was the friend of this great performer, who led the "Academia," or concert, held weekly at the Cardinal's palace, and established the reputation which his countrymen held, by the title, "Virtuosissimo di violino, e vero Orfeo di nostro tempo." About the year 1700, he produced his celebrated Solos. In 1713 he died, and was interred in the Pantheon, close to Raffaele.

Corelli's performance was eminent for grace, tenderness, and touching simplicity. It wanted the dazzling execution of later times, but its tone was exquisite. Geminiani, his pupil, said, long after, that it always reminded him of a sweet trumpet. For many subsequent years, his scholars per formed an anniversary selection from his works over his tomb. At length the scholars themselves followed their master, and the honour sank with them into the grave.

The next celebrated violinist was Francesco Geminiani, born at Lucca in 1680. After acquiring the rudiments of music from Scarlatti, he completed his studies under Corelli. He now began the usual life of the profession. His fame in Rome, as the first scholar of the renowned Corelli, spread through Italy, and he commenced his career at Naples as the head of the orchestra. There his brilliancy, taste, and tone were unrivalled; yet, like many a concerto player, he was found but ill suited for the conduct of the orchestra. His impetuosity and animation ran away with him; he rose into ecstasies, and left the band wandering behind. He has been charged with deficiency as a timeist; but this, though the most frequent failure of the amateur, seems so incompatible with the professor, and is so easily avoided by the practical musician, that we can scarcely believe it to have been among the errors of so perfect a performer. He was still scarcely above boyhood-he was ambitious of display-he was full of fancy, feeling, and power; and in this fulness he rioted, until the orchestra, unable to follow, were thrown into confusion.

England is, after all, the great encourager of talent. It may be imitated in Italy, or praised in France, but it is in England alone that it is rewarded. In 1714 Geminiani arrived in this country. George I. was then on the throne. He has not been fam

ed for a too liberal patronage of the fine arts, but he was a German, which is equivalent to his being a lover of music. The Baron of Kilmansegge, a Hanoverian, and one of the royal chamberlains, was the protector of the young Italian violinist. Geminiani was introduced to the royal chamber; where he played before the monarch, with Handel accompanying him on the harpsichord. The King was delighted; acknowledged the violin, in such hands, to be the master of all instruments; and Geminiani was instantly in fashion. His reign was unusually long for a sitter on the capricious throne of taste, he reigned fifteen years. During that time, no one was allowed to stand in competition with him in the qualities of finished execution, elegance of conception, and vividness of performance. After this period, he began to write books of instruction, and treatises on harmony. He seems to have been the original inventor of those pieces of imitative music, which attained their height in that most popular and most tiresome of all battles, the "Battle of Prague." Geminiani conceived the extravagant idea of representing the chief part of the 13th Book of Tasso's Jerusalem by music. The ingenuity of the composer must be tasked in vain, where he has to represent things wholly unconnected with musical sound. He may represent the march of armies or the roar of tempests, the heaving of the forest or the swell of ocean; but in what tones can he give the deliberations of council or the wiles of conspiracy?

After a residence of thirty-six years in England, where he ought to have died, Geminiani went to Paris, where he was forgotten, and where he found it difficult to live. He returned only to pass through England on his way to Ireland, where, in a land singularly attached to music, the great master's old age was honoured. Some faint recollection of him survives there still. His scholar Dubourg was leader of the King's band; and he delighted to do honour to the powers which had formed his own. Geminiani was frequently heard at the houses of his friends, and preserved, though in extreme old age, his early elegance. But his career was now near its close. A treatise on harmony, to which he confided his fame with posterity, was stolen or de

stroyed by a domestic. The loss to the world was probably slight; but to the old man was irreparable. It certainly hastened his death; he sank perceptibly, and, after a year's residence in Ireland, died in 1762, in his eighty-third year.

Carbonelli, a powerful performer, and scholar of Corelli, who came to this country about the year 1720, and was leader of the opera, is worth remembering chiefly as the ancestor of that still more famous master of the art of pleasing English taste, of whom it was dexterously said, that "he never brought a good hogshead of claret into his cellars, nor ever sent out a bad His talent for composition must have been acknowledged. But the same tendency to prefer the service of Bacchus to that of Apollo was exhibited by the violinist. He became a wine-merchant, and one of the purveyors to the King." On this change were hung the following couplets :

one."

