Henri Vieuxtemps

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Henri Vieuxtemps, lithograph by Joseph Kriehuber, 1842

Henri Vieuxtemps (born February 17, 1820 in Verviers , † June 6, 1881 in Mustapha Supérieur , a suburb of Algiers ) was a Belgian composer and one of the most important violinists of the 19th century.

Life

Portrait of Henri Vieuxtemp's youth; Lithograph by Joseph Kriehuber , 1834

Henri Vieuxtemps had two brothers who were also musical. He received his first lessons from his father, a violinist and amateur violin maker. When he noticed the talent of his son Henri, he transferred the lessons to the violinist Joseph Lecloux-Dejonc (1798-1850), who worked in Verviers . At the age of six, Vieuxtemps made his first public appearance in his hometown with Pierre Rode's 5th Violin Concerto . In the following years he gave further concerts in several neighboring cities.

From 1829 to 1831 he studied with Charles-Auguste de Bériot at the Brussels Conservatory . After completing his studies, he moved to Paris with his teacher de Bériot. The unrest during the reintroduction of the monarchy in France, but also the wedding of his friend de Bériot, brought him back to Brussels. There he perfected his violin technique.

In 1833 he went on his second art trip to Germany, where he made friends with Robert Schumann and Louis Spohr , who compared him to Niccolò Paganini . In the same year he appeared in public for the first time in front of the German audience in the Hotel Weidenbusch in Frankfurt am Main with the 7th concert by Rode, with Air varié by de Beriot and variations by Mayseder . In the winter of 1835/1836 he studied counterpoint with Simon Sechter in Vienna , then composition with Anton Reicha in Paris. His first composition came to be known as Violin Concerto No. 2. In 1837 he performed his Concerto No. 1 in St. Petersburg with great enthusiasm and recognition from the public. Living in Paris, he devoted himself to composing other works with great success.

Vieuxtemps was accepted into the Masonic lodge Les Vrais Amis de l'Union et du Progrès réunis in Brussels on August 26, 1841 . He later became an affiliate of the Amis Philanthropes Lodge in Brussels .

In 1843 he set out on a tour of the New World for the first time. The Viennese pianist Josephine Eder (1815–1868) accompanied him on this journey. Only after returning home in 1844 did she become his wife, and they married in Frankfurt am Main . During their joint concerts in America, she appeared as his sister and was therefore announced as "Josephine Vieuxtemps": "His sister, a beautiful blonde who doesn't look like him at all, goes on tour with him and accompanies him on the piano", so wrote a New York daily newspaper in 1844. Both artists evidently feared that the “prudish” Americans would be less able to attend the concerts of an unmarried couple or not at all. After spending December 1843 with concerts in Boston, New York and other cities in the north of the Union, he set out south in early January 1844. In New Orleans he made his debut on January 17, 1844; two months later he gave his farewell concert in this city - after concerts in Vera Cruz and other Mexican cities as well as Havana (February and March 1844) - on March 29, 1844 in the south of the Union. Then he drove up the Mississippi and Ohio rivers north again, where he gave more concerts. In June 1844 he arrived back in Europe, “enriched by a wealth of experience”, as he wrote in his autobiography.

Place Vieuxtemps in Verviers

In 1846 he moved to St. Petersburg for six years, as court musician to Tsar Nicholas I and as a soloist at the Imperial Theater in St. Petersburg. In this position he composed four other violin concertos. Vieuxtemps was the founder of the St. Petersburg violin school at the local conservatory.

After he left Russia in 1852, he returned to his work as a traveling violin virtuoso. Together with the Russian pianist Anton Rubinstein (1829–1894) he played Beethoven's violin sonatas and performed at numerous concerts in Paris. From May 1855 to autumn 1864 he lived with his wife Josephine Eder and their two children Julie (* 1846) and Maximilian (* 1848) on his "Gut im Hayn" in Dreieichenhain near Frankfurt am Main. Because of the deteriorating political situation in Germany, he moved to Frankfurt for three years at the end of 1864, then moved to Paris, where he further expanded his international career. On June 20, 1868, his wife died of cholera in La Celle St. Cloud near Paris .

