AGAINST THE ODDS

Pierre Baillot battled against financial hardship and suffered personal tragedy, yet he became a leading exponent of the 19th-century French violin school. Martin Wulfhorst reveals his importance as an instrumentalist, pedagogue and compose

An 1829 drawing of Pierre Baillot by his violin student and French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

‘Illustrious yet unknown’ – what Brigitte François- Sappey wrote in 1978 about Pierre Marie François de Sales Baillot (1771–1842) still holds true today. Most violinists would count Baillot among the main representatives of the French violin school, yet few would know much more about him than that he co-authored the Paris Conservatoire’s famous Méthode de violon (1803) with Rode and Kreutzer and published his own teaching compendium, L’art du violon: Nouvelle méthode (1834). The recent 250th anniversary of his birth offers us a welcome opportunity to re-examine his contributions to the development of violin technique and pedagogy, playing style, performance philosophy and concert formats.

Baillot never achieved the same international fame as Viotti or Rode. One main reason is that a sheer unending series of struggles seemed to prevent him from pursuing the customary career path for a virtuoso and from fully capitalising on his extraordinary talent and skills: ‘I have almost become accustomed to adversity,’ wrote the 26-year-old.

After a sheltered childhood in and around Paris, life struck him a first blow that left deep scars and placed a tremendous responsibility on him. In 1783 his father died (possibly by suicide), a few months after taking his family to Corsica, where he had been appointed deputy attorney general. This left Pierre the only remaining male family member, and therefore immediately financially responsible for his mother, his sister and his aunt (and later three other relatives, as well as his wife and three children).

Fortunately, twelve-year-old Baillot found a benefactor: his father’s superior and friend Bertrand de Boucheporn, who sent him to Rome to be educated together with his own sons, separating him from his family. During his one-year sojourn, Baillot (having previously had lessons in France with two little-known violinists) had the opportunity to study with Francesco Polani (1730–1803), a student of Nardini, and gave his first successful performances in private salons. Yet in 1785 he had to leave this stimulating environment. Boucheporn was appointed commissioner of three administrative districts in southern France and hired Baillot to his staff of secretaries, while also sponsoring him to earn a bachelor of law degree. This arrangement provided some income for young Baillot and his dependants, but it placed him in a region that must have seemed a cultural desert compared with Paris or Rome. Left without a teacher and without access to scores, Baillot pursued autodidactic studies, developing a highly individual playing style and honing his improvisational skills.

When the upheavals and violence of the French Revolution began to spread from Paris to the provinces and Boucheporn’s position was eliminated, Baillot decided to unite with his family. His return to Paris in 1791 initially seemed to open up prospects for a musical career: highly impressed with the 19-year-old’s audition, Viotti offered him a post in the orchestra of the theatre he managed, placing him in the second violin section next to his favourite student, Rode; but after five months Baillot resigned from the orchestra because he could not support his relatives on the meagre salary. He became a civil servant and for almost four decades worked on and off in various branches of the ministry of finance. The tremendous workload severely curtailed his playing and composing: ‘I am at the office from 9.30am to 2pm and in the evening from 5pm to 8pm. In between I have three students [children from wealthy families] who […] break my head and hurt my ears. This dual job exhausts me and bores me even more’ (letter to a friend, 23 April 1793).

The title page of Baillot’s 1834 L’art du violon: Nouvelle méthode

Moreover, in spite of his hard work, Baillot’s economic situation worsened. When he was drafted into the army, in November 1793, his family’s income was reduced to his low soldier’s pay. Repeatedly, he had to borrow money from friends, and after his return to civilian life in May 1795 a famine forced him to take up work in a leather factory under the most dire conditions.

