Great Violinists And Pianists

his intimate friends, said of him, "Never did a man attach so much value to the simplest gifts of nature, and never did a child enjoy them more passionately." A mode

ing musical picture of the feelings experienced in the mountains of Switzerland. It was there he heard, under peculiar circumstances,

perfect harmony. There, without being fatigued, I seated myself mechanically on a fragment of rock, and fell into so profound a reverie that I seemed to forget that I was upon earth. While sitting thus, sounds broke on my ear which were sometimes of a hurried, sometimes of a prolonged and sustained character, and were repeated in softened tones by the echoes around. I found they proceeded from a mountain-horn; and their effect was heightened by a plaintive female voice. Struck as i

rie Langlé, a professor of harmony in the French Conservatoire, was an intimate friend of Viotti, and one charming summer evening the twain were strolling on the Champs élysées. They sat down on a retired bench to enjoy the calmness

, and yet there is so

ested Langlé, "though i

spot whence the extraordinary tones issued, and saw a poor blind man standing near a miserabl

ream of such a curiosity?" and, after listening a while, he added, "I say, Langlé, I

e question, but the old man wa

able you to purchase a better," he added;

. At last his good, kind nephew Eustache, who was apprenticed to a tinker, had made him one out of a tin-plate. "And an excellent one, too," he added; "and my poor boy Eustache brings me here i

ancs for your violin. You can buy a much better

listened with curiosity and astonishment to the performance. Langlé seized on the opportunity, and passed around the hat, ga

rise; "just now I said I would sell the violin for twenty francs, but

one, and then immediately retired from the spot, passing through the crowd with the tin-plate instrument under his arm. He had

you are an amateur, as it was I who made it, I can su

owever, Viotti was quite satisfied with the one sample he had bought. He never parted with that instrument; and, when the effects of Viotti were sold in London after his death, though the tin fiddle onl

i returned to London, which had become a second home to him, and s