large construction elsewhere accepted. But in the violin family there was no such advance in the instruments themselves as in the case of the piano. The one decided mechanical gain was the perfecting of the bow by Tourte (see sec. 149). The field for violin music, however, was constantly broadened by the rise of interest in the orchestral and chamber concert as a social institution.
The significant link between the older and newer violinism was the veteran Viotti (see sec. 149), whose style rested upon the Corelli tradition, and whose long artistic life brought him into touch with both the Mozart and the Beethoven periods. He not only clung to the broad style of playing, but is notable as the one to apply to the violin-concerto the full system of sonata-form and the new resources of orchestration. Through his pupils and his leadership of the Paris Opéra he exerted a large influence upon the brilliant and energetic French group of players. Valuable progress was still more stimulated by the genius of Spohr, who held the purest technical traditions with a greater general musicianship, and who fully maintained the excellence of the Mannheim and other German groups. Another line of development was strikingly illustrated by Paganini, the whimsical, but immensely gifted 'wizard of the bow.' He represented a growing class of players whose supreme aim was to astonish and emotionalize audiences. This aim is always liable to descend into charlatanism, but often has value in advancing the standards of dexterity and the apparatus of effect.
Among the older violinists still at work about 1800 and afterward, besides
Viotti (d. 1824), Kreutzer (d. 1831) and others already mentioned, were
Isidore Berthaume (d. 1802), a Parisian who when a boy (1761) appeared at
the Concerts spirituels, later (1783) became their conductor and went to
Russia in 1791; Pierre Lahoussaye (d. 1818), from 1779 also active at Paris,
finally professor in the Conservatoire; the brothers Johann Friedrich Eck (d.
l809?) and Franz Eck (d. 1804), both associated chiefly with Munich; and
Alessandro Rolla (d. 1841), from 1782 at Parma and from 1802 a well-known
conductor and teacher at Milan.
Andreas Romberg (d. 1821), though not specially influential, deserves mention for his industrious activity. Born in 1767, at 7 he was heard in public and joined his cousin Bernhard (see below) in varied travel until after 1800. From 1795 he knew Haydn and Beethoven at Vienna. From 1801 he taught at Hamburg and in 1815 succeeded Spohr at Gotha. Besides stage-works (from 1790), excellent secular choral pieces, like Das Lied von der Glocke and other poems by Schiller, and much sacred music, he wrote 10 symphonies, over
