Alexander Batta

Lithograph by the young Batta on the flyleaf of the contemporary biography by Eyma / de Lucy, Paris 1840.

Portrait of Battas by Ernest Meissonier , 1859.

Petrus Alexander Batta (born July 9, 1816 in Maastricht , † October 8, 1902 in Versailles ), known under the name Alexander Batta or French Alexandre Batta , was a violoncello virtuoso and composer who mainly worked in Paris.

Life

Alexander Batta was the eldest of three sons of the cellist and music teacher Pierre Batta (1793–1876) and his wife Isabella Laguesse († 1851). All three brothers became musicians: Alexander Batta cellist, Jean-Laurent Batta (1817–1880) pianist and Joseph Batta (1819 or 1820–1892) violinist. In 1821 the family moved to Brussels, where Pierre Batta worked as a solfège teacher at the Conservatory . There Alexander Batta also received his training as a cellist with Nicolas-Joseph Platel . According to a contemporary biography, Batta is said to have given his first public concerts at the age of eleven; at the age of twelve he had made concert tours through the cities of Belgium and Holland with his two younger brothers.

Batta moved to Paris in 1835. His breakthrough there was in January / February 1837 with a series of four concerts with Franz Liszt (piano) and Chrétien Urhan (violin), including chamber music works by Ludwig van Beethoven . He established himself as a cello virtuoso in Paris and soon created a large circle of friends and admirers, including Liszt, among others, the composers Hector Berlioz , Giacomo Meyerbeer , Gioacchino Rossini , Charles Gounod and Gaetano Donizetti , the writers Honoré de Balzac , Eugène Sue , Alexandre Dumas the Elder and Alexandre Dumas the Younger as well as the painters Ernest Meissonier , Eugène Delacroix and Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot belonged.

Batta played in the most prestigious salons, such as Delphine de Girardin and Pierre-Antoine Berryer , and went on numerous concert tours throughout Europe. His own preference was the great French and Italian opera. He showed particular admiration for the operas by Vincenzo Bellini and especially for the tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini , whose singing style he adapted as a model for his cello playing. Batta also wrote a number of compositions, mostly for his instrument with piano accompaniment, and transcribed other musical works for the cello. Often they were paraphrases or fantasies about opera melodies.

In the 1870s Batta retired from musical life and took up residence in Versailles , where he occasionally wrote music reviews for a local paper. Among other things, he was known there as an art collector who owned oil paintings and graphics by Delacroix and Corot, among others, often with a personal dedication. After his death, his collection was auctioned. Batta bequeathed to the city of Maastricht, among other things, his portrait made by Jakob Josef Eeckhout (today in the Bonnefanten Museum ) as well as a sum of money to support talented musicians at the city's music school. The “legaat Batta” was awarded only four times, the last time in 1911, for reasons that have not yet been clarified.

The musician was married to Clémentine Batta (née O'Mahony; 1819–1880), also a musician who herself published a number of compositions for piano.

The cellist

Performances and repertoire

Batta limited himself essentially to chamber music . In this field he primarily played piano trios , cello sonatas and similar forms in which the cello emerges as a soloist.

The four chamber music soirées with Franz Liszt and Chrétien Urhan in January and February 1837 in the Salle Érard , which focused on Beethoven's works, had an enormous success that continued to have an effect for decades . Batta played the cello part in the cello sonata in A major op. 69 , the trios op. 70.1 in D major (“Ghost Trio”) and op. 70.2 in E flat major, and in particular op. 97 in B flat major (“ Archduke Trio " ). These performances received many reviews at home and abroad, often in exuberant tones, and found a large audience despite high admission prices. The fourth soiree was attended by no less than 900 people.

Batta later often performed with his brother Laurent on the piano, occasionally with Joseph Batta, but mostly with François Seghers on the violin. In 1863 he formed a trio with Rosa Escudier-Kastner (piano) and Henri Vieuxtemps (violin). In addition to the Beethoven trios, the repertoire also included technically demanding works by cellist Bernhard Romberg and trios by contemporary composers such as Johann Peter Pixis and Napoléon-Henri Reber . Above all, Batta played his own compositions and transcriptions for cello, etc. a. of Schubert songs, fantasies about well-known opera melodies and the like, especially at his annual concerts in the Salle Érard. He was occasionally reproached for this: he no longer dared to approach more difficult works.

