désiré que MM. les auteurs ne trouvassent nulle part plus d’avantages qu’à son spectacle, a cherché par divers réglemens les moyens d’atteindre ce but. Mais persuadée que c’est à MM. les auteurs euxmêmes réunis en société, qu’il est plus à propos de s’en rapporter pour le prix de leurs ouvrages, l’administration croit devoir les prévenir qu’en exceptant les traités particuliers, elle suivra dorénavant les regles qu’ils ont établies, bornant l’effet de ses anciens réglemens aux pieces précédemment reçues (Moniteur universel, 6 November 1791, transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 421). I am grateful to Denise Yim for her help with the translation of this passage. 119. The contract is transcribed in Della Croce 1983–86, 2:21–23. 120. Note relative à L. Cherubini, rédigée par lui même, cited in Della Croce 1983–86, 2:575. 121. Schama 1989, 573. 122. Feuille du jour, 3 December 1791, 1247. Transcribed in Di Profio 2003, 421. 123. Kelly 1968, 84–85. 124. See chapter 10. 125. NG1, 7:390–91. 126. See Place 1989, 66, for a detailed description of this play. 127. Agts 1792 [1791], 68. 128. Cited in Di Profio 2003, 420. 129. Feuille du jour, 4 March 1792, cited in Di Profio 2003, 428. 130. Agts 1792, 49. 131. See Di Profio 2003, 7, 430. 132. Giazotto 1956, 125, asserts that one of the actors of the Théâtre Feydeau intervened on Viotti’s behalf for a visa, for which he provides no evidence. One person who may have been in a position to help Viotti was General Pierre-Marie de Grave (1755–1823). He was Minister of War from 9 March to 8 May 1792, but emigrated to England in August. The tone of a letter of 1802 from Viotti to the general suggests that they were old friends (see chapter 7). It is possible, however, that they met in England. 133. Eymar 1801, 43. Denise Yim, in a private communication, has ingeniously argued for the authenticity of Viotti’s account (which has sometimes been doubted) based on a comparison of spelling discrepancies between the version in Eymar and that in the Royal College of Music Library, in relation to Viotti’s orthographic eccentricities in his letters. Thus the RCM copy, though not in Viotti’s hand, may plausibly be assumed to have been copied from a copy in his hand. 134. Aaad, 16 July 1792, 3079. 135. The name “Hôtel Bullion” appears often in advertisements of sales of household effects in this period. This establishment is now referred to as the Hôtel Bouilleron, but all of the early sources mentioning the sale of Viotti’s violin, beginning with the Harmonicon, no. 21, September 1824, 174, and Busby 1825, 1:194, call it the Hôtel (de) Bullion, or a variant thereof.


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136. Transcribed in Della Croce, 1983–86, 2:24, according to which the autograph of this letter is held in the Civico museo bibliografico in Bologna. However, according to Di Profio 2003, 64n71, it is no longer to be found in this library, which, on the face of it, means that the document disappeared sometime between about 1986 and about 2003. 137. This is the number traditionally given, as in Schama 1989, 615, but it has been contested as being more like 400, as in Allen 1999, 239–40.

Chapter Five: Viotti’s Achievement Thus Far 1. NG2, 26:767. 2. A reviewer for the Oracle, 20 February 1793, compared the playing of Viotti with that of his nearest rival: “Viotti is original and sublime—he reaches at unattempted grandeur—and he never fails. [. . .] Giornovichi is not so grand; but he is always delightful, finished and elegant.” 3. Rode may have heard Viotti play in London or at the Chinnerys during his brief English sojourn early in 1798. 4. Viotti’s Concerto no. 20 was published in Paris in 1799 by Pleyel, who had also published three of Viotti’s string trios, and arrangements of the same for piano, in 1797. Concertos no. 21 through 26 were published in Paris one at a time between 1803 and 1808 by the Magasin de Musique, headed by Cherubini. 5. François-Sappey 1978, 149. 6. Les Tablettes de Polymnie (April 1810), 3–4, signed A. M. 7. Mongrédien 1996, chapter 5, “Public and Private Concerts,” 205–59, gives several of these citations. 8. La Laurencie 1923, 2:297. 9. Viotti wrote no concertos originally for the piano, though several of his London violin concertos were first published in arrangements for the piano. 10. Le Courier des Spectacles, 8 January, 9 March, and 27 January 1797, respectively. 11. Cited in Dratwicki 2006, 66. 12. Ibid. 13. La Laurencie 1923, 2:501, citing Aaad, 6 July 1797 (8 thermidor an V ). 14. Francois-Sappey 1978, 177. Mongrédien 1996, 218, suggests that this new organization was created in 1799. However, Baillot writes of a concert series already conceived in November 1797, and underway in January 1798, which surely is the rue de Cléry series, or its predecessor. 15. Cited in Dratwicki 2006, 66. 16. Letter from Baillot to Montbeillard, 8 November 1799, cited in FrançoisSappey 1978, 182. Baillot seems unaware that Viotti composed at least two symphonies concertantes. 17. Mercure de France, 31 March 1804, 82. 18. Correspondance des professeurs et amateurs de musique, 19 January 1805, 19. 19. Ibid. 20. Cited in Gregoir 1888–89, 2:21. Fémy later took lessons from Viotti in London (1814) and played in several concerts of the Philharmonic Society (see below, chapter 8). 21. Les Tablettes de Polymnie, March 1810, 3.

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22. Tablettes (February 1811), 279. Mazas, like Boucher, went on to an international career as a violinist. His studies for violin are still used. 23. Tablettes (March 1810), 3–4. 24. Letter from Baillot to Montbeillard, 6 October 1796, cited in François-Sappey 1978, 176. 25. Tablettes (April 1810), 9. 26. Tablettes ( June 1810), 4–5. Pierre Garat (1762–1823), French tenor and baritone, according to FétisB, had been favored by Marie Antoinette and had learned from listening to the Italian singers at the Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau. It seems likely that he and Viotti were acquainted, though there is no reliable evidence. 27. NG2, 7:864, citing the Musikalische Monatsschrift, 1792 (3. Stücke Sept. 1792), 66. 28. Spohr 1865, 1:61. 29. See below, chapter 7. 30. See below, chapter 9. 31. Notably André in Offenbach, Artaria in Vienna, Breitkopf & Hartel in Leipzig, Hummel in Berlin and Amsterdam, Longman & Broderip/Clementi in London, and Simrock in Bonn. See White 1985, appendix 2: Publishers of Viotti’s Music, 155–72. The pattern is broken by André only in 1820–24, with editions of fifteen of the Paris concertos and the last two London concertos. 32. Einstein 1946, 282. 33. Ibid., 305, 282. Banat 2006, 165, points out, however, that both Mozart himself, in his Violin Concerto, K. 218, and Saint-Georges, in his op. V, no. 2, had used marchlike themes in 1775. 34. Schwarz 1985, 244. There is no evidence that Eck was in Paris between 1782 and 1789. In any case, the year 1786 seems too early for a concerto that Viotti probably composed for performance in his theater. 35. Schmid 1995, 162–64. 36. Schwarz 1958, 434. 37. Schmid 1995, 164–71. 38. Wiener Zeitung, 2 March 1793. The program is mistakenly described as a “sort of contest between [Clement] and Viotti” in Haas 1948, 21, and similarly in NG2, 6:35. 39. Landon 1977, 4:329. 40. Schwarz 1958, especially 443–47, and, more recently, Stowell 1998, 11–19, and Stowell 2006, 242–45. Scazzoso 1942, passim, finds anticipations, not always convincingly, particularly in the duets and sonatas of Viotti, of many of Beethoven’s works, including the String Quartet, op. 18, no. 2 (1798), the Piano Concerto no. 3 in C Minor (1800), the Symphony no. 6 (“Pastoral”) (1808), the Egmont overture (1810), and even the last piano sonata, op. 111 (1822). Banat 2006, 135, 137–38, 166–68, argues that the Chevalier de Saint-Georges preceded Viotti and his followers in anticipating and influencing Beethoven. Of course, anticipation is one thing, influence another. Each case must be judged on its own merits. 41. White 1992, 347, 349; Stowell 2000, 297. 42. Mongrédien 1996, 216. 43. François-Sappey 1978, 179; Mongrédien 1996, 322. 44. Dratwicki 2006, 71–77. These arrangements are absent from White’s thematic catalogue. Dratwicki observes that the reason Viotti’s concertos ceased to be played at the Opéra after 1800 was because in that year Kreutzer became the leader of the orchestra. Kreutzer, “unlike his predecessors,” was the composer of violin concertos, which he


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naturally preferred to play for the ballets, to the exclusion of other composers’ concertos. This seems plausible, though both Guénin and Rode, Kreutzer’s immediate predecessors as violin soloist at the Opéra, had composed several violin concertos. 45. Choron and Fayolle 1971, 2:237. 46. “Oeuvre II, gravé par Mad.e Thurin, à Paris.” Solo part in GB-Lbl: h.1568. n (6.). 47. Premier Concerto de violon, dédié au citoyen Viotti, composé et exécuté au concert du Théâtre-National rue de la Loi, par le citoyen Rode, éléve du citoyen Viotti (Pougin 1874, 55). 48. A copy is in F-Pn (Musique), Vm7 1759. It was announced in several publications in December 1788 (see Chastel 1976, 61). 49. See below, p. 227. 50. FétisB, “Viotti,” 8:361; Miel 1827, 186; Baillot 1825, 5.

Chapter Six: London, 1792–98, and Exile, 1798–ca. 1800 1. GBV to MC, 25 July 1793, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–2/7. 2. Times, 15 April 1793. 3. Yim 2006, 397 and n. 9. 4. Morning Chronicle, 15 February 1793. 5. Parke 1830, 1:153. According to Parke, someone shouted, “What! Are you going to play all night, Mr Allday?” 6. Milligan 1983, 121. 7. Felice Giardini, after forty years in England, gave his last known performance on 22 May 1792, and left England that summer. It is unlikely that he encountered Viotti before his departure, since he apparently was in Switzerland in June or July, with Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, and her sister Harriet, Lady Bessborough (Gleeson 2006, 205). 8. Giazotto 1956, 125, asserts that Viotti had been in contact with Salomon since March 1792 regarding his removal to London, and cites a letter purportedly from Viotti to Salomon, dated 23 April 1792, giving a catalogue reference so incomplete as to cast extreme doubt on its authenticity. In any case it is untraceable. Giazotto claims, p. 126, that Salomon met Viotti in Paris in 1790 in the home of Hélène de Montgéroult, citing a nonexistent article by Rode “in the Mercure de France of January 1795.” There is no evidence of which I know that Salomon was in Paris in 1790, or that he met Viotti then, though it is not impossible that he did, so far as I know. (Many of Giazotto’s fabrications are fiendishly plausible.) 9. Diary; or, Woodfall’s Register, 20 November 1792. 10. See McVeigh 2006, 94. The Morning Post, 23 September 1789, had announced that “Viotti will only play in select parties, as he is a man of good fortune.” 11. Cited in Landon 1976, 212. 12. Morning Post, 1 January 1793. Cited in Landon 1976, 213. 13. Morning Chronicle, 11 January 1793; World, 14 February 1793. Cited in McVeigh 1989a, 121. A guinea equalled £1.1.-. (1 pound and 1 shilling, that is, 21 shillings). 14. The (English) National Archives Web site (http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency), and L. H. Officer and S. H. Williamson 2008, respectively. The former Web site

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gives consistently lower modern equivalents than the latter, in roughly the same proportion, for its estimates from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Henceforth, in the present work the Officer and Williamson estimates will be used. According to this source, the purchasing power of the pound in 1793 was approximately ninety times that in 2007, declining to about fifty times in 1800, then, beginning in 1814, rising to about seventy times by 1823 and 1824, the year of Viotti’s death. 15. McVeigh Calendar, and McVeigh 1789, 121. Viotti may also have performed at the Anacreontic Society, where many foreign musicians made their débuts before performing in London’s West End concerts. (See McFarlane and McVeigh 2004, 173.) See also below, p. 208 and n. 129. 16. For example, the orchestra for Concertos nos. 22, 25, and 26 includes clarinets, which almost certainly means that Viotti did not compose them to play in 1793 with Salomon’s orchestra, which did not have clarinets that year, but either with Salomon’s orchestra of 1794 or with that of the Opera Concert series in which he performed beginning in 1795, both of which orchestras did have clarinets. 17. That is, no. 20, by Hüllmandel; no. 21, by Niccolo Isouard; nos. 23 and 25, by Dussek; and no. 27, by J. B. Cramer. Hüllmandel also published a piano concerto in B-flat major, consisting of the first movement of no. 10, the second movement of no. 14, and the third movement of no. 12. 18. See White 1973, 121–24; White 1992, 334–36; Milligan 1983, 133–37. These findings have been collated in table form by Stowell 2000, 285, and by Stewart-MacDonald 2006, 141. 19. Oracle (Public Advertiser), 8 February 1793. 20. Morning Post, 8 February 1793. 21. Diary; or, Woodfall’s Register, 15 February 1793. 22. See chapter 4. 23. Diary; or, Woodfall’s Register, 3 May 1793. The Oracle on the same day refers to the air by its penultimate line, “And every shepherd tells his tale.” 24. Baillot (1825, 7) describes the middle movement of Viotti’s Concerto no. 23 as “an adagio in the style of Handel,” but it bears no resemblance to the air from the oratorio. Viotti’s movement based on Handel’s siciliano has not survived. 25. The text of the air: Let me wander not unseen By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green; While the ploughman near at hand Whistles o’er the furrowed land, And the milkmaid singeth blithe, And the mower whets his scythe, And every shepherd tells his tale Under the hawthorn in the dale. 26. On 22 February and 20 March at Covent Garden, and on 6 and 8 March at the Haymarket Theatre, the last-named of which he might very well have attended in order to hear Paul Alday play a concerto, his “first performance in this Kingdom.” 27. Morning Chronicle, 26 April 1793. 28. Brenet 1900, 372.


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29. Milligan 1983, 46, suggests that even one concerto could suffice, but this seems improbable in the present case, in which the soloist played a concerto in nine weekly subscription concerts, including four consecutive concerts, 7 March–4 April. 30. The history of the Chinnery Family Papers is told in Yim 2004, 4–6. 31. The country home was Castle Beare, about seven miles west of London, belonging to Henry Beaufoy, to whom Viotti had probably been introduced by Hüllmandel. See Yim 2006 (which includes complete transcriptions of these letters), 404n22. Almost all the surviving letters from members of the Chinnery family to Viotti are also in French, as indeed are most of the letters to him from everyone else. The exceptions are noted. The Chinnerys usually wrote to each other in English. 32. GBV to MC, 8 June 1793, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–2/4. 33. Charles Smith, a friend of the Chinnerys, later Viotti’s partner in the wine business. Smith was apparently delivering Margaret’s letters. If Viotti had seen Margaret four days earlier it must mean that he wrote his previous letter, dated 8 June, afterward on the same day. 34. GBV to MC, 12 June [1793], AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–2/5. 35. For Viotti dusk was “the melancholy hour” (l’heure triste), a fact mentioned by Eymar 1801, 34. 36. GBV to MC, 12 June [1793], AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–2/5. 37. GBV to MC, 30 May 1793, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–2/3. 38. GBV to MC, 25 July 1793, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–2/7. 39. Yim 2004, 49, broached this possibility. 40. A glance at the map reveals Viotti’s probable route: Brussels, Aix (Aachen), Cologne, Bonn, Koblenz, Mainz, Frankfurt, barring detours necessitated by allied (English and Hanoverian) armies on the march. 41. GBV to MC, 3 August 1793, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–2/8. 42. A full description is given in Yim 2004, 43–60. 43. GBV to MC, 20 September 1793, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–2/10. 44. GBV to MC, 4 September 1793, 94/143/1–2/9. 45. GBV to MC, 20 September 1793, 94/143/1–2/10. 46. It is possible, since Maret was already acquainted with Viotti (see chapter 4) that they had seen each other in London during this period. 47. The Hammersley Bank, then at 50 Pall Mall, was absorbed by Coutts and Company in 1840. The Hammersley ledgers have not survived and there is no other record of Viotti’s account in the archives of Coutts and Company. In addition to the £200, which William Chinnery had withdrawn from his account at Drummonds Bank on 29 August 1793 ( presumably then transferred to Hammersley for remittance to Viotti), Chinnery had previously made two other withdrawals for Viotti: £293.5.7 on 22 June 1793 (the day Viotti went to Gillwell for a month preceding his departure for the Continent), and £153.15.6 on 20 July 1793, two days before Viotti left England. These are not only large but also very specific amounts, surely to do with expenses of Viotti’s forthcoming trip. Chinnery subsequently made several other payments to Viotti from his account (see appendix 10). It is not known whether Viotti ever repaid these loans, or, indeed, whether they were gifts. I am indebted to Denise Yim for bringing to my attention the Drummonds Bank customer account ledgers (DR/427) in the archives of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group.

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48. GBV to MC, 20 October 1793, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–2/13. 49. Ibid.; GBV to WBC, 8 November 1793, 94/143/1–14/2. 50. The letter is transcribed in Giazotto 1956, 266, who gives no source, and who mistranscribes “Mantoue” as “Mentone.” 51. GBV to WBC, 8 November 1793, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/2. 52. GBV to MC, 6 December 1793, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–2/14. 53. Though several years older than Viotti, it is possible that Borghi knew the boy Viotti in Turin. He was leader of the second violins in the Professional Concert from 1785 to 1793. One might have expected the two Piedmontese musicians to gravitate toward each other, though there is no mention of Borghi in the Viotti-Chinnery correspondence. 54. Gaetano Pugnani to GBV, 16 October 1793, US-NYp JOB 97–52, item 1. 55. In his Précis Viotti says he “crossed Germany, the Tyrol, and arrived in my homeland by way of Venice.” 56. GBV to MC, 6 December 1793, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–2/14. 57. According to the (error-ridden) article on Viotti in Highfill, Burnim, and Langhans 1973–93, Viotti’s address is given as “No. 34, Wells Street, Oxford Street” in Doane’s A Musical Directory for the Year 1794. Oxford Street was (and is) the nearest main street with which Wells Street intersected. In the newspaper advertisements for Viotti’s benefit concert of 23 May 1794, his address is given as “Signor Viotti, No. 16, Charlesstreet, Middlesex Hospital.” Charles Street (no longer extant) was the eastern continuation of Mortimer Street, which ran eastward from the north side of Cavendish Square. There is still a Middlesex Hospital a short distance east of Wells Street. 58. Oracle (Public Advertiser), Morning Chronicle, various issues, 10–25 January 1794. Cited in Landon 1976, 232. 59. GBV to MC, ca. 1–4 February 1794; ca. late January 1794, AUS-Sphm 94/143/ 1–2/15 and 2/22. 60. According to the review in the Sun, 18 February 1794, quoted in Landon 1976, 237. 61. Morning Chronicle, 19 February 1794. 62. Milligan 1983, 136, 137 (table 14); Stewart-MacDonald 2006, 141, figure 5. 63. See White 1973, 122–23. The manuscript is in F-Pn (Musique), W 8, 134. 64. Je vous envoye amica un autre de mes nouveaux Enfans je desire que vous le receviés avec l’indulgence de l’amitié et que jamais vous ne vous fachiés contre lui. Vous sentés bien que c’est d’un concerto dont je veux parler, car comment pourrai-je parler d’autre chose moi pauvre etre isolé de tout, l’ame si ardente et si vide de ce qui pourroit la rendre sattisfaitte! (GBV to MC, 13 F[ebruary] 1794, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–2/16). 65. Morning Chronicle, 12 March 1794. 66. Ibid., 9 April 1794. 67. Mrs. Hester Piozzi was the former Mrs. Thrale, the great friend of Samuel Johnson, who had married Piozzi in 1784. 68. Charles Burney to Fanny Burney, 14 April 1794. Cited in Hall 1904, 198. 69. Burney 1819. 70. GBV to MC, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21 (or 22), and 23 April 1794, AUS-Sphm 94/143/ 1–2/17, 2/1, 2/18, 2/19, 2/2, 2/20, respectively. The quoted excerpts that follow are from these six letters.


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71. Many reviews speak of individual movements of Haydn’s symphonies being applauded and, not infrequently, encored. 72. There is a discrepancy in the article on Libon in NG2, 14:638, in which it is stated that Libon studied with Viotti for six years in London, and that he became court violinist at Lisbon in 1796, which of course, is impossible since Viotti did not take up residence in London until 1792. FétisB, 5:296, does not stipulate that the six years with Viotti were in London, allowing the possibility that Libon began studying with Viotti in Paris. However, Fétis also asserts that Libon went to London when aged fourteen, that is, in 1789. In a note probably written early in 1794 (AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–2/22), Viotti refers to Libon as “l’Espagnol,” a term he surely would not have used had he known Libon since his Paris days. Libon later dedicated his (thirty) Caprices, op. 15, to Viotti. 73. Robins 1998, 551–52. The symphony was of course no. 100, in G. 74. Ibid., 540, 582, 744, 687. 75. The advertisement for this concert lists one violin concerto and one viola concerto, but this is surely an error or misprint, since the review in the Morning Chronicle, 26 May, lists two violin concertos. 76. Oracle, 22 May 1794, as transcribed in Landon 1976, 255–56. 77. Landon 1976, 255: “Salomon was generous enough to let his distinguished rival open each part with a MS. Haydn symphony.” Two manuscript symphonies by Haydn were also played at Viotti’s benefit concert in 1793 (26 April). This simply means, of course, that they were unpublished; in both cases, Viotti would have got permission from Salomon, who owned the rights to the twelve “London,” or “Salomon,” symphonies. Haydn’s manuscript symphonies were often played at other musicians’ benefits throughout Haydn’s sojourn in London. 78. NG2, 7:761. 79. He is not listed in NG2. 80. Ducrest 2004, 32. The book is imprecise as to dates. Georgette Ducrest (b. 27 November 1789) could have been no more than about six years old when her mother left England. 81. Bath Journal, 8 December, cited in James 1987, 731. 82. The month of October is given by Giazotto 1956, 136; followed by Schwarz 1983, 140; Stowell 2000, 283; and Yim 2004, 79. But Giazotto gives no source, and though it is plausible, this information could well be another of his fabrications. 83. Cited in James 1987, 287–88, 1016. 84. It was not the first time that a Piedmontese violinist had been in charge at the King’s Theatre. In 1763 Felice Giardini “was both manager, in that he conducted the business affairs of the company, and music director, both engaging performers and, as a violinist, taking a special interest in the orchestra” (Price 1989, 60–61). In addition, Luigi Borghi would no doubt have been able to give some useful advice to Viotti, since he had been assistant manager at the King’s Theatre in 1791 and 1792. 85. “Joint directors of the Italian Opera” (Kelly 1826, 2:33). The terminology was flexible: “manager” meant different things at different times. Storace conducted from the harpsichord and arranged substitute arias. See Price 1989, 61. Kelly, Storace, and his sister Nancy had been in Vienna in the mid-1780s where Kelly was the first Basilio and Nancy Storace the first Susanna in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. We have already met with Kelly and his Reminiscences; he was connected with the King’s Theatre for thirty years

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from 1793 as a singer and as a manager, and he was variously a music publisher and wine merchant. Several singers who had worked under Mozart in Vienna later came to be associated with Viotti, not unnaturally, given Viotti’s positions in theaters in two major operatic capitals. In Paris, there had been the two Mandinis, who had created the roles of Alamaviva and Marcellina in Le nozze di Figaro; in London, Kelly, Nancy Storace, and Ludwig Fischer. 86. Price 1989, 61. 87. For the sake of completeness it should be noted that seven ballets were also produced. The ballets were performed between the acts of the operas. Viotti would not have been directly involved with the ballets. The leader of the orchestra for the ballets was Felice Chabran (originally Chiabrano) (1756–1829), still another Piedmontese, who had been in London since about 1782. Highfill, Burnim, and Langhans 1973–93, 185, followed by Milhous, Dideriksen, and Hume 2001, 225, and by Stewart-MacDonald 2006, 126 and n. 20, state erroneously that Viotti had been engaged as a violinist at the King’s Theatre in 1794. The first source also states erroneously that Viotti accompanied Banti on 26 April of that year. It was Cramer who accompanied Banti in Semiramide in 1794. 88. Milhous, Dideriksen, and Hume 2001, 223, 225; and Stewart-MacDonald 2006, 129, do not name Zenobia in Palmira, but according to Hogan 1968, part 5:1717, this opera was also announced as “the whole under the direction of Viotti.” 89. Milhous, Dideriksen, and Hume 2001, 225. (Federici, by the way, continued to use the harpsichord, not the piano, in both operas and concerts at the King’s Theatre throughout the 1790s.) 90. Ibid., 212. 91. Kelly 1968, 2:84. 92. Milhous et al. 2001, 225. 93. Times, 26 March 1795. 94. Morning Chronicle, 4 May 1795. 95. Miel 1827, 193. 96. Two other singers from Viotti’s Paris theater also appeared in London, but not when Viotti was in charge at the King’s Theatre: Giuseppe Viganoni, who sang at the KT from 1796 to 1805, and another tenor, Giuseppe Simoni, who sang in Salomon’s concerts in 1792. 97. Haydn Yearbook 4, 202. 98. This must refer to performances in Viotti’s Parisian theater, since Viganoni is not known to have sung publicly in London before his first appearance at the King’s Theatre on 15 March 1796. 99. Milhous and Hume 1993, 60–65, 73–75. 100. First desk players: see Parke 1830, 1:303–4. Rank and file: this was the fee paid to George Smart (violin/viola) in Salomon’s concerts in 1794 (McVeigh 1993, 193). Estimated purchasing power in 2007: £1,400 = ca. £116,100; £300 = ca. £24,878 (all for the year 1797); 10s 6d = ca. £46.45 (for the year 1794) (L. H. Officer and S. H. Williamson 2008). 101. Da Ponte 2000, 238. 102. From Haydn’s notebooks, Landon 1959, 293. Haydn was also of the opinion that Rovedino, among others, “deserved, and received, not the least applause.”