66

The

But a phenomenon was now to appear the famous Guiseppe Tartini. In all arts there is a strong similitude. They all make their progress by bounds. A long period passes in each, which is a period of imitation. progress is slight, is nothing; then comes suddenly some man of singular powers, some human accident, who pushes the art beyond all its former limits, and heads a new era. This has been the history of invention from its slightest efforts to its noblest victories, from pin-making to the "Principia." Tartini developed new powers in the violin, an instrument which seems to contain within its four simple strings all the mysteries of music, and which may be still far from exhausted.

Tartini was, what in Italy would be called a barbarian, for he was a native of Istria; a territory from which Venice recruited her wildest mercenaries, and which, mingling Greek, Turk, and Italian, once lay like a border land between Christendom and

Islamism. But times are changed, and Austria, if she has not much improved its Christianity, has at least checked its Mahometanism. Tartini's birthplace was Pisano (April 1692). His family had been lately ennobled; and as commerce was felt to be too humble for his descent, he was destined for the law. He was fantastic from the beginning. He first exhibited a forbidden passion for music. The passion lulled, or was superseded by a passion for fencing; he became the most expert of swordsmen, at a time when all the gladiators of Europe were furnished from Italy. It may be presumed, that law made but tardy progress in the rivalry of those active competitors. Perhaps, to obviate this state of things, he was sent, in 1710, to Padua, once the great school of the civilians. There he committed the natural, but still more irreparable, fault of falling desperately in love. The object of his passion was inferior to the hopes of his parvenu family, and he was soon cast off without mercy. The world was now before him; but it was a desert, and the future delight and pride of Italy was near dying of hunger. At length, like many another son of misfortune, he fled to the cloister, where a relative, a monk, gave him protection. There he adopted the violin, as a solace to an uneasy mind; and rapidly acquired skill sufficient to take a place in the cathedral band. During this period his existence was unknown to his family. But on a grand festival, a gust of wind blowing aside the curtain which hid the orchestra, Tartini was seen by an acquaintance. The discovery was communicated to his family, a partial reconciliation followed, and as the triumphs of the law were now fairly given up, the wayward son of genius was suffered to fol. low his own will, and be a violinist to the end of his days.

But there was to be another stage in his ardent career. Veracini, a most powerful performer, happened to come to Venice. Tartini was struck with a new sense of the capacity of the violin. He determined to imitate, if not to excel, this brilliant virtuoso. He instantly left Venice, then a scene of tumultuous and showy life, retired to Ancona to devote himself to labour, ment. and gave night and day to his instruThere he made the curious

discovery of the "Third Sound”the resonance of a third note when the two upper notes of a chord are sounded.

He now rose into fame, and was appointed to one of the highest distinctions of the art, the place of first violin to St Anthony of Padua himself. The artist was duly grateful; for, with a superstition which can now only make us smile, but which was a proof of the lofty enthusiasm of his heart, as it was then accepted for the most striking evidence of his piety, he dedicated himself and his violin to the service of the saint for ever. His pupils had already spread his fame through the European capitals, and he received the most tempting offers from the chief courts. But his virtue was proof against all temptation. St Antony was his sovereign still. His violin would stoop to no more earthly supremacy, and the great master lived and died in Padua.

It is remarkable that all the chief virtuosi of the violin, if they live beyond youth, palpably change their conception of excellence. Whether it is that their taste improves, or their fire diminishes, their latter style is almost always marked by a study of elegance, a fondness for cantabile, and a pathetic tenderness. Difficulty, force, and surprise, are their ambition no more. Tartini's performance scarcely assumed superiority till mature manhood. He said "that till he was thirty he had done little or nothing." Yet the wellknown story of his dream shows with what ardour he studied. Lalande relates it from his own lips. The story has all the vividness of a man of imagination, that man an Italian, and that Italian a devotee for though Tartini was an Istrian, he had the true verve of the Ausonian; and though he was not a monk, he was the sworn slave of St Anthony.

"He dreamed one night, in the year 1713, that he had made a compact with Satan, who promised to be at his service on all occasions. And during his vision the compact was strictly kept-every wish was anticipated, and his desires were even surpassed. At length he presented the fiend with his violin, in order to discover what kind of musician he was. To his infinite astonishment, he heard him play a solo so singularly beautiful, that it eclipsed all the music he had ever heard or con

ceived during his life. So great was his surprise, and so exquisite his delight, that it almost deprived him of the power of breathing. With the wildness of his emotions he awoke; and instantly seized his instrument, in the hope of executing what he had just heard. But in vain. He was in despair. However, he wrote down such portions of the solo as he could recover in his memory; still it was so inferior to what his sleep had produced, that he declared he would have broken his instrument, and abandoned music for ever, if he could have subsisted by any other means." The solo still exists, under the name of the "Devil's Sonata. A performance of great intricacy, but to which the imagination of the composer must have lent the beauty; the charm is now undiscoverable.

