François-Joseph Fétis - Nicolo Paganini

Nicolo
Paganini

Nicolo
Paganini

With an Analysis

of His Compositions

and a Sketch of the

History of the Violin

Franois-Joseph Ftis

New Introduction by

Stewart Pollens

Dover Publications, Inc.

Mineola, New York

Copyright

Introduction copyright 2013 by Stewart Pollens

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2013, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published by Schott & Company, London, in 1860. Stewart Pollens has prepared a new Introduction specially for this Dover edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ftis, Franois-Joseph, 17841871.

[Notice biographique sur Nicolo Paganini. English]

Nicolo Paganini: with an analysis of his compositions and a sketch of the history of the violin / Franois-Joseph Ftis; new introduction by Stewart Pollens.

p. cm.

Unabridged republication of the work originally published by Schott & Company, London, in 1860.

ISBN-13: 978-0-486-49798-3

ISBN-10: 0-486-49798-4

1. Paganini, Nicol, 17821840. 2. ViolinistsItalyBiography. 3. ViolinHistory. I. Title.

ML418.P2F32 2013

787.092dc23

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation
49798401
www.doverpublications.com

INTRODUCTION

T HE author of Nicolo Paganini, Franois-Joseph Ftis, was born in Lige, Belgium in 1784 and died in Brussels in 1871. He began his musical education with his father, Antoine, who was a church organist, violinist, and conductor, and from him Franois-Joseph learned to play the organ, piano, and violin. At the age of nine he tried his hand at composition and wrote a violin concerto, and by the time he entered the Paris Conservatoire in the year 1800 he had composed two piano concertos and three string quartets. There he studied theory and music history and won a second prize in composition in 1807. He married in 1806 and left Paris with his wife in 1811, settling first in Bouvignes and later Douai, where he taught and worked as a church organist. In 1818 he returned to Paris where he continued teaching and composing (his works include seven comic and dramatic operas, a sacred mass and secular cantata, chamber music, and solo works for piano and organ). In 1821 he received a teaching appointment at the Paris Conservatoire and also worked as the Conservatoires librarian from 1826 through 1830. In 1827 he founded the musicological journal Revue musicale.

In 1833 Ftis returned to his native Belgium to become the director of the Brussels Conservatoire. In addition to his administrative duties, he contributed articles and reviews to newspapers and musical journals, and wrote numerous methods, treatises, and manuals devoted to harmony, counterpoint, solfge, accompaniment, and composition. Perhaps his most ambitious undertaking was his Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie gnrale de la musique, a multi-volume work published between 1835 and 1844. This comprehensive musical encyclopedia went through numerous editions; the last, published in 18781880, was reprinted as recently as 1963. Though Ftis Biographie universelle has come under sharp criticism for factual errors, it remains an invaluable reference work, particularly with regard to events he witnessed and those he knew personally.

Several of the articles in the Biographie universelle were later adapted for republication as monographs, including this one devoted to Nicolo Paganini (with preliminary essays on the history of the violin and violin performance), published in Paris in 1851, and another on Stradivari (with essays on the origin of bowed instruments, the schools of violin making, and a biography of Franois-Xavier Tourte with a technical study of his bows) published in Paris in 1856. The Paganini monograph was translated into English and published by Schott & Co. in London in 1852, though the Stradivari monograph did not appear in English until 1864. The publication of these monographs coincided with the release of new editions of Paganinis first and second violin concertos and a number of his introductions and variations for violin.

Ftis opening Sketch on the History of the Violin begins with the assertion that bowing was an invention of the West, a point disputed by todays historians, who trace bowing back to tenth-century central Asia. Regarding the earliest known violin, he cites Jean-Benjamin de La Bordes Essay sur la Musique (Paris, 1780), which describes a four-string violin labeled Joann. Kerlino, anno 1449. Ftis remarks that this instrument found its way to Paris and in 1804 was in the hands of the violin maker Jean Gabriel Koliker (active in Paris, 17831820). Today, Kerlino is believed to have been a fictional character and the instrument in question either a fabrication by Koliker or perhaps a conversion from an earlier form, such as a viol or lira. Ftis also describes a violin ostensibly by Gaspard Duiffoprugcar bearing the date 1539, though the authenticity of that instrument has also been called into question.

Ftis makes reference to a brother of Andrea Amati named Nicolo, who is said to have assisted in the construction of instruments for Charles IX of France. This information was likely drawn from J. B. Roqueforts Magasin encyclopdique (Paris, 1812) or perhaps from M. LAbb Sibires La chlonomie ou le parfait luthier (Paris, 1823), though later research in the archives of Cremona by Carlo Bonnetti published in La Genealogio degli Amati liutai e il primate della scuola liutistica cremonese (Cremona, 1938) and more recent research efforts reported by Carlo Chiesa in Andrea Amati opera omnia: les violins du roi (Cremona, 2007) have failed to reveal the names of any immediate family members of Andrea Amati other than that of his father, Gottardo, and two sons Antonio and Girolamo. One reason for the paltry genealogical information about early members of the Amati family is the lack of relevant census returns from the first half of the sixteenth century and reliance upon sporadic notarial documents. Unfortunately, a number of the labels in the extant Andrea Amati instruments are inauthentic (such as the label in the Kurtz Amati violin in the Metropolitan Museum of Art), and it is possible that the lost original labels may have borne the names of both Andrea and Nicolo.

Ftis indicates that Antonio Stradivari was born in 1664 (he was actually born about twenty years earlier) and died in 1747 (1737 is the correct year). He then turns to the Guarneri family, writing that it was originally from Cremona, and constantly resided there, with the exception of Pietro Guarneri, who settled in Mantua, and still resided there in 1717 (he died there in 1720). However, Andrea Guarneri, the founder of the family of violin makers, was actually born outside of Cremona in the little town of Casalbuttano. Pietro Guarneri, now known as Peter of Mantua, was not the only member of the family to leave Cremona; there was also his nephew, another Pietro, who settled in Venice and is today known as Peter of Venice.

Ftis praises Lorenzo Guadagninis violins and characterizes the instruments of his son Giovanni Battista Guadagnini as less sought afteran interesting reversal of fortune, as recent archival research has revealed Lorenzo to have been an innkeeper rather than a violin maker (thereby placing violins bearing his label in limbo) while G.B.s violins are valued at well over a million dollars.

Jacob Stainers birth year is given as 1620, whereas 16181619 is a better estimate. Other facts about Stainer must also be called into question, such as his alleged apprenticeship with the Amatis, as well as his collaboration with a brother named Marcus, members of the Klotz family, and Albani. Ftis states that Stainer made sixteen instruments that he presented to the emperor and electors of the Holy Roman Empire, but the whereabouts of these instruments are unknown and recent research has yielded no documentary evidence of these supposed gifts. It is important to keep in mind that this historical essay was written before the publication of comparatively well-researched biographical dictionaries of violin makers, such as Willibald Leo Freiherrn von Ltgendorffs Die Geigenund Lautenmacher vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart (Frankfurt, 1904). Previously, historical information about violin makers had been deduced by dealers, who reconstructed birth, death, and dates of activity from authentic violin labels (which were formerly in greater abundance than they are today).