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Home Componisten en uitvoerders de Bériot, Charles

de Bériot, Charles

° Leuven, 20/02/1802 — † Brussel, 8/04/1870

Biografie

Lees in het Nederlands

Evy De Smedt (translation: Joris Duytschaever)

Charles-Auguste de Bériot was born on 20 February 1802 in a noble family in Leuven. His first violin lessons were imparted by Jean-François Tiby, who became the boy’s guardian after the untimely death of de Bériot’s parents. At the age of nine already de Bériot performed for an audience, playing a concerto by Giovanni Battista Viotti. At the advice of violinist André Robberechts and supported by Viotti, he moved on at age nineteen to the Conservatoire of Paris, where he took violin lessons with Pierre Baillot. However, Baillot did not like de Bériot’s technically eccentric style, and after a short time de Bériot said farewell to the Conservatoire. During the following years he performed mainly in Paris, London and the Netherlands. In 1824 he was appointed court violinist of king Charles X of France, with the title of ‘Violon de la chambre de S.M. le Roi de France’. However, it remains a moot question whether he ever really obtained that title, several sources contradicting each other. A couple of years later, in 1827, he did earn the title of chamber virtuoso of king Willam I of the Netherlands, an office he was to exercise until 1830.

In 1827 Charles de Bériot met for the first time Maria de la Felicidad Garcia, a famous mezzo-soprano, better known under the name of her husband at that time, Malibran. In 1830 they settled down in Paris, teaming up for concert tours through France, Belgium, England and Italy. In 1836 ‘La Malibran’ divorced her husband and married de Bériot, but the same year she died as a result of a fall from her horse. De Bériot withdrew from concert life with a view to looking after their son Charles-Wilfrid. This period of withdrawal lasted for a whole year after the death of his wife, followed by his comeback at the city hall of Brussels and a concert tour through Austria and Italy, together with the singer Pauline Garcia, the junior sister of his deceased spouse.

After his second marriage in 1840 with Maria Huber, the daughter of an Austrian magistrate, de Bériot settled down in Sint-Joost-ten-Node and limited his concert tours. His house became the centre of the ensemble ‘Cercle des arts’, founded by him, which regularly executed chamber music concerts.

In 1842 he was offered the succession of Baillot at the Paris Conservatoire. Whether de Bériot accepted this position or declined, cannot be determined because of contradictory evidence, but we do know for sure that in the same year 1842 he was offered a position at the Brussels Conservatoire as well. De Bériot accepted the latter appointment, founded a flourishing violin school, and continued to teach there until 1852. Earlier he had already been loosely associated with that institution as a private teacher, thus discovering in 1828 Henri Vieuxtemps, and resolving to tutor the boy at age eight for free.

In 1852 de Bériot had to resign at the Brussels Conservatory because of a serious eye illness. Six years later he was completely blind. In this period de Bériot wrote his Méthode de violon, and despite his blindness he remained active as a violinist. In 1859 he received an invitation from the Russian violinist Prince Nikolaj B.Yusupov, resulting in a stay of several months in St Petersburg. However, when de Bériot’s left arm was stricken with paralysis in 1866, his career as a violinist was over.

Charles-Auguste de Bériot is considered as one of the greatest violinists from his era and as one of the founding fathers of the Belgian school of violin playing, with Eugène Isaÿe as one of its later glories. De Bériot combined the virtuoso style of Paganini with typical characteristics of the French violin school such as elegance, grace, precision and pure intonation. These characteristics are already present in de Bériot’s first violin concerto, with its numerous brilliant effects.

As for his compositions indeed he wrote almost exclusively for his favourite instrument, including ten violin concertos and numerous series of variations on famous opera motifs for violin and piano. De Bériot often composed in cooperation with piano virtuosos such as his son Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot, Sigismund Thalberg, Georges Osborne and Benoit-Constant Fauconier. As a pedagogue he composed several collections of Etudes and the pedagogical works Méthode de violon (1858) and École transcendante du violon (1867).