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103. GBV to MC, [early 1795], AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–2/24, telling her that he has invited Cimador and Bartolozzi to a forthcoming music party of Margaret’s. 104. Slatford 1970–71, 23. By the time of his benefit concert that year (8 June), however, he gave his address as no. 208. Palmer 1997, 26. 105. From Salomon’s announcement, dated 12 January, inserted in various newspapers. Cited in Landon 1976, 280. The sticking point was the clause restricting the singers (see below, in the next paragraph). 106. From the newspaper announcements, January 1795. Cited in ibid., 282. 107. No. 103 was premièred at the fourth concert, 2 March. The second movement, with its extended violin solo, played by the leader, Cramer (not by Salomon or Viotti, as is sometimes asserted), was encored, and Cramer’s playing was praised in the reviews. 108. Based on information in McVeigh 2006, 118, and in Milligan 1983, 135–37. 109. Detailed programs are lacking for the last two subscription concerts, but the review of the ninth concert in the Morning Chronicle of 21 May said, “Viotti, in particular, was never heard to greater advantage.” 110. The notation of these passages (see White 1976) in both movements is ambiguous as to their extent, and the leader’s solos in the finale are doubled in at least one place (mm. 73, 77) by the second violins. 111. MC to WBC, ca. January 1795, AUS-Sfl 2000–18/1. 112. Haydn normally used two flutes in his London symphonies. 113. White 1992, 345. 114. Morning Herald, 4 February 1795. Cited in Landon 1976, 288. 115. See Landon 1976, 293–94, citing the review in the Morning Chronicle, 24 February 1795. 116. Morning Chronicle, 17 March and 15 April 1795, for the fifth and sixth concerts, respectively. Cited in Landon 1976, 296, 303. 117. See McFarlane and McVeigh 2004, 162–67, 194. 118. See Landon 1976, 297, and 306, citing the Morning Chronicle, 29 April 1795. 119. Landon 1976, 306. 120. Cited (translated from the German) in ibid., 309. 121. In the General London Guide, or Tradesman’s Directory for 1794, in Kent’s Directory for 1794, 1796, and 1797 and in the London Directory for 1798 he is listed as a wine merchant at 4 Southampton-St., Strand. In 1799, in the London Directory, his address is shown as Duke-Street, York Buildings, and in The New Annual Directory for 1800 it is given as 3 Duke Street, York-buildings, remaining identical through the following years (continued as The Post-Office Annual Directory) up to and including 1819. 122. Gater and Wheeler 1937, 18:133, 77. Built by the Adam brothers in the 1770s, its centerpiece, the Adelphi Terrace, was a large multi-dwelling structure fronting the Thames, demolished in 1936–38. Viotti used “Adelphi” in his written address (this distinguished it from other Duke streets in London), but the house on Duke Street, which still stands, did not form part of the Adelphi development, having been built in the seventeenth century. 123. MC to WBC, ca. 13 July 1795, AUS-Sfl 2000–18/2. Yim 2004, 89, ascertained the approximate date of this letter from the postmark. 124. Yim 2004, 90. 125. Yim 1999, 1:106n232: “Sir Peter Burrell, second Baronet of Langley Park, was created Baron Gwydyr in 1796.”

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126. The dedication of Clementi’s arrangements (published by Longman, Clementi and Co., 1798–ca. 1800) to Mrs Chinnery is absent from White’s Thematic Catalogue, but is given in Tyson 1967, 131. 127. Parke 1830, 1:303–4. 128. Margaret had inherited Gillwell from her father, Leonard Tresilian. The estate, now known as Gilwell Park (an “l” has been dropped) lies on the northern edge of what is now Greater London, and is the international headquarters of the Scout Association, which has owned the property since 1919. 129. See McVeigh 1993, 33 and 254n22. The Society dissolved in 1794. Viotti also dedicated to Hankey his violin duets, WIV:25–27, published in 1803. One other as yet unidentified dedicatee was Mlle Marshall, to whom Viotti dedicated three sonatas for piano accompanied by violin and cello, WVI:1–3, published ca. 1801–2. It is possible that the Julian Marshall who, in the late nineteenth century, owned the seven miniature sketches of Viotti now in the Royal College of Music library was her descendant. 130. Lesure 1984, 221–22. Edward Street no longer exists. 131. Letter of 6 October 1796, quoted in François-Sappey 1978, 181. 132. Boccherini to Pleyel (his publisher in Paris), 11 October 1796. Quoted in Rothschild 1965, 105. Viotti’s letter to Boccherini has not survived. Perhaps Boulogne’s copies of the music had been seized along with his musical instruments, in which case they may have entered the library of the Conservatoire at its founding in 1795 (Antonio Bruni was one of those responsible for the depositing of seized music—see Cesari et al. 1931, 29–31, 39), and therefore may well form part of the extensive Boccherini manuscript music holdings of the present Music Department of the Bibliothéque nationale in Paris. Boccherini sold these works to Pleyel in July 1797. His loyalty to Pleyel may have prompted his remarks about Viotti’s request. 133. Papendiek 1887, 2:179. 134. GB-Lbl Add. Ms. 27593, 109. 135. Oracle (Public Advertiser), 20 January 1796. 136. True Briton, 14 January 1797. 137. Parke 1830, 1:254: “It was said that Banti had for some time been privately exerting the power she had acquired at the King’s Theatre to remove Cramer, its excellent leader of the band, in order to place her countryman, Viotti, in his situation; and the articles of the former having expired at the close of the last season, she accomplished her object.” Apart from Parke’s placing this event a year late, it is impossible to judge the accuracy of this unsubstantiated assertion, though Banti was apparently capricious and manipulative, to judge from the memoirs of Lorenzo Da Ponte, and she did apparently succeed in getting the “slippery and unscrupulous” proprietor, William Taylor, “under her thumb and keeping him there” (Milhous, Dideriksen, and Hume 2001, 205, 226). 138. Monthly Mirror, July 1797, cited in Smith 1955, 41. 139. See Smith 1955, 36, citing “Veritas.” 140. See, for example, Morning Chronicle, 23 November 1796, and 15 November 1797, both opera announcements; True Briton, 14 January 1797, Opera Concert announcement. 141. Smith 1955, 45, 69; Hogan 1968, part 5:1925, 1929. 142. A copy is in GB-Lbl: H.2819. (13.). This arrangement apparently predates that by Steibelt, W:VIa:29, “Air montagnard,” with eight variations, published in 1812.


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143. Morning Chronicle, 7 February 1797. 144. MC to WBC, ca. January 1797, AUS-Sfl 2000–18/5. 145. Boigne 1907, 138–39. In September 1804 de Boigne left England. De Boigne (1781–1866) was musically inclined. She informs us that as a girl she studied with Sapio in London, and sang with the celebrated contralto Grassini. 146. GB-Lbl Add. Ms. 17838, 409. The letter is undated. Sapio (1751–1817), who no doubt was known to Viotti from Paris days, had emigrated to London. 147. Milhous, Dideriksen, and Hume 2001, 424. 148. McVeigh 2001, 164. 149. In fact, Viotti’s cutaway coat is a green-blue color in the original pen and wash drawing reproduced in figure 6.3 (see cover). His trousers are cream colored—sartorial elegance indeed. If it is the same suit, the date of this letter lends some slight circumstantial support for the present author’s speculations as to the significance of the drawing. 150. Viotti wrote “Grais,” but probably meant “Grèce,” an example of his sometimes wayward orthography. 151. GBV to WBC and MC, ca. January 1797 (“Saturday 7.97”—he seems to have omitted the “jan.” in his haste), AUS-Sfl 2000–2/1. 152. Asprey 2002, 2:207–8. A letter that George Chinnery wrote to his father years later reveals that one of Smith’s and Viotti’s suppliers was [ Jean-Rémy] Moët, of Epernay. Moët, the grandson of the founder of the famous champagne house, was a personal friend of Smith’s, and George tells of meeting him once at dinner in Duke Street (GRC to WBC, 22/23 and 27 January 1823, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–18/6 and 18/7). This would have taken place most probably in the period 1814–18. It seems reasonable to suppose that Viotti also met Moët. 153. Morning Chronicle, 15 November 1797. 154. Morning Chronicle, 10 January 1798. 155. Mount Edgcumbe 1827, 80. According to NG2, 10:510, Debora e Sisara is “almost universally regarded as one of the most sublime works of the late eighteenth century.” 156. Windham 1866, 383. 157. “Parona”: a playful version (dialect?) of “padrona” (“mistress of the house,” but also having the connotation of “boss”), one of Viotti’s names for Margaret. 158. Anna Maria Crouch (née Phillips, 1763–1805) was an English soprano who sang and acted at the Drury Lane theater. She often appeared in stage works, concerts, and oratorios with Kelly, with whom she had been living for several years. She too had to perform on the evening of the twenty-third, a lead role (Fatima) in George Colman’s Blue-Beard at Drury Lane. 159. GBV to MC, Tuesday, 23 J[anuary] [1798], US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 2. 160. Cited in NG2, 6:733. 161. FétisB and NG2, in their respective articles on Garat, appear to confuse this trip (including the storm at sea in FétisB) with one allegedly taken by Garat from which he returned at the end of 1794. 162. Audiffret and Fayolle, “Rode,” Michaud 1843–65, 36:270; FétisB, 7:283. 163. The distinguished Berlin violinist, Karl Möser (1774–1851), after serving as leader of King Frederick William II’s private quartet (1792–96), went on a concert tour, during which he is said to have visited London, “and [he met] Rode and Viotti, under whose influence he rebuilt his technique before returning in 1797 to Berlin” (NG2, 17:180). This suggests that Rode arrived in England in 1797.

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164. Baillot to Montbeillard, 4 July 1796. François-Sappey 1978, 182–83. 165. The document announcing the intentions of the National Institute of Music, with Rode and his colleagues’ names affixed, is translated and annotated in Weiss and Taruskin 1984, 319–20. 166. Audiffret and Fayolle, “Rode,” Michaud 1843–65, 36:270; FétisB, 7:283. 167. See also McVeigh 1993, 127–28. We note, however, that a “Grand Sinfonia” by Mozart had opened Mara’s benefit on 24 March 1795, the orchestra led by Janiewicz, with Clementi at the pianoforte (True Briton, 23 March 1795). 168. Morning Herald, 6 February 1798. 169. Morning Herald, 29 March 1798. It is not stipulated when these concerts were to take place. Viotti may have met Mrs. Second in Bath, where she was resident until the summer of 1795. She sang in the New Musical Fund benefit concert in London on 20 April 1795, and acted in the Drury Lane theater from 17 October to 23 December 1796. 170. The Courier des Spectacles, 19 March 1798 (reproduced in Pougin 1888, 140n1). That the original appeared two weeks after the translation is attributable to the difficulty of communications in time of war. The original and the translation both appeared in the Morning Herald on 5 March. 171. Viotti means that he never took part in seditious meetings, which were often held in coffeehouses and taverns. Michael Kelly’s report of Viotti dining at the Crown and Anchor with his friends, “three of the greatest revolutionaries” (Alexandre de Lameth, Adrien Duport, and the Duc d’Aiguillon), even if true, is tendentious, since, as we have seen, all three had been forced to emigrate from France because of their moderate views. 172. Yim 1999, 1:114. 173. WBC to MC, 16 May 1812, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–7/12. 174. Information from Yim 2004, 101. 175. According to a report in the AMZ, 14 August 1799, his name was George Smith. A wealthy merchant named George Smith had been a client of the architect Sir John Soane in 1791–92, but had encountered financial difficulties. Chinnery also became a client of Soane. Soane recorded in his journal on 7 August 1793 that he had called on William Chinnery and “Mr Geo: Smith” and a third person named McRae (?) at the home of Lord Buckingham (The Sir John Soane’s Museum, Soane Notebooks. Information from Denise Yim, who uncovered the Soane Notebooks material). It is possible that this was the Smith who owned a home in Schönfeld, and that Viotti was able to stay with him through Chinnery’s intercession. 176. Unidentified. Cerutti (spelled variously) was a common Piedmontese name. Several persons named Cerutti were employed in the Teatro Reale in Turin when Viotti worked there. A Domenico Cerutti is listed as a harpsichordist at the King’s Theatre in the 1806–7 season (Milhous and Hume 1993, 71). 177. See appendix 4 for a full translation. 178. “Memoir of John Peter Pixis,” Harmonicon 4 (1826), 65–66. See also FétisB, 7:67. NG2, 19:816, asserts that Viotti “was so impressed [with Pixis] that he wrote duets for him.” The source for this information is unknown to the present author. Neither the Harmonicon article, nor FétisB, nor the obituary in AMZ, vol. 49 (1842), cols. 969–72, makes such an assertion. Perhaps the duets dedicated to the Chinnerys are intended.


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179. The AMZ of 24 April 1805 refers to him as a pupil of Viotti. See Yim 2004, 103. 180. AMZ, 14 August 1799, col. 762. 181. François-Sappey 1978, 182. 182. There are discrepancies among some of the accounts of this episode in Rode’s life. Sotolova 1990, 13n17, asserts that the opera was titled Obaldi, but she in turn garbles Fétis’s account, saying that Garat was the manager, and Rode the conductor of a French operatic company in Hamburg! The article on Reicha in NG2, 21:130, says that it was a second private performance of the opera, possibly misconstruing Fétis’s “répétition” as “repetition.” Lastly, Baillot reports in a letter of 6 October 1796 that “they say that Rode is in Madrid” (François-Sappey 1978, 182), which is difficult to reconcile with the known facts of Rode’s whereabouts at this time. 183. GBV to WGC, 18 June 1798. Translation by Denise Yim 2004, 121. Quoted partially in Straeten 1911, 155, fully in Pougin 1888, 79, who located it in a private collection. Its present location is unknown. 184. Yim 2004, 120–21 and n. 5. 185. GBV to CC, 8 October 1798, GB-Lcm Viotti Papers. Translation by Yim 2004, 122–23. As Yim suggests, the pretty little piano sonatas may well be the arrangements for piano with violin accompaniment (WVIa:10–12) of the first three of the violin duets, Book 1, WIV:1–6. 186. Denise Yim has described in detail how Margaret’s methods for educating her children were derived, both philosophically and in practical details, from the theories of Mme de Genlis, in particular those expounded in Adèle et Théodore (Paris, 1782). Genlis, in turn, was much influenced in her pedagogical ideas by Rousseau’s Emile ou de l’éducation (1762). See Yim 1999, 255. 187. According to a note (not in Viotti’s hand) on the manuscript of the Précis in the Royal College of Music. It has not been ascertained why Macgregor was in Hamburg at the time (he must have been on his way to England), nor how he became known to Viotti. 188. AMZ, 14 August 1799, col. 762. 189. Oracle, 21 February 1800.

Chapter Seven: Gillwell, Paris, Oxford, London, ca. 1800–1812 1. There is not a shred of evidence for Giazotto’s assertion (1956, 153) that Viotti played (including a new concerto) at the King’s Theatre in London in 1803, for which Giazotto provides fictitious newspaper announcements, and which, presumably, is the source for the similar assertion in Schwarz 1974, 647, and in Schwarz 1983, 143. 2. McVeigh 1993, 67–69. 3. Spohr 1865, 1:13. 4. This was a journal Margaret kept from 1801 to 1808, recording the progress of her children’s education. 5. Her precise identity and the reason for her presence at Gillwell remain uncertain. She was born in ca. 1788 and her father was a singer at the King’s Theatre in March 1814 ( Yim 2004, 9), apparently in the chorus, since there is no Philipps listed among the soloists (unless, of course, Philipps was not Maria’s father’s name).

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6. These were weighted baskets, which the children wore strapped to their backs, going up and down stairs, the weights being increased as they got older. The purpose, of course, was as a physical exercise to develop strength. 7. MC’s journal, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–3 (2 vols.), 2:126–27, “Plan de journèe donné ce 4 Avril 1801.” For a thorough examination of Caroline’s music education, see Yim 2008. 8. Yim 2004, 9, 124. 9. GBV to MC, Tuesday 23 J[anuary] [1798], US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 2. Viotti gave violin lessons to George, but only for a brief time. 10. MC’s journal, 3 September 1801. Cited in Yim 1999, 1:316. 11. The meaning of this word in this context has not been ascertained. It would seem to be Viotti’s word for a kind of tree or shrub. 12. The Duomo (cathedral) of Milan, begun in the fourteenth century, was still not completed. Its façade was finished between 1805 and 1809, by order of Napoleon. 13. GBV to MC, 20 May 1801, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–2/25 and US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 3. 14. MC’s journal, 14 October 1801. Cited in Yim 1999, 1:315. 15. GBV to Ginguené, 8 November 1802, US-NYpm, Mary Flagler Cary Collection, MFC V799.G492. I am grateful to Denise Yim for bringing this collection to my attention. The letter is partially transcribed in Pougin 1888, 83. 16. QMMR, 2 (1820): 22. 17. There may have been other reasons, apart from the resumption of hostilities, why Bianchi’s work was not accepted by the French. The Conservatoire had its own theorists, including Cherubini, who as an inspector for education at the Conservatoire, worked under Ginguené. He himself was writing pedagogical works (solfeges, figured basses, and the like). There was also Charles Catel, who had been professor of harmony and counterpoint at the Conservatoire since 1795. His Treatise on Harmony, published, indeed, in 1802, for years remained a standard text in France. 18. GB-Lcm Ms. 8218i and 8218ii. The paper of this two-volume manuscript is watermarked 1798, according to the Bonhams online catalogue entry, Sale 11946, lot No: 619. 19. GB-Lcm Ms. 754. Another treatise by Bianchi, in French, titled De l’attraction harmonique, ou Sistème phisico-mathematique de l’Harmonie [. . .] suivis d’un traité theorique-pratique de Contrepoint, is in the library of the Conservatorio Statale di Musica L. Cherubini in Florence, Italy. The second part ( . . . un traité theorique-pratique de Contrepoint) is missing. Despite its title, the contents of this treatise do not correspond to the contents of Dell’ Attrazione Armonica as given in QMMR. It is tempting to suppose that the French treatise was the one submitted to the Insitut de France (however, the copy in Florence is by no means a fair copy). Otherwise one wonders why it was written in French. But the titles of these various treatises seem on the face of it to be in something of a muddle: the Trattato Teorico e pratico del Contrapunto, copied by Viotti (the first volume of which corresponds to the Trattato di Armonia, first part), at the same time appears to correspond to the missing second part of the De l’attraction harmonique. 20. There are two known copies: F-Pn 4°C2 105, a fair copy, undated, in a very fine copperplate hand, and GB-Lcm Ms. 45, a less careful copy, possibly a draft or a working version, with a watermark including the date 1807. 21. MC’s journal, 3 September 1803. Cited in Yim 1999, 1:317.


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22. GBV to Dizi, 5 October 1806, transcribed in Giazotto 1956, 268, who gives no location. 23. See Yim 2003, 30–32, 63–78. 24. Mme de Genlis to Margaret Chinnery [September 1802], AUS-Sfl 2000–6/2. This and the following letters are transcribed in Yim 2003. 25. [September 1802], AUS-Sfl 2000–6/4. Mme de Genlis apparently hopes that her harp playing will benefit from Viotti’s acclaimed communicative and expressive powers on the violin. 26. [October 1802], AUS-Sfl 2000–6/10. 27. These three poems are in the Powerhouse Museum (AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–1/3, 25/1 and 1/4). The music does not survive. 28. See François-Sappey 1978, 176–77. 29. Baillot was named leader of the second violins on 20 July 1802, with an annual salary of 2,500 francs. By December of the same year, however, he was complaining of the poor organization and “disagreeable conditions” (“we are treated worse than servants”). François-Sappey 1978, 144, 178. 30. An acute disease of the skin and subcutaneous tissue caused by a streptococcus and marked by spreading inflammation. Also called St. Anthony’s fire. 31. I am indebted to Yim 2004, 112, for this felicitous translation of this phrase. 32. Baillot to Montbeillard, 29 October 1802. François-Sappey 1978, 182–83. 33. Baillot 1825, 8. FétisB, s.v. “Viotti,” 363, seems to conflate this visit with that of 1814, when a concert was arranged for Viotti at the Conservatoire, at which, however, Viotti himself seems not to have played, or with Viotti’s visit of 1818, when he did play, but not at the Conservatoire. Neither Baillot, in his letter of 29 October 1802, and in his Notice, 8–9, both describing Viotti’s visit of 1802, nor Miel mentions a concert at the Conservatoire in 1802. 34. Baillot 1825, 8–9. 35. Lesure 1984, 222–26. 36. GBV to Baillot, “Wednesday 14,” cited in Pincherle 1924, 109. In fact there was no Wednesday the fourteenth in August–October 1802. However, there seems to be no other year in which this letter can plausibly be dated (for example, 14 September 1814 was a Wednesday, but Viotti was in Paris only from 19 to 27 September that year, and in 1818 Montgéroult was in London from June until the following year). Viotti may have mistaken the date. 37. MC to CC, 11 May 1811, GB-Och. 38. We have already noted General Menou (see p. 124). 39. Ten years later William wrote to Margaret referring to their intimacy with Maret in 1802 (WBC to MC, 16 May 1812, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–7/12). 40. The correspondence between Margaret and Mme de Genlis in 1807 was sent through Perregaux. 41. GBV to Perregaux, 6 December 1791 (F-Pn [Musique], L. a. Viotti, G.B., 15); GBV to Perregaux, Wednesday, 14 fructidor (1 September 1802) (L.a. Viotti, 8); GBV to Perregaux, 20 September 1806 (L. a. Viotti, 2). A fourth letter, written on 10 January 1792, must be in a private collection, if it survives, and we are ignorant of its contents. Catalogue de la belle collection de Lettres Autographes de feu [. . .] Baron de Trémont [. . .] dont la vente, aura lieu [. . .] 9 Décembre 1852 (Paris, 1852, 1853), 1° vacation, p. 218, no. 1442. 42. Mme de Genlis to MC, 23 August 1807, AUS-Sfl 2000–6/23.

