DORINA MANGRA, MELINDA BÉRES - Leopold Mozart – Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule
(A Treatise on the Fundamental Principles of Violin Playing) from the perspective of the necessity of updating the Baroque stylistic principles in modern interpretation
Abstract
In this article we set out to briefly present Leopold Mozart’s Violinschule (Violin Method), taking into consideration three versions of the work. The first is the German-language version originally edited by Johann Jakob Lotter in 1756, the same year Leopold's son Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Augsburg. The second is the French-Language version edited in Paris in 1770, translated by Valentin Roeser, while the third is a Hungarian-language translation of the 1787 third edition (once again edited by Johann Jakob Lotter, in Augsburg, this time with his son) which was published in Budapest by the Mágus publishing house in 1998. The aim of this presentation is to draw attention to the importance of the Baroque and Classical stylistic principles elaborated by Leopold Mozart, as our knowledge of them is essential to the performing art of our day, even if executed on modern instruments. We hope that by looking at the way the Violinschule is structured, specifying the problems each chapter approaches, and by underlining certain technical and performing problems which we considered to be the most important (ensuring a better perception through musical examples), we will manage to awaken young violin players’ interest in the historic approach of the Baroque and Classical repertoire and, at the same time, to facilitate reading the Violinschule according to one’s area of interest.
Keywords
Leopold Mozart, Violinschule, Giuseppe Tartini, Johann Joachim Quantz, Ivan Galamian