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A British Child's Music Education, 1801–1810: G.B. Viotti, Caroline Chinnery and the French Influence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2011
Extract
Broadly speaking, the British reception of foreign musicians appearing in London at the end of the eighteenth century was one of adulation. Most of these artists had arrived via Paris, where some had acquired a mantle of sophistication unknown in London. Paris was a city of fashion, which, if it could not rival London in economic clout, was the acknowledged European capital of culture, of refined taste and manners. British amateurs were therefore happy to admit these foreign artists into their homes both for private concerts, and in the capacity of music teachers for themselves and their children. One of the most alluring – not to mention gifted – of the performing artists to arrive in London from Paris was Giovanni Battista Viotti, whose public concerts in the last decade of the eighteenth century were among the most popular of the many that were on offer.
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* This article is an expanded version of a paper presented at the Fifth Biennial Conference on Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Nottingham, July 2005. I am indebted to Warwick Lister, who read through my original typescript and answered technical questions. He also generously shared with me some of his own research, especially on the Bianchi treatise.
1 Chinnery Family Papers, Powerhouse Museum (henceforward PHM), 94/143/1.
2 With the exception of drawing and dancing, and later German and Latin, for which masters were employed, all subjects, including music, were taught by her mother. On the Chinnery children's general education see Denise Yim, ‘Madame de Genlis's Adèle et Théodore: Its Influence on an English Family's Education’, Australian Journal of French Studies, 38/1 (2001): 141–57Google Scholar.
3 Caroline Chinnery's music education is touched on in chapter 10 of my book Viotti and the Chinnerys: A Relationship Charted through Letters (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004),Google Scholar but this article will go into greater detail than the confines of the book allowed.
4 Spencer, William Robert, Poems, 2nd edn, ed. Cochrane, James (London: Caddell and Davies, 1835): 59–60.Google Scholar
5 PHM 94/143/1 – 24 and PHM 94/143/1 – 28/3, 28/4.
6 Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis (1746–1830) had been gouverneur to the children of the Duke of Orléans (Philippe-Egalité). She taught harp to her pupils, and even authored a harp tutor. In her memoirs (Mémoires inédits de madame la comtesse de Genlis sur le dixhuitième siècle et la Révolution française, 8 vols, Paris: Ladvocat, 1825: vol. I, 102) she credits herself – probably justly – with creating the rage for the harp that swept Paris society in the 1760s. This vogue caught on in London a few decades laterGoogle Scholar.
7 Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité de, Adèle et Théodore, ou Lettres sur l'éducation, 3 vols (Paris: Libraires associés, 1782).Google Scholar
8 Margaret Chinnery's Journal, PHM 94/143/1 – 3 (henceforward MC's Journal), written in French and English.
9 See Viotti to Caroline Chinnery, 8 October 1798, Viotti Papers, London, Royal College of Music (henceforward RCM), MS 4118. The sonatas were probably arrangements of his violin duos, Book 1, and according to the ‘accompanied sonata’ tradition of the day, gave the major part to the piano, with the violin playing only a secondary role.
10 Dr Burney, Hannah More and Mme de Genlis all agreed that a child would not profit from formal music instruction before the age of five or six.
11 MC to William Bassett Chinnery, 13 July 1795, Chinnery Family Papers, University of Sydney, Fisher Library (henceforward Fisher), 2000 – 18/2.
12 The Abbé Gaultier's Grammar Chart (Fisher 2000 – 49/5). Aloïsius-Edouard-Camille Gaultier (1746–1818) had emigrated to England during the Revolution, and published several educational works in London, one of which was his Jeu de Grammaire, ou Méthode pour apprendre d’une manière facile et agréable les principes de la langue françoise, 2nd edn, London, 1794. In the Avertissement at the front of the book is a list of objects needed for the game, one of which is ‘a little book for children aged three’ (precisely the age of the Chinnery twins in 1794). Another is a chart depicting a family tree showing the relationships between the three principal parts of speech. It is this chart, 41cm × 33cm, which is among the Chinnery papers in Fisher Library.