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43. Reichardt 1896, 148, letter of 15 December 1802. 44. Castil-Blaze 1832, 166. 45. Reichardt 1896, 384, letter of 1 March 1803. 46. Mme de Genlis to MC, October 1802, AUS-Sfl 2000–6/8. 47. Mme de Genlis to GBV, 25 February and ca. 5 April 1803, US-NYp JOB 97-52, items 7, 9. 48. Yim 2003, 86n66. 49. Pierre Rode to MC, 8 November 1802, AUS-Sfl 2000–4/3. The arm ailment seems to have cleared up, at least for while, since in December J. F. Reichardt heard Rode play several times and was full of praise: “Rode was marvellous: intonation, quality of sound, attacks, expression, all perfect; the most severe difficulties overcome with an unparalleled brio. At times his style is unusual, but always tasteful; he has succeeded in assimilating the originality of his master Viotti, adding to it, in the adagio and the romance, a naïve and tender sentiment that is the reflection of his pleasant character.” And again: “Rode played one of those quartets of Mozart that are so difficult to play, with a neatness, a precision, an expression and a bravura that overwhelmed me; I have never heard anything more perfect!” (Reichardt 1896, 167, 200, letters of 17 December 1802 and 24 December 1802). 50. GBV, London, to General de Grave, Paris, 11 December 1802, private collection. Transcribed, with errors, in Pougin 1888, 83. After emigrating to England in 1792, de Grave returned to France in 1800. There is no mention of him in the Chinnery Papers. Captain Carthew, of His Majesty’s ship Regulus, had been active in sea engagements, including the capture of a Spanish corvette “of 18 guns and 140 men” off the British coast in December 1796 (An Impartial History of the War [ Manchester: Sowler and Russell, 1799]: 327), and the capture of several French vessels in Guadilla Bay, Puerto Rico, on 27 December 1797. The commander of the squadron in the latter engagement wrote, “To Captain Carthew I am indebted for the gallant and able Support that I on this Occasion met with” (Bulletins of the Campaign 1798 [ London, 1799]: 29–30). Both sources from Eighteenth Century Collections Online. 51. Information from Yim 2004, 9, and a private communication from Denise Yim. 52. See also appendix 10. 53. Schmeissen to GBV, 10 May 1804, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 10. 54. Much of this information from Yim 1999, 1:304–9. 55. Vigée-Lebrun 1835–37, 2:147–48. Vigée-Lebrun gives the date of her departure from France for England as 15 April 1802 ( p. 123), but this is either her error or a misprint. 56. Viotti’s portrait was reproduced in Die Musik 1/18 and 19 (1902) and in Straeten 1911, when the painting was still in the possession of members of the Greene family, descendants of Mary Whitaker Greene, who had been Margaret’s companion in her last years. Vigée-Lebrun had painted the young Bariatinsky’s portrait in Russia in ca. 1795, and she did several portraits of Mme Grassini in England, and one of Mme Catalani in 1806. 57. Vigée-Lebrun 1835–37, 2:133. 58. Lady Bessborough to Lord Granville Leveson Gower, 10 October 1805 (Gower 1917, 2:120). 59. Cambridge says in a letter written after George Chinnery’s death in 1825 that he had known George since the latter was a boy (AF to MC, 17 March 1826, AUS-Sfl 2000–12/22).


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60. Eight are in the Royal College of Music Viotti collection, one in the Fisher Library collection, and one in the New York Public Library collection. 61. AF to MC, 14 December 1807, AUS-Sfl 2000–12/3. 62. Yim 1999, 1:138. 63. WRS to GBV, 21 December 1808, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–29/1. 64. “A J. B. Viotti,” in Spencer 1811, 233. 65. The princess was Caroline, Princess of Wales, detested by and long since separated from the Prince of Wales. “Lady Anne Charlemont (d. 1876), the wife of Francis William Caulfield, second Earl of Charlemont (1775–1863), was described in all the Chinnery letters as a beauty” ( Yim 1999, 139n380). Viotti’s Lady Henriette was probably Henrietta (Harriet), Countess Granville (1785–1862), the daughter of the sixth Duke of Devonshire and Georgiana Spencer, who married Lord Granville Leveson-Gower in 1809. The couple attended several of Margaret’s parties, but there is no further mention in the Chinnery Papers of any particular attachment between Henrietta and Viotti. 66. WRS to GBV, 6 April [1811], AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–29/2. 67. GBV to WRS, 8–9 April 1811, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–31/4. 68. He was also capable, in his poetry, of a gentler form of humor: “Lines [ Impromptu] written by the Violin Strings, on learning that poor Amico had hurt a finger. Alas! What should we do, if Viotti’s finger No longer could draw the beauteous swelling tone? In mute inaction then must ever linger, Those pow’rs which once through Him, so brilliant shone! T’express our fears, what voice what language borrow? And will not, even then the sigh we send, By all be deem’d an interested sorrow, Since our existence must on Him depend! April 14, 1809.” US-NHub Osborn Shelves fd 11. 69. MC to GRC, 20 February 1809, GB-Och. 70. He also wrote (at least) one letter to William Chinnery, dated 16 January 1800 [recte 1808], listed in auction catalogue no. 576 of J. A. Stargardt, 24–25 May 1966, Marburg, p. 130, item 723, now presumably in a private collection. 71. GBV to MC, 15 January 1808, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 12. 72. Pascoe Grenfell, a wealthy copper magnate and Member of Parliament, and his wife, Georgina, to whose country home near Windsor, Taplow House (now a hotel), the Chinnerys and Viotti were frequently invited. 73. GBV to MC, 16 January 1808, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 13. 74. MC to GRC, 20 January 1808, GB-Och. 75. GRC to MC, 18, 24 March; 3 May 1808, GB-Och. 76. MC’s journal, 19 January [1807], 100. The Chevalier La Cainea, theater impresario, served for a time in a managerial capacity at the King’s Theatre. Very little seems to be known about him. He was an enthusiastic singer and frequenter of the Gillwell parties. 77. MC’s journal, 9 March [1807], 106. The only concerto by Viotti known to have been arranged by Montgéroult is no. 6 in E Major (wIa, in E Flat Major). Perhaps, as Denise Yim points out (2004, 135), it was an arrangement in manuscript of another concerto, or perhaps Margaret misremembered the key.

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78. White 1973, 123. 79. Pougin 1874, 20, is careful to distance himself from the reports of this liaison: “I am unaware as to whether there is any foundation to these rumors, which I report because several biographies mention them.” Some of the known facts are: Antonin Reicha reported having spent a part of the period 1800–1801 in the vale of Montmorency with Rode and Grassina (Sotolova 1990, 15); in November 1801 Rode and Grassina undertook, together, an extended tour of Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy; Rode dedicated his Concerto no. 8 to Grassina. 80. Giuseppina Grassina to MC, 9 November 1806, AUS-Sfl 2000–4/7. 81. Sun, 4 February 1806. 82. Lady Bessborough to Lord Granville Leveson Gower, 20 December 1807 (Gower 1917, 2:316). 83. Mme de Genlis to MC, 25 August 1807, AUS-Sfl 2000–6/24, transcribed in Yim 2003, 104–5. 84. Unless they have entered a private collection, which often amounts to the same thing. 85. Baecker to MC, 16 December 1807, AUS-Sfl 2000–10/5, transcribed in Yim 2003, 161. 86. MC to Macleod (copy), ca. 23 August 1807, AUS-Sfl 2000–9/4, transcribed in Yim 2003, 157. 87. MC to Baecker, 5 November 1807, AUS-Sfl 2000–10/3, transcribed in Yim 2003, 159–60. 88. MC to GRC, 29 January 1808, GB-Och. 89. GBV to Casimir Baecker, [1814], US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 65, transcribed in Yim 2003, 166–68. 90. Susan Fincastle to MC, 14 September 1806, AUS-Sfl 2000–5/5. 91. Susan Fincastle to GBV, [ca. 1810 or 1811], US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 67. 92. Another child prodigy, Michael Rophino Lacy (1795–1867), born in Spain, arrived in England in 1805, aged ten. According to Sainsbury 1824/1971, 2:32–33, followed by FétisB and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004, he had been brought to study with Viotti. This is not corroborated by any other source known to the present author, nor is Lacy mentioned in the Chinnery-Viotti correspondence. He was active as a soloist, orchestra leader, composer, and actor in various cities in Great Britain. It has not been ascertained whether he was related to the singer William Lacy (1788–1871), who married the widowed Mme Bianchi in 1812. 93. Times, 16 January 1805. 94. NG2, 17:119. François-Hippolyte Barthélemon (1741–20 July 1808) had been one of London’s leading violinist-composers. He was well known for his interpretations of Corelli’s sonatas, and he became a good friend of Haydn’s during the latter’s two visits to London. There is no record of his being acquainted with Viotti or the Chinnerys. 95. Rohr 2001, 69. 96. MC to GRC, 7 May 1808, GB-Och. 97. MC to GRC, 21 November 1808, GB-Och. 98. Apparently, however, in adulthood he had a reputation as an eccentric, and his manner was described as “irritable and brusque.” See Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004, 39:162.


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99. MC to GRC, 23 May 1809, GB-Och. Times, 22 May 1809, announced the program. Mrs. Bianchi, who had given music lessons to George, remained a good friend of the Chinnerys. She and her husband had apparently separated soon after their marriage in 1800 (NG2, 14:103), though they had come to Gillwell together in 1801 and 1803. Notwithstanding his appearance, Bianchi committed suicide a year-and-a half after this concert. 100. Excerpts from MC to GRB, GB-Och. 101. Marianne Tresilian, Margaret’s youngest sister. 102. WRS to MC, 15 June 1808, AUS-Sfl 2000–13/3. 103. Viotti, MC and CC had also visited Knight in April 1807. See MC’s journal, vol. 2, 18 April 1807, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–3. 104. Luigi Asioli (1778–1815), tenor, pianist, composer, and singing teacher active in London from 1804. 105. White 1985, 147 (WVIII:1, F-Pn (Musique), Ms. 1420). 106. See Yim 2004, 146–47, and Glenbervie to MC, 17 May 1819, US-NHub Osborn Shelves fd 11, item 1. 107. GBV to WBC, 17 December 1793, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/3. 108. GBV to WBC, ca. February 1814, 94/143/1–14/18. 109. GBV to WBC, 31 May 1816, 94/143/11–14/33. 110. F-Pan AJ13 1037. It is odd that this letter, written from Gillwell to London, found its way into the AJ series of the French national archives, which is concerned with the Paris Opéra. It might be thought that Viotti was purchasing these books for George, newly enrolled at Oxford University, but they are not relevant to George’s courses in 1808 (see Yim 1999, 2:425, 450–51). Viotti gave George at Oxford a set of the fifteen-volume La Rivalité entre la France et l’Angleterre (The Rivalry between France and England, 1771–74), by Gabriel-Henri Gaillard (GRC to MC, [5 March 1809], GB-Och). 111. Joseph Hyacinthe François de Paule de Rigaud, Comte de Vaudreuil (1740–1817) had been in the entourage of Comte d’Artois, who emigrated in 1789, and who came to Edinburgh and London in ca. 1795. 112. Yim 2004, 118. 113. MC to GRC, 4 and 9 February 1809, GB-Och. 114. MC to GRC, 8 February 1809, GB-Och. It is to be regretted, the more so since the comte did not write his memoirs, that Margaret, who was clearly aware of the historical importance of this “curious and interesting information,” did not see fit to write it down, something she was capable of doing in a thoroughly competent fashion. Among other things, she could have settled the disagreement between two present-day historians as to whether it was Vaudreuil (Schama 1989, 215) or Artois (Fraser 2001, 218) who played Almaviva in the Trianon performances of Beaumarchais’s The Barber of Seville in the summer of 1785. Her source would have been impeccable. The present author, following Nolhac 1914, 160, plumps for Vaudreuil, who, according to Nolhac, was a friend of Beaumarchais. 115. Published by J. Power, ca. 1817, “sung by Mrs Ashe at the London and Bath Concerts.” Mrs. Ashe sang in a Phiharmonic Society concert in 1816, but not this piece. 116. GBV to GRC, 15 November 1808, GB-Och. 117. GBV to GRC, 8 March 1809, GB-Och. George followed these instructions scrupulously—his mother’s letters to him at Oxford, 1808–11, and his to her, are contained

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in the fourteen volumes of Chinnery correspondence in the library of Christ Church College. But Viotti and William Chinnery do not seem to have got around to their intended project. 118. This and the following two letters: GB-Och. 119. Edmund Goodenough, George’s logic and rhetoric lecturer, who was a music lover. 120. Collections were the viva voce examinations held at the end of every term. 121. GRC to MC, 4 March 1809, GB-Och. 122. GBV to MC, 4 March 1809, GB-Och. 123. GRC to MC, [5 March 1809], GB-Och. 124. GBV to GRC, 8 March 1809, GB-Och. 125. MC to GRC, 11 June 1809, GB-Och. 126. MC to GRC, 21 June 1809, GB-Och. 127. MC to GRC, 9 February 1810. The Comte de Vaudreuil was staying at Gillwell at this time. He was thus no doubt one of the first to hear Viotti play on this violin. 128. See appendix 8 for a full account. 129. MC to GRC, 23 March 1810, GB-Och. 130. Yim 2004, 145. Yim points out that “there are letters proving that Adolphus Frederick made at least ten visits to Gillwell, and several more to Stratford place.” 131. MC to GRC, 27 March 1810, GB-Och. 132. Morning Post, 7 March 1810, as cited in Fenner 1994, 212. 133. MC to GRC, 7 March 1810, GB-Och. 134. MC to GRC, 16 March 1810, GB-Och. 135. Examiner, 1 May 1808, cited by Fenner 1994, 212. 136. WBC to GRC, 28 May 1810, GB-Och. It may have been Mrs. Lamb, not her husband, who was present (see MC to GRC, 28 May 1810, GB-Och). 137. Margaret had mentioned Scott’s poem to George, MC to GRC, 12 February 1810 (GB-Och). 138. Leveson-Gower (1773–1846), politician and diplomat, a former Christ Church man and friend of George Canning. His wife was “Viotti’s Henrietta” (see above, n. 65), Lady Bessborough’s niece. The letters of Lady Bessborough (1761–1821) to him are notable for their wit, intelligence, and acute observation. Byron made his spiteful epithet against her (“the hack whore of the last half century”) as a result of his notorious affair with her daughter, Lady Caroline Lamb, George Lamb’s sister-in-law. This, however, lay two years ahead. 139. In 1818, Richard Rush, the American ambassador, remarked in his diary on this, to him, curious phenomenon (Rush 1987, 34). 140. MC to GRC, 27 June 1810, GB-Och; MC to GRC, 11 June 1810, GB-Och, and Knight to MC, ca. May 1810, replying to a dinner invitation, AUS-Sfl 2000–5/10. 141. MC to GRC, 27 June 1810, GB-Och. 142. See Mongrédien 1996, 305. 143. Dussek to GBV, 26 May 1810, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 16. 144. GRC to MC, 29 June 1810, GB-Och. 145. Other Oxonians who won the Newdigate Prize include John Ruskin in 1839, Matthew Arnold in 1843, Oscar Wilde in 1878, and John Buchan in 1898. 146. GRC to MC, 24 June 1810, GB-Och. 147. GBV to WBC, in MC to WBC, [5] July 1810, AUS-Sfl 2000–18/9.


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148. CC to WBC, in MC to WBC, 6 July 1810, AUS-Sfl 2000–18/10. 149. GBV to WBC, 7 July 1810, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 17: “deux grands hommes.” Parr’s eldest daughter, Sarah, died on 8 July, at Parr’s home in Hatton, Warwickshire (Derry 1966, 282). Given the distance from Oxford, it is unlikely that Parr would have received the news the same day. 150. MC to WBC, [8 July] 1810, AUS-Sfl 2000–18/11. 151. MC to GRC, 22 November 1810, GB-Och. 152. MC to CC, 13 May 1811, GB-Och. 153. GBV to WRS, 16 May 1811, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–31/5. 154. CC to GBV, 19 May 1811, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 23. 155. GBV to WRS, 18 May 1811, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–31/6. 156. GBV to CC, 22 May 1811, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 25. 157. Thomas Moore to his mother, 21 June 1811 (Moore 1964, 1:152). 158. MC to GRC, 21 June 1811, GB-Och. 159. Roe 2005, 148–49. 160. AF to GBV, 25 July 1811, AUS-Sfl 2000–38/3. 161. GBV to WRS, 6 August 1811, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 26. The letter was posted from Eastbourne on the seventh, showing that Viotti expected it to arrive before 6 P.M. 162. Mary Berry, an author, and her sister Agnes held a salon in London, respected for its literary conversation. Their correspondence and Mary’s journal are a rich source of information for the period. 163. MC to GRC, 3 September 1811, GB-Och. 164. MC to GRC, 6 September 1811, GB-Och. 165. MC to GRC, 8 (recte 9?) September 1811, GB-Och. The letter is dated Monday, 8 September 1811, but 8 September 1811 was a Sunday. 166. George Jackson to his mother, 27 September 1811 ( Jackson 1873, 1:293). 167. Glenbervie 1910, 142–47 (entry of 13 September 1811). 168. MC to GRC, 21 September 1811, GB-Och. 169. MC to GRC, 6 October 1811, GB-Och. 170. Francis J. Jackson to George Jackson, 15 September 1811 ( Jackson 1873, 1:287–88). 171. MC’s journal: 2 October [1803], 20 September [1804], 14 November 1804 (Denise Yim, private communication). See also MC to GBV, 16 October 1804, AUS-Sfl 2000–39/1 ( presumably written in Brighton), an affectionate letter thanking Viotti for sending her a birthday bouquet of flowers from Gillwell, and lamenting how long it has been since they have seen each other, all of which indicates that Viotti did not stay in Brighton in 1804 as long as the Chinnerys did. 172. A box covered in red leather used by ministers of state for holding official documents. 173. WRS to GBV, 15 October 1811, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–29/5. I am indebted to Yim 2004, 154, for the translation of the last phrase. 174. C. W. Flint to GBV, 24 October 1811 (in English), US-NYp JOB 97–52, item 27. 175. MC to GRC, 31 October 1811, GB-Och. 176. George Jackson to his mother, 11 November 1811 ( Jackson 1873, 1:305). 177. Hibbert 1976, 308.

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178. There is no mention of Ferrari in the Chinnery Papers until now, by which we must assume that he had not frequented the Chinnery’s musical parties and that he and Viotti had not been particularly close. But this reappearance of Viotti’s old Parisian maestro di cembalo gives pause. Two of his operas had been produced at the King’s Theatre, in 1799 and in 1802; he had sung in fashionable houses, including that of the Duchess of Devonshire, and he was the singing teacher of the Princess of Wales. According to NG2, 8:716, “from 1809 to 1812 he was almost totally blind, but recovered.” But in his Anedotti, 325, he says that he was afflicted with a “violent ophthalmia,” resulting in blindness, for eighteen months, beginning in 1809, which means that on the present occasion in Brighton he had just recovered or was recovering. 179. MC to GRC, 4 November 1811, GB-Och. 180. Benjamin Bloomfield to GBV, 4 November [1811], AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–28/2. 181. Gore 1963, 82–83. 182. GBV to MC, 10 January 1812, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–2/26. 183. Officer and Williamson 2008. 184. Harcourt 1860, 2:487–88. 185. GB-Lna T1/3535 and T1/3535/16484. These were sums discovered during the investigation into WBC’s finances, which took several years. However, Viotti and Smith had repaid this debt by 1812 (T1/3535, pp. 22, 23). See also appendix 10. Scorgie 2007 gives a full account of WBC’s malfeasance. 186. Yim 1999, 2:531. 187. WBC to MC, 9 August 1811, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–7/2. 188. WBC to MC, ca. March 1812, 94/143/1–7/4. 189. MC’s journal, 4 September 1813, 94/143/1–10. 190. MC to WBC, 10 April 1812, 94/143/1–17/3. 191. MC to WBC, 6 April 1812, 94/143/1–17/2. 192. GBV to WBC, at the end of MC to WBC, 6 April 1812, 94/143/1–17/2. 193. MC to WBC, 5 August 1812, 94/143/1–17/5. 194. GBV to WBC, 30 March 1812, 94/143/1–14/4. “Le père de ma fille”: Viotti’s writing here is not entirely clear. Since Viotti is not known to have left issue, this reference to a daughter is inexplicable. An alternative reading, “le père de Mathilde,” is equally inexplicable. Yim 2004, 103, refers to an occasion in 1811 on which a woman speaks of Viotti as her father, again, inexplicably. Murray 1998, 121 and 125, refers to Viotti’s daughter, “usually referred to as Mademoiselle Viotti, a popular soprano,” and to Mademoiselle Viotti singing in York. However, Murray gives no source for this information, which the present author has not encountered elsewhere. Until further evidence comes to light, the existence of any offspring of Viotti must be regarded as unproven. 195. GB-Lna T1 3535/14 (27, 28 April 1812). 196. MC’s journal, 4 September 1813, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–10. 197. GB-Lna TS 11/362. 198. See MC to GBV, 29 November 1821, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 58, in which Margaret asks Viotti if he remembers how much he had paid for the furniture he had bought at the Gillwell sale; GBV to WBC, 3 September 1812, AUS-Sphm 94/143/ 1–14/12, in which he mentions objects that “were bought for us.” 199. Viotti may have bought other items. See n. 198.


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200. The copy of the catalogue containing the names of the buyers, in the Christie archive, wants the last three pages; the copy in the National Archives, TS 11/362, is complete, but does not have the names of the buyers. 201. GB-Lna T1 3535/19 (25 May 1812). 202. Payne Knight “bequeathed his important collection of antiquities and drawings to the British Museum, including just over fifty vases” ( Jenkins 1988, 456). 203. See Dean 2006, 194. Also in Sir John Soane’s Museum is a volume (vol. 114 in the Concise catalogue of drawings), bound in vellum, tooled in gold, of seventy-five Italian and Northern European Renaissance designs for ornament by various artists, called the “Margaret Chinnery Album.” However, this volume is not listed in the catalogue for the auction of 2 June 1812, and it is not known when or how Soane acquired it. 204. MC to WBC, 25 November 1816, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/27. The friend was Count St. Antonio, at his home. We note in passing that Viotti also played chess—how well we do not know. Margaret informed George on 6 November 1810 that Amico was playing chess with an admirer of Caroline. Apparently Viotti was also an accomplished fencer, as shown by a letter from George, who has been taking fencing lessons at Oxford, and has become quite good at it. He tells his mother that he wishes to challenge Viotti to a fencing duel in the coming vacation (GRC to MC, 6 December 1808, GB-Och). It surely was in the Palazzo Cisterna that Viotti had been taught to fence. 205. Of the seven or eight pictures sold, one was listed as by Poussin (“a Landscape, and a Sun Set”), and one as by Vandyck (“Portrait of Henrietta Marta [recte Maria]”).

Chapter Eight: London and the Continent, 1812–19 1. Teresa Bertinotti, soprano, became the prima donna seria at the King’s Theatre in the 1810–11 season, and, notably, introduced Mozart’s Così fan tutte (in the role of Fiordiligi) to London audiences at her benefit. She was married to the violinist-composer Felice Radicati. Diomiro Tramezzani, a tenor, sang at the King’s Theatre from 1809 to 1814. Both singers received generally excellent reviews from the London press and other commentators (Fenner 1994, 335–36, 170–72). 2. Francesco Vaccari, according to FétisB, was born in 1773, as a child prodigy impressed Pugnani, and at around the age of ten went to Florence to study with Nardini. The rest of Fétis’s account is not completely accurate. Vaccari was in the service of the king of Spain from 1796 to 1806 (Labrador 2005, 90). He participated both as a violinist and as a violist in the Philharmonic Society concerts in London from 1813 to 1815, including a performance, as second violinist to Viotti, of a quartet by Viotti (17 May 1813), and thrice acting as leader (14 March 1814, 17 April, and 29 May 1815). According to Fétis, who does not mention the English sojourn, Vaccari returned to Lisbon and Madrid in 1815. However, Viotti refers to his presence in England in March 1816 (see below, p. 303). 3. GBV to WBC, 5 August 1812, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/8. 4. MacCarthy 2003, 161. 5. Moore 1830. 6. Hibbert 1976, 399. 7. GBV to WBC, 23 June 1812, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/7.