Batta's reputation was based not only on such public appearances in concert halls. He was one of those artists who paid at least the same attention to private appearances, often in the artist's apartments, but also in well-known salons of better society. There are a number of very graphic and impressive reports about these more intimate appearances. Hector Berlioz wrote in a correspondent's report for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 1841:

“The Batta matinees bring together a large number of distinguished people, writers, artists, philosophers, and military personnel! One climbs up on the table, sits under the piano and almost does not give the player enough space to move freely. Beethoven and his divine trios, Schubert and his songs rule exclusively. The admirable cellist Batta is excellently accompanied by his brother Laurent. [...] A piece entitled: les Accords , composed by A. Batta, has caused a sensation. It is from the Etudes dramatiques , which the composer Mr. Liszt dedicated. "

The English author and critic Henry Fothergill Chorley also described such a matinee in his book Music and Manners in France and Germany , published in 1841 :

“I haven't forgotten the pretty little suite on the third floor of Rue Laffitte 42, where I heard the posthumous Beethoven quartets unraveled by an ensemble directed by Monsieur Seghers, with Monsieur Alexandre Batta as cellist, and with such conscientiousness and depth of feeling that I have come much further than ever in understanding this difficult music. The matinees at which these works were played were charming. The audience was both mixed and select: the breathtaking interest provided a different kind of silence than the forced attention of the Conservatoire audience [at the symphonic Beethoven concerts]. "

Chorley noted that the English audience had never adequately experienced Batta's remarkable abilities in this "highest level of music" (that is, classical chamber music).

Overall assessments of style

There are no sound recordings of Batta's cello playing, since his active time long before the invention of the first sound reproduction equipment. However, there is a large number of reviews, critiques, and summary reviews.

His vocal, beautiful sound, soulful and soulful tone, which is similar to the human voice, was consistently described as Batta's special quality. As an "impressive and impressive melodist" he is unsurpassed. Strength, bravado, energy and also technical brilliance should not have been as much in the foreground with him as with his contemporary Adrien-François Servais . In 1845 , Hector Berlioz praised the “both simple and expressive style of his cantilenas ”. Batta's violoncello breathes “the true sounds of the human voice”. However, he had an unpleasant impression of Batta's pizzicato , the plucking of the strings had resulted in a "unique and grotesque noise" that had "nothing musical". Charles Eichler wrote in Robert Schumann's Neue Zeitschrift für Musik that Batta was “a true singer on his instrument” and that what distinguishes him is “a deep, true feeling”. Above all , he has acquired some of the singing of Giovanni Battista Rubini , Tamburini and Grisi for his cello playing.

In the satirical story Les amours de deux bêtes in 1842 , Honoré de Balzac used Batta's cello playing as a proverbial comparison for directly addressing the most delicate emotions, using the musical term of son filé ( something like : "spun sound") that was common at the time . He spoke of the "sons filés of Batta's violoncello, when Batta paints love and thus arouses the most ethereal dreams in the touched women - which an old sniff of tobacco often disturbs (out!)". The Son filé was how David Watkin holds in an essay on contemporary performance practice of Beethoven's chamber music for cello, one of sustained sound (or a legato played tone sequence) in singers and strings, in the case of the strings on one long bow stroke, with a Swelling and swelling ( Messa di voce ) and was recommended in all textbooks of the time as an exercise, but sometimes also as a strong means of expression. This was particularly true of the then very influential method of the Paris Conservatory, which even stated that a tone swelled and swelled several times within a bow stroke (called "ondulé").