13 Translated from the French (London: Longman and Rees, 1800).Google Scholar It is listed in Christie's sale catalogue for the ‘Library of Books, of Antiquities, Prints and Polite Literature of W. Chinnery Esq’, 2 June 1812, item 16, p. 4.
14 ‘All my pupils have considered music as an amusement’, she wrote to her cousin in 1806 (see Appendix below).
15 Watts, Isaac, The Improvement of the Mind with the Life of the Author by Dr. Johnson (London, 1821 [1741]): 232.Google ScholarCited in Kassler, Jamie Croy, ‘Music Made Easy to Infant Capacity, 1714–1830’, Studies in Music, 10 (1976): 74 n. 31.Google Scholar Works by Dr Watts are discussed in Margaret's correspondence with her son at Oxford, and one is listed in Christie's sale catalogue for the ‘Library of Books […] of W. Chinnery’, item 13, p. 4.
16 All of the above are named in Chinnery correspondence. Although there is no clear proof that Haydn and Hüllmandel performed at Chinnery parties, there are some letters that would indicate that this was the case. See Viotti to MC, 18 April 1794, PHM 94/143/1 – 2/18, in which Viotti intimates that Haydn owes Margaret a favour, and several other Viotti letters, 1793–95, concerning the Hüllmandels (see below, p. 31, n26).
17 See Yim, Denise, ed., The Unpublished Correspondence of Mme de Genlis and Margaret Chinnery, (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 2003): vol. II.Google Scholar
18 MC to Mrs [Bridget] Craufurd, 6 February 1806 (copy), in MC's Journal, 122–5.
18 ‘La perfection sur la harpe & le clavecin consiste dans l'égalité des mains; … avant de faire mettre un air ensemble, il faudroit exercer les mains séparément pendant un an, quand l'élève est dans la premiere enfance, & pendant six mois pour une jeune personne il faudroit faire exécuter à chaque main, tour-à-tour, tous les agrémens, les roulades & les passages les plus difficiles qui peuvent se rencontrer dans les pieces, en ayant l'attention d'exercer toujours davantage la main gauche, qui, en effet, est naturellement plus lourde & moins forte que la droite … au lieu que d'exiger d'elle qu'elle apprenne à la fois àdéchifrer la musique, la position de la main, le doigté, & à mettre ensemble un dessus et une basse … Pas un maotre n'adoptera ma méthode, parce qu'ils ne pourroient, en la suivant, produire, au bout de cinq ou six mois, une écoliere jouant de routine plusieurs pieces, & qu'il faut convenir aussi, seroient fort peu satisfaits de voir leur fille, pendant un an, ne répéter que des passages; … Rien n'est plus absurde aussi que d'enseigner les règles de l'accompagnement à un enfant de dix ans; cette étude est par elle-même très abstraite, & ne peut convenir qu'à quinze ou seize ans’ (Adèle et Théodore, vol. I, 67–9).
20 Margaret used the French in her letter ‘Il est absurde d’enseigner à un enfant de dix ans les regles de l'accompagnement &c&c&c…’
21 The underlinings here and in all following quotations are in the original. See Appendix (p. 44) for the remainder of the letter in which Margaret describes her step-by-step introduction to the scales, the different keys, major and minor modes, intervals and modulation.
22 At the end of her letter Margaret wrote: ‘I acknowledge they [her pupils] do not shine so early in a Sonata, but they are the less exposed to impressions of vanity, and when at a later period, they are commended, it is for having acquired a true knowledge of music.’ In her journal a year later she decried the custom of showing off children's musical skills for the amusement of large assemblies as ‘the most indecorous folly’ (MC's Journal, 16 January 1807, 99; see Yim, Viotti and the Chinnerys, 129, for full quotation).