De Belgische vioolschool, Brussel, 1978, afb. 17.

Bibliografie

Anderen over deze componist

  • Baeck, E. en Baeck-Schilders, H.: Het concertleven te Antwerpen in het midden van de 19de eeuw, Brussel, 1996.
  • Cornaz, M.: De prinsen van Chimay en de muziek. Een familie van muziekliefhebbers 16de – 20ste eeuw, Brussel, 2002, p. 92-95, 123.
  • De Schrijver, K.: Bériot, Charles, Auguste, de, in: Bibliografie der Belgische toonkunstenaars sedert 1800, Leuven, 1958, p. 16.
  • De Seyn, E.: De Bériot (Charles), in: Dictionnaire biographique des sciences, des letters et des arts en Belgique, dl. 1, Brussel, 1935, p. 200-201.
  • Dewilde, J.: Lof zonder grenzen: Charles de Bériot, in: SVM Nieuwsbrief nr. 71, oktober 2008.
  • Fétis, F.: Bériot (Charles-Auguste de), in: Biographie universelle des musiciens, 2e uitgave, dl. 1, Parijs, 1873, p. 359-361.
  • Goldstein, M.: Charles-August de Bériot, in: Cahiers Ivan Tourgéniev, Pauline Viardot et Maria Malibran, nr. 10, 1986, p. 64-72.
  • Gregoir, E.: De Bériot (Charles-Auguste), in: Galerie biographique des artistes-musiciens belges du XVIIIme et du XIXme siècle, Brussel, 1862, p. 37-38.
  • Gregoir, E.: De Bériot (Charles), in: L’art musical en Belgique sous les règnes de Léopold Ier et de Léopold II, Brussel, 1879, p. 206.
  • Gregoir, E.: Pièces flamandes avec musique - Ajoutes et corrections, in: Bibliothèque musicale populaire, ouvrage en trois volumes, dl. 2, Brussel, 1877, p. 33.
  • Gregoir, E.: Souvenirs artistiques - Documents pour servir à l’histoire de la musique, dl. 2, Brussel, 1888, p. 54-58.
  • Hammill, N.: The ten violin concertos of Charles-Auguste de Bériot. A pedagogical study, Louisiana, 1994.
  • Heron-Allen, E.: A contribution towards an accurate biography of de Bériot and Malibran, Londen, 1984.
  • Huybens, G.: Negen componisten rond ‘150 jaar conservatorium Leuven, Leuven, 1985, p. 9-13.
  • Huys, B.: Charles-Auguste de Bériot, in: De Belgische vioolschool, tentoonstellingscatalogus, Brussel, 1978, p. 18-21.
  • Levaux, T.: de Bériot, Charles-Auguste, in: Dictionnaire des compositeurs de Belge du moyen âge à nos jours, Ohain-Lasne, 2006, p. 61-62.
  • Mariën, S.: Charles de Bériot: “Ein sehr stiller, übrigens feiner Mann”, in: SVM Nieuwsbrief nr. 74, januari 2009.
  • Mariën, S.: Parijse briefwisseling van Charles-Auguste de Bériot, in: SVM Nieuwsbrief nr. 74, januari 2009.
  • Fétis, F.: Charles Auguste de Bériot, in: Le guide musical, 1872, jrg. 18, nr. 17, p.[1-2]; nr. 18, p. [1-2], nr. 19, p. [1-2], nr. 20, p. [1-2].
  • Pinsart, G.: Quelques lettres inédites de violonistes belges - Charles de Bériot, [Henry] Vieuxtemps, [Hubert] Léonard - au Musée Royal de Mariemont, in: Bulletin de la société liégeoise de musicologie, nr. 57, 1987, p. 8-27.
  • Pougin, A.: Bériot (Charles-Auguste de), in: Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie générale de la musique par F.-J. Fétis, supplément et complément, publiés sous la direction de Arthur Pougin, dl. 1, Parijs, 1878, p. 74-75.