His financial circumstances did not even improve substantially when he began to receive prestigious musical appointments: he became professor at the newly founded Paris Conservatoire in 1795, principal second violin of Napoleon’s private chapel in 1802, first violin of the king’s private quartet in 1820, solo violinist at the opera in 1821, and first violinist of the royal chapel in 1825. But the changing governments of the revolutionary and restoration eras frequently went into arrears with paying civil servants, professors and artists, and after the French Revolution of 1830, Baillot, like many government employees, was dismissed from various positions. Furthermore, many of the concerts he organised and played in Paris, during a three-year stay in Russia (1805–8) and on tours to the north and south of France, England and Switzerland turned out to be financially disastrous if artistically successful. Although he continued to work until the end of his life, he died poor in 1842, shortly before his 71st birthday.

Autograph manuscript of Baillot’s first-movement cadenza to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Baillot gave the work its French premiere with this cadenza on 23 March 1828

BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE DE FRANCE

Right until his last performance, about a year before his death, Baillot continued to impress his contemporaries with his playing. In 1874, the pianist Ferdinand Hiller recalled their joint chamber music performances in 1830–31: ‘Baillot, in spite of his advanced age [he was about 60], still played with the fullest energy and poetry of youth.’ And in a short manuscript essay about Baillot, Louis Philippe Joseph Girod de Vienney, baron de Trémont, an aristocratic amateur who hosted frequent musical soirées, summed up the consensus of many musicians and educated music lovers: ‘Baillot was a talent beyond the public’s comprehension [...] Baillot is one of the greatest violinists who ever lived, as Chopin is one of the greatest pianists.’

Baillot represented the French violin school at its best: he had a beautiful, powerful sound, an impeccable left-hand technique, including unrivalled command of virtuosic double-stops, and a wide range of strokes and bowing nuances. (All this was facilitated by the classic toolset of the modern-day virtuoso: a Tourte bow and a Stradivari violin, of which he owned two – one dating from 1709 which later perished in Jacques Thibaud’s plane crash in 1953; and one dating from 1732 which is now played by Giuliano Carmignola.) According to some fellow musicians and reviewers, Baillot’s playing was marred by harshness of sound, mannerisms and lack of elegance, grace and natural expression. Comments by prominent musicians of the age, however, help us to put such criticisms into perspective.

On 8 March 1831 Paganini joined the audience at one of Baillot’s chamber concerts while the latter’s ensemble was finishing a quintet by Mozart (see programme, page 42). According to the French critic Joseph d’Ortigue (Le balcon de l’Opéra, 1833), ‘He then went up on the stage, and with an air of brotherhood and full of affection which won all hearts, he shook his rival’s hand, saying: “This is admirable! This goes right to my soul.”’ On two visits to Paris, young Mendelssohn had his music performed by Baillot and participated in his chamber music soirées: ‘I could barely follow [my Piano Quartet op.3]; it became crazier, faster, and louder […] Finally, in the finale, all hell broke loose […] Baillot tore into the strings so that I was frightened by my own quartet’; ‘The man played with ravishing beauty […] to have my String Quartet in E flat major […] played by Baillot and his quartet gave me the greatest joy; he tackled it with fire and enthusiasm’ (letters: April 1825 and December 1831).

As these and other, similar testimonies suggest, Baillot was indeed capable of playing with great beauty. But driven by an uncompromising quest for extreme expressive intensity, he occasionally broke with what was generally considered ‘tasteful’. (His mentor Viotti received similar criticism, as have some world-class players of the modern age.) According to Trémont, Baillot’s playing ‘had a severe originality, which the public mistook for wildness and sadness’.

