Baillot, Quadruple Stops for One Violin, “Adagio“ (1834), Anna McMichael, violin

This work appears in Baillot’s Treatise “The Art of the Violin“, published in 1834. Baillot indicates that the piece is to be played: “holding the bow upside down, the stick below the violin, the hair above, the hair and the stick grasped in the right hand , with the fingers just about in their ordinary position.“ Baillot writes: “Now we do not see in what way it would be unworthy of true talent to use a procedure; it matters very little whether the bow hair is taught or slack, or whether the stick of the bow is placed under the violin instead of above the strings; the essential thing is to please and to move by means which have nothing bad in either their principle or their effect.“ Pierre Marie Franҫois de Sales Baillot (1771-1842) lived during turbulent times in post-Revolutionary France and at a transitional time from Classical to Romantic eras of music. A founding professor of the Paris Conservatoire he was an eminent concert violinist and c