In 1871 he transferred his violin class to Henryk Wieniawski , returned to Brussels and once again took over the professorship at the Brussels Conservatory. His most renowned student was Eugène Ysaÿe .

In 1873, after a stroke, he suffered from paralysis on the left side of his body, which made it impossible for him to continue playing the violin. From then on he lived mostly in seclusion in Paris. From 1879 he spent the last years of his life in a sanatorium near Algiers (Mustapha Supérieur), which was run by his son-in-law Eduard Landowski. He continued his compositional work tirelessly, however bitter about having to have his music performed by other soloists.

Henri Vieuxtemps and Eugène Ysayë can be described as the founders of the Franco-Belgian violin school, some of which is still maintained today at the Conservatories of Liège, Brussels and Paris.

His hometown Verviers erected a monument to him in 1898 and named the site after him. On October 8, 2014, an asteroid was named after him: (40007) Vieuxtemps .

"Prix Henri Vieuxtemps"

In 1920 Queen Elisabeth of Belgium donated the “Prix de la Reine” on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Vieuxtemps. The first prize winner was the violinist Alfred Dubois (1898–1949). From 1923 it was awarded as part of the national violin competition "Prix Henri Vieuxtemps", which took place every two years in Verviers. Since the 20th competition in 1966, the award of the prize to young up-and-coming artists has only taken place every four years.

Works (selection)

  • 7 violin concerts
    • No. 1 in E major, Op. 10
    • No. 2 in F sharp minor op.19
    • No. 3 in A major op.25
    • No. 4 in D minor, Op. 31
    • No. 5 in A minor, Op. 37
    • No. 6 in G major op.47
    • No. 7 in A minor, Op. 49
  • 2 violoncello concerts
  • Fantasia appassionata op.35
  • Ballade et Polonaise op.38
  • Fantaisie- Capriccio for violin and orchestra
  • Caprice-homage à Paganini op.9
  • Sonata op.12
  • Viola Sonata in B flat major, Op. 36
  • 3 cadences for the Beethoven concerto
  • 12 concertante duos (including on Don Juan op.20 for violin and piano)
  • Many salon music, notable variations on the Yankee Doodle Op. 17

Documents

Letters from Henri Vieuxtemps are in the holdings of the Leipzig music publisher CF Peters in the Leipzig State Archives .

literature

Web links

Commons : Henri Vieuxtemps  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Clive Unger-Hamilton, Neil Fairbairn, Derek Walters; German arrangement: Christian Barth, Holger Fliessbach, Horst Leuchtmann, et al .: The music - 1000 years of illustrated music history . Unipart-Verlag, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-8122-0132-1 , p. 124 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Clive Unger-Hamilton, Neil Fairbairn, Derek Walters; German arrangement: Christian Barth, Holger Fliessbach, Horst Leuchtmann, et al .: The music - 1000 years of illustrated music history . Unipart-Verlag, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-8122-0132-1 , p. 124 .
  3. ↑ Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder: Internationales Freemaurer Lexikon. Herbig, Munich 2006 5 ; ISBN 978-3-7766-2478-6 ; P. 878.
  4. ^ John H. Baron: Vieuxtemps (and Ole Bull) in New Orleans . In: American Music . tape 8 , no. 2 , 1990, p. 210-226 , doi : 10.2307 / 3051949 .
  5. ↑ See Wilhelm Langhans: Henri Vieuxtemps. In: German musician newspaper of November 9, 1878, pp. 454–455 and November 16, 1878, pp. 463–465.
  6. ^ Website of the Prix Henri Vieuxtemps (accessed December 21, 2012)
personal data
SURNAME Vieuxtemps, Henri
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian violinist and Romantic composer
DATE OF BIRTH February 17, 1820
PLACE OF BIRTH Verviers , Belgium
DATE OF DEATH June 6, 1881
Place of death Mustapha Supérieur near Algiers , Algeria