Baillot’s pursuit of powerful expression emanated from a novel, revolutionary philosophy of performing: whereas the virtuosos of the age tended to use compositions as vehicles for dazzling their audiences with their instrumental skills, Baillot was solely led by a deep-seated urge to comprehend and convey the composer’s intentions and the character of each composition. Contemporary critic J.P.B. Nault wrote:

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 the audiences in his performance – 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 practised only a single style his whole life. (Une esquisse de Beaumarchais, et Souvenirs de la musique, 1854)

Martin Wulfhorst’s version of the cadenza, based on the autograph manuscript and a copy by Baillot’s son-in-law Eugène Sauzay

The programme list for Baillot’s 119th chamber music soirée on 8 March 1831 featured quartets by Haydn, Fesca and Beethoven, as well as a quintet by Mozart and the popular slow movement from Baillot’s own Violin Concerto no.7

BRU ZANE MEDIABASE/FONDS BAILLOT

This ground-breaking conception of the performer’s role placed Baillot in a line of development that began with Spohr and led through Vieuxtemps and Joachim right to the modern type of ‘authentic’ or historically informed performance.

Yet although Baillot committed himself to executing the score faithfully and opposed taking undue liberties (advocating the newly invented metronome, for example), he by no means reduced his role to that of a neutral, objective messenger. He defined performing as a highly creative process in its own right, as bringing the composition to life on the basis of his subjective understanding of the composer’s intentions. For him, every single performance, even a subsequent rendition of the same piece, became a unique, highly creative act: according to Trémont, he chose works by Boccherini, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven ‘as suited his momentary disposition, and played them with true inspiration. This resulted in such a variety that even a quartet heard for the tenth time took on a novel character.’ Thus Baillot elevated himself to the same level as the composer: perceptive critics praised the ‘intuition’, ‘inspiration’, ‘poetry’ and ‘genius’ of his performances – naming attributes that the Romantics tended to reserve for composers rather than players. Without exaggeration, one may state that Baillot, in his playing and writings, turned performance into a craft, a science and a true art – an approach that should serve as a model for today’s performers.

Baillot embodied a completely new type of musician: the ‘re-creative artist’ or ‘violinist-interpreter’ (as described, respectively, by Boris Schwarz in 1976 and by Louise Goldberg in her 1991 translation of Baillot’s L’art du violon). Although he played his own violin pieces in public (with great acclaim), he saw his primary role as championing other composers’ music that he considered valuable.

The early 19th century saw the emergence of a canon of classics –a repertoire of masterpieces considered to have timeless value. Baillot played an important role in this development. Together with fellow Paris Conservatoire professors, he endorsed his colleague Jean-Baptiste Cartier’s L’art du violon (1798), a comprehensive anthology of Baroque and Classical violin repertoire. The ‘rare and precious pieces’ in this collection probably included contributions from Baillot, which in turn may have stemmed from the collection of Baroque violin music that he found in 1795 while serving in the army. These were works by the same composers that Baillot later featured in the first tier of repertoire he considered essential for his students: Bach, Corelli, Geminiani, Leclair, Locatelli, Pugnani and Tartini. The second tier of repertoire comprised ‘solos’, that is, concertos and other violin pieces, by Kreutzer, Rode and Viotti. The third, highest category consisted of ‘chamber music works by Handel, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven’ (letter to Cherubini, 21 December 1838). In fact, Baillot became one of the most significant and influential interpreters of the Viennese quartet, in particular those of Beethoven, even his late quartets – which he promoted, along with his violin sonatas, romances and Violin Concerto.

The logical conclusion to be drawn from Baillot’s hierarchy of genres was that the string quartet, as the most sublime species, required and deserved its own, perfectly tailored performance venue. Not surprisingly, he played a crucial role in creating the modern type of chamber music or quartet concert. This contrasted with the fashionable music parties of the era, featuring a variety of instrumental and vocal genres and built on joint participation of professionals and amateurs.

The more than 150 chamber music performances Baillot gave with his ensemble between 1814 and 1841 were meticulously planned and organised, as documented in copious lists of audience members, detailed programmes, invitations for subscribers, tickets and newspaper reviews. Each programme was centred on three quartets or quintets, one each by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven; these were usually framed by a work by another, often earlier, composer (for example Boccherini) and a short piece by Baillot as a built-in encore. To the circle of ‘fanatical supporters’, attendance at his performances seemed not only an elite educational and even quasi-religious experience but also, seemingly paradoxically, a manifestation of social change: ‘It is, so to speak, a conversation in a small circle where all social differences disappear,’ wrote d’Ortigue.

