Amico The Life of Giovanni Battista Viotti

Description

hardcover This is the first full-length biography in English of Giovanni Battista

Viotti , one of the great violinist-composers in the history of

music, and arguably the most influential violinist who ever lived. This study

is based on extensive documentary research, much of it here revealed for the

first Battista Viotti was unquestionably the most influential

violinist of his time, and his style continues to pervade to the present day.

The last great representative of the Italian tradition that Corelli began,

Viotti is often considered the founder of the modern or 19th-century French

school of violin playing. In Amico: The Life of Giovanni Battista Viotti,

author Warwick Lister provides the first complete biography in English of

this continuously

significant violinist. Much of the documentary material Lister cites is

previously unknown or not translated. Lister’s biography takes the reader on

a fascinating journey over the European continent and into the musical

culture of the late 18th century. Born one year prior to Mozart and dying

three years before

Beethoven’s death, Viotti rose from the humble origins of a blacksmith’s son

in a village near Turin, Italy, to international fame. His multifarious

career as a concert performer, composer, teacher, opera theater director, and

impresario was played out against the backdrop of a dramatically changing

world – he served as a court musician for no less a figure than Marie

Antoinette before founding an opera house in Paris. Viotti also knew tragedy

as well as success: he was forced to flee the

French Revolution, he was exiled from England for an extended period based on

suspicions of certain Jacobin tendencies, his attempt to establish himself in

business met with failure, and he died heavily in debt. Lister concludes

Amico by coming to grips with the very things that account for Viotti’s

greatness and influence: the technical aspects of his violin playing and

compositions. With its extensive documentary research and the inclusion of

translations of various archival documents, this is the essential

English-language biography of Viotti, a significant addition to the libraries

of students and scholars of 18th and early 19th century music, as well as

violin performers, students, and instructors.