The well-known music critic François-Joseph Fétis wrote in his biography universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique 1868 very critically about Batta. He had borrowed a certain manner from Rubini: “The most striking of his (Rubinis) flaws was a formulaic alternation of forte and piano, which was repeated incessantly, regardless of the character of the phrase sung. This seductive means never failed to serve its purpose with the dilettanti . Batta realized that he could apply this to the cello, which is similar in register and timbre to the tenor voice. He was also not mistaken about the result for his reputation and his wallet. “This manner had a negative effect on his technical skills. That is a shame, because he naturally had a good musical feeling and learned solid basics from Platel; "He had a remarkable talent in terms of precision and feeling for classical quartet and quintet music." It literally means: "dans la musique classique du quatuor et du quintette", an expression that was generally used in Paris at the time for the serious Chamber music was used. Heinrich Heine expressed himself mockingly in his reports on the “Musical Season in Paris” in 1841: When Batta came to Paris, “especially the ladies with his boyish youth” were delighted. “He was a dear child and cried like a child on his viola [sic!]. Although he has now become a big boy, he can never leave the sweet habit of grinning ... "

Opinions were divided on Batta's cello playing. A particularly negative account, which takes up all common pairs of opposites and supplements them with gender stereotypes, can be found in the Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIXe siècle by Larousse (1867): “He has given a large number of concerts, always with great interest from amateurs were followed because they admired the grace, the feeling and the ease of his playing ... Serious art judges criticize Batta for his preference for small salon compositions, his constant switching from forte to piano, his effeminate playing, his musical affectations and tastelessness, and finally the lack of Masculinity in bowing. ... He's a musician for women. "

The instrument

From 1837 Batta played on a cello made by Stradivari in 1714 , which he had acquired in Paris. He sold it in 1893, and via a few stops in 1903 it came to Gregor Piatigorsky , who used it for a lifetime. The instrument known as the Batta Piatigorsky violoncello is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

During the time of Batta, the spike gradually gained acceptance, with which the instrument could be supported on the ground so that the player no longer had to clamp it between the legs. Batta does not seem to have adopted this innovation, which favored virtuosity. In the portrait of Meissonier he plays his cello in the traditional position.

The composer

In the 19th century, compositions for solo cello mostly came from cellists and were primarily intended as practice pieces or for one's own performance. However, there were a large number of arrangements and transcriptions for the instrument, especially fantasies on popular themes from the world of opera, which, however, rarely remained attractive over long periods of time. Batta was no exception. A large part of his compositional work consisted of fantasies about motifs from popular operas by Bellini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer, Rossini and Verdi.

His transcriptions of Schubert songs for cello, which he is said to have performed "inimitably", are emphasized several times in the literature. An obituary from October 1902 states that cellists (“an earlier generation”) would have liked to play his elegy Souvenir de Dom Sébastien (based on Donizetti's opera Dom Sébastien ), but the piece is now considered old-fashioned.

Honors and afterlife

Batta received a number of state and municipal honors. The King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg William III. appointed him "First Cellist" of the King and awarded him the Order of the Oak Crown with the rank of commander. In 1875 he received the title of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor . In 1892, while he was still alive, the city of Maastricht named a street in the new station district after him, the Alexander Battalaan.

Batta was almost forgotten for a long time, his compositions, which he had mostly written for himself, were no longer performed. In 2015, however, a Batta & Co. festival was held in Maastricht at the Museum aan het Vrijthof , which was dedicated to the “Maastricht-Paris Connection”, ie musicians who had grown up in Maastricht and had enjoyed success in Paris. Doris Hochscheid (cello) and Frans van Ruth (piano) played pieces by Batta, Joseph Hollman , Andrée Bonhomme , Émile Wesly and others. Batta's opera fantasies about Robert le diable , Il trovatore and Guillaume Tell were performed; the former two were also recorded on CD.

outer appearance

During his great successes after arriving in Paris, Batta is described as a young man of medium height, with long, curly, blond hair, pale complexion and melancholy blue eyes. He was considered a handsome boy who attracted the women of society not only through his talent, but also through his person.

