Charles-Auguste de Bériot

Belgian violinist and teacher Charles-Auguste de Bériot was the founder of the virtuoso Franco-Belgian violin school that extended into the 20th century in the work of Eugène Ysaÿe, and thence into the 21st in the work of Hilary Hahn, a student of Ysaÿe's last student. Little known today, he combined French control with Italian virtuoso heroics and set a lasting pattern. Bériot was born in Louvain (Leuven), Belgium, on February 20, 1802. At age eight he moved to France and was taught by a local player, Jean-François Tiby, who had studied with the Italian-French virtuoso Viotti. In his teens he caught the attention of Viotti himself and also of the preeminent Paris Conservatory teacher Pierre Baillot, absorbing lessons from both, but also opening himself to influences from the violin star of the day, Paganini. He served in the courts of King Charles X of France and King William I of the Netherlands and then began to tour major European capitals. During this period Bériot developed a liaison with the famed opera singer Maria Malibran. At first the pair kept their relationship secret, but the secret became more open as time went on, and Felix Mendelssohn wrote an aria with violin accompaniment for them (it was never published, but it may be related to the aria Infelice, Op. 94). Finally, in 1836, the two married. Shortly after that, Malibran died after falling from a horse. The devastated Bériot returned to Belgium, performed very little in the late 1830s, but finally married an Austrian woman, Marie Huber, in 1840. In 1843, after turning down a similar post at the Paris Conservatory, Bériot became chief violin professor at the Brussels Conservatory. He wrote ten violin concertos and a variety of other violin music, including the still popular Scène de ballet, Op. 100, producing new music for his own use throughout his career. During his later years, as his eyesight began to fail, Bériot wrote several instructional works that are still in use. His concertos, often in the traditional, three-movement form, but played without a break, have been revived by Japanese violinist Ayana Tsuji. Amputation of Bériot's left arm ended his career for good in 1867, by which time he was already totally blind. He died in Louvain on June 8, 1870.