  • Quitin, J.: De Belgische vioolschool, in: Gamma, jrg. 27, nr. 1, 1975, p. 22-24.
  • Robijns, J. en Zijlstra, M.: Bériot, Charles de, in: Algemene Muziek Encyclopedie, Haarlem, dl. 1, 1979, p. 319.
  • Roquet, F.: De Bériot Charles-Auguste, in: Lexicon Vlaamse componisten geboren na 1800, Roeselare, 2007, p. 154-155.
  • Schueneman, B.: The search for the minor composer. The case of Charles de Bériot and María Malibran, in: Music reference services quarterly, jrg. 3, nr. 2, 1994, p. 29-46.
  • Schwarz, B.: Bériot, Charles-Auguste, de, in: The new grove dictionary of music and musicians, dl.3, 2001, Oxford, p. 358-359.
  • Soccanne, P.: Le “lion” belge, Charles de Bériot (1802-1870), in: Guide du concert, nr. 23, 1936-1937, p. 679-681, 711-712, 743-746, 775-777.
  • Stowell, R.: The nineteenth-century bravura tradition, in: The Cambridge companion to the violin, 1992, New York, p. 61-78.
  • Thys, A.: Charles-Auguste De Bériot: in: Historique des sociétés chorales de Belgique, Gent, 1855, p. 165-166; 2de uitgave (1861), p. 215-216.
  • Tollet, M.: Catalogue des lettres de Charles de Bériot, in: Revue Belge de musicologie, nr. 43, 1989, p. 211-224.
  • Van Den Borren, Ch.: Bériot, Charles de, in: Biographie nationale, nr. 29, 1957, p. 174-197.
  • Van der Linden, A.: L’exotisme dans la musique de Charles de Bériot (1802-1870) et d’Henry Vieuxtemps (1820-1881), in: Académie Royale de Belgique. Bulletin de la classe des beaux-arts, jrg. 52, nr. 10-11, 1970, p. 317-327.
  • Van Hemel, V.: De Bériot, Charles-Auguste, in: Voorname Belgische toonkunstenaars uit de 18e, 19e en 20ste eeuw, Antwerpen, 1958, p. 14-15.
  • Vanhulst, H.: Bériot, Charles-Auguste de, in: Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Personenteil, dl. 2, Kassel, 1999, k. 1305-1309.
  • Vanhulst, H.: Les concerts au domicile bruxellois de Charles de Bériot (1842-1849). De l’intimité du salon au Cercle des Arts, in: La maison de l’artiste. Construction d’un espace de représentations entre réalité et imaginaire (XVIIe-XXe siècles), Rennes, 2007, p. 183-192.
  • Vanhulst, H.: Les Weissenbruch, éditeurs et marchands de musique à Bruxelles au début du 19e siècle, in: Archives et bibliothèques de Belgique, nr. 48, 1997, p. 35-54.
  • Van Lysebeth, A.: Paris-Bruxelles. Le cordon ombilical, in: Le conservatoire de Paris. Deux cents ans de pédagogie, Paris, 1999, p. 387-390.
  • Viotta, H.: Charles-Auguste de Bériot, in: Lexicon der Toonkunst, dl. 1, Amsterdam, 1885, p. 185.
  • Wirsta, A.: L’enseignement du violon au 19ème siècle, Paris, 1974.
  • Wouters, M.: Autochtoon kamermuziek, in: Muziek & Woord, jrg. 8, nr. 91, 1982, p. 5.

Historische teksten

Le lion belge

Pierre Soccanne

Tous les dons, toutes les séductions: la flamme d'une destinée qui s'annonçait miraculeuse, et qui le fut d'abord, brillait au front du jeune violoniste belge Charles de Bériot lorsqu'il vint demander au public de Paris la première consécration de son talent, vers les années 1820.

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