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8. GBV to WBC, 14 August 1812, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/9. About a year and a half later, Viotti implied that the Amati cello had at some point been given to John Crosdill. In a rather alarming outburst, Viotti raged against the celebrated cellist, to whom, more than a decade earlier, he had dedicated a set of cello duets (WIV:37–42), “as a tribute to his extraordinary talent, by a sincere friend.” Crosdill had been back from his “blasted country place for more than two months, and he has never deigned to come by to see if we are dead or alive. [. . .] What a pity that you made this cello over to him. I am sure that the rascal will not keep his promise, and that he will die without bequeathing it to you or your son” (GBV to WBC, 14 February 1814, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/1). 9. She appeared at the King’s Theatre only in the 1802–3 season. 10. GBV to WBC, 14 August 1812, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/9. 11. WII:16–18 (three quartets for flute/violin, violin, viola and violoncello, ca. 1801–6). Philip Cipriani, the son of the artist G. B. Cipriani (and nephew of Lorenzo Angelo Cipriani, a buffo singer at the King’s Theatre, where he sang in Soler’s L’isola del piacere in 1795), was a colleague of William Chinnery at the Treasury (a senior clerk 1787–1807 and a chief clerk 1807–20). He was a good friend of the Chinnerys and Viotti. 12. Yim 2004, 168. 13. Christopher Schram had been one of the featured cello soloists, along with Lindley, in the Opera Concert in 1795, and cellist in the King’s Theatre orchestra for the 1795–96 and 1796–97 seasons. He participated in the Chinnery music parties. His brother, S. Schram, was a violinist (Highfill, Burnim, and Langhans 1973–93, 13:232). 14. GBV to WBC, 14 August 1812, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/9. 15. Yim 2004, 167, 175. 16. Cited in MC to WBC, [ January 1813], AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/4. Lacepede was one of the members, along with Ginguené, of the three-man committee to which Bianchi’s treatise had been sent for inspection. 17. F-Pan L2731030. On 24 August 1820 André was named an Officer of the Legion of Honor. On 15 November 1815 he became a naturalized French citizen (F-Pan BB/11/108/1). 18. In any case, after 5 August 1812, the date of the former Gillwell tutor Herr Trumpf’s letter to Viotti, reporting on his search for a house in London for the Gillwell residents (AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–28/18). 19. This was not the same Charles Street, near Middlesex Hospital, where Viotti had lived in 1794, and it, too, no longer exists. It was the eastern extension of George Street, north of Manchester Square. 20. MC to WBC, 10 October 1813, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/16. 21. Yim 2004, 181. 22. AF to GBV, ca. March–May 1813, GB-Lcm Viotti Papers. 23. Another Associate was “C. Smith, bass-singer,” who sang in vocal ensembles in many of the Society’s concerts from 1813 to 1816. It is possible that he was the Charles Smith who was Viotti’s business partner. 24. GBV and MC to “My dear Friend,” 20 January 1813, National Library of Congress, Washington, Rosaleen Moldenhauer Collection, Box 13. Cited in Rowland 2006, 383–84, where, however, Margaret’s portion of the letter is attributed to Clementi. 25. “Particulars of a Freehold Estate called Gillwell House in Essex; and a Freehold Warehouse in Vine Street Middlesex,” printed by Luke Hansard & Sons, near Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, 1813, AUS-Sphm 94/13/1–11/20 and 21.


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26. Denise Yim suggested this latter possibility in a private communication. On 27 January 1815 Margaret was finally paid £2,050 (GB-Lna T1 3535/72), “the agreed value of her life interest and right of Dower in the real Estate of her husband.” Statement of the solicitor H. C. Litchfield, 3 March 1815. GB-Lna T1 3535. 27. The choice of pieces for the progams was jointly decided by the directors, but surely the leader’s opinion weighed heavily in each case. Foster 1912, 10, is presumably correct in giving Luigi Cherubini, rather than Johann Vogel, as the composer of the Démophone overture. 28. Spohr 1865, 2:81. 29. MC to WBC, [17 May 1813], AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/55. 30. See Landon 1976, 482. 31. Cimador’s concert: Temperly 1960, 208. Also in the program were six vocal works of Mozart, an overture by Winter, a harp concerto by Dussek, and a violin concerto by Janiewicz, presumably played by the composer. Janiewicz’s concerts: McVeigh 2006, 108. 32. GBV to Frederick William Collard, 24 March 1811, private collection. I am indebted to Clive Brown for making this letter available to me. 33. GBV to an unidentified English publisher, 12 May 1813, private collection, cited in Badura-Skoda 1970, 19–20. 34. “Letter to the fifth Duke of Marlborough,” 21 April 1813, GB-Lbl Add. Ms. 61677, f. 69 (Blenheim Papers). 35. MC to WBC, 18 July 1813, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/11. The “famous Menuet of Pugnani” (an exception to Viotti’s usually playing his own pieces) has not been identified. However, Pugnani’s Twelve Favourite Minuets in Three Parts, Compos’d for His Majesty the King of Denmark’s Masquerade . . . for the Harpsichord, Violin, or Ger. Flute had been published in London (Welcker) in 1768. The polacca would have been one of Viotti’s two popular polonaise-finales of Concertos nos. 2 and 13. They had both been published in London in the 1790s as songs with piano accompaniment. The concerto played by Matilda was the arrangement by J. B. Cramer for piano and orchestra of Viotti’s Violin Concerto no. 27, which indeed was new, having been announced only in 1813. 36. MC to WBC, 18 July 1813, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/11. It would appear that Lawrence had been invited to Caroline’s funeral and had observed her features then. Lawrence was prone to revise his paintings (“scrapings out”), and left many of them unfinished. In June 1810, Margaret had reported that the brilliant miniature painter Richard Cosway (ca. 1742–1821), was painting Caroline (MC to GRC, 27 June 1810, GB-Och). (However, it is a drawing that Margaret mentions in the present letter.) The present whereabouts of these portraits, if they were finished, and if they have survived, are unknown. 37. GBV to WBC, 27 January 1814, AUS-Sphm 94/1437–14/16. 38. Moore 1983, 1:34–35. 39. GBV to WBC, [ca. February 1814], AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/18. 40. Comte de Vaudreuil to MC, 7 March 1814, AUS-Sfl 2000–4/11; Matilda Chinnery’s journal, 6 and 7 April [1814], AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–27. 41. Matilda Chinnery’s journal, 30 March [1814], 94/143/1–27. 42. Matilda Chinnery’s journal, 6 April [1814], 94/143/1–27. 43. The several arrangements in the British Library for various combinations of instruments all postdate 1814, but it seems likely that at least one was published in

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London by that year, in view of the frequency with which Cherubini’s works were programmed by the Philharmonic Society at the time. 44. Matilda Chinnery’s journal, 6 April [1814], 94/143/1–27. 45. Marchand 1973–94, 2:123. 46. Mme de Staël to GBV, 28 June 1813, US-NYp JOB 97–52, item 29. 47. GBV to WBC, 28 June 1813, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/14. 48. Glenbervie 1910, 174–75, entry of 5 July 1813. 49. MC to WBC, 18 August 1813, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/13. 50. MC to WBC, 25 August 1813, 94/143/1–17/14. 51. MC to WBC, 11 September 1813, 94/143/1–17/15. 52. Albertine de Staël, 3 October [1813], US-NYp JOB 97–52, item 32. 53. Mme de Staël to GBV, ca. 1814, US-NYp JOB 97–52, item 69. 54. In two (undated) letters in the spring of 1814 she badgers Viotti for tickets. US-NYp JOB 97-52, items 34, 35. 55. Morning Chronicle, 15 February 1814. 56. Cited in Foster 1912, 5. 57. GBV to WBC, 19 July 1813, US-NYp JOB 97–52, item 30. 58. GBV to WBC, ca. February 1814, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/18. 59. See Yim 1999, 165, who cites Matilda Chinnery’s journal, 6 April [1814], AUSSphm 94/143/1–27. 60. The ( printed) Abstract: GB-Lbl Add. Ms. 41771 (Smart Papers), ff. 6–7. Clementi and Viotti’s note: Add. Ms. 41771, f. 11, undated. 61. The minutes of the meeting have not survived. See Rowland 2006, 389. 62. GBV to Ayrton, 2 July 1813, GB-Lbl Add. Ms. 52337 (Ayrton Collection), f. 8. 63. MC, “Observations upon Mr. A’s Plan,” ca. July 1813, AUS-Sfl 2000–16. 64. In fact, the restrictions were gradually relaxed. In 1816 vocal solos and duets were admitted, and Baillot performed a Concertante for violin. 65. Salomon to Ayrton, 10 November 1813, GB-Lbl Add. Ms. 52337, f. 29. See Rowland 2006, 387–94, for a full discussion and other documents. 66. GB-Lbl Add. Ms. 41771, f. 12. 67. GBV to Ayrton, 25 or 28 July 1813, GB-Lbl Add. Ms. 52337, f. 9. 68. GBV to Ayrton, 10 November 1813, GB-Lbl Add. Ms. 52337, f. 11. 69. Margaret reported that the duke had “asked after Amico and the Royal Academy of Music, respecting which [. . .] he observed that with such talents as Viotti’s at the head of it, an establishment of that sort must be highly advantageous” (MC to WBC, 14 August 1813, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/12). 70. 1813: 8.12. 1814: 7.4; 15.4; 28.5; 21.12; 28.12. 1815: 18.5; 22.5; 24.7; 26.7. 1816: 12.12. 1817: 12.4. 1819: 28.6. GB-Lbl RPS/Ms./275. See also McVeigh 2002, 67–80. 71. GBV to Ayrton, 23 November 1813, GB-Lbl Add. Ms. 52337, f. 12. 72. GB-Lbl RPS/Ms./275, 20 February 1815; see below, p. 297. 73. Johann Wilhelm Moralt, “principal viola and member of a large family of successful string-players” (Ehrlich 1996, 6). 74. Robert Lindley, one of the most popular cellists of the time. 75. These entries from Matilda’s journal, quoted in Yim 2004, 187. 76. Matilda’s journal, 25 March [1814], AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–27. 77. Matilda’s journal, 28 March [1814], AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–27. Matilda’s journal, 27 and 28 March [1814], AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–27. Poor Viotti! One sympathizes with


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his not wishing to attend a dinner the night before an important concert. It was the unnecessarily complicated excuse of having to leave the table at dessert, which, it seems, enabled Mme de Staël to force his hand. But when he stayed until 10 o’clock, she would have realized that there was no rehearsal. 78. At the time Edmund Kean was playing his most celebrated role, Richard III in Shakespeare’s play, at Drury Lane. 79. Matilda’s journal, Wednesday, 31 (recte 30) March [1814]. 80. See Saint-Foix 1932, 150–52, 196. 81. Morning Chronicle, 1 April 1814. 82. GBV to Ayrton, 2 April 1814, GB-Lbl Add. Ms. 52337, f. 15. 83. GB-Lbl RPS/Ms./275, ff. 18–19. 84. GBV to Baillot, 12 July 1814, previously in the private collection of M. Pincherle, cited in Pincherle 1924, 105–6. Its present location is unknown, as is the case with the other seven letters quoted in Pincherle’s article. Fémy’s name is mistranscribed as “Remy” by Pincherle. According to FétisB, 3:205, Fémy “the elder” was born in Ghent in 1790 and studied with Rodolphe Kreutzer, obtaining a first prize in violin at the Paris Conservatoire in 1807. 85. Bernhard Romberg to an unidentified friend (in German), ca. May 1814, Catalogue de la Collection d’autographs de Musiciens formée par feu M. Egidio Francesco Succi de Bologna, 6 May 1889, and following days, Berlin, Leo Liepmannssohn, p. 50, item 764, resumé. 86. Spohr 1865, 1:67. 87. Times, 25 June 1814. 88. Viotti to Boucher, 25 June 1814. F-Pn (Musique), Lettres autographes de musiciens (W40B). Transcribed in Vallat 1890, 69. 89. Alexandre Boucher to his wife, June 1814, cited in Pincherle 1930, 315. 90. GBV to WBC, 14 April 1814, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/20. 91. GBV to WBC, 25 April 1814, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/21. 92. GBV to Mme Cherubini, ca. April 1814. F-Pn (Musique), Lettres autographs: G. B. Viotti, item 1. 93. GBV to WBC, 25 April 1814, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/21. 94. Friedrich Kalkbrenner (1785–1849), who had been so warmly recommended to Viotti by Dussek, was now living in London. 95. GBV to Baillot, 12 July 1814. Cited in Pincherle 1924, 106. 96. Baillot to Montbeillard, 20 September 1814, cited in François-Sappey 1978, 183–84. Jean Joseph Paul Augustin Dessolle (1767–1828), general of division in 1799, was made a marquis in 1817. 97. Baillot to Montbeillard, 9 November 1814, cited in François-Sappey 1978, 184. We learn from Baillot’s words that the arrangement of Concerto no. 19 for string quartet, published about two years later, was not “probably” made by Viotti himself ( White 1973, 120), but certainly. 98. Pierre Rode, who had been Viotti’s favored chamber music partner in 1802, had not lived in France for years, and was now settled in Berlin. 99. Cherubini to Baillot, [19–25 September 1814], cited in Pincherle 1924, 104. 100. François-Sappey 1978, 179. 101. Baillot 1825, 10. 102. [ Jean-Louis] Duport, Paris, to “Monsieur Hollander [unidentified], chez mons John Power et compagnie [the music publisher], London Street nr 19, London,” 13

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July 1814: Duport has arranged for Tourte to make a violin bow for Hollander, and has received a reply from Viotti saying that he was delighted to meet Hollander (F-Pn [ Musique], L. a. Duport). 103. Perey 1890, 452. 104. Brifaut 1921, 1:146. Charles Brifaut (1781–1857), man of letters, was friendly with the Abbé Morellet and with Mme de La Briche, and was to be the colibrettist for Spontini’s Olympie, all of which would have brought him into contact with Viotti. In the quoted passage, he almost certainly is referring to the years 1814 and 1815. 105. Pingaud 1889, 1:xlvi. 106. On 8 December, Marie-Amélie de Bourbon attended a reception for the Duke of Wellington given at the Palais Royal by her husband, Louis Philippe d’Orléans. After dinner, for a company of sixty persons, “Mme Camporese, an excellent amateur, sang marvellously, accompanied by [Ferdinando] Paër and by Libon, a very good violinist” (Marie-Amélie 1980, 207). 107. GBV and MC to Cécile Cherubini, 29 September 1814. F-Pn (Musique), G. B. Viotti, item 5. 108. J[ean] A[ndrè] Viotti to GBV, 9 April 1803, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 8. 109. GBV to Ayrton, 1 October 1814, Gb-Lbl Add. Ms. 52337, f. 20. 110. Cited in Pincherle 1924, 107. 111. Muzio Clementi, Vienna, to F. W. Collard, London (in English), 22 April 1807. Cited in Landon 1975, 120. 112. Muzio Clementi to GBV, 15 December 1814, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 36. See Rowland 2006, 385–87, for a complete transcription of this letter and an interpretation of its contents. 113. Letter, GBV to the Philharmonic Society, 20 February 1815, GB-Lbl RPS/Ms./275. 114. Cherubini to Baillot, 21 February 1815, cited in Della Croce 1986, 2:92. 115. Luigi Cherubini to Cécile Cherubini, 22 March 1815, cited in Della Croce 1986, 2:95. 116. Times, 22 and 24 April 1815; 11 June 1812; 25 April 1815; 13 June 1815; 26 May 1815; Smith 1955, 136. 117. Cited in Foster 1912, 20. 118. See Benton 1966, 37–39. 119. Camille Pleyel to his parents, 23 May 1815. Benton 1966, 41. 120. GB-Lbl RPS/Ms./275, 1 June 1815. 121. RPS/Ms./275, 14, 21 June 1815. 122. McVeigh 2002, 73. 123. GB-Lbl RPS/Ms./275, 27 September 1815. 124. Samuel Wesley to Alfred Pettet, 29 September [1815], GB-Lbl Egerton 2159, f. 74. Samuel was the son of Charles Wesley, the hymn writer, and the nephew of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. 125. GBV to W. Watts, 3 January 1816. This description and the quoted excerpts from a Christie, Manson, and Woods auction catalogue, 16 October 1985. The letter is presumably now in a private collection. 126. GBV to Ayrton, 29 January 1816, GB-Lbl Add. Ms. 52337, f. 24. In the meantime the Professional Society announced its first concert for 5 February 1816. The orchestra list on the printed program included the names of A. Betts, Bridgetower, Rosquellas, Vaccari, R. G. Ashley, Crouch, Lindley, and Dragonetti. GB-Lbl Add. Ms. 41771, f. 23.


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127. GB-Lbl RPS/Ms./275, 17 June 1816; 6 and 13 February 1817. 128. MC to WBC, 14 May 1815, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/24. 129. AF to GBV, 15 October 1814, GB-Lcm Viotti Papers, transcribed in Yim 2004, 197. 130. Cherubini to Cécile Cherubini, 5 June 1815, cited in Della Croce 1986, 2:104–5. I have not seen the original letter in F-Pn. It is possible that “le mari de l’amico” is a mistranscription of “le mari de l’amica” (Margaret was sometimes called “amica” by her friends), in which case there is no venom. 131. GBV to WBC, 16 July 1815, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/25. 132. Taken from an anecdote in the Musical World of 15 August 1839, in which J. Betts foists a fake Stradivari violin on Viotti, who (according to the anecdote) had tried the same trick on an aristocratic pupil. It must be admitted that the present letter, if my interpretation is correct, tends to confirm this anecdote (in which Arthur Betts is wrongly identified as John’s son). Hill 1902/1963, 260, also states that A. Betts was a pupil of Viotti’s. 133. François-Sappey 1978, 150. 134. Jean-Louis Duport to GBV, [September–November 1815], AUS-Sphm 94/143/ 1–28/1. 135. AF to GBV, 6 October 1815, GB-Lcm Viotti Papers. 136. White 1976, 1:xi. 137. GB-Lbl RPS/Ms./367, f. 33. 138. François-Sappey 1978, 150. 139. Matilda Chinnery to WBC, in GBV to WBC, 12 February 1816, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/27. It is in this letter that Viotti thanks William for having sent his “old baton,” about which we have earlier speculated. 140. Yim 2004, 202. 141. GBV to WBC, 7 March 1816, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/30. 142. Yim 2004, 7. 143. Michael Kelly admired the music composed by Spencer for a production at Drury Lane in 1802 (Kelly 1968, 2:166). 144. The Spencer family home at Wheatfield, where John Spencer had previously lived, had burned down in 1814. Petersham, at the western edge of Richmond Park, now engulfed by Greater London, was then in the country. Viotti, Margaret, Cherubini, and other guests had twice visited Petersham in 1815. 145. The French expression “paniers percés” (leaky buckets) is more vivid. 146. Yim 2004, 210. 147. Fernando Sor (1778–1839), Spanish guitarist and composer, who had been living in London since 1809. He played a Concertante for guitar and strings in the third concert, 24 March, of the 1817 season of the Philharmonic Society. 148. The one surviving occasional piece of this type by Viotti, a Suite in D Major for strings, was for a French theatrical piece for “the Gillwell Theater” (see chapter 7). 149. GBV to WBC, postmarked 22 March [1816], AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/31. 150. MC to WBC, 4 July 1816, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/25. 151. Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun to MC, 7 July 1816, AUS-Sfl 2000–8/2. 152. AF to GBV, 21 October 1816, GB-Lcm 4118, Viotti Papers, f. 36r. 153. Farington 1978–84, 12:4160, entry of 18 July 1812. 154. MC to an unidentified recipient, copy, 25 April 1812, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–9.

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155. I am indebted to Denise Yim for pointing out this possibility. 156. MC to WBC, 8 July 1816, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/26. 157. MC to WBC, 16 March 1817 and 24 May 1817, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/29 and 17/30, respectively. 158. According to NG2, 19:890, Robberechts was a pupil of the Belgian violinist Corneille van der Plancken (1772–1849), and Plancken “was admired by Viotti, who also became his close friend.” I have been unable to find corroboration for these assertions. 159. GBV to André Robberechts, 10 April 1817 (copy, in neither Viotti’s nor Robberecht’s hand), F-Pn (Musique), Lettres autographs, suppl. 16. 160. GB-Lbl RPS/Ms./279, 10 January 1819. 161. RPS/Ms./367, f. 32. 162. RPS/Ms./279, 8 February 1818. On 7 February 1819 the Directors resolved to request a symphony from Fémy for the next Trial Night. 163. Announcements in the Times: 1 June 1815, 1 March 1822, 1 May 1819, 30 March 1824; Theatre Royal, Covent Garden programs: 8, 13, 27 March 1822 (GB-Lbl, 1494.g.11). 164. MC to WBC, 20 February 1817, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/28. 165. MC to William Ayrton, 1 January 1817, GB-Lbl Add. Ms. 52342, f. 72. 166. AF to GBV, 7 July 1817, GB-Lcm Viotti Papers. 167. GBV to [Louis] Vogel, 17 October 1817, F-Pn (Musique), Lettres autographs, G. B. Viotti, no. 6. Transcribed in Giazotto 1956, 272. 168. It is not known exactly when GBV and MC returned to England. Lord Glenbervie, in his diary entry of 3 July 1818, says that Viotti had been in Paris “last winter” (Glenbervie 1928, 2:319). 169. GB-Lbl RPS/Ms./279, 11, 18, and 25 January 1818. 170. MC to WBC, 26 May 1818, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/33. With regard to the Bohrer brothers, Margaret meant that they were about to leave England to take up positions at the Prussian court. Regarding Lady Flint, Gronow 1892 (who is unreliable regarding music and musicians), 1:267, asserts that Viotti and “Jarnowickz” (Giornovichi) “accompanied” Dussek and [ J. B.] Cramer at her Sunday house concerts in Birdcage Walk, giving no further details, and concocting an anecdote about Giornovichi playing “a concerto by Beethoven.” There are at least two references in the Chinnery Papers to Viotti frequenting Lady Flint: on Sunday, 16 March 1817 he, Matilda, and George “are gone to a grand soirée at Lady Flint’s tonight” ( MC to WBC, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/29); and on the evening of 10 June 1818 he went with Margaret and Mme de Montgéroult (after having dined with the Duke of Cambridge—see p. 309) (MC to WBC, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/34). It seems likely that on the first occasion he would have played, probably with Matilda. On the second, Margaret reported that the music was “so-so,” though she may have been excepting Amico. (Did he play with Mme de Montgéroult?) 171. AF to MC, 7 August 1816, GB-Lcm Viotti Papers. 172. MC to WBC, 11 June 1818, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/34. 173. MC to WBC, 15 June 1818, 94/14371–17/35. 174. MC to WBC, 22 June 1818, 94/143/1–17/36. 175. MC to WBC, 27 June 1818, 94/143/1–17/37. 176. From ca. June 1818 to February 1819 ( Yim 2004, 207, 209).