23 Margaret's own father-in-law, William Chinnery Jnr (1740–1803), a London penman, seems to have authored a piano tutor for adult beginners, entitled Music Made Easy, or a New Musical Vade-Mecum: being a complete book of instructions for beginners on the piano-forte or harpsichord, printed and published by the patentee of Writing and Drawing Made Easy, 1798. This last work was published anonymously, and has been attributed to William Chinnery Snr, William Bassett Chinnery's grandfather (see British Library catalogue and Kassler, Jamie Croy, The Science of Music in Britain, 1714–1830: A Catalogue of Writings, Lectures and Inventions, 2 vols (New York: Garland, 1979): vol. 1, 185–6),Google Scholar but it is clear from the preface of Writing and Drawing Made Easy that it was not by William Chinnery Snr. The most likely author is the latter's son, William Chinnery Jnr. In the preface to Chinnery's Music Made Easy he writes of the necessity of assimilating musical notes ‘to the Eye, the Ear, the Fingers, and the Instrument’, a comment quite similar to Margaret's recommendation in her letter to her cousin of learning the intervals ‘on the instrument, in the book and by the ear’.
24 Hüllmandel, Nicolas-Joseph, Principles of Music, chiefly calculated for the pianoforte or harpsichord with progressive lessons, op. 12, printed and sold by the author, London, c. 1795.Google Scholar
25 See Yim, Denise, ‘Selected Letters from G.B. Viotti to Mrs Margaret Chinnery, 1793–1798, including one to her Husband, W.B. Chinnery, 1812’, in Giovanni Battista Viotti: A Composer between the Two Revolutions, ed. Sala, Massimiliano (Bologna: Ut Orpheus Edizioni, 2006): 397.Google Scholar
26 Yim, , Viotti and the Chinnerys, 47, 56, 62 and passim. See also Sir John Carr to MC, 25 September 1797, Fisher 2000 – 1/1, in which Sir John mentions Margaret's caution against his placing a child in the care of Mrs Hüllmandel because in Margaret's view she does not have any firm moral or religious principles.Google Scholar
27 Dussek, Jan Ladislav, Instructions on the Art of Playing the Piano Forte or Harpsichord (London and Edinburgh, c. 1796).Google Scholar
28 Piano Sonata in B| major op. 24 (1793), and Concerto in B| major op. 22 (1793), of which the third movement was also written as a rondo for piano solo.
29 In 1801 Margaret had four children to educate, and in 1803 five, therefore both Bianchis gave music lessons (see MC's Journal, 3 September 1803, 152).
30 MC to George Robert Chinnery (henceforward GRC), 15 November 1809, Chinnery letters, Oxford, Christ Church (henceforward Ch.Ch.) MS xlviii a.51, fo 78.
31 MC's Journal, 2 January 1804, 43.
32 De l'attraction harmonique, ou sistème phisico-mathématique de l'harmonie fondé sur l'analyse des phénomènes que présente la corde sonore, suivis d’un traité théorico-pratique de contrepoint et de composition idéale. The committee members, all of whom were probably known to Viotti, were Prony, Lacépède and Ginguené. The latter was also director general of public education in France, (Dictionary of Musicians, 2 vols, London: Sainsbury, 1824: vol. I, 86Google Scholar; Yim, , Viotti and the Chinnerys, 126)Google Scholar.
33 Viotti and the Chinnery family were in Paris from August to October 1802. Bianchi was also in Paris for at least some of that period. See Yim, , Viotti and the Chinnerys, 114–15Google Scholar.
34 The letter, which may have accompanied the treatise itself, is cited in Yim, , Viotti and the Chinnerys, 126Google Scholar.
35 However, a section of the first part, which Bianchi simplified for the benefit of children, was used to teach Caroline's brother George the first principles of geometry and the relationship between mathematics and music. Bianchi left a copy of his ‘manuscript on Geometry’ at Gillwell for George to look over (MC's Journal, 3 September 1803, 152, and 3 September 1804, 157).
36 In an astonishing stroke of fate Viotti's two-volume copy of this document (with a few additional pages of his own) turned up in a Bonhams auction catalogue in November 12005 and was purchased by the Royal College of Music. Viotti's inscription on the front reads ‘Trattato teorico e pratico del contrapunto del Sigr Maestro Bianchi. Copiato da me colla sua permissione’ (‘Theoretical and practical treatise on counterpoint by Sigr Maestro Bianchi. Copied by me with his permission’), RCM MSS 8218i and 8218ii.