BAILLOT PLAYED A CRUCIAL ROLE IN CREATING THE MODERN TYPE OF CHAMBER MUSIC OR QUA RTET CONCERT

The slow movement opening of Baillot’s Violin Concerto no.8 disproves the often-repeated criticism that he was incapable of writing beautiful, naturally flowing melodies

Sharing his passion for the great masterpieces and grooming players as promoters of this repertoire became Baillot’s most important mission and perhaps his greatest achievement. He taught two generations of young musicians, both privately and, together with several teaching assistants (répétiteurs), at the Paris Conservatoire.

The roster of his more than 150 students included children from affluent families, dedicated and accomplished amateurs (most famously, the painter Ingres), many orchestral players and teachers who formed the pillars of French musical life but worked largely in obscurity, and a number of prominent musicians. Seminal figures who had lessons with Baillot include Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga, Charles-Auguste de Bériot, Charles Dancla, Bernhard Molique, Charles Eugène Sauzay, Adolph Wiele and possibly Édouard Lalo. Privately and at the conservatoire (until in 1822 it limited access to French citizens only), Baillot taught talented foreigners who spread his playing style, performance philosophy and repertoire all over Europe. And against public resistance, he included women in his classes. Félicité Lebrun (duchesse de Laviano) and Nina Mosso (later Moreau) received accolades for their playing and helped shape Parisian musical life by organising private concerts and teaching, respectively.

The crowning achievement of Baillot’s pedagogical zeal was his L’art du violon. It is far more than a guide to advanced violin technique – it is a 290-page compendium of practising material and strategies, performance-practice conventions, stylistic principles, pedagogical maxims and career tips. Technique is always in the service of expression, following Baillot’s belief that, ‘One does not play the violin only with one’s fingers but with one’s soul’ (letter to his friend and pupil Francis Montbeillard, 9 July 1797).

Measured against the dimensions of this treatise (and against the large volume of Baillot’s other published and unpublished writings), his compositional oeuvre, spanning more than four decades and mostly limited to works for his instrument, seems modest in size. It comprises nine violin concertos, one symphonie concertante for two violins, three quartets, thirty string trios and duets, one violin sonata, twenty-seven variation works (airs variés), two etude collections, numerous cadenzas, and various works for social occasions.

Whereas many contemporaries praised the originality and beauty of Baillot’s music, the verdict of posterity has been damning. His works have completely disappeared from the concert and teaching repertoire – we do not even have a single modern edition – and only three short pieces are available on streaming platforms or have ever featured on CD. True, Baillot’s concertos probably do not quite match the best concertos of Viotti, Rode or Spohr in musical value, but they certainly do not deserve complete oblivion. The heroic, cantabile style of the French violin school seems best represented in Concertos nos.1 and 7–9, and in particular in the romance-style slow movements of nos. 6–8. Baillot was probably at his best in his airs variés. As a master of the art of variation and improvisation he found highly creative ways to treat popular themes such as Handel’s ‘Harmonious Blacksmith’ or the Russian folk song best known as Beautiful Minka. In arrangements for violin and piano his most beautiful airs variés might serve as valuable additions to the recital and teaching repertoire.

The title page of Baillot’s Violin Concerto no.8

We must hope that in the years to come we will see more performances and recordings of Baillot’s works as well as substantial studies based on the copious sources recently digitised. Most likely they will confirm what is already evident, namely that Baillot was one of the most significant and fascinating figures in the history of 19th-century violin playing, performance and pedagogy.

The author thanks Peter Corina, Barbara Danner, François-Pierre Goy, Étienne Jardin, Frédéric de La Grandville, Anne-Charlotte Rémond and Bruce Schueneman for providing valuable material; for further information see baillot.org