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177. Hélène de Montgéroult to MC, 30 March 1819, AUS-Sfl 2000–4/18. 178. Glenbervie 1928, 2:319, entry of 3 July 1818. 179. NG2, 22:172. 180. GB-Lbl Add. Ms. 27593, f. 109. 181. François Habeneck (1781–1849), violinist, conductor, composer, and a pupil of Baillot’s at the Conservatoire, where he won a premier prix for violin in 1804. From 1806 to 1815 he had conducted the public concerts of the Conservatoire orchestra, in which he introduced Beethoven’s symphonies to Paris. 182. Baillot 1825, 10–11. 183. Baillot to Montbeillard, 6 November 1818, cited in François-Sappey 1978, 184. 184. White 1973, 124. However, White’s hypothesis that Viotti wrote the andante “for this occasion” cannot be sustained, since it was a surprise party. 185. Yim 2004, 211. 186. MC to GRC, [25 March 1811], GB-Och; Times, 1 April 1811. In the 1810–11 season at the King’s Theatre, Teresa Bertinotti-Radicati had sung in her husband’s opera, Phaedra, which was not a success. 187. Jean-Jérôme Imbault had played in the Imperial Chapel beginning in 1810. He published works by Viotti for the last time in about 1808, and in 1812 he sold his firm to Janet and Cotelle. Though he is never mentioned in the Viotti-Chinnery correspondence, this reference shows that in 1818 he and Viotti were still in touch. Radicati had published a set of three string quartets dedicated to Viotti (op. 14, Artaria, [1808]), of which a copy was owned by Haydn (see Elssler’s Catalogue of Haydn’s Music Library [Landon 1977, 5:309]); whether they are the same as those mentioned in the present letter has not been ascertained. We note in passing that Haydn appears not to have owned any music by Viotti. 188. GBV to Felice Radicati, 24 October 1818, Bologna, R. Accademia Filarmonica, Archivio-Biblioteca, Fondo Masseangeli. 189. Spohr 1865, 1:114. 190. Leo 1931, 269. 191. Annales de la musique pour l’an 1819, 306–7. This article was uncovered by Denise Yim (cited in Yim 2004, 214), whose translation this is. 192. MC to WBC, 8 January 1819, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/40. Pierre Begrez (1787– 1863) was a French tenor who sang at the King’s Theatre 1816–19, and in the Philharmonic concerts for several years, beginning in 1816. 193. Margaret does not specify whether Ashley was Charles Jane, cellist, or his brother, Richard, violist, both of whom played in the Philharmonic orchestra. Assuming that the Boccherini quintets were of the two-cello variety, then either Robberechts or Guynemer played the viola, and Colonel West and C. J. Ashley played the two cello parts. If they were two-viola quintets, then either Robberechts or Guynemer and Richard Ashley played the two viola parts, and Colonel West played the cello part. 194. MC to WBC, ca. spring–summer 1819, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/56 (incomplete). 195. François-Sappey 1978, 129, 131. 196. GB-Lbl RPS/Ms./279, 10 February 1822. 197. Moore 1983, 1:185. 198. GBV to Ayrton, 12 May 1819, GB-Lbl Add. Ms. 52337, f. 25. 199. MC to WBC, 19 January 1819, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/43.

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200. It would have been in the summer of 1819 that Viotti received Louise Brun’s letter from Fontanetto, asking for the repayment of a twenty-year-old debt (see chapter 3, n. 70). 201. MC to WBC, 4 January 1819, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–39. 202. Yim 2004, 220, suggests that Viotti may have begun negotiating for this position as early as his 1818 Paris sojourn or shortly after. Already in January 1819 Margaret Chinnery had sent her belongings to Paris in preparation for making France her principal residence (MC to WBC, 21 January 1819, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/44).

Chapter Nine: Paris and the Opéra, 1819–21 1. F-Pan O3 1650/II/41. This decree states that Viotti was to take over the direction on 1 January 1820, but it was superseded, perhaps because Persius’s illness was worsening rapidly, by a letter to Viotti from the Baron de La Ferté, dated 16 November 1819 (F-Pan AJ 13 111), which specifies that though Persius is to keep the title of Directeur du Personnel until 1 January 1820, Viotti is to assume all the duties of the position “from this moment.” Persius died on 21 December. 2. F-Pan O3 1650/II. “Direction de la scène” does not correspond to the modern term “stage direction,” but perhaps more accurately to “stage management” or even more generally to “artistic direction.” Viotti’s position could be termed “general manager.” 3. The English pound was worth about 25 francs, thus Viotti’s 12,000 francs would have been worth about £480, which was equivalent in buying power in 1819, in England, to about £28,865 in 2007 (Officer and Williamson 2008). But in France it would have been worth much more, since the cost of living was considerably lower than in England. It was estimated that a single man could live as well in Paris on £200 a year as in London on £500. Mansel 2001, 44. 4. The Théâtre Italien, founded in 1801, had been disastrously mismanaged by Mme Catalani in the years 1814–17. It was housed, since March 1819, in the Salle Louvois, on the rue de Louvois (the site now no. 6), across the street from the side of the Opéra, facing the rue Lulli. 5. Morand 2007, 99. 6. Cherubini to the Comte de Pradel, undated and unsigned, F-Pan O3 1650/ II/40. 7. Cited in Pougin 1888, 92. The letter had been in the possession of Cherubini’s daughter. Its present location is unknown. 8. Yim 2004, 222. 9. Ibid., 222, 252. The former address is given in the Annales de la Musique pour l’an 1819 as that of one Godefroy, a violinist-violist in the orchestra of the Théâtre Italien. In the Annales for the year 1820, the address for both Godefroy and Viotti is (r. Bassedu-Rempart), passage Sandrier (Cendrier). The Neuve-de-Mathurins address is given in André Viotti’s naturalization dossier as his place of residence on 13 December 1814. It is difficult to draw conclusions from these facts, though more than mere coincidence seems to be involved. 10. Rodolph Kreutzer to an unidentified functionary of the Académie Royale de Musique, 18 November 1819, F-Pn (Musique), L.a. Kreutzer. 11. Kreutzer, “demande des appointements de 8,000f,” 12 March 1821, F-Pan O3 1655/III.


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12. GBV to Kreutzer, 31 December 1819, F-Po AD 37, 127–28; GBV to Kreutzer, 26 May 1821, F-Po AD 39, 20. 13. Cairns 1989, 140. But see Spohr 1865, 2:118–19, who, though he disapproves of Grasset’s (the leader’s) method of conducting by motions of the body and the violin (Spohr thinks that there should be “continual beating of the time”), praises “the discretion with which [the orchestra] accompanies the singer.” 14. La Ferté appears to be a younger relative (the son?) of Viotti’s old nemesis, who occupied the same position in the reign of Louis XVI and who had been guillotined in 1794. 15. The administrator of Production and Finances (Administrateur du materiel et des deniers). 16. The general secretary. 17. GBV to the Baron de La Ferté, 26 November 1819, F-Pan O3 1650 (another copy in F-Po AD 34). 18. La Laurencie 1924, 115. 19. Mongrédien 1996, 133. 20. Johnson 1988, 255. 21. GBV to Gaspare Spontini, 6 December 1819. F-Pan O3 1650. This and the following two letters concerning Spontini are transcribed in La Laurencie 1924, 116–18. 22. GBV to Spontini, 7 December 1819, F-Pan O3 1650. 23. GBV to Pradel, 8 December 1819, F-Pan O3 1650. 24. Moore 1983, 1:268. 25. Ibid., 1:270. 26. Ibid., entry of 23 Apri1 1820, 1:313. 27. See Matilda’s journal, 21 March 1814; Jane Porter to GRC, [September 1820], AUS-Sfl 2000–22/65, cited in Yim 2004, 228; Jane Porter to GBV, [19 September 1820] (in English), US-NYp JOB 97–53, item 45. 28. Sotheby’s auction catalogue, London, 26 May 2000, item 276. 29. Transcribed in Giazotto 1956, 274. The Society had requested the services of the three singers on 16 April (F-Pan O3 1655/IV). 30. GBV to WBC, 21 November 1819, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/34. E strings in particular, from Naples, were considered the best, as Baillot’s L’Art du Violon informs us. See Goldberg 1991, 450. 31. A Mr. Cary bought a Stradivari violin from the dealers Hill and Sons in 1812, for 100 guineas; he sold it to Betts in 1817 for 80 guineas (Hill 1902, 268). 32. La Ferté to GBV, 11 January 1820 (rough draft): “In reply to the request that you directed to me, Monsieur, of which the object was to obtain a leave of absence to go to look after your affairs in England, I authorise you to be absent for a period of two months to begin on the [left blank, but probably “fifteenth” was intended] of the month” (F-Pan O3 1651/IV/17). For Viotti’s probable date of departure, see GBV to [ Jacques Le Veux], 8 January 1820, US-NYp *MNY-Viotti. 33. MC to WBC, 1 February 1820, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/48. 34. Le Triomphe de Trajan, by Persius, premièred in 1807 to glorify Napoleon, but still in the Opéra repertory. Aladin, ou La lampe merveilleuse, by Nicolas Isouard, not performed until February 1822. 35. GBV to Baron de La Ferté, 2 February 1820, Liepmannssohn 1889, 57, lot 864. Pougin 1888, 95n2, gives the same resumé from an earlier catalogue, and assigns the date 7 February. The present location of this letter, if it has survived, is unknown. It is

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possible that the full text would give a clearer picture of Viotti’s participation, if any, in the affairs of the Académie at this time. 36. Pradel to GBV and Courtin, 1 February 1820, F-Pan O3 258, “f. 11, no. 36,” and Pradel to GBV, 4 February 1820, F-Pan O3 258, “f. 12, no. 38,” respectively. O3 258 is a register of correspondence of the Opéra and the Théâtre Italien, briefly summarizing the contents of each letter. 37. In particular, F-Po AD 34 (Théâtre Italien), and 37 (Opéra). 38. Monsieur and Mme Rayneval were the recipients of one of Viotti’s most charming letters, recently uncovered. He regrets that tomorrow’s party must be postponed because of Mrs. Chinnery’s “horrible pains,” and, though in these circumstances Mme de Rayneval will appreciate that it is hardly possible to be concerned with hats, there is one hat that is so pretty ( joli), and that he likes so much, more than all the others that he has seen, that he asks her to lend it for the third time. (n.d.) US-NYpm, Mary Flagler Cary Collection, MFC V799.G358. It may be tentatively concluded that Viotti means a hat for Margaret rather than for himself, though the full weight of international scholarly investigation has yet to be brought to bear on this question. 39. MC to WBC, 1 February 1820, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/48. 40. The stabbing took place in the rue Rameau, by the side entrance of the theater, facing what is now the parc Louvois, across from the Bibliothéque nationale in the rue de Richelieu. 41. Roullet 1862, 78, and Hapdé 1820, 12, respectively. 42. Louis Spohr, London, to “Monsieur Vogel artiste,” Lille, 3 March 1820, F-Pn (Musique), Lettres autographes, Spohr, Louis, item 69. 43. Morning Chronicle, 13 March 1820; Spohr to Wilhelm Speyer, 27 March 1820. Both cited in Jacobs 1950, 313–14. 44. The “Viotti” bowing consisted of slurred pairs of notes, typically sixteenth notes, the second note of each pair receiving an accent. 45. See below, chapter 11, for some of Viotti’s formal experiments that anticipated Spohr’s. 46. Spohr 1865, 2:77. 47. GBV to Baillot, 16 March 1821 [recte 1820?], US-NYp *MNY-Viotti, item 1. Yim 2004, 226–27, has convincingly shown that the year of this letter must be 1820 rather than 1821. 48. The budget for 1820 was not to exceed 785,000 francs. See La Laurencie 1924, 115, citing Pradel to La Ferté, 13 November 1819 (F-Pan O3 1650). 49. GBV to six members of the Opéra orchestra, 30 June 1820, F-Po AD 37, 170. 50. Barilli to GBV, 8 June 1821, F-Pan AJ 13 130/II; Rinaldi to GBV, ca. autumn 1819, F-Pan AJ 13 130/V. 51. Johnson 1988, 299. 52. GBV to La Ferté, 27 January 1821, F-Pan O3 1654/I, 2. 53. GBV to the ballet masters, 8 June 1820, F-Po AD 37, 161. 54. GBV to Milon and Kreutzer, 20 June 1820, F-Po AD 37, 164–65. 55. Louis-Joseph Daussoigne to GBV, 24 November 1820, F-Pn (Musique), L.a. Daussoigne. Stratonice was performed in this version at the Opéra on 30 March 1821. 56. GBV to La Ferté, 24 August 1821, F-Pan O3 1654/I, 14. 57. GBV to Paer, 4 September 1820, F-Po AD 37, 188–89, item 106bis, transcribed in Castellani 2006, 370. 58. Paer to GBV, 5 September 1820, F-Pan AJ 13 128, transcribed in Castellani 2006, 371.


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59. GBV to Paer, 6 September 1820, F-Po AD 37, 190, item 108. 60. Paer to GBV, n.d., US-NYp JOB 97–52, item 70. 61. Issue of 23 February 1821, cited in Mongrédien 1996, 133. 62. GBV to Paer, 12 April 1820, F-Po AD 34, 92–93. 63. GBV to Paer, 20 July 1820, F-Po AD 34, 98. 64. GBV to Paer, 9 August 1820, F-Po AD 34, 100–101. Partially transcribed in Soubies 1913, 17–18. 65. Charles Pralorme to GBV, 18 October 1820, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 47. 66. GBV to Mme Fodor-Mainvielle, 4 February 1820, F-Po AD 34. 67. M. Mainvielle to GBV, 1 July 1820, F-Pan AJ 13 130. 68. Garcia to GBV, 10 January 1820, F-Pan AJ 13 130. 69. Resumé, J. A. Stargardt, Marburg, sale of 20, 21 June 1972, catalogue 599, lot 810. 70. See, for example, F-Pan AJ13 112/III (“Examens, Concours”). This is a report, signed by Viotti and others, of an audition of three singers, chaired by Viotti, on 28 September 1821. 71. GBV to Kreutzer, 2 April 1820, F-Po AD 37, 145–46. 72. GBV to Kreutzer, 20 May 1820, F-Po AD 37, 154. It is not clear whether this was the Joseph Lefèbvre (1761–after 1822) who had played in the Concert olympique orchestra in 1786 and 1788 and who was, or had been, the chef d’orchestre of the OpéraComique. 73. GBV to Kreutzer, 24 May 1820, F-Po AD 37, 155. 74. GBV to Barbereau, 26 February 1821, F-Po AD 37, 244. 75. GBV to Kreutzer and Valentino, 3 June [1820], F-Po AD 37, 158–59. 76. GBV to Mlle Aimée, 22 June 1820, F-Po AD 37, 166–67. 77. GBV to Choron, 17 November 1819, F-Po AD 37, 96–97. 78. GBV to La Ferté, 3 October 1821, F-Pan O3 1654/I, item 19. Another copy is in F-Po AD 39, 46–47. 79. GBV to Paer, 27 October 1820, F-Po AD 34, 103–4; Paer to GBV, 29 October 1820, F-Pan AJ 13 130/I. 80. GBV to Paer, 15 November 1820, F-Po, AD 34. 81. Johnson 1988, 184. 82. MC to WBC, 24 September 1820, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/49. 83. Observations désintéressées, sur l’administration du Théâtre Royal Italien, adressées à M. Viotti, directeur de ce théâtre, par un dilettante (Paris: Boucher, 1821). The writer apparently was acquainted with Pugnani (who died in 1798), was familiar with Piedmont, had heard several performances of Mozart’s The Magic Flute in Germany, and had recently made a trip to Italy. If he had heard Viotti early in his career, he must have been at least sixty years old. He was extremely knowledgeable (and opinionated) about the repertory and the singers of the Théâtre Italien, their qualities, defects, and salaries, as well as about many of the prominent singers in other European opera houses, and the salaries they would command if hired in Paris. It seems extraordinary that he has not been identified. 84. AMZ, XXII (1820), col. 657, cited in Castellani 2001, 130–31. 85. Stendhal 1970, 428. In addition to the subsidy to both the Opéra and the Théâtre Italien, there was also the tax, abolished in 1791 (see chapter 4), but reestablished by Napoleon in 1811, by which all concerts, theaters, and other entertainments were required to pay a percentage of their receipts to the Académie royale de musique (the “droit de l’Opéra”). This was widely protested and evaded, but was not revoked until 1831. The

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tax accounted for about 10 percent of the total receipts of the Opéra. See Morand 2007, 100, 120. 86. Le Miroir des spectacles, 18 March 1821. 87. Le chev[alier] Artaud, Rome, to [ M. de Rayneval], 29 May 1819, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 40. Transcribed in Barulich 2000, 311–13. The presence of this letter in the Viotti-Chinnery correspondence shows that Rayneval must have given it to Viotti at some point. Yim 2004, 235, goes so far as to suggest that Viotti had been behind this early overture to Rossini, “proving that he had been or anticipated being promised the directorship of the Opéra as early as May 1819,” but this is difficult to reconcile with Viotti’s lack of instructions to Hérold regarding Rossini, and with the lack of any archival evidence of Viotti’s role. It appears to have been Rayneval, Lauriston, La Ferté, and Hérold who took the initiative in approaching Rossini, unless we subscribe to the notion that Viotti wished to act behind the scenes, perhaps fearing the criticism that indeed was leveled at him in Le Miroir des Spectacles. 88. Johnson 1988, 64, citing Bulletin des lois, 2ème semestre 1820, no. 423, p. 965. 89. See Cagli and Ragni 1996, 2:18, who cite L. Gallois, Biographie de tous les ministres (Paris: Les marchands de Nouveautés, 1825). According to Gallois, Lauriston’s successor carried out Lauriston’s wishes by lowering the pitch by a quarter-tone. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of Gallois’s assertions, since he seems to have been in error regarding the date of Lauriston’s appointment. On 8 December 1821, Viotti’s successor, François Habeneck, replied to a collective request from the wind players of the Opéra orchestra for compensation for the adjustment (l’entretien) of their instruments to the “diapason of the Opéra.” He promises to take up the matter with the Minister, and adds that “M. Viotti seemed willing at the time to adopt this measure, [but] did not take administrative action.” F-Po AD 39, 69. Baillot states in his L’art du violon that a standard pitch was adopted by the Opéra in 1821, but “only for a short time; motives of personal convenience prevailed and led musicians to take up again the old wind instruments which had been used in the concert halls” (Goldberg 1991, 348). According to Hector Berlioz, the Opéra’s pitch was still “a tone higher than it should be” in August 1823 (see Cairns 1989, 131). 90. See Stendhal 1970, 26–27, 91. See also Cagli and Ragni 1996, 1:436n2. Castellani 2001, 132–33; and 2006, 365n1, 366n4, maintains that Paer was in fact instrumental in the introduction of Rossini’s works to Paris, that he was the victim of calumny on the part of jealous rivals, and that it was only after Rossini became codirector with him of the Théâtre Italien that Paer became hostile. 91. Letter of 17 January 1821, cited in Mongrédien 1996, 86. 92. La Ferté to Courtin and Viotti, 2 February 1821, F-Pan AJ 13 111/VI. 93. GBV to Ferdinand Hérold, 8 February 1821, F-Po AD 34, 112–13. Transcribed in Pougin 1888, 100. 94. GBV to Hérold, 21 February 1821, F-Po AD 34, 115. 95. GBV to Hérold, 22 February 1821, F-Po AD 34, 116. In his next letter to Hérold, 23 February (AD 34, 117), Viotti, having learned that Mme Pasta was engaged for the next carnival in Turin, was forced to back down from his original demand, and instructed Hérold to offer her an eight-month contract, at 16,000 francs, but with no benefit concert. 96. Hérold to GBV, 24 March 1821, F-Pan AJ 13 130. 97. Hérold to GBV, 13 April 1821, private collection, transcribed in Cagli and Ragni 1996, 1:493–97. Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840), Genoese violinist-composer, was already


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famous in Italy, but had not yet performed abroad. According to Cagli and Ragni, the man Paganini most admired was Rossini. But Paganini and Rossini had already met. Paganini’s meaning depends on the interpretation of “meet” (rencontrer). 98. GBV to Filippo Galli, 14 June 1821 (F-Po, AD 34). Galli wrote to Viotti on 26 June (US-NYpm, James Fuld Music Collection), apparently before receiving Viotti’s letter, asking that Viotti reply to him in Milan, where he was next engaged. 99. Rossini to GBV, by 26 April 1821, Cagli and Ragni 1996, 1:501–2. The letter is a French translation of the original Italian autograph, of which the location is unknown. Pougin 1888, 101–2, gives another, similar version of the French translation. 100. Castil-Blaze to Jacques-Alexandre de Lauriston, 12 August 1822, Cagli and Ragni 1996, 2:18–19. 101. GBV to La Ferté, 24 July 1821; La Ferté to GBV, 2 August 1821, Cagli and Ragni 1996, 1:519 and 522. 102. GB-Lbl Add. Mss. 64093, 64094, 64095. 103. Louis Norblin (1781–1854), principal cellist of the Opéra orchestra (1811–41) and member of Baillot’s quartet. 104. MC to WBC, 9 October 1820, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/50. 105. Morning Herald, 29 March 1798; The Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner, 21 May 1798. 106. GRC, travel journal, 3:169. 107. GBV to WBC, 25 November 1820, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/36. 108. GBV to WBC, 19 October 1820, 94/143/1–14/ 35, and 28 January 1821, US-NYp JOB 97–52, item 49. 109. GBV to Henry Dance, 20 December 1820, 94/143/1–28/24. 110. MC to WBC, 4 February 1821, 94/143/1–17/51. 111. MC to GBV, 15 February 1821, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 50. 112. GBV to La Ferté, 28 November 1820, F-Pan O3 1652/III. This letter, unusually, is in Viotti’s own hand, since he is the supplicant. 113. La Ferté to Lauriston, 29 November 1820, F-Pan O3 1651/IV/63. 114. GBV to La Ferté, 27 January 1821, GB-Lcm Viotti Papers. It would appear that Viotti’s apartment was in rue Taitbout, no. 9, since this is the address of a letter to him dated 2 March [1821] (Georges de Caraman to GBV, AUS-Sfl 2000–38/5). However, the same address is given for Charles Lafont in the Annales de la musique pour l’an 1820. Again, it would be hazardous to draw conclusions from this fact (see also above, n. 9). It is possible that, after 27 January, Viotti moved out of the official residence to take lodgings with Lafont by 2 March, assuming that Lafont still lived in rue Taitbout, no. 9. 115. Two years later Margaret again tried to raise money by selling her cashmere shawl. Viotti had asked William for the name of a buyer in Paris: “I will take [the shawl] of our Amica to him (without telling him to whom it belongs) and I shall try to have him sell it for me” (GBV to WBC, 12 February 1823, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/50). 116. MC to GBV, 19 February 1821, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 51. 117. GBV to MC, 3 March 1821, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 52. 118. Le Miroir des spectacles, 19 February 1821. The Salle Favart concerts included quintets by Antoine Reicha, and, on 25 March, Beethoven’s septet. Mongrédien 1996, 249. 119. Pape, a piano manufacturer, whose pianos Ignaz Moscheles preferred to those of Erard. 120. Le Miroir des spectacles, 19 March 1821.