37 MC's Journal, 4 April 1801, 126–7.
38 MC's Journal, [3 September] 1801, 138–9. For a full transcription of this journal entry see Yim, , Viotti and the Chinnerys, 125Google Scholar.
39 MC's Journal, 14 October 1801, 142.
40 Trattato di armonia teorico pratico: per uso del di lui amico, parte prima, RCM MS 754. Although only the theoretical section of Bianchi's copy of this remains in the RCM, Viotti must have had both sections before him when he copied it, for he has divided his copy into vol. I (theoretical section) and vol. II (practical section).
41 ‘Caroline a travaillé ce matin comme un petit ange au[x] canti fermi, elle a même fait cet ouvrage avéc beaucoup de plaisir, quoiqu'avant de commencer elle eût preferé travailler à sa sonate’ (Viotti to MC, 20 May 1801, New York Public Library, Viotti/Chinnery correspondence, JOB 97-52, item 3). In Yim, , Viotti and the Chinnerys, 123,Google Scholar ‘canti fermi’ has been mistranscribed. I thank Warwick Lister for making me aware of the error.
42 Adolphus Frederick to MC, 22 December 1807, Fisher 2000 – 12/2; Undated manuscript, Nuovo metodo per apprendere con facilita l’accompagnamento, 49p. (BnF cote 4°C2105). There is another (incomplete) copy in the RCM (MS 45). The Nuovo metodo is a practical instruction manual, which leads a pupil already conversant with the fundamentals of music progressively through 82 lessons, complete with musical examples, starting with the simplest concepts of harmony through to the most complex: intervals, scales, chords, harmonic progressions, resolution of dissonances, voice-leading, a ten-part lesson in modulation, and lessons where the pupil is required to harmonize a given bass. (I thank Warwick Lister for providing this breakdown of the document, and for providing the captions to Figs 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.) The few rules and observations that are given are brief. The fact that it remained unpublished, that there is no preface as in other instruction manuals, and that there is very little written explanation, would point to its being created for Bianchi's own teaching purposes. (I also thank Deborah Priest and Giuseppina Mazzella for their comments on this document.)
43 MC's Journal, [3 September] 1801, 138.
44 See MC's Journal, 5 and 7 September [1804], 63, and 7 January 1805, 82.
45 ‘avec méthode et attention’ (Pincherle, Marc, ‘La Méthode de violon de J.B. Viotti’, Feuillets d’histoire du violon, Paris, 1927, 176).Google Scholar I thank Warwick Lister for drawing my attention to this part of Viotti's Méthode.
46 By ‘unsupervised’ practice it is meant that there was no instructor present, correcting her. However, at no point in the day were the children ever suffered to be left alone. Therefore a French governess always sat with Caroline during her practice.
47 ‘un concerto en l’A mineur de Viotti, un concerto en si bemol de Dussek, une sonate en l’A majeur de Cramer, et elle a parcouru beaucoup de Musique sans la perfectionner pour apprendre à lire à livre ouvert. Elle a aussi parcouru des partitions pour apprendre les Clefs, et l’accompagnement’ (MC's Journal, 3 September 1802, 148).
48 It served to loosen the fingers and to introduce the key or the mode of the piece.
49 See d'Eymar, A.-M., Anecdotes sur Viotti (Geneva: Luc Sestié, 1799–1800): 37–8.Google Scholar Viotti had also accompanied the gifted amateur Mlle Belz, another pupil of Hüllmandel, when she preluded in one of the most famous salons of the ancien régime. Mlle Belz was the niece of the famous eighteenth-century philosopher the Abbé Morellet, and the salon was that of Mme de La Briche. See Pierre de Zurich, Une femme heureuse: Madame de La Briche, 1755–1844 (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1934): 295; and André Morellet, Mémoires inédits de l'abbé Morellet sur le dix-huitième siècle et sur la Révolution, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1967): vol. I, 281.