Compositions, arrangements and transcriptions (selection)

• La Romanesca. Fameux air de danse de la fin du 16e siècle. Arrangé pour violoncelle with accompagnement de deux violons, alto, basse et guitarre (ou pianoforte). Cotelle, Paris 1838. Arrangement of a Romanesca for cello with accompaniment (either violin, viola and double bass with guitar or piano).
• Duo pour piano et violoncelle sur Robert le Diable (with Julius Benedict ). Schott, Mainz 1840. Duo for piano and violoncello on motifs from the opera Robert le diable by Giacomo Meyerbeer .
• Souvenir de Dom Sébastien . Élégie pour violoncell et pianoforte. Schott, Mainz 1847.
• Six songs by François Schubert, transcrites pour violoncelle avec accompagnement de piano. Spina, Vienna 1855. Transcriptions of Schubert songs for violoncello with piano accompaniment: The girl's lament , Ellen's third song (better known as "Ave Maria"), serenade (from the swan song ), the expectation , greetings to me . Finally, Adieu is included, the song is not by Schubert, but by August Heinrich von Weyrauch, but was long ascribed to Schubert.
• Il Trovatore, Opera de Verdi. Fantaisie pour violoncelle with accompagnement de piano . Escudier, Paris 1863. Fantasy on themes from the opera Il trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi for violoncello with piano accompaniment.
• Guillaume Tell. Morceau de concert pour trois violoncelles avec accompagnement de piano . Grus, Paris 1864. Concert piece for three cellos with piano accompaniment based on motifs from the opera Guillaume Tell by Gioachino Rossini .
• Cantilène for violoncello and piano . Durand & Fils, Paris 1894. Score online on Gallica .

literature

• Xavier Eyma / Arthur de Lucy: Écrivains et artistes vivants français et étrangers. Biographies with portraits . Première livraison: instrumentalists. Alexandre Batta. Bureau du journal Outre-Mer, Paris 1840. Online on Gallica
• François-Joseph Fétis : Batta (Alexandre). In: Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique . Deuxième édition, Tome 1, Firmin Didot, Paris 1868, pp. 270-271.
• Frans Sagers: Alexander Batta. In: Limburg's Jaarboek , 8 (1902), pp. 49-58.
• AJA Flament: Batta (Petrus Alexander). In: Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek , Deel 2, Leiden 1912, p. 103, online
• Frans van Ruth: Biography of Batta in the booklet of the CD Doris Hochscheid / Frans van Ruth: Dutch Cello Sonatas, vol. 7: The Maastricht-Paris Connection , MDG, 2015.

Web links

• Jo Boetsen: Alexander Batta: bij leven al tot straat seinven . Published online on the website of the Regionaal Historisches Centrum Limburg .
• Biography on the website http://cellosonate.nl
• Sheet music by Alexander Batta in the International Music Score Library Project

