PIerre Baillot as a Violinist, Representative of the French Violin School, and Chamber Musician
By the first decade of the 19th century Baillot began to be considered one of the main representatives of the French violin school, together with Viotti, Rode, and Kreutzer (with the names of Lafont and Boucher sometimes added to the list). He was generally praised for his beautiful, large sound, a large repertoire of bow strokes, and impeccable left-hand technique, particularly his double-stop technique. Further, his contemporaries admired the intensity, expressivity, and dramatic quality of his playing (The Strad Feb. 2022).
Most important, Baillot played a crucial role in the development of the modern, composition-centered aesthetics of performance, which seems to have originated with Louis Spohr and eventually gave rise to the “historically-informed performance” philosophy of our age. This conception, intimately tied to the performance of the works, particularly the quartets, of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, opposed the virtuoso culture of the 19th century: it placed the performer in the service of the composition. Keen critics perceived this revolutionary quality in the performances of Spohr, Baillot, Vieuxtemps, or Joachim, using descriptions that show remarkable congruence.
In 1804 Friedrich Rochlitz praised the 20-year-old Louis Spohr for
“...his insight into the characters of the most diverse compositions and his ability to perform each in its own spirit—this is what renders him a true artist. We never had to admire this last quality in any violinist as much as in Mr. Spohr, especially in his quartet performances. He appears almost completely different when he performs, for instance, Beethoven (his favorite whom he treats excellently) or Mozart (his ideal) or Rode (whose grand quality he knows very well to adopt, without bordering, like him, on sounding sharp and harsh, while falling short of him only slightly, especially in the volume of his tone), or when he performs Viotti and gallant composers: he is different, as they are different.” (AMZ, 26 Dec. 1804, cols. 202-3; see this author’s articles of 1997-98.)
Thirty years later fourteen-year-old Vieuxtemps received similar praise for his rendition of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto from Eduard Baron Lannoy, the conductor of the performance:
“You fully penetrated the spirit of this composition, a masterpiece of one of our great masters. ... all this shows that you, still young and close to childhood, are already a great artist who appreciates what he plays, knows how to give each genre its proper expression, and does not limit himself to dazzling the listeners with difficulties.”
(Letter by Eduard Baron Lannoy to Vieuxtemps, 17 March 1834, quoted after Jean-Théodore Radoux, Vieuxtemps: sa vie, ses oeuvres, Liège: A. Bénard, 1891, p. 28; see this author’s website.)
The same ability to grasp and convey the composer’s intentions and the same ability to perform each work according to its character was what struck Baillot’s contemporaries about his performances (The Strad Feb. 2022):
“What I admire most in a performing artist is a refined instinct, a kind of mental intuition that makes him penetrate to the bottom of the composer's genius, which he reveals to his audience—whether it is to render Haydn's masculine strictness, Mozart's smooth grace, or Beethoven's passionate reverie. This is where Baillot excelled as a faithful interpreter, translating one by one the masterpieces of instrumental music with eloquent truth, as if he had practiced only a single style his whole life.”
“Ce que je prise le plus dans l'artiste exécutant, c'est une finesse d'instinct, une sorte d'intuition mentale qui le fait pénétrer à fond, pour le révéler à son auditoire, le génie du compositeur qu'il met en scène, soit qu'il s'agisse de rendre la sévérité mâle d'Haydn, la grâce onctueuse de Mozart ou la rêverie passionnée de Beethoven. C'est là où Baillot excellait interprète fidèle, traduisant tour à tour les chefs-d'ouvre de la musique instrumentale avec une vérité parlante, comme s'il n'eût pratiqué qu'un style toute sa vie.” (J.-P.-B. Nault, “Une esquisse de Beaumarchais et souvenirs de la musique,” Dijon: Loireau-Feuchot, 1854, p. 44)
Rather than superimposing his own artistic personality on the composition, Baillot—as did Spohr, Vieuxtemps, and Joachim—aimed at penetrating into the spirit of the composition, grasping its individual character, translating, and conveying it to the audience. Baillot helped shape and promoted this revolutionary concept, sharing it with his students, as a contemporary article about Jules Mercier reveals:
“Which artist has ever, better than Mercier, performed the works and translated the thoughts of Beethoven, Mayseder, Spohr, etc.! Alternately full of energy, verve, grace, finesse, fire, and grandeur in Beethoven, brilliant in Mayseder, clear in the sometimes tortuous developments of Spohr...”
“Quel artiste a jamais, mieux que Mercier, rendu les œuvres, traduit la pensée de Beethoven, Mayseder, Spohr, etc.! Tour à tour plein d'énergie, de verve, de grâce, de finesse, fougueux et large avec Beethoven, brillant dans Mayseder, clair dans les développements quelque fois tortueux de Spohr...” (Charles Émile Poisot, “Essai sur les musiciens Bourguignons,” Dijon: Lamarche et Drouelle, 1854, p. 56)
In order to do justice to the most sublime repertoire—the quartets of the Viennese masters—Baillot helped create an appropriate venue: the chamber-music or quartet concert. The series of “séances” that he organized and played from 1814 to 1840 popularized this novel performance format in France (Fauquet 1986, Vandoros 2015).
Finally, Baillot was at the helm of another development that revolutionized performing: the emergence of a canon of timeless masterpieces (The Strad Feb. 2022). In a letter to Cherubini, Baillot defined three tiers of repertoire: first, Baroque works; second, solos (that is, concertos and other works) by representatives of the French violin school; and third, chamber music by the three great Viennese composers as well as Handel and Cherubini:
“Sir, the desire to regulate and complete the studies of the students of my class has made me feel for a very long time the need to make them aware of all the classical works written for the violin, from the oldest known composers to the more modern. This is why my students have all studied [not only] the sonatas of Corelli, Leclair, Tartini, Locatelli, Geminiani, Bach, and Pugnani, and successively the solos of Viotti, Kreutzer, Rode, etc., but [also] the authors whom I have just mentioned and still others such as Handel, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, to whom in our just admiration we must add your name: these composers, I dare say, have created ensemble pieces expressly for the violin that would be all the more important to make known to the students and to have them practice, because each day one loses more track of their beauties and because they contain in themselves the history of art that is so useful and so interesting.”
“Monsieur, Ie désir de régulariser et completer les études des élèves de ma classe m'a fait sentir depuis très longtemps la necessité de leur faire prendre connaissance de tous les ouvrages classiques écrits pour le violon depuis les plus anciens compositeurs connus jusques aux plus modernes. C'est pourquoi mes élèves ont tous étudiés les sonates de Corelli, Leclair, Tartini, Locatelli, Geminiani, Bach, Pugnani et successivement les solos de Viotti, Kreutzer, Rode, etc., mais les auteurs que je viens de citer et d'autres encore tels que Haendel, Haydn, Mozart et Beethoven, auxquels dans notre juste admiration nous devons ajouter votre nom, ces auteurs, dis-je, ont fait expressement pour le violon des morceaux d'ensemble qu'il serait d'autant plus important de faire connaître et pratiquer aux élèves que chaque jour on perd davantage la trace de leurs beautés et qu'ils renferment en eux-mêmes l'histoire de l'art si utile et si interessante.” (Letter to Cherubini, 21 Dec. 1838, quoted after Francois-Sappey, 1978, p. 199).
© Martin Wulfhorst 2021 /R 2022
Pierre Baillot (1771–1842)
LINKS
This website, initiated on occasion of the 250th anniversary of Baillot's birth in October 2021, is intended as guide to research, materials, and information. A more comprehensive publication on Baillot is in preparation.