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121. Spohr 1865, 2:119; GBV to La Ferté, 13 January 1821, F-Pan O3 1654/I. See, however, F-Pan O3 1655/IV, 12 January 1821, Resultat du Concert de Sr Spohr. Resultat du Concert et du Balles qui ont composé la répresentation du 8 janvier. 122. NG2, 24:200. 123. Baillot to Montbeillard, 4 January 1821, François-Sappey 1978, 185. 124. Le Miroir des spectacles, 19 March 1821. 125. Moscheles 1970, 26–29. Unfortunately this edition does not provide as much detailed or precise information as one might wish. These diaries, assuming they have survived, cry out to be published in an unabridged edition. 126. Plantinga 1977, 239, citing a letter of 2 April 1821 from Clementi to Härtel. 127. Transcribed in Giazotto 1956, 273. 128. GBV to La Ferté, 6 April 1821, F-Po AD 39, 8. Transcribed in ibid., 274. 129. Moscheles 1970, 31. 130. Transcribed in Giazotto 1956, 274. It is not clear what Viotti meant by the “Bohrer Orchestra” (l’orchestre Bohrer). 131. Announcement in Le miroir des spectacles, 16 April 1821. The appointment of the two violinists to the orchestra: F-Po AD 34, 113 (8 February 1821). 132. GB-Lcm Ms. 4751. The score is held in the Bibliothèque-Musée de l’Opéra, Paris. 133. FétisB, 6:47. 134. [Comte de] Lamorlière to GBV, 27 November 1820, US-NYp, JOB 97-52, item 48. 135. The autograph is in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; the last page is reproduced in MGG2 Personenteil, 17:29–30. 136. GBV to Choron, 14 September 1821, GB-Lcm Viotti Papers. 137. Audéon, Colas, and Di Profio 2008, 1:225 and n. 18, citing a letter of La Ferté to Choron, 11 December 1816, F-Pan AJ13 109. 138. Sotheby’s catalogue for a sale of 22 November 1989, Fine Printed and Manuscript Music, lot 100. 139. GBV to WBC, 29 June 1821, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/37. 140. GRC to MC, 21 March 1821, AUS-Sfl 2000–7/10; 9 May 1821, AUS-Sfl 2000–7/13. 141. Viscount Lowther [of the KT managerial committee] to Ayrton, 16 July 1821, GB-Lbl Add. Ms. 52340, f. 6; Ebers 1828, 65. I have not found documentation in the Opéra archives of the negotiations between the two theaters, perhaps because, according to Ebers 1828, 65, the correspondence “was required [by the Opéra administration] to be transmitted through the medium of the English Ambassador at Paris, to the Baron de La Ferté.” John Ebers, the manager of the KT in 1821, makes no mention of Viotti in his account of these events. 142. GRC to MC, 21 March 1821, AUS-Sfl 2000–7/10. 143. US-NYp JOB 97/52, items 54 and 56. 144. Decourcelle 1881, 56. 145. Transcribed in Cagli and Ragni 1996, 1:257. 146. Lady Bessborough to Lord Granville Leveson Gower, 16 June 1821, Gower 1917, 2:546. Lady Bessborough died five months later, 11 November, aged 60, in Florence. 147. GBV to WBC, 6 July 1821, AUS-Sphm 94/14371–14/38. 148. GRC to MC, 1 June and 11 June 1821, AUS-Sfl 2000–7/20 and 7/22, cited in Yim 2004, 242–43.


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149. GBV to Monseigneur [the Marquis de Lauriston], 16 August 1821. Resumé, J. A. Stargardt, sale of 9, 10 March 1988, catalogue 641, lot 1084. 150. GRC to MC, 20 June 1821, AUS-Sfl 2000–7/24 mentions GBV having moved into the Hôtel Choiseul in June. GBV to the Vicomte de Sorconnes, 14 November [1821], F-Pan O3 1656/I, says it was in July. The new opera house was built on the site of the Hôtel Choiseul, a small part of which was saved for the administration lodgings. See Hillairet 1997, 2:37. 151. See GBV to MC, 12 December 1821, AUS-Sfl 2000–2/4, in which Viotti mentions the Hôtel Choiseul in terms that suggest that he may still be living there. 152. GBV to Monseigneur [the Marquis de Lauriston], 14 November [1821], F-Pan O3 1656/I. Viotti specifies that the amount owed him is 1662.50 francs (712.50 for each of the two trimesters, plus 237.50 for the month of October). 153. Marquis de Lauriston to the Baron de La Ferté, 15 November 1821, F-Pan O3 1653/II. An almost identical document appears in F-Pan O3 1656/I. 154. GBV to Robberechts, 6 July 1821, private collection. Cited in Pougin 1888, 146n1. 155. GBV to Robberechts, 24 August 1821, St. Petersburg, Russian National Library, Manuscript Department, Fond 965 (Collection of P. L. Vaksel), file 2809. There is a report of another pupil of Viotti’s in this period. According to Charles Dancla, who, later in the century, was leader of the orchestra of the Opéra Comique, Narcisse Girard (1797–1860), conductor of the same orchestra from 1836 to 1847, was a member of Baillot’s class at the Conservatoire from 1817 to 1820, and had taken lessons from Viotti. This must have been in the period 1818–23. See Dancla 1898, 60. 156. GBV to MC, 12 December 1821, AUS-Sfl 2000–2/4. 157. Three possibilities: (1) Germain Garnier (1754–1821), “poete de salon” and politician, friend of the Abbé Morellet, flourished in the Revolution, under Napoleon ( president of the Senate, 1809–11), and under the Restoration (a state minister since 1817), died 4 October 1821; (2) François-Joseph Garnier (1755–ca. 1825), first oboist in the Opéra orchestra, 1786–ca. 1808, taught at the Conservatoire in the 1790s; (3) Jean-Baptiste Garnier, a flautist, the younger brother of François-Joseph. He and his brother were “frères à talent” in the lodge Contrat Social in the 1780s. 158. Alexandrine de Lespine to [Mrs. Chinnery], [after 29 September 1820], US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 71. 159. F[rançois] Gérard to Monsieur Viotti à Londres, 30 January, US-NYp JOB 97–52, item 72. Amphion, in Greek mythology, was a son of Zeus and Antiope, the queen of Thebes. The god Hermes taught him music and gave him a golden lyre, which, when Amphion played it, caused the stones magically to fall into place to form the walls of Thebes. 160. Yim 2004, 187 and n. 24, and a private communication to the present author. 161. GBV to La Ferté, 5 October 1821, O3 1654/21. 162. GBV to “Monseigneur,” 13 October 1821, signed autograph letter, resumé from PIASA catalogue, sale of 20 November 2008, Paris, p. 102, lot 426. 163. Le Miroir des spectacles, 31 October 1821. 164. Ibid. 165. F-Pan O3 1654/IV. 166. Henri Berton to Lauriston, registered 15 October 1821, F-Pan, O3 1655. 167. Garcia to Habeneck, 6 June 1822, F-Pan AJ 13 130/II. 168. Cairns 1969, 83; Castil-Blaze 1855, 2:173.

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Chapter Ten: Last Years, Death, and Aftermath 1. Dans cette galère = in this galley = in this unexpected situation, after Molière. 2. GBV to MC, 1 November 1821, AUS-Sfl 2000–2/2. 3. GBV to MC, 8 November 1821, AUS-Sfl 2000–2/3. 4. MC to GBV, 13 November [1821], US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 57. 5. Habeneck to GBV, 14 November [1821], F-Po AD 39, 61. 6. F-Pan AJ13 112. 7. GBV to MC, 12 December 1821, AUS-Sfl 2000–2/4. 8. F-Pn (Musique), Ms. 1425 (WVI:7). 9. Yim 2004, 248. 10. MC to GBV, 29 November 1821, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 58. 11. See White 1973, 124. See also above, p. 313, for another possibility regarding the slow movement of Concerto no. 29. 12. GBV to Lourenço da Lima, 11 November 1821, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–28/25. 13. GBV to MC, 23 December 1821, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–2/27. 14. AF to GBV, 7 December 1821, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 59. 15. Draft of a note from La Ferté to GBV, 2 January 1822, F-Pan O3 1658/I. 16. In 1818 Janet and Cotelle had advertised in Paris for subscriptions to a collected edition of Boccherini’s quintets (parts), to be published in (approximately) monthly installments of six quintets each, for a total of ninety-three quintets (Annales de la Musique pour l’an 1819, 182–83). 17. This may be the same Duc de Duras who, as a young man in 1789, was the baritone in the operatic finales conducted by Viotti at the home of the Comte de Rochechouart, described by Mme de La Tour du Pin. 18. André Robberechts to GBV, 11 February 1822, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 60. 19. Concert of 5 April 1822. See F-Pan AJ13 113/II. 20. GB-Lbl RPS/Ms./279, 10 February 1822. 21. GBV to WBC, 21 March 1822, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/41. 22. Hibbert 1976, 457. 23. Gustave Gasslar to GBV, 17 February 1822, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 61. 24. Vicomte de Sorconnes to GBV, 20 April 1822, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 62. 25. GBV to WBC, 7 May 1822, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/42. 26. GBV to WBC, 17 May 1822, 94/143/1–14/43. 27. GBV to GRC, 2 June 1822, 94/143/1–25/4. 28. GBV to Cailleux, 16 August 1822, GB-Lcm Viotti Papers, transcribed in Giazotto 1956, 275. 29. Marquis de Lauriston to the Baron de La Ferté, 15 November 1821, F-Pan O3 1653/II and F-Pan O3 1656/I. See also above, p. 344. 30. Ministry of the Maison du roi, “Rapport,” 1 May 1822, F-Pan O3 1658/I. A very similar letter, informing Habeneck, dated 9 May, is in F-Pan AJ 13 113. 31. Lauriston to Viotti, 8 May 1822, F-Pan O3 1658/I. 32. Robb 1997, 82–83, 95–96. 33. In the rue d’Artois, and at [46] rue Neuve-des-Mathurins. See Yim 2004, 252. 34. Archives départementales (Paris), DQ8 472, Déclaration de décès, and Préfecture du Département de la Seine/Ville de Paris/Extrait du Registre des Actes de Décès de l’an 1822 (Reconstitution des Actes de Décès). His age is given incorrectly as forty-eight. The date 1 November 1822, given in André’s Legion of Honor dossier, is in error.


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DeGregori, Istoria, 409n1, also gives 1822 as the year of André’s death. André was buried on 2 November, in a temporary grave, no longer existing, in the Père-Lachaise cemetery (communication from the Conservateur du cimetière du Père-Lachaise, 2 June 2005). 35. Times, 13, 16 May 1816. On the Janet and Cotelle edition of the three quartets that Viotti dedicated to him, he is described as “Chef de Battallion d’État-Major et Rapporteur du 2e Conseil de Guerre de Paris.” 36. (F-Pan MC: ET/XCVII/738: 6 novembre 1822/Inventaire/après le décès de M. Viotti, Maître Agasse, notaire.) 37. GBV to WBC, 7 December 1822, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/44. 38. “Huit cent” (eight hundred), not “huit mille” (eight thousand) as given in Giazotto 1956, 235. If the date of the will is correct, Viotti may have sketched a version before 30 October, which was not copied until 13 December (it is not in Viotti’s hand), and the phrase about the debt to André went unnoticed. 39. Viotti’s will, 13 December 1822, GB-Lcm Viotti Papers. 40. GBV to WBC, 22 January 1823, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/45. 41. GBV to WBC, 13 February 1823, 94/143/1–14/51. 42. GBV to WBC, 31 March 1823, 94/143/1–14/57. 43. GB-Lbl RPS/Ms./280, 23 February 1823. 44. GBV to WBC, 25 February 1823, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/53. 45. There seems to be no other good reason why Viotti would send two new concertos to Cary. Their friendship was not close enough to warrant such a gift under ordinary circumstances. 46. GBV to WBC, 9 October [1820], AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/35. 47. GBV to WBC, ca. 27 September 1823, 94/143/1–17/52. 48. GRC to MC, 22 April 1823, 94/143/1–12/13. 49. GRC to MC, 6 May 1823, 94/143/1–12/6. “Charles Staniforth was the son of a prominent London banker, and a close family friend” (Yim 2004, 256n30). The “Presentation Copy” of Concerto no. 29 has not (yet) come down to us. 50. Yim 2004, 256. 51. Baillot 1825, 8n4. 52. GRC to MC, 1, 4, 14, and 18 April 1823, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–12/6, 12/7, 12/11, and 12/12. 53. GRC to MC, 11 August 1823, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–12/19. 54. GRC to MC, 19 September 1823, AUS-Sfl 2000–7/29, cited in Yim 2004, 241. 55. GBV to Baillot, 29 July 1823, facsimile in Schwarz 1958, facing p. 443, “from the Author’s collection.” 56. See François-Sappey 1978, 175–76. 57. Baillot 1825, 12–13. 58. See also appendix 9. 59. GBV to Turcas, 23 September 1823, US-NYp *MNY-Viotti, item 6. 60. GBV to WBC, 9 August 1823, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/58. 61. GBV to WBC, 18 August 1823, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/59. 62. See also appendix 10. 63. GBV to WBC, 27 October 1823, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/62. 64. GBV to WBC, 14 November 1823, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/63. 65. No archival documents concerning the discontinuance of Viotti’s salary have yet been uncovered. 66. GBV to WBC, 17 November 1823, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–14/64.

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67. GRC to WBC, 2 December [1823], 94/143/1–18/9. 68. MC to WBC, n.d., ca. January–March 1824, 94/143/1–17/53. 69. The Duke of Cambridge was probably in Hanover at the time. 70. William Shield (1748–1829), violist and composer, principal violist of the King’s Theatre orchestra from 1773 to 1791, and house composer at the Covent Garden Theatre from 1782 to 1797. Landon 1976, 234, asserts that Viotti, after his arrival in London, “soon became a great friend of William Shield,” but provides no evidence. Viotti’s dedication of a set of three trios, WIII:10–12 (published by Clementi, Banger, Hyde, Collard and Davis in ca. 1802), is proof of a connection, though Shield’s name is not mentioned in the Viotti-Chinnery correspondence. Shield had visited Paris in 1791. It is possible that he met Viotti then. 71. MC to WBC, 4 March 1824, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–17/54. 72. However, in the April issue of the Harmonicon, there appeared a three-page long “Memoir” by François Fayolle. 73. Register of Burials in the Parish of St. Mary-le-Bone, in the County of Middlesex, 1824, p. 55, no. 444, London Metropolitan Archives. 74. Directions for Burials, St. Marylebone parish records, London Metropolitan Archives. Paddington Street and Paddington Street Gardens are located some distance away from the church. 75. Duc de Bassano to MC, 30 March 1824, AUS-Sfl 2000–4/25, cited in Yim 2004, 262. 76. Mentioned in GRC to MC, 15 July 1824 and 28 May 1825, AUS-Sphm 94/143/ 1–12/30 and 12/63, respectively. 77. Notice in the Annales de la musique pour l’an 1820, p. 161, under the heading “Répertoire de musique vocale et instrumentale publié en 1819.” 78. G. Duport to MC, 14 March 1824, AUS-Sfl 2000–4/24. 79. According to Busby 1825, 1:194, the sale took place in March, but this is unlikely since George Chinnery does not mention the sale until late August. See appendix 8 for further on Viotti’s violin. 80. GRC to MC, 13 June and 6 August 1824, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–12/26 and 12/33. The piano had probably been bought for the Montagu Street house in London, and later transported to Châtillon. 81. Archives de Paris, DQ8 472, Déclaration de décès. 82. GRC to MC, 20 January 1825, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–12/50. 83. Archives de Paris, DQ7, Déclarations des Mutations par Décès, 1 September 1824. 84. Viotti, no. 3 Duke Street, Adelphi [London] to Perregaux, [Paris], 20 September 1806. F-Pn (Musique). 85. F-Pn 4-FM-10551, [Factum. Thirion-Montauban, Étienne-Philippe. 1825?]. Mémoire pour M. Bertrand Du Chailla des Arènes [ . . .]. 86. GRC to MC, 3 March 1825, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1-12/53. 87. Genlis 1825, 1:144. 88. Ibid., 3:198. 89. MC to Mme de Genlis, 1 July 1825, AUS-Sfl 2000–6/36. Transcribed in Yim 2003, 138–44. 90. GRC to MC, 4 July 1825, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–12/69. 91. Hughes 1955, 232–33. 92. See Della Croce 1986, 2:166, 252.


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Chapter Eleven: Viotti’s Achievement and Legacy 1. White 1992, 332. On 5 June 1824, three months after Viotti’s death, the twelveyear-old Franz Liszt played in the Argyll Rooms (and again on the twenty-first). Nicolas Mori led the orchestra. 2. Baillot 1825, 4, 6, 8. 3. Cited in White 1992, 348. 4. The overture to Der Freischütz was played at the Philharmonic Society concert of 23 February 1824. 5. White 1992, 348–49. 6. Brown and Milsom 2006, 161–62. 7. White 1992, 349. 8. Stowell 2000, 284, 286. This article provides a thorough and thought-provoking examination of Viotti’s London concertos from the standpoint of their progressive and retrospective tendencies. Stewart-MacDonald 2005 considers the unusual key-schemes of Viotti’s concertos no. 23 in G Major and no. 27 in C Major, each with a slow middle movement in E major, which key also appears prominently in the outer movements, but he argues caution in assuming that this represented a conscious striving for intermovement unity, anticipating the Romantic preoccupation with “organic” continuity. 9. Schwarz “Violinmusik,” MGG1, 13, opposite col. 1744. 10. Brahms, letter to Clara Shumann, June 1878. In Einstein 1972. 11. McVeigh 1994, 343–47. 12. Todd 2005, 125. 13. Amateur [1836], 58, 60. 14. Joachim-Moser 1905, 3:32–33. 15. Milsom 2003 is concerned largely with this matter. 16. NG2, 1:335. 17. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), 39:161. However, Mori’s name is not on the list of the teaching staff of the RAM for 1823 as recorded in QMMR 1823, transcribed in Rohr 2001, 82. 18. See Prefumo 2006, 49, 85, 118–19, 193–95, 204–5, 213. 19. Cited in Stowell 1985, 209–10. 20. Musikalischer Almanach für Deutschland auf das Jahr 1784 (Leipzig), cited in White 1957, 81. 21. Pohl 1867, 2:241. 22. AMZ, 3 July 1811, col. 452. 23. Lamare was closely associated with Baillot, and he “was said to emulate Rode’s bowing style” (NG2, 14:156). Lamare accompanied Rode on his concert tour of 1803, mentioned in chapter 5. 24. Brown and Milsom 2006 provide a searching interpretation of the various editorial changes and additions in these and other editions of Viotti’s Concerto no. 22, in particular with regard to their fidelity, or lack thereof, to a putative tradition of performance stemming from Viotti himself. 25. GBV to Baillot, 12 July 1814. Cited in Pincherle 1924, 106. 26. See GBV to WBC, 28 January 1821, US-NYp JOB 97-52, item 49; GBV to Lourenço da Lima, 11 November 1821, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–28/25; GBV to WBC, 7 May 1822, 94/143/1–14/42. 27. MC to WBC, 11 June 1818, 94/143/1–17/34.

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28. GBV to MC, Bath, Holy Thursday, 17 April [1794], 94/143/1–2/1.

Appendix Two: G. B. Negri’s Biographical Note * Translation from the original Italian. The manuscript is in the parochial archive of S. Martino Vescovo, Fontanetto Po. See also above, p. 3 and n. 5. It is partially transcribed in Giazotto 1956, 232–34. A photocopy of the original is in Raina 1985, 327–30. 1. There is no record of Giovanni Maria (“Giorgio”) Viotti in the surviving files of the Légion d’honneur (F-Pan).

Appendix Three: “Précis of the Life of J. B. Viotti” * Translation from the original French. The manuscript is in GB-Lcm Viotti Papers, Ms. 4118. It is transcribed in Giazotto 1956, 229–31.

Appendix Four: Viotti’s Letter to the Prince della Cisterna * Translation from the original French. The manuscript is in Biella, Archivio di Stato: Famiglia Dal Pozzo della Cisterna, Storia della Famiglia II, mazzo 11, fasc. 56. It is transcribed in Casseti and Signorelli 1994, 122–24. 1. Viotti knew that the prince would be familiar with the famous bon mot of the emperor Diocletian.

Appendix Five: Viotti’s Will * Translation from the original French. The manuscript is in GB-Lcm Viotti Papers, Ms. 4118. It is transcribed in Giazotto 1956, 235. 1. The signature is not in Viotti’s hand.

Appendix Six: Viotti’s Siblings 1. The date is scarcely legible. She was baptized on 2 December. 2. She is mentioned in André Viotti’s letter of that date. 3. Based on the assumption that, despite the “Celestina,” if she were still alive on 26 February 1772, the birth date of Domenica Maria (no. 14), the latter would not have been so-named. 4. She stood witness, along with Giovanni Battista, at the baptism of no. 19 on 13 December 1782, and she married on 5 September 1786. Her name in the marriage register is given as Maria Maddalena, but they must be one and the same person. 5. She was inducted into the Fontanetto confraternity in 1779. 6. He was known in adulthood as André. Strangely, in both his Légion d’honneur dossier and his naturalization dossier, his date of birth is given as 27 November 1779


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(actually the birth date of Giovanni Maria). In the latter dossier it appears to be stated that he himself declared his birth date to be 27 November 1779. 7. This must be the “ultimo fratello Giorgio Maria” in André’s letter of 9 April 1803, that is, the Giovanni Maria who, according to Negri, died at the Battle of Wagram. It is not clear why André calls him Giorgio instead of Giovanni; perhaps it was to avoid confusion with Giovanni Battista and with himself (he signs his letter both as “J.[ean] A.[ndré]” and as “Giovanni”). At any rate, there is no entry for a Giorgio Viotti in the relevant register of births in the Fontanetto archive.

Appendix Eight: Viotti’s Violins 1. DeGregori 1824, 409. 2. GRC to MC, August 27, 1824, AUS-Sphm 94/143/1–12/37. 3. Yim 2004, 147–48, 264–65. Yim has followed Hills’s erroneous date of 1712, but this has no bearing on the matter. 4. Dubourg 1852, 239. 5. “I the undersigned certify that the violin indicated opposite by Mme Brochant de Villier’s receipt is a completely authentic Stradivarius and entirely by his hand. It belonged to Viotti and was sold at his sale [i.e., of his effects] in my presence [for] 3,816 francs to Monsieur Menessier from whom it later passed to Monsieur Brochant de Villiers. This instrument has always been considered one of the most perfect by Stradivarius. In my opinion it is also one of the most beautiful. Paris, 12 October 1862.” This note was kindly provided by Charles Beare in a private communication. Vuillaume’s statement is presumably the one referred to by William E. Hill and Sons in their letter to Edward Heron-Allen, dated 26 March 1901 (now in the Viotti Papers, GB-Lcm). According to this letter, the statement, that the violin was in the possession of Viotti at his death, came with the violin when Hill and Sons acquired it in 1897. 6. Fétis 1856, 96. Faber 2004, 101, 232, misquotes Fétis (“third best Strad”), when in fact Fétis simply lists five of Stradivari’s violins, of which the third on the list is Viotti’s. It was Fétis’s practice to number items on a list, without intending a hierarchy. Faber also makes the unwarranted assumption that the violin Viotti played at his début at the Concert spirituel in March 1782 was the Stradivari violin mentioned in his will and sold in 1824 (pp. 83–86, 94). 7. Hill, Hill, and Hill 1963, 270. 8. Charles Beare, private communication. 9. The following dictionary entry does not seem compatible with the facts as given above: Vannes 1972, 349: “The ‘Viotti’ of 1709, having belonged to the Vicomte de Greffuhle, was later passed to an American collector by the house of Hug and Co. of Zurich.” No dates are given for these events. 10. Hill, Hill, and Hill 1963, 153. 11. A recent search of the family archive (Archivio di Stato, Palermo, Archivio Trabia) failed to uncover any trace of the sale. 12. Thompson 1813, 122–23, 171–72. 13. Yim 2004, 147–48, 155. Yim hypothesizes that the Chevalier Raibari de La Cainea, a friend of Viotti’s and the Chinnerys’, might have been involved, the similarity of his

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name as given in his marriage license to that of the prince (“Prince Buttera de Rubari”) as given in Burke’s Peerage (from the marriage certificate of the prince’s widow in 1814) suggesting a family relationship. However, I found no mention of the name Rubari or Raibari in the Butera family archives. On 14 August 1814, the prince’s widow, Octavia Spinelli, married (in Palermo, and afterward in London) Robert Herbert, who was the son of Lord and Lady Pembroke, and who had been a contemporary of George Chinnery’s at Christ Church, Oxford. 14. Vidal 1876–78, 1:67–68. 15. Bacchetta 1950, 145. 16. Pougin 1888, 158.