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Life data of the brothers according to Sagers: Alexander Batta , 1902. According to the Maastricht birth register, Joseph was born in 1819 ( online ); Sagers states 1820, as does Flament in the Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek .
2. ↑ Eyma / de Lucy: Écrivains et artistes vivants français et étrangers , pp. 6 and 10.
3. ↑ Bibliographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique , Supplement 1, Firmin-Didot, Paris 1878–1880, entry Batta (Alexandre) , p. 53.
4. ↑ See the auction catalog with a listing of all objects, online on Gallica .
5. ↑ Hans van Dijk: Henri Hermans (1883-1947) , Uitgeverij Verloren, Hilversum, p. 43; See also the relevant documents in the archive of the Regionaal Historisch Centrum Limburg, details online .
6. ↑ Gil Blas, January 20, 1880, p. 1, online on Gallica; Jules Lecomte: Courrier de Paris, in: Le Monde Illustré of March 10, 1860, p. 162, online on Gallica.
7. ↑ See Joël-Marie Fauquet: Les sociétés de musique de chambre à Paris de la restauration à 1870 . Aux amateurs de livres, Paris 1986, p. 48 and especially 182, where it is noted that the magazine La France Musicale remembered these concerts in 1862 on the occasion of a new trio concert with Batta.
8. ^ Joël-Marie Fauquet: Les sociétés de musique de chambre à Paris de la restauration à 1870 . Aux amateurs de livres, Paris 1986, p. 225, based on information from Ernest Legouvé .
9. ^ Joël-Marie Fauquet: Les sociétés de musique de chambre à Paris de la restauration à 1870 . Aux amateurs de livres, Paris 1986, pp. 213f.
10. ^ Joël-Marie Fauquet: Les sociétés de musique de chambre à Paris de la restauration à 1870 . Aux amateurs de livres, Paris 1986, p. 32.
11. ^ Hector Berlioz: Mitteilungen aus Paris, in: NZfM, Jg. 14 (1841), No. 19 (March 5), pp. 76-77, there (p. 77) under "Concerte".
12. ^ Henry Fothergill Chorley: Music and Manners in France and Germany. Series of traveling sketches of art and society . Longman etc., London 1841. Vol. II, p. 71 (footnote). English wording: “I have not forgot the pretty little suite of apartments, au quatrième , No. 42. Rue Lafitte [sic!], Where I heard the posthumous quartetts of Beethoven disentangled by a party led by M. Seghers, and to which M. Alexandre Batta is violoncellist, with a conscientiousness and depth of feeling that brought me far nearer an understanding of that difficult music than I had ever come before. The matines at which these works were played were charming. The audience was at once miscellaneous and select: the breathless interest there being silence of a quality different from the forced attention of the Conservatoire audience. M. Batta, however, (whose remarkable power in this highest order of music has been never properly exhibited to the English public,) ... "
13. ^ H. Blanchard: Matinées et soirées musicales, in: Revue et Gazette musicale , Vol. 10 (1843), No. 18 (April 30), p. 149f, here: p. 150, online .
14. ^ Hector Berlioz: Feuilleton du Journal des Débats , May 17, 1845. Online . French original: “Alexandre Batta a produit un très grand effet par le style à la fois simple et expressif de ses cantilènes; son violoncelle exhalait de véritables sons de voix humaine, et l'émotion était générale. Mais pourquoi at-il fait à plusieurs reprises un bruit singulier et grotesque en arrachant, sous prétexte de pizzicato, les cordes de son instrument? Il n'ignore pas que les cordes ainsi pincées rendent un son fort désagréable et qui n'a rien de musical ... "
15. ^ Charles Eichler: The Belgian virtuoso school. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik , Volume 8, No. 17, February 27, 1838, p. 66.
16. ^ Honoré de Balzac: Les amours de deux bêtes . In: ders .: Scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux , Hetzel, Paris 1842, pp. 241–280, here: p. 247. French original: “… aux sons filés du violoncelle de Batta, quand Batta peint l ' amour et en rappelle les rêveries les plus éthérées aux femmes attendries que souvent un vieux prizeur trouble en se mouchant (a la porte!). "
17. ^ David Watkin: Beethoven's sonatas for piano and cello: aspects of technique and performance. In: Robin Stowell (ed.): Performing Beethoven , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1994, pp. 89–116, here: p. 108. Watkin quotes, among others, Baillot / Levasseur / Catel / Baudiot: Méthode de violoncelle et basse d ' accompagnement , Paris 1804, pp. 133f.
18. ^ Biography universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique . Deuxième édition, Tome 1, Firmin Didot, Paris 1868, p. 271.
19. ^ Joël-Marie Fauquet: Les sociétés de musique de chambre à Paris de la restauration à 1870 . Aux amateurs de livres, Paris 1986, p. 18.
20. ^ Heinrich Heine: Musical season in Paris. Supplement to Allgemeine Zeitung , Nro. 119, April 29, 1841, p. 946, online .
21. ^ Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIXe siècle , Larousse, Paris 1867, Tôme 2, p. 373, online .
22. ↑ See the illustration and description on the Metropolitan Museum of Art website , online .
23. ↑ Booklet of the CD Doris Hochscheid / Frans van Ruth: Dutch Cello Sonatas, vol. 7: The Maastricht-Paris Connection , MDG, 2015.
24. ^ New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, Macmillan, New York 1984, Volume 3, pp. 812-813.
25. ↑ so by Flament in the Nieuw Nederlandsch Biografisch Woordenboek , 1912
26. ^ Sagers: Alexander Batta, 1902.
27. ↑ Het nieuws van den dag. Kleine courant, October 14, 1902.
28. ↑ Bibliographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique , Supplement 1, Firmin-Didot, Paris 1878–1880, entry Batta (Alexandre) , p. 53.
29. ↑ See the festival website: http://www.theateraanhetvrijthof.nl/algemeen/festival-batta-co/
30. ↑ Eyma / de Lucie: Écrivains et artistes vivants français et étrangers , p. 1.
31. ^ Fétis: Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique , p. 271; Heine: Musical season in Paris, p. 946.