Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/478

 who in 1824-30 led a noted quartet ('Die Gebrüder Herrmann') which imitated the Schuppanzigh and Moralt quartets in touring through Germany, France, Belgium and England with much acceptance, and who from 1831 was conductor and teacher in Manchester and from 1838 at Liverpool, writing considerable instrumental music and an opera.

A notable Swedish violinist was Johann Friedrich Berwald (d. 1861), pupil of Vogler, whose extraordinary precocity in playing and composing made him known throughout northern Europe before he was 10 (1798), and who settled in 1816 at Stockholm, where from 1834 he was royal choirmaster, composing concertos, quartets, symphonies, etc.

From the Italian group—Giuseppe Maria Festa (d. 1839), born in 1771 near Naples and first trained there, developing into an able player and a remarkable conductor, working first throughout Italy, from 1802 at the Paris Opéra and from 1805 at Naples, and writing quartets, duos, etc.; Pietro Rovelli (d. 1838), pupil of his grandfather and of Kreutzer, who became famous from about 1810 at Paris, Weimar, Munich and Vienna, and from 1819 was choirmaster and concertmaster at Bergamo, worthily upholding the Viotti traditions and training good pupils; and Carlo Bignami (d. 1848), eminent from about 1825 as soloist and conductor, from 1837 bringing the Cremona orchestra to striking perfection and winning the highest commendation from Paganini.

Here should be named some virtuosi on other stringed instruments, such as the viola-player Franz Weiss (d. 1830), in the Rasumowsky and Schuppanzigh quartets at Vienna; many 'cello-players, like Bernhard Romberg (d. 1841), considered the first of the German 'cellists of the day, who made important extensions in technique and wrote striking concertos (see sec. 149); Friedrich Dotzauer (d. 1860), in the Dresden orchestra in 1811-52 and a noted teacher; Nicolas Joseph Platel (d. 1835), from 1813 at Antwerp and from 1824 at Brussels; Charles Nicolas Baudiot (d. 1849), from 1802 professor in the Paris Conservatoire and in the court-orchestra, the author of two methods; George Onslow (d. 1852), a wealthy nobleman, trained first as a pianist, but later enthusiastic over chamber music, of which he wrote an enormous amount with skill and elegance; the brothers Wilhorski (d. 1863, '56), prominent in Russia; Joseph Merk (d. 1852), from 1818 active at Vienna; and the contrabassist Wenzel Hause, teacher at Prague and the author of fine studies and a method (1828).

182. Other Instrumental Music.—The opening period of the century was marked by an immense interest, particularly at Paris, in the whole range of instrumental music. This is illustrated not only by the attention to the piano and the violin as the chief artistic implements, but by parallel attention to several of the wind instruments of the orchestra, and to the harp and the guitar as modern successors of the lyre and the lute. In every case efforts were made to better the mechanism of the instrument itself, so as to improve its quality or extend its possi