Thomas Baltzar |
||
| Violoniste et compositeur originaire de Lübeck qui passa deux ans à la cour de Suède avant d'émigrer en Angleterre en 1655. Baltzar participa à la production de The Siege of Rhodes de Davenant en 1656 ainsi qu'à d'innombrables concerts privés. Cinq ans plus tard, il fut nommé musicien ordinaire de la Musique privée du Roi. Thomas Britton possédait un exemplaire de son recueil perdu de sonates en trio pour violon - lyre, violon aigu et basse, mais ses suites pour deux et trois violons ainsi que les variations parues dans The Division Violin de Playford ( 1685 ) le font apparaîter comme un technicien accompli en matière de positions élevées et de cordes multiples. Il mourut, dit - on, d'alcoolisme et de «maladie française». | ||
| ( Guide de la Musique Baroque, Fayard ) | ||
 |
||
| Baltzar, Thomas (b Lübeck, ?1631; d London, 27 July 1663). German violinist and composer. He came from a family of Lübeck musicians: his father, David (d 1647), his grandfather, Hinrik Thomas, his great-grandfather, Hinrik, and his brothers Joachim and David were all musicians there. According to the English scientist Samuel Hartlib, Baltzar studied with Johann Schop (i), and he is recorded at the Swedish court in 1653. He probably returned home in summer 1654, after Queen Christina's abdication, and was briefly appointed a Lübeck Ratslutenist at the beginning of 1655. He travelled to England later in the year, where he remained until his death. Baltzar caused a sensation in England. John Evelyn heard him at Roger L'Estrange's London house on 4 March 1656, and wrote that he ‘plaid on that single Instrument a full Consort, so as the rest, flung-downe their Instruments, as acknowledging a victory’. Baltzar was in London in September 1656 to play in Davenant's The Siege of Rhodes, though Anthony Wood wrote that he spent about two years with Sir Anthony Cope at Hanwell House near Banbury. Presumably he was living there when he made his famous visits to William Ellis's Oxford music meetings in summer 1658. Wood compared him several times with the English violinist Davis Mell, who ‘play'd farr sweeter than Baltsar, yet Baltsar's hand was more quick and could run it insensibly to the end of the finger-board’. Mell was also in Oxford in 1658, and their divisions on John, come kiss me now, printed in Playford's The Division Violin (1684/R), probably record some sort of playing contest. They show that Mell was no match for Baltzar, as a composer as well as a player. Baltzar probably returned to London at the Restoration, and was given a new place in the King's Private Music by a warrant dated 23 December 1661, back-dated to Michaelmas at the high salary of £110 a year. His appointment brought the number of violins in the group to three, and it was surely for them that he wrote his C major suite, probably the earliest English piece for three violins. A painting at Nostell Priory appears to show him in the company of his Private Music colleagues, including John Banister (i) and the harpist Charles Evans (d 1687). According to Burney, Baltzar died on 24 July 1663; he was buried in Westminster Abbey three days later. At first, Wood thought he had died of ‘the french pox and other distempers’, but subsequently wrote that ‘being much admired by all lovers of musick, his company was therefore desired; and company, especially musicall company, delighting in drinking, made him drink more than ordinary which brought him to his grave’. Unfortunately little of Baltzar's music survives. He introduced English violinists to high positions, elaborate chordal writing, and scordatura. Playford published three unaccompanied pieces in The Division Violin, and a number of others apparently by Baltzar are in manuscript (GB-Ob Mus. Sch. F.573). Some are arrangements of lyra viol pieces by Jenkins and others, which suggests that he based his chordal idiom on English viol music, rather than on German violin music. His suites for two violins and bass are fine examples of a conservative Anglo–German idiom, though his masterpiece is the grand, extended suite in C major, one of the finest pieces in the three-violin repertory. WORKS (for further details see Dodd I) 16 pieces, vn, in The Division Violin (London, 1684/R), GB-Lbl, Ob, Och Divisions on John, come kiss me now, G, vn, b, in The Division Violin (London, 1684/R) 2 divisions, d, G, b viol, b, Ob, US-NYp 3 suites, D, c, G, 2 vn, b, GB-Ob Suite, C, 3 vn, b, Ob; ed. I. Payne (Hereford, 1999) Set of sonatas, lyra vn, tr vn, b, lost, listed in T. Britton's sale catalogue (London, 1714) Solos, vn, b, lost, listed in C. Burney's sale catalogue (London, 1814) Vn solos, pavans etc., lost, listed in J.B. Cramer's sale catalogue (London, 1816) BIBLIOGRAPHY AshbeeR, i, v, viii BDA BDECM BoydenH HawkinsH C. Stiehl: ‘Thomas Baltzar, ein Paganini seiner Zeit’, Mmg, xx (1888), 1–8 J. Hennings: Musikgeschichte Lübecks, i: Weltliche Musik (Kassel, 1951) E.S. de Beer, ed.: The Diary of John Evelyn (London, 1955) J.D. Shute: Anthony à Wood and his Manuscript Wood D 19(4) at the Bodleian (diss., International Institute of Advanced Studies, Clayton, MO, 1979) G. Dodd: ‘Matters Arising from Examination of Lyra Viol Manuscripts’, Chelys, ix (1980), 23–7 P. Holman: ‘Thomas Baltzar (?1631–1663), the “Incomperable Lubicer on the Violin”’, Chelys, xiii (1984), 3–38 P. Walls: ‘The Influence of the Italian Violin School in 17th-Century England’, EMc, xviii (1990), 575–87 P. Holman: Four and Twenty Fiddlers: the Violin at the English Court 1540–1690 (Oxford, 1993, 2/1995) |
||
|
PETER HOLMAN © New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians 2nd edition Macmillan Publishers Ltd, 2001-2002 |
||
 |
 |
|