Appendix Ten: A Selection of Withdrawals from William Chinnery’s Account at Drummonds Bank * I am grateful to Philip Winterbottom of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group Archives for his help in preparing this table. 1. It is unlikely that WBC would have referred to GBV in this way—perhaps the bookkeeper? 2. Presumably the New Musical Fund. 3. This could have been a remittance to the exiled Viotti, by way of his banker, Hammersley. 4. NG2, s.v. “Raimondi, Ignazio,” and MGG2, s.v. “Raimondi, Ignazio,” give his year of birth as ca. 1735, whereas McVeigh 2001, 172, gives it as 1753. 5. See Parke 1830, 1:303–4. 6. GB-Lna T1/3535. 7. Hill 1902, 266–69. Equivalent in purchasing power in 2007 to ca. £5,705 (Officer and Williamson 2008), a fraction of the price today.

Appendix Eleven: A Mystery Letter * Translation from the original French. Ce Dimanche 19. Cher bon ami J’ai attendu un mot de vous hier toute la journée. Voulez vous me l’envoyer aujourd’hui par le porteur, et que ce mot soit un Oui! Cependant, je le repette, je ne veux ni contrarier vos plans ni vos sensations, ainsi dites moi sans gene ce que vous déciderez. Il est seulement nécessaire que je sache sur quoi compter le plutot possible, et que vous me diriez vos intentions au sujet de ce villain argent afin que j’en fasse part à l’administration. Adieu cher ami je vous embrasse. J. B. Viotti US-NYpm, Mary Flagler Cary Collection, MFC V799. X.

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Index of Viotti’s Works

Adagio et Allegretto, 172 Airs with variations, 78, 111, 237, 258, 308, 312 Andante et rondo pour le pianoforte et le violon, 350

(no. (no. (no. (no. (no. (no.

17), 152, 166, 168–69, 371 18), 152–53, 167–69, 371 19), 112, 169, 371 20), 178–79, 208, 367, 372 21), 178–79, 186, 367, 372 22), 111, 167, 171, 202, 231, 367, 371–72 (no. 23), 167, 171, 179, 372 (no. 24), 168, 188, 241, 372 (no. 25), 179, 202, 371 (no. 26), 202, 367, 371–72 (no. 27), 109, 111, 179, 202, 238, 291, 300–301, 367, 372 (no. 28), 111, 179, 246, 340–41, 350, 355–56, 372 (no. 29), 111, 179, 202, 313, 340–41, 350, 355–57, 367, 372 wIa:1 (wI:6 arr. as piano concerto), 99, 240, 459n77 wIa:3 (two movs. of wI:9 arr. as piano concerto), 99, 116 wIa:7 (wI:23 arr. as piano concerto), 193, 278, 342, 357 wIa:10 (wI:25 arr. as piano concerto), 194, 227 wIa:13 (wI:27 arr. as piano concerto), 279, 467n35 wIa:15 (wI:1 arr. as piano concerto with violin obbligato), 116

Concertos, 78, 85, 94–95, 116–19, 144–45, 150–53, 166, 173, 177, 180–81, 187–88, 193–94, 196, 202–4, 212, 218, 263–64, 281, 289, 308, 314, 342, 352, 435nn187–90 (nos. [ wI:]1–19), 113 (no. 1), 43, 64, 72, 77–79, 112, 172 (no. 2), 82, 84, 112, 133, 364 (nos. 2, 4, 5), 44, 64, 79, 112 (no. 3), 29, 43, 63–64, 79, 112, 146, 170–71, 272 (no. 4), 112 (no. 5), 189 (no. 6), 79, 112 (no. 7), 170, 424n29 (nos. 7, 8, 9), 80, 112 (no. 9), 99, 112 (nos. 11–15), 106, 112 (no. 13), 111–12, 133, 146, 169–71, 199 (no. 14), 112, 167 (no. 15), 109 (no. 16), 170–71 (nos. 16–19), 106, 112, 169 509

510

Index of Viotti’s Works

Duets, 114, 180, 187, 193, 203, 218, 244, 304, 308, 310–11, 315, 357–58 (wIV:1–6), 112 (wIV:7–12), 52 (wIV:19–24), 221, 279 (wIV:20), 171 (wIV:22), 230–31 (wIV:25–27), 452n129 (wIV:28–30), 322–23 (wIV:29), 300 (wIV:31–36), 238 (wIV:37–42), 207 Polaccas (vocal and instrumental, arr. from finales of wI:2 and wI:13), 133, 147, 171, 199–200, 430n104 Solos Divertimenti/nocturnes for cello (wV:19–21), 361 Divertimenti/nocturnes for violin (wVa:7–9), 361 “duet” for violin solo (wV:23), 341 harp sonata (wVI:9), 243, 277 piano sonatas, 281 (wVI:1–3), 451–52n129 (wVIa:1–6), 44, 99 (wVIa:7–9), 208 Serenata (piano with violin obbligato and cello, wVI:7), 350 Solo for violin with piano accompaniment (wV:24), 434n170 violin sonatas (wV:1–6, 7–12), 112, 114 Ms variations (violin), 308 variations for piano, arr. Steibelt, “Mountain Air” (wVIa:29, arr. from wI:5, ii), 44, 189

Song, “Love thee dearest” (wVIIa:3, arr. from wI:5, ii, words by Thomas Moore), 250–51 String quartets, 104, 275, 286, 296 (arr.), 372 (op, 1, wII:1–6), 51–52, 63, 112–13 (op.3, wII:7–12), 112–13 (wII:13–15), 272–73, 275, 277, 291, 314, 354 (wII:15), 371 (wII:16–18), 272, 466n11 (wIIa:1), 291 unpublished arr. of wIa:10, 296 Symphonies concertantes (wI:30, 31), 37, 93, 112, 122, 147, 153, 166–67, 180, 306–7, 340 Trios, 180, 231, 244 (arr.), 296, 315 (op. 2, wIII:1–6), 44, 90, 112–14, 118 (wIII:7), 171 (wIII:7–9), 208–9 (wIII:10–12), 484n70 (wVIa:31–33), 99 Uncatalogued: Pas de Trois in the ballet Apollon Berger (arr. from wI:5, ii), 212 Unpublished occasional pieces, 229, 247, 248–51 (Fig. 7.2), 280, 306–7 (Fig. 8.1), 349–50, 430n104 Written works Ms copy of F. Bianchi’s Trattato Teorico e pratico del Contrapunto, 227 Mémoire au Roi […], 140–41 Violin method (fragment), 358

General Index

Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations. Affry, Colonel d’, 104, 143 Agus, Giuseppe, 213 Aiguillon, Duc d’, 100, 108, 114, 123, 159, 454n171 Albaret, Count d’, 100, 123 Alday, Paul, 106, 115–17, 121–22, 147, 150, 153–54, 166, 172, 176, 370 Alembert, Jean Le Rond d’, 98 Artois, Comte d’ (later Charles X), 97, 136, 249, 259, 324 Ashe, Andrew, 201, 203, 273, 285 Ashley, Charles Jane, 273, 286, 315 Ashley, Richard, 473n193 Asioli, Luigi, 246 Autié, Léonard, 125–27, 129, 143, 149, 154–56, 172, 362 Ayrton, William, 284–85, 287–88, 293, 297, 308, 315, 342

341, 347, 351, 357–58, 368–70, 398, 407, 423n11, 435n192, 457n29 friendship with GBV, 229, 325, 357 performances of GBV’s works, 166–68, 230 and the Philharmonic Society, 301–2 pupils, 166–67, 288, 305, 315, 369 L’art du violon, 17, 109, 111, 165, 368, 371, 475n30, 478n89 Méthode de violon (with Rode and Kreutzer), 165, 230, 368, 371 Notice sur J.-B. Viotti, 78, 108, 153, 189, 231, 358, 361, 365–66 Baletti, Rosina, 130, 150, 152–54, 161 Banti, Brigida Giorgi, 197, 199–201, 205, 210, 215 Bariatinsky, Prince Ivan Ivanovich, 85, 236 Bariatinsky, Prince Ivan Seergevich, 85, 236 Bartolozzi, Gaetano, 200–1, 218, 277 Baudiot, Charles-Nicolas, 231, 302 Baux, Julian, 209, 221 Beaumarchais, Pierre Augustin Caron de, 74, 157 Beckford, Susan, 245

Bach, J. S., 366 unaccompanied violin sonatas, 312 Baecker, Casimir, 242–43, 363 Bagge, Baron de, 69, 81, 107, 123 Baillot, Pierre, 17, 29, 108, 135, 165–69, 171–73, 209, 217, 222, 229–31, 233, 290–91, 294, 300, 312–13, 327, 339,

511

512

General Index

Beethoven, Ludwig van, 51, 157, 275, 289, 291, 294, 444n40 Kreutzer Sonata (op. 47), 144 “Ouverture,” 341 piano trios, 336 piano variations, 281 septet, 479n118 string quartets, 275–76, 291, 368; op. 74, 277 string quintet, 302 string trios, op. 9, 113 symphonies, 276, 343, 473n181 violin concerto, 171, 291 Begrez, Pierre, 315 Belz, Catherine Henriette, 99, 103–4, 111, 114 Benda, Franz, 48–49, 52 Bériot, Charles de, 369–70 Berlioz, Hector, 136, 347 Berry, Duc de, 324, 354 Berry, Misses Agnes and Mary, 260 Berthaume, Isidore, 78, 121–22, 153 Bertinotti-Radicati, Teresa, 270, 313–14, 465n1, 472n186 Berton, Henri-Montant, 171, 340, 347 Bertoni, F. G., 7, 268 Bessborough, Lady, 236, 241, 255, 343–44 Besozzi, (Alessandro, Carlo, Gaetano, Paolo Girolamo), 7, 18, 30–31, 34, 47, 66, 179, 410n12, 417n124 Betts, Arthur, 299–300 Betts, John, 299 Bianchi, Francesco, 200, 203, 210, 215, 225–28 Bianchi, Mrs. (later Mrs. Lacy), 226, 244, 296 Boccherini, Luigi, 43, 51, 104–6, 113, 209, 229, 242, 276–77, 286, 291, 311, 315, 351 Boher, Anton, 298, 309, 340 Boher, Maximilian, 298, 309, 340 Böhrmann (Baermann) (clarinettist), 307 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 70, 147, 173, 214, 218, 228–30, 232–33, 255, 282, 289, 300 Borghi, Luigi, 186, 268 Boucher, Alexandre, 167, 288–89 Boullongne de Magnanville, Jean Baptiste Tavernier, 105–106, 108, 123, 209 Brand, Reverend Thomas, 41–44, 53, 173

Braham, John, 210 Brahms, Johannes, 367 Bréval, Jean-Baptiste, 68, 92, 105, 122, 277, 438n22 Bridgetower, George, 144–45, 177, 209, 274, 312 Bruni, Antonio, 105, 133–34, 452n132 Bruni, Domenico, 180–81 Burney, Charles, 8, 20, 29, 30, 31, 33, 49, 134, 189–90, 410n9, 417n1 Butera, Prince, 254 Byron, Lord, 271, 343 Cailleux, Achille-Alexandre-Alphonse, 351, 353, 359, 361 Calonne, Charles Alexandre de, 92–93, 100, 123, 137, 143, 172–73, 381 Cambridge, Duke of, 237–38, 243, 245–46, 254–55, 259, 298, 300–301, 304, 308–11, 350–51 Campagnoli, Bartolomeo, 47 Canning, George, 290, 300, 304, 322, 336–37, 345, 363 Cartier, Jean Baptiste, 94, 115, 233, 319, 347 L’art du violon, 115, 312 Cary, Joseph, 322–23, 352, 356, 358, 373 Castil-Blaze, 134, 334–36, 347 Catalani, Angelica, 241, 254–55 Catel, Charles, 217, 456n17 Catherine II (the Great), 55–56, 58 Celoniat (GBV’s violin teacher), 7, 11, 12, 14–15, 18, 377, 398, 412n48 Celoniat, Carlo Antonio, 12, 35 Celoniat, Carlo Lorenzo, 12 Celoniat, Ignazio, 12, 24, 36–37 Chabanon, Michel Paul Gui de, 40–41, 68, 123 Chailla des Arènes, Bertrand, 129, 362 Charlemont, Lady, 239, 260 Charlemont, Lord, 247 Chernyshev, Count Ivan Grigorievich, 58–59, 68 Cherubini, Cécile, 229, 290, 292 Cherubini, Luigi, 81, 95, 106–7, 123, 126, 173, 205, 217, 220, 228–29, 231, 290–92, 294, 298–300, 318, 340–42, 364–65 and Paris Conservatoire, 229, 290, 300, 364

General Index and Philharmonic Society, 295 publishing house, 231 and Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau, 132–33, 148, 156–58, 162–63 Cherubini, Luigi, works, 132, 146, 152, 155, 165, 171, 229, 339–40, 438n19, 456n17 overture to Anacreon, 281, 286, 295 overture to Démophone, 275 overture to Faniska, 286 String Quartet no. 1, 295, 298 vocal quartet, “Cara da voi dipende,” 146, 204, 212, 275 vocal sextet, “Sacro Pugnal,” 286 Achille à Scyros, 171 Blanche de Provence, 340 Démophone, 132 Lodoiska, 156–57 Requiem Mass, 315 Chinnery, Caroline, 182, 238, 245–47, 249, 254–56, 259, 263, 271, 282, 315 death, 265 early musical training, 224–28 ill health, 228, 258, 260, 262, 264 performances with GBV and of GBV’s works, 240–41, 244, 254, 260–61, 263 social début, 255 Chinnery, George (artist), 181, 221, 264 Chinnery, George Robert, 181, 228, 239–40, 270–71, 273, 289–90, 300, 304, 309, 322, 324, 336–38, 342–44, 350, 356–57, 361–63 Chinnery, John (WBC’s brother), 234, 264 Chinnery, Mrs. John, 308 Chinnery, “little” Margaret, 234, 315, 324 Chinnery, Margaret, 181–82, 237 concerts, 182, 191, 195, 201, 206, 216, 240 (see also Viotti, Giovanni Battista, performances in private concerts) death, 364 dedications of musical works to, 194, 207, 221, 227, 296 as educator, 222–24, 228, 234–35, 315, 345 finances, 304–5, 315–16, 338 ill health, 225, 254, 258, 352–53, 355

513

lawsuits, 270, 361–62 musical tastes of, 240, 246, 332, 343 and Philharmonic Society/Royal Academy of Music, 284–285 as pianist, 350 relationship with GBV, 182, 188, 191, 206, 240, 283, 310, 338, 348–50, 373 residences in England, 187, 208, 273, 305, 360, 392 residences in France, 318, 319, 344, 354, 391–93, 479n114 visits to Continent, (1802) 228–233, (1814) 290–94, (1815) 300–301, (1816) 304, (1817) 308–9, (1818) 312–15 Chinnery, Matilda, 234–35, 256, 260, 273, 286–87, 300, 302–3, 305, 308, 315, 324, 337 performances with GBV and of GBV’s works, 244, 279, 281, 311, 336, 467n35, 472n170 Chinnery, Walter Grenfell, 182, 225–26, 228, 233 Chinnery, William Bassett, 181, 207–8, 228, 247, 300, 308, 337, 355 in business, 290, 303, 316, 322, 355–56, 358 as cellist, 206–7, 216, 246, 271 as clerk in the Treasury, 208 as collector, 208, 268–69 death, 363 disgrace of, 264–65 in ménage à trois, 207 Choron, Alexandre, 331, 341 Cimador, G. B., 200–201, 218, 276–77 Cipriani, Philip, 272, 466n11 Cisterna, Prince Alfonso Dal Pozzo della, 6–9, 11–14, 18, 22, 26–28, 34, 37, 48, 53, 80, 89–90, 94, 220, 232, 282–83, 377, 380, 385–86, 410n11, 415n88, 429n98 Clement, Franz, 171 Clementi, Muzio, 84, 177–78, 201, 203, 205–7, 225, 268, 273, 275, 277–78, 284–86, 288, 294–95, 297, 339, 342, 357, 360, 364–65, 403 Collard, Frederick William, 277–78, 342, 356–57

514

General Index

Collot d’Herbois, Jean Marie, 149, 160, 163 Concert spirituel, 15, 68, 70, 74–78, 86, 92, 97, 106–7, 116–19, 122, 126, 129, 150, 153–54, 166, 181, 352, 441n103 Conservatoire, Paris, 103, 135, 147, 165–69, 171, 217, 229–30, 290–94, 300, 341–42, 364, 368 Corelli, Arcangelo, 14–15, 17, 268, 277, 366–67 Courtin (Opéra administrator), 319, 334 Cozio di Salabue, Count, 79–80 Cramer, Franz, 273–74 Cramer, Johann B., 273, 446n17 Cramer, Wilhelm, 176–77, 187, 197, 200, 202, 209 Crosdill, John, 207, 226, 231, 308, 311, 360, 363, 373, 466n8 Crouch, Anna Maria, 216 Crouch, Frederick William, 275, 303 Dance, Henry, 273, 323, 337 Danton, Georges Jacques, 149 Da Ponte, Lorenzo, 200–201, 205, 221, 332 Daussoigne, Louis Joseph, 327 Dessolle, General (later Marquis), 291, 315–16 Devienne, François, 122, 136, 150–53, 217, 438n22, 440n84 Devonshire, Duchess of, 255 Devonshire, Duke of, 279, 286 Dillon, Edward, 82–83, 281 Dillon, Madame, 83, 85 Dizi, François, 228 Donissan, Victoire de, 104 Dragonetti, Domenico, 197, 200–201, 203, 205, 207, 209, 212–13, 294, 301–2, 364 Du Crest, Madame, 195 Dunmore, Lord George, 254–55, 304 Dunmore, Lady Susan, 243, 254–55, 304 Duport, Adrien, 159, 454n171 Duport, G. ( Jean-Louis’s son), 361 Duport, Jean-Louis, 78, 92–93, 121, 173, 300, 363 Duport, Jean-Pierre, 50–51, 207 Durand (Duranowsky), August F., 115, 124, 150–51

Duras, Maréchal Duc de, 102, 123, 328, 351, 431n126, 482n17 Dussek, Jan Ladislav, 62, 152, 169, 172, 187–88, 193–94, 203, 205, 225, 256, 281, 294 Eck, Franz, 115, 169 Eck, Friedrich Johann, 68, 78, 84, 115–16, 122, 169–70, 203 Erard, Sébastien, 105, 243, 265 Étioles, Madame d’, 81, 107 Eymar, Ange Marie d’, 42, 97, 104–5, 109, 112, 159–61, 173 Fabre d’Eglantine, 149–50 Federici, Vincenzo, 197, 200, 215 Fémy, François, 288, 301–2, 308, 370 Ferrari, Domenico, 7, 18, 49 Ferrari, Giacomo G., 94, 133–36, 176, 203, 221, 263, 464n178 Filistri, Antonio, 94, 96 Fischer, Ludwig, 195 Flint, Lady, 298, 309, 315, 472n170 Flint, Sir Charles, 223, 262, 298 Fodor, J. A., 68, 78, 320 Fodor-Maineville, Joséphine, 319–20, 323, 329, 331 Fontana, Carlo, Count, 47–50, 52–53, 63, 65–66 Franklin, Benjamin, 74, 98–99 Frederick II (the Great), 47–50 Frederick William, Prince (later king) of Prussia, 49–53, 63, 203, 217 Frederika Louisa, Princess (later queen) of Prussia, 50–52, 63, 218 Galli, Filippo, 335 Garcia, Manuel, 309, 311, 320, 329, 343 Gasparini, Quirico, 30–31, 33 Gasslar, Gustave, 352, 355 Gautherot, Louise, 106, 114, 117–18, 177, 209 Gaviniés, Pierre, 17, 100, 165–66, 189, 434n186 Genlis, Madame de, 45–46, 99, 101, 167, 172, 195, 221–22, 228–29, 233–34, 242–43, 247–48, 266–67, 315, 362–63, 399, 455n186 and GBV, 229, 362 Adéle et Théodore, 455n186

General Index

515

La Duchesse de La Valière, 234 Mémoires, 45, 101, 172, 362–63 romance, 229 The Siege of La Rochelle, 248 George IV. See Wales, George, Prince of Gérard, François, 345 Gerbini, Luigia, 146–47, 150, 271–72 Giardini, Felice, 15, 29, 50, 60, 445n7, 449n84 Giay, F.-S., 30–31 Gillberg, Madame, 203, 209 Ginguené, Pierre-Louis, 82, 159–60, 173, 227 Giornovichi, Giovanni Mane, 64, 68–69, 78, 83, 98, 117, 173, 176, 187, 209–10 Giovanni, Signor, 4–5 Glenbervie, Lord, 207, 247, 260–61, 282, 311 Gluck, Christoph Willibald, 84, 140, 198, 247, 268 overture to Iphigenia in Aulide, 152, 204, 212, 275 Alceste, 198–99 Gossec, François Joseph, 116, 217 Grandsire (Opéra general secretary), 319, 324 Grasset, Jean-Jacques, 122 Grassini, Giuseppina, 236, 241, 298 Grave, General de, 234 Grenfell, Pascoe, 459n72 Grétry, André Ernest Modeste, 93, 101, 157–58 Guadagnini, Giuseppe, 79–80, 90 Guémené, Prince de, 81–85, 98, 107, 172 Guénin, Marie-Alexandre, 98, 171, 424n27 Guérillot, Henri, 116–17, 121–22 Guglielmi, Pietro, 7, 215–16, 255 Deborah e Sisara, 216 Guynemer, Charles, 291, 315

influence of Viotti’s Concerto no. 16 on, 170 string quartets, 84, 106, 113, 204, 268, 275–77, 302, 307 string trios, 113–14 symphonies, 33, 68, 78, 118, 120–22, 147, 151, 154, 180, 189, 204, 212, 268, 309, 341 unspecified works, 116 vocal quartet (accompanied), 150 La Vera Costanza (Laurette), 148 Heinrich, Prince, 52, 101 Helvétius, Madame, 98, 107 Hermann, Johann-David, 95, 105, 150 Hérold, Ferdinand, 334–35, 343 Holland, Henry (MC’s uncle, architect), 259, 262, 269 Hope, Thomas, 254, 256, 264, 269 Hugo, Victor, 354 Hüllmandel, Nicolas-Joseph, 99, 109, 174, 176, 187, 294, 350, 415n90, 446n17

Habeneck, François, 312, 319, 343, 346–47, 349, 371 Hamilton, Lady Anne, 246 Handel, George Frideric, 180, 189, 195–96 Haydn, Joseph, 50, 104, 118, 121, 133, 148, 177–78, 186–88, 199, 200, 204–5; see also Index of Viotti’s Works

Kalkbrenner, Friedrich, 256, 290, 296, 298, 350 Kelly, Michael, 100, 159, 196–98, 205, 210, 215–16, 449n85, 454n171 Kreutzer, Rodolphe, 17, 111, 144, 151–53, 157–58, 165–66, 169, 171, 205, 229–31, 242, 291, 296, 339–40, 368–71

Imbault, Jean-Jérôme, 41–42, 68, 92, 116–17, 120–22 Isouard, Nicolas, 231, 446n17, 475n34 Jackson, Francis James, 260 Jackson, George, 261, 263 Janet, Mr. (of Janet and Cotelle publishers), 314, 351 Janiewicz, Feliks, 54–55, 121, 133, 150, 176–77, 187, 191, 194, 196, 207, 209–10, 273–74, 276–77, 285, 294, 403, 438n24, 454n167, 467n31 Janson, Jean-Baptiste-Aimé Joseph, 28 Jarnowick. See Giornovichi, Giovanni Mane Joachim, Joseph, 368–70 Johnstone, Sophia (later Countess St. Antonio), 255, 270–71, 304