The late Dr Burney, an ingenious writer and a good musician, thus sketches the character of Tartini's style. But Burney was a harpsichord player, and his instrument was the antipodes of the grace, delicacy, and expression of the violin. The effect produced on Tartini's contemporaries is the true standard of his powers. His compositions want the hand that gave them vitality. Burney's estimate seems much below the great artist's fame, yet still it is almost the only one left to us.

His allegros

"Tartini, though he made Corelli his model in the purity of his harmony and the simplicity of his modulation, greatly surpassed him in the fertility and originality of his invention--not only in the subjects of his melodies, but in the truly cantabile manner of treating them. Many of his adagios want nothing but words to be excellent pathetic opera songs. are sometimes difficult; but the passages fairly belong to the instrument for which they were composed, and were suggested by his consummate knowledge of the finger-board and the powers of the bow. Yet I must, in justice to others, own, that though the adagio and solo playing in general of his scholars are exquisitely polished and expressive, yet it seems to us as if that energy, fire, and freedom of bow, which modern symphonies and orchestra playing require, were wanting." Tartini's compositions are by no means a test of his talents as a violinist. One of the habitual follies of all the leading

violinists is, to turn composers. They seldom condescend to play any concertos but their own. This is a frequent failure in their popularity; for the faculties required for composition, and for mastery of performance, are of a different order, and each may exist where there is almost a total deficiency of the other. Nine-tenths of the finest performers on any instrument are incapable of musical conception. One great cause of the vast quantity of feeble, rambling, and extravagant composition that overwhelms us at the present day, is the idle ambition in every pianist, harpist, or violinist to exhibit as an original genius, and, instead of giving to our ears the ideas of true composers, weary us with the vanity of their own. Yet Tartini's compositions still have a practical value, and some of them have been lately republished for the use of the Conservatoire at Paris.

The homage paid to those early artists seems frequently to have turned their heads; even now, there is no one class of mankind which furnishes so many eccentrics as musicians. Veracini's name has been already mentioned, as awaking Tartini into rivalry and excellence. He was the most daring, brilliant, and wild of violinists. His natural temperament had some share in this; for he was singularly ambitious, ostentatious, and vain. His own countrymen pronounced him "Capo pozzo, the Crackbrained. At the Festa della Croce" at Lucca, an occasion on which the chief Italian instrumentalists were in the habit of assembling from all quarters, Veracini, who, from long absence, was unknown to the Lucchese, put down his name for a solo. On entering the choir, he found that his offer was treated with neglect, and that the Padre Laurenti, a friar from Bologna-for ecclesiastics were often employed as musicians in the cathedrals was at the desk of the solo-player. Veracini walked up at once to the spot where the padre stood in possession. "Where are you going?" was the friar's question "To take the place of first violin," was the impetuous answer. But Laurenti was tenacious of his right, and told the applicant that if he wished to display his powers, either at vespers or high mass, he should have a proper place assigned to him. Veracini indignantly turned on his heel, and scorning the padre's

location, went down to the lowest bench of the orchestra. When the time for his solo was come, he was called on by Laurenti, who appears to have acted as the director, to ascend into a more conspicuous place. "No," said Veracini, "I shall play where I am, or no where." He began the tones of his violin, for which he was long celebrated, astonished every one

their clearness, purity, and passion were unrivalled; all was rapture in the audience, even the decorum of the church could not restrain their cheers. And at the end of each passage, while the vivas were echoing round him, he turned to the hoary director in triumph, saying, "That is the the way to play the first violin."—("Cosi si suona per fare il primo violino.")

Veracini's prompt and powerful style must have made his fortune, if he had taken pupils. But he refused to give lessons to any one except a nephew; he himself had but one master, an uncle. His style was wholly his own. Strange, wild, and redundant. Violin in hand, he continually travelled over Europe. About 1745 he was in England. He had two Steiner violins, which he pronounced to be the finest in existence, and with the mixture of superstition and frivolity so common to his countrymen, he named one of them St Peter and the other St Paul ! Violinists will feel an interest in knowing that his peculiar excellencies consisted in his shake, his rich and profound arpeggios, and a vividness of tone that made itself heard through the loudest orchestra.