50 For example, Steibelt preluded with immense success at Mme de La Briche's salon, and elsewhere his showy demonstrations sometimes went into the early hours of the morning. See Jacques Marquet de Norvins, Souvenirs d’un historien de Napoléon: Mémorial de J. de Norvins, ed. L. de Lanzac de Laborie, 3 vols (Paris: Plon, Nourrit et cie, 1896–97): vol. I, 173; and Ducrest, Georgette, Mémoires sur l'impératrice Joséphine, ed. Pincemaille, Christophe (Paris: Mercure de France, 2004): 316Google Scholar.
51 Montgéroult, Hélène de, Cours complet pour l'enseignement du forte-piano, 3 vols (Paris: 1822):Google Scholar vol. III, p. 283.
52 Kollmann, Augustus, An Introduction to the Art of Preluding & Extemporizing, op. 3 (London: printed for R. Wornum, c. 1792):Google Scholar Preface. Interestingly, this work was dedicated to a Miss Craufurd, who may well have been related by marriage to Margaret Chinnery (two of MC's cousins married the two youngest sons of Sir Alexander Craufurd, d. 1797). Kollmann authored about a dozen theoretical and pedagogical works.
53 Kollmann, Augustus, An Essay on Musical Harmony, according to the nature of that science and the principles of the greatest musical authors (London: 1796): 120.Google Scholar Here the term ‘lesson’ has the eighteenth-century meaning of a short sonata-like keyboard piece.
54 Kassler, , The Science of Music in Britain, vol. I, 646.Google Scholar
55 He omits the study of modulation, which he reserves for a later work, An Introduction to Extemporary Modulation (London: c. 1820)Google Scholar.
56 See Yim, , Viotti and the Chinnerys, 122.Google Scholar
57 MC's Journal, 3 September 1803, 153.
58 Probably the sonata dedicated to Mrs Chinnery (see note 28).
59 Fedele Fenaroli (1730–1818), Italian music educator and composer. He wrote several pedagogical treatises. One was his Partimenti ossia Basso numerato (Rome, c. 1800/R).
60 ‘Elle lit joliment les partitions, et après les avoir parcouru un peu le matin, elle les execute assez bien le soir; je puis dire avec vérité, mieux que la plupart des professeurs’ (MC's Journal, 3 September 1804, 155).
61 MC's Journal, 6 September [1803], 8. The musicians are not identified.
62 Viotti was surely a participant, for except for a brief return to London he was with the family in Brighton for the duration of their three-week stay (1–22 October 1803). Another was Johann Peter Salomon, who had been a guest at dinner on 5 October. Another may have been the amateur Gaetano Bartolozzi and/or his wife, the pianist Therese Jansen, who paid a visit to the Chinnerys on 15 October (MC's Journal, 9 October [1803], 20).
63 Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre à jouer de la harpe (Geneva: Minkoff Reprint, 1974): 14–15.Google Scholar A simplified version of this was published in Paris, 1802, and another in c. 1807. A copy of the latter had presumably been sent to Margaret by Mme de Genlis. See Mme de Genlis to MC, 23 August [1807], in Yim, ed., The Unpublished Correspondence of Mme de Genlis and Margaret Chinnery, 103. See also Mme de Genlis's Mémoires, vol. I, 204n.
64 MC's Journal, 12 January 1807, 98. A letter from Viotti to Dizi regarding the payment of Dizi's account, 5 October 1806, transcribed in Giazotto, Remo, Giovan Battista Viotti (Milan: Edizioni Curci, 1956): 268, refers to this periodGoogle Scholar.
65 At Gillwell Caroline accompanied vocalists Giuseppe Siboni, Giuseppe Naldi, Luigi Asioli (who dedicated some of his duets to her), Mmes Bianchi and Catalani, and the amateur Chevalier La Cainea. On a visit to London with her mother and Viotti in April 1807 Caroline's playing was admired at the homes of Lady Susan Fincastle, Lady Clifden, Lady Anne Hamilton and the famous London antiquarian Richard Payne Knight (MC's Journal, 18 April [1807], 109).
66 It is not known if the piano reductions she used for this were written out by Viotti each time they were needed or, indeed, whether she sometimes accompanied from a full score, as she seems to have been quite capable of doing. The earliest reference to Caroline accompanying Viotti in a concerto is January 1807 (MC's Journal, 19 January [1807], 100).