516

General Index

Kreutzer, Rodolphe (continued) and Paris Opéra, 158, 319, 329–30, 347 performances at Théâtre de Monsieur/ Feydeau, 151–52 pupils, 166, 369 Clari, 327 Forty Etudes or Caprices, 158 Lodoiska, 158 Krumpholtz, Madame, 180–81, 212 Labarre, Louis-Julien Castels de, 115 La Briche, Madame de, 103–4, 107–8, 123, 172, 351–52 La Cainea, Chevalier, 207, 240, 246, 254, 256, 403, 487n13 Lacy, Rophino, 460n92 La Ferté, Baron de, 319, 322, 326–27, 331, 333–34, 337, 339–40, 342, 345, 350 La Ferté, Papillon de, 93, 138–41, 143 Lafont, Charles Philippe, 166, 296–97, 339–40 La Houssaye, Pierre, 77, 90, 92, 134–35, 147, 150, 152–54, 165, 167, 427n78 Lamballe, Princess de, 94–95, 163, 436n209 Lameth, Alexandre de, 93, 159, 454n171 La Tour du Pin, Madame de, 85, 101–3, 123 Lauriston, Marquis de, 333–34, 337, 344–46, 349, 354 Lawrence, Thomas, 279–80 Lebrun, Louis-Sébastien, 93, 150–51 Legros, Joseph, 70, 78, 85, 92, 126 Lespine, Madame de, 345 Lesueur, Jean François, 217 Leveson-Gower, Lady Granville (“Henriette”), 239, 255 Leveson-Gower, Lord Granville, 255 Libon, Philippe, 193, 203, 207, 209, 243, 334, 370, 401, 403–4, 448–49n72 Lindley, Robert, 201, 295–96 Linley, Thomas, 18 Liston, Robert, 48–49, 53, 223, 261–62 Lolli, Antonio, 57–58, 60, 69, 78, 98 Lombardini-Sirmen, Maddalena, 17, 29, 119 Maelzel, Johann, 45, 119 Mandini, Stefano, 102, 105, 130, 150

Mara, Madame, 78, 85, 93, 180–81, 187, 201 Maret, Hugues-Bernard, 159–60, 186, 232, 361 Marie Antoinette (queen of France), 68, 71, 72, 84, 89, 92–96, 127, 129, 136, 139–40, 158–59, 172–73, 185, 203, 249 Marlborough, fourth Duke of, 238, 240, 278 Marlborough, fifth Duke of, 278 Marmontel, Jean François, 98, 101, 103, 107, 120, 132, 157 Marsh, John, 193 Mazas, Jacques, 167, 341, 343 Méhul, Étienne, 217, 231, 327 Menou, Baron de (General), 122–24, 159–60 Mestrino, Nicola, 111, 133, 150 Miel, Edme-François, 15, 18, 29, 40–45, 54, 61, 63–64, 68, 82, 93–94, 97–98, 105–7, 111–112, 119, 133, 173, 182, 198, 220, 247, 269, 312–13, 354, 372, 418n12 Mirabeau, Comte de, 154–55 Moët, Jean-Rémy, 453n152 Montansier, Madame, 125, 127, 148 Montgéroult, Hélène, Marquise de, 99, 101–3, 109, 111–12, 114, 159, 161, 174, 194, 217, 228, 240, 256, 294, 311, 339, 350, 361, 364, 459n77 performances in private concerts, 102, 109, 231–32, 311 victim of Austrian attack, 183–85 visit to England, 311 Cours complet [ . . . ], 112, 256 Moore, Thomas, 250–51, 258–59, 271, 280, 282, 315, 321–22, 336 “Love thee dearest, love thee,” 250–51 Morellet, Abbé André, 98–101, 103–5, 107–8, 114, 174 Morelli, Giovanni, 130, 199, 201, 203, 210, 241 Mori, Nicolas, 243–44, 274–76, 294–96, 307, 308, 313, 342–43, 370 Morichelli, Madame, 105, 130, 150, 154–55, 161, 197, 199, 201, 206 Moscheles, Ignaz, 339–40 Mount Edgcumbe, second Earl of, 215–16

General Index Mozart, Leopold, 18, 25 Treatise on […] Violin Playing, 25, 38 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 18, 51, 84, 170, 195, 203, 241, 432–33n149 Divertimento, K. 563, 113–14 insertion numbers, 133 Notturno, 286–87, 296 operas, 130, 241, 320, 328, 332–33, 336 overture to Le Nozze di Figaro, 277, 296 piano sonatas, 203, 281, 419n39 piano and violin sonatas, 114 “Se al volto,” from La Clemenza di Tito, 286 “Sento, o Dio,” from Così fan tutte, 296 string quartets, 276–77, 301, 419n39 symphonies, 218, 286; no. 31 (K. 297), 72, 77; no. 40 (K. 550), 170, 287 violin concertos, 170 and Viotti’s Concerto no. 16, 170 vocal quartet, 151 Naldi, Caroline, 303–4, 311, 331–32, 342 Naldi, Giuseppe, 241, 255, 274, 298, 303–4, 309, 311, 320, 331–32 Naldi, Madame, 303, 326 Navoigille, Guillaume Julien, 121 Necker, Jacques, 101, 137, 140, 143 Negri, Doctor Giovanni Battista, 3–7, 13–14, 37, 42, 65, 86–88, 186, 394 Nield, Jonathan, 194–95 Noblet, Lise, 342 Norblin, Louis, 336 Norvins, Jacques Marquet de Montbreton de, 103, 120–21, 123 Nourrit, Adolphe, 327, 341 Novello, Vincent and Mary, 364 Nyvenheim, Baron de, 362 Ozi, Étienne, 150–51, 217 Paer, Ferdinando, 327–28, 331–33, 336, 339, 341 Paganini, Niccolò, 38, 70, 335, 369–71 Paisible, Louis-Henry, 57–58 Paisiello, Giovanni, 18, 26, 58, 84, 130, 163, 229 Annibale in Torino, 18, 58 Il Barbiere di Siviglia, 145, 162 La Frascatana, 155, 206

517

La Modista Raggiratrice, 214 La Molinarella, 197 La Pazza per l’amore, 157, 210 Il Re Teodoro, 136 La Serva Padrona, 136, 199 Parke, William, 176, 207 Parr, Dr. Samuel, 257 Pasta, Giuditta, 334, 343–44 Paul, Grand Duke, 55, 84–85, 106 Payne Knight, Richard, 245–46, 256, 269 Perceval, Spencer, 264 Perregaux, Jean-Frédéric, 232–33, 362 Persius, Louis, 317 Pfeffel, Christian Hubert, Baron de, 345 Philips, Maria, 224, 234, 345 Piccinni, Niccolò, 47, 56, 78, 82, 93, 98–99, 130, 140, 146–47, 268, 284 Pixis, Friedrich Wilhelm, 221, 369 Pleyel, Camille, 296 Pleyel, Ignace, 105–6, 177, 187, 193, 205, 208–9, 275, 296 Plötz, Hans Henrik, 45–46 Polignac, Duchesse (earlier Comtesse) de, 81, 95 Porter, Jane, 286, 322 Poniatowski, Stanislaw (king of Poland), 54, 61–62 Pradel, Comte de, 317–18, 323–24, 327 Provence, Comte de (“Monsieur,” later Louis XVIII), 96, 120, 126, 130, 155–56, 163, 259, 290, 300, 318, 362 Provence, Comtesse de, 19, 22, 96–97, 120, 155 Pugnani, Gaetano, 11–12, 14–15, 16, 17–21, 24–26, 28–31, 33–38, 40–65 passim, 66, 78–80, 84–85, 90–91, 133–134, 136, 152, 172, 176, 186, 198, 232, 272, 285, 313, 362, 372, 378, 398, 411n35, 414n76, 414n79, 415n82, 415n96, 416n98, 416n107, 417n124, 422n108, 427n77 and Count Andreas Razumovsky, 427n77 and GBV, 43, 53, 65, 186, 332 as GBV’s teacher, 14–18, 65, 285 as orchestra leader, 19–21, 25, 30–34, 62 and Sir William Hamilton, 427n77 trips to England, 15, 28–30, 40–41, 50, 59, 64

518

General Index

Pugnani, Gaetano, works, 15, 30, 33, 43–44, 60, 63, 115, 152, 180, 186, 277, 279, 467n35 L’Aurora, 24 Nanetta e Lubino, 15 La scomessa, 50 The Sorrows of the Young Werther, 186 Puppo, Giuseppe, 105, 134, 147 Radicati, Felice, 313–14, 473n187 Rangoni, G. B., 21 Rauzzini, Venanzio, 23, 190, 192 Rayneval, François-Maximilien Gérard, Comte de, 323–24, 333 Regent, Prince. See Wales, George, Prince of Reicha, Antoine, 222, 341 Reichardt, Johann Friedrich, 152, 169, 233 Richelieu, Madame de, 81, 102–3, 107 Robberechts, André, 104, 305–9, 311–12, 315, 344–45, 351–52, 369–70 Rochechouart, Comte de, 101–2, 107, 123 Rode, Pierre, 17, 103–5, 115–16, 133–35, 143–44, 146–47, 150–54, 165–66, 169, 171–72, 180, 205, 222, 228–31, 233–34, 241, 291, 294, 296, 361, 368–72, 458n49, 469n98 performances of GBV’s works, 146–47, 150–52, 166, 169, 230 pupils, 166, 296, 368 studies for the violin, 371 visit to England, 216–218 Rogers, Samuel, 250–51, 254–55, 258, 269, 271, 282, 315, 343 Romberg, Andreas, 222 Romberg, Bernhard, 222, 288 Rorà, Monsignor Francesco, 6–7, 34, 37, 377 Rose, George, 219, 264 Rosquellas (violinist), 296–97 Rossini, Gioachino, 309, 311, 320, 331–36, 341, 343, 360 Rouget (Rougé), Madame la Marquise de, 123, 138 Rovedino, Carlo, 130, 150, 154, 197, 200–1, 203, 210 St. Antonio, Count, 304, 342 Saint-Georges, Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de, 120–21

St. Leger, Colonel Anthony Butler, 266, 298, 304 Salomon, Johann Peter, 52, 176–78, 186–87, 191–92, 201, 273, 294 Schmeissen, Mr., 235, 404 Schram, Christopher, 201, 272, 311 Schram, S., 466n13 Schuppanzigh, Ignaz, 171 Sheremetev, Count Nicolai Petrovich, 60–61 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 196, 257–58 Sirmen, Maddalena Lombardini. See Lombardini-Sirmen, Maddalena Smed (Flemish merchant), 114–15, 183, 186 Smith, Charles, 182, 205, 209, 214, 216–17, 226, 272, 278, 303, 311, 323, 337, 352, 356, 373 Smith, Sir Sydney, 255–56 Smyth, Harriet, 281 Smyth, Mrs., 281 Soane, Sir John, 269 Somis, Giovanni Battista, 15, 17–18, 50, 367 Sor, Fernando, 303 Sorconnes, Vicomte de, 349, 352 Sotheby, William, 280 Soubise, Prince de, 81, 83–84 Spagnoletti, Paolo, 273, 275, 294, 303 Spencer, John, 303, 315, 471n144 Spencer, William Robert, 238–40, 243, 246, 248, 250, 256–57, 260–62, 280, 282–83, 298, 315, 364, 373 Spohr, Ludwig (Louis), 115, 169–70, 224, 275, 288, 309, 314, 324–25, 339, 368, 370 quartets, 339 Quintet in E-flat, 339 Violin Concerto no. 1, 169–70 Violin Concerto no. 8, 324–25 Violin Concerto no. 9, 339 Spontini, Gaspare, 320–22, 346 Staël, Albertine de, 283 Staël, Germaine de, 101, 159–60, 172, 271, 280–83, 286, 288 Steibelt, Daniel, 44, 103, 105, 116, 212, 218, 225, 240, 256 Stradivari, Antonio, 12, 47, 79–81, 96, 106, 162, 164, 254, 272, 287, 299,

General Index 309, 355, 358, 388, 394–95, 405, 471n132, 475n31, 487nn5–6 the “Buttero,” 254, 256–57, 283, 361 Tartini, Giuseppe, 115, 134, 367 school of violin playing, 17, 29, 119, 166, 412n42 L’arte del arco, 17 Letter […] to Signora Maddalena Lombardini, 17 Testori, Carlo Giovanni, 5 Tilmant, Théophile, 340 Todi, Madame, 48, 101 Tolbeque, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph, 340 Tourte, François, 45, 81, 119, 164, 350 Trumpf, C. L., 235, 239, 245 Tuileries, Palace of the, 70–77, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 82, 122–23, 126, 127, 128, 129, 145, 155, 228–29 Turcas, Joseph, 358 Vaccari, Francesco, 271–72, 274, 278–79, 303–4, 363, 370 Vacher, Pierre-Jean, 115, 167 Valentino, Henri, 320, 347 Vandick (violinist), 172, 438n22 Vaudreuil, Comte de, 95, 172–73, 248–50, 259–60, 281, 292, 373, 402–4, 461n114, 462n127 Viganoni, Giuseppe, 105, 130, 147, 150, 200, 210, 216, 275 Vigée-Lebrun, Elisabeth, 43, 52, 95, 100–101, 108, 158, 172–74, 233, 235–36, 247, 292, 304, 318, 351, 364, 404, 458n56 Villedeuil, Laurent de, 137–42, 144 Viotti, Giovanni Andrea (André) (halfbrother), 87–89, 124, 232, 235, 273, 293, 301, 314, 324, 336, 343, 351, 354–55, 379, 390, 466n17, 474n9 VIOTTI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA. See also Index of Viotti’s Works appearance, portraits, 42–43, 211, 213 attempt to become director of Paris Opéra (1789), 137–43 as billiards player, 269 British denizenship, 259–60, 262 character brusqueness/outspokenness, 373; regarding colleagues (Haydn,

519

Salomon), 191–92; regarding doctors, 352; regarding drunkenness in England, 252; regarding English audiences, 190–92; regarding English women, 191; regarding Oxford tutors, 240; regarding Philharmonic Society members, 284, 301–2; regarding friends, 303; toward Opéra personnel, 137–42, 321, 327, 331; toward publishers, 277–78; toward servants (mamselle), 226; toward WBC, 290, 303, 358–59 constancy in friendship: the Chinnerys, 266, 355, 373; Genlis, 234; GRC, 253, 257; La Briche, 103; MC, 265–66, 353; Montgéroult, 183–85; Vaccari, 278–79 convivialist/conversationalist, 86, 206, 229, 252–53, 261, 280, 304 devotion to MC, 182, 188, 191, 206, 240, 283, 338, 348–50, 373 dislike of the wind, 161, 182, 226, 260 distress at separation from friends, 184, 190, 337, 349 educational interests, activities, 225–27, 314–15 love of nature, 182, 184, 192–93, 282–83, 353 “overbearing,” 310 periods of melancholy and “hating” music, 186, 188, 190, 221, 258–59, 310–11 protecting others from unpleasant truths, 258, 266, 318, 337, 353, 356 resourcefulness, 258, 358–59 roused to anger, 242, 294, 359 scientific interests, 81, 119–20 self-estimation as violinist and composer, 185, 191, 272, 298 sense of humor, 184, 206, 240, 259–60, 284, 292, 294, 305, 313, 326, 358 as chess player, 465n204 command of English, 247, 278 death, 360 dedicatees of works Cambridge, Duke of, 238, 300–301 Cary, Mr. ( Joseph?), 322–23

520

General Index

VIOTTI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA (continued) dedicatees of works (continued) Cherubini, 231, 341 Chinnery, Mr. and Mrs., 221, 230, 279 Chinnery, Mr. and Mrs. recte GRC, 356–57 Cipriani, Philip, 272, 466n11 Crosdill, John, 207 Dunmore, Countess of, 243, 277 Duport, Jean-Louis, 361 Frederika-Louisa, princess (later queen), of Prussia, 51, 52, 63 Guémené, Prince de, 81–82, 84 Hankey, J. C., 208, 452n129 Lauriston, Marquis de, 356 Marshall, Miss, 451–52n129 Pugnani, 90, 172 Shield, William, 360, 484n70 Solticoff, Princess Marie, 424n29 Viotti, André, 273, 314, 354 dedications to Alday, 172 Dussek, 256 Eck, 172 Libon, 449n72 Pleyel, 296 Radicati, 473n187 Rode, 172 Vandik, 172 early training, 4–5, 11, 15–18 earnings Cappella Reale, Turin, 35, 90–91 from compositions, 208, 231, 342, 357 Concert spirituel, Paris, 70 Hanover Square, 178 King’s Theatre, 200, 210 Marie Antoinette, Versailles, 92–96 Mrs. Second’s concerts, Dublin, 218 Opéra, Paris, 317, 344, 353–54 Teatro Regio, Turin, 25 on tour (1780–81), 53–54, 61–62 as violin teacher, 243–44 as father and teacher to Chinnery children, 223, 225–26, 251–52, 290 as fencer, 465n204 and German Romanticism, 366 as horseman, 7, 192, 226

ill health dry cough, 285, 359–60 gout, 187, 238–39 heart murmur, 285 “irruption on his arms and legs,” 282 lumbago, 357 medicine drops for, 349 rheumatism, 239 teeth, 258, 304 tinnitus, 191 unspecified, 357 international reputation, 184, 293, 366, 371–72 lawsuits, 337, 352–53 Legion of Honor, 273 literary tastes, 247–48 and marriage, 302–3 and Masonry, 91–92, 120–24, 343 and the metronome, 119, 296 monetary concerns, problems, 80, 108, 161, 178, 315–16, 323, 337, 344, 350, 352, 355–56 as orchestra leader, conductor, 81–83, 120–21, 210–13, 211, 215, 274, 277, 286, 295–96 performances in private concerts Brighton Pavilion, 236–37, 262–64 Châtillon (Chinnery), 357–58 Fontanetto, 86 Ghent, 183 Lille, 309, 313 London: Carlton House, 203; Curtis, 280; Duke of Cambridge, 254; Dunmores, 254; Flint, 472n170; Hamilton, 246; Portuguese ambassador, 213; Smyth, 281; Vigée-Lebrun, 236 London (Chinnery): Charles Street, 279, 281, 288, 298, 304, 308; Gillwell, 236, 238, 240–41, 244–46; Half Moon Street, 255; Montagu Street, 309, 311, 315; Mortimer Street, 191, 206; Stratford Place, 255–56 Oxford, 253, 256–57 Paris, (1780s) 69, 98–108; (1802) 229–32; (1814) 291–92; (1815) 300; (1818) 312–13 on tour (1780–81), 43, 49–56, 61–64 Tunbridge Wells, 260–61

General Index Turin, 37 Versailles, 84–85, 94–95 performances in public concerts Bath, 190, 193, 195–96 benefits (of GBV): Bath, 193; London, 187, 193–94; Paris, 78, 83 benefits (of others): Bath, 196; London, 195, 213; Paris, 78 Dublin (Mrs. Second’s: engaged but did not perform), 218 London: Hanover Square, 177–81, 187–90; Hickford’s Room, 28; Opera Concert, 201–5, 212, 218; Philharmonic Society, 274–76, 283, 286–87 Paris, Concert spirituel, 70, 72, 77–79, 86, 92 on tour (1780–81), 41–42, 47, 52–53, 56–57 and the Professional Society, 297–98 public performances of his concertos by other violinists Bath (1789), 145, 177 Concert spirituel (1784–1790), 116–19, 122, 435nn187–89 Concert olympique (1780s), 122 Flanders, 369 Italy, 371 London (1789–1824), 117–18, 145, 177, 203, 209, 244, 307–8, 342 other Parisian venues, (1785) 435n190, (1789) 144, (1790) 153, (1796–1810) 166–68 Paris Opéra (1821–22), 340–41, 352 Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau (1790–92), 146–47, 150–53 Vienna (1793–1803), 171 and publishers, 208, 231, 277–78, 314, 342, 351, 357 pupils and followers in Ghent, 114–15, 183 in Paris, 114–16, 151, 229, 308, 481n155 in London, 172; Baecker, 243; Bridgetower, 209; George Chinnery, 456n9; Lacy (?), 460n92; Libon, 193; Mori, 243–44; Fémy, 288, 315; Guynemer, 315; Robberechts, 305; in Schönfeld: Baux (?), 221; Pixis, 221

521

and Royal Academy of Music, 284–85, 293 violin playing ability to play after prolonged absence, 185 evolution of, 366 expressive qualities of, 168–69, 188–90, 231, 304, 313, 343 on the G string, 80, 179, 287 improvisation and preluding, 104, 109, 110, 111–12, 213 influence of/as founder of school, 165–69, 292, 365–72 “old French school”, 189 ornamentation, 109, 110 performance of other composers’ works, 276–77; J. S. Bach (?), 312; Beethoven (?), 277; Boccherini, 43, 51, 105–6, 276–77, 286, 291, 311, 315; D. Ferrari, 18, 49; Guglielmi, 215–16; Handel, 180; Haydn (?), 106; Mozart (?), 114; Pugnani, 180; Radicati (?), 313 Piedmontese tradition of, 14–18, 29, 79 rubato, 109 scales, 15–17 simplicity of, 189, 231, 366 tone, 78–79, 164, 179, 231 unaccompanied, 257–58, 311–12 vibrato, 371 as violist, 35 visits to Continent, (1793) 183–187, (1802) 228–233, (1814) 290–94, (1815) 300–301, (1816) 304, (1817) 308–9, (1818) 312–15 visits in England, Blenheim, 240 Brighton, 236–37, 262–64 Henry Beaufoy’s (Castle Beare), 182 Eastbourne, 260 Fulham, 282 Pascoe Grenfell’s (Taplow House), 459n72 Thomas Hope’s (Deepdene), 264 Oxford, 239–40, 256–58 John Spencer’s (Wheatfield), 240; Petersham, 303, 315, 471n144 Mme de Staël’s (Richmond), 283

522

General Index

VIOTTI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA (continued) visits in England (continued) Tunbridge Wells, 260 visits to England, (1767) (?) 15; (1773) (?) 18, 28–29; (1820) 323–25; (1822) 351–53 visits to Italy, (1782–83) 86–91, (1793) 183–87, (planned in 1802) 233 will and testament, 355 wine business, 205, 214, 232–33, 274, 280, 303, 311, 316, 323, 453n152 works and style characteristics, 44, 51–52, 164, 176, 186, 202, 223, 246, 248, 258, 300, 308, 349–50 chronology of London concertos, 179 conservative aspects, 35, 63, 113–14 differences between Paris and London concertos, 202, 366–67 distinguishing elements of Paris concertos, 113 double stops, 305 evolution in Paris string quartets, 113 forward-looking aspects of concertos, 366–67 influence of: on Beethoven, 171, 444n40; on Haydn, 170; on Mozart, 170; on Paganini, 370–71; on Spohr, 169–70, 325 influence on: of Beethoven (?), 277; of Haydn, 202, 273; of Pugnani, 12, 63

“new in style,” 186 set by Thomas Moore, 250 used for ballets, 171–72, 212 used for didactic purposes, 165–66, 372 used as insertion arias, 133, 199–200 “Viotti bowing,” 325, 476n44 Viotti, Giovanni Maria (Giorgio) (halfbrother), 39, 87–89, 232, 379, 390 Viotto, Anna Adelaide (sister-german), 4, 14, 87–88, 235 Viotto, Felice Antonio (father), 3–8, 14, 37, 86–89, 91, 360, 390 Viotto, Giuseppe (brother-german), 4, 14, 87–88, 235, 378, 427nn70–71 Viotto, Maria Maddalena, née Milano (mother), 4, 5, 7 Viotto, Teresa Maria, née Musetti (stepmother), 4, 6, 8, 11, 37, 87–88, 186, 379, 382, 390 Vogel, Mr. (violinist of Lille), 309, 324 Vogel, Johann, overture to Démophone, 150, 204, 341 Voghera, Marchesa di, 6–9, 11, 13, 18, 34, 89, 377, 412n48, 415n85 Voghera, Maria Anna di, 6–7, 9, 12, 28 Wales, George, Prince of (later George IV), 203, 236, 241, 259, 262–64, 270–71, 282, 373 Wesley, Samuel, 209, 297, 312

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