He

The school of Tartini was still the classic" academe" of Italy. Nardini brings it nearer our own era. was the most exquisite pupil of the great master. Of all instruments the violin has the closest connexion with the mind. Its matchless power of expression naturally takes the mould of the feelings; and where the performer has attained that complete mastery which gives the instrument a language, it is grave, gay, touching, or romantic, according to the temper of the man, and almost of the hour. Nardini's tenderness of mind gave pathos to his performance. He left the dazzling and the bold to others; he reigned unequalled in the soft, sweet, and elegant. "His violin," says the President Dupaty, who heard

him in Italy in 1783, "is a voice, or has one. It has made the fibres of my ear vibrate as they never did before. To what a degree of tenuity does Nardini divide the air! How exquisitely he touches the strings of his instrument! With what art he modulates and purifies their tones!" England was never visited by this fine virtuoso; but her musical tastes were more than compensated by the arrival of Felice Giardini, who produced effects here unrivalled till the appearance of Paganini. Giardini was born at Turin in 1716, and received his chief musical education under Somis, a scholar of Corelli. At the age of seventeen he went, as was the custom of the time, to seek his fortune in the great capitals. From Rome he went to Naples, and after a short residence in the chief musical cities of his own country, passing through Germany with still increasing reputation, came to Eng. land in 1750. His first display was a concert for the benefit of Cuzzoni, who, once the great favourite of the Italian opera, was now old, and enfeebled in all her powers. In her decaying voice the violinist had all the unwilling advantage of a foil. The audience were even on the point of forgetting their gallantry, and throwing the theatre into an uproar, when the young Italian came forward. His first tones were so exquisite, and so unlike any thing that the living generation had heard, that they instantly put all ill-humour to flight. As he proceeded, the rapture grew. length all was a tumult, but a tumult of applause, and applause so loud, long, and overwhelming, as to be exceeded by none ever given to Garrick himself. His fortune was now made, if he would but condescend to take it up as it lay before him. But this condescension has seldom formed a part of the wisdom of genius; and Giardini was to follow the fate of so many of his showy predecessors.

At

His first error was that avarice which so curiously and so often combines with the profusion of the foreign artist. In 1754 he was placed at the head of the Opera orchestra.

In

1756 he adopted the disastrous idea, in connexion with the celebrated Signora Mingotti, of making rapid opulence by taking the theatre. Like every man who has ever involved

VOL, XLI. NO, CCLV.

himself in that speculation, he was ruined. He then fell back upon his profession, and obtained a handsome livelihood by pupils, and his still unrivalled performance. Still he was wayward, capricious, and querulous, and old age was coming on him without a provision. He had now been nearly thirty years in England, and his musical rank and the recollection of his powers would doubtless have secured for him the public liberality in his decline. But he then committed the second capital error of the foreign artists, that of restlessness, and breaking off their connexion with the country in which they have been long settled. Giardini went to recommence life in Italy with Sir William Hamilton. But Italy now knew nothing of him, and was engrossed by younger men. After lingering there just long enough to discover his folly in cne shape, he returned to England to discover it in another. Five years' absence from London had broken off all his old connexions, dissolved all his old patronage, and left him a stranger in all but name. His health, too, was sinking. He was enfeebled by dropsy; his sight was failing; and he was glad to find employment as a supernumerary or tenor in the orchestra, where his talent had once reigned supreme. He attempted a burletta opera at the little Haymarket theatre, failed; took his company to St Petersburg, failed at that extremity of Europe; took them to Moscow, failed there; and then could fail no more. In Moscow, at the age of eighty, he died.

In music, as in poetry, there have always been too schools. The classic and the romantic. The former regular, graceful, elegant; the latter wild, often rude, often ungraceful, but often powerful, and postponing all things to power. The classic gaining its object by addressing itself to the sense of pleasure, the romantic by exciting the sense of admiration. The triumphs of the two schools have alternated in

music as in poetry. The weariness of excessive elegance has lowered the popularity of the one, the exhaustion of strong sensations has extinguished the honours of the other. Thus runs the circle. A performer was now to appear whose consummate elegance gave the palm to the classic school for the time. The name of Giornovichi

G