67 MC to GRC, 7 November 1808, Ch.Ch.
68 MC's Journal, 9 March [1807], 106.
69 This obliged her to play the solo piano part from the full orchestral score, as a pencilled note on the autograph manuscript from Caroline to the binder shows (see White, Chappell, ‘Towards a More Accurate Chronology of Viotti's Violin Concertos’, Fontes Artis Musicae, 20 (1973): 123)Google Scholar.
70 I thank Warwick Lister for interpreting the manuscript for me. See also White's, ChappellGiovanni Battista Viotti: A Thematic Catalogue of his Works (New York: Pendragon Press, 1985): 36Google Scholar.
71 MC to GRC, 9 February 1809, Ch.Ch.
72 Mme Bianchi's benefit, on Monday 22 May in the Hanover Square Rooms. Margaret particularly wished Caroline to hear J.B. Cramer and Mrs Billington (MC to William Spencer, 20 May [1809], Fisher 2000 – 43/4). Viotti's pupil Mori was to perform a concerto by his master at the same concert (The Times, 22 May 1809).
73 ‘en preludant je m’apperçois de plus de facilité. M. Bianchi dit qu’elle est profonde dans la science de la musique’ (MC's Journal, 3 September 1804, 155).
74 MC to GRC, 15 November 1809, Ch.Ch. MS xlviii a.51, fo 78.
75 Wollenberg, S.L.F., ‘Music and Musicians’, in History of the University of Oxford, vol. V (The Eighteenth Century), ed. Sutherland, L.S. and Mitchell, L.G. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986): 866.Google Scholar The degree was usually conferred on distinguished men such as Burney, Arnold and Crotch, who had already achieved fame.
76 Her proficiency was such that Naldi said she would need only five or six lessons.
77 MC to GRC, 3 March 1810, Ch.Ch.
78 ‘Quand je chanterai avec le Chevalier comment dois-je faire? Maman s'attendra a me voir chanter tout presque a livre-ouvert, mais si je ne suis pas au Piano, je ne le peus pas! J'en suis extremement peinée’ (CC's Journal, 21 March 1809, PHM 94/143/1 – 22).
79 ‘J'ai peur que j’ai fait une bien meschine figure deux ou trois fois quand on m'a proposé de chanter; mais vraiment je n'osois le risquer, prévoyant l'impossibilité de me placer assez près pour voir!’ (ibid., 4 May 1809).
80 From February to March, and from May to June 1810.
81 John Fisher (1748–1825), D.D. (Cambridge), 1789, had been appointed by George III to superintend the education of Princess Charlotte in 1805. George Frederick Nott (1767–1841), D.D. (Oxford), 1807, was the Princess's sub-governor.
82 MC to GRC, 17 March 1810, Ch.Ch.
83 MC to GRC, 28 May 1810, Ch.Ch.
84 MC to GRC, 25 June 1810, Ch.Ch.
85 Two independent contemporary sources, as well as the one quoted above (p. 26), testify to this fact. Lord Glenbervie writes in his journal on 13 September 1811 that Miss Chinnery possessed ‘skill in music in a superior degree’ (Douglas, Sylvester, The Glenbervie Journals, ed. Sichel, W., London: Constable, 1910: 144),Google Scholar and in the Diary of Joseph Farington, ed. Newby, Evelyn, 68 vols (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1998): vol. XII, 4160, the entry for 18 July 1812 reads: ‘The daughter [Caroline Chinnery] was remarkably accomplished in languages & in Musick.’Google Scholar
86 MC's Journal, 122–5 (Chinnery Family Papers, PHM 94/143/1 – 3). There are two copies of this letter in the Powerhouse Museum. The above was copied into MC's Journal in her own hand. The other, with some very slight variations (PHM 94/143/1 – 4/1), was copied by the Chinnery tutor C.L. Trumpf. The letter was published in full but not discussed in Kassler, Michael, ‘The Chinnery/Viotti Papers in Sydney’, Musicology Australia: Journal of the Musicological Society of Australia (1979): vol. V, 237–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.