ABSTRACT
The establishment of the Franco-Belgian violin school was connected to the establishment of the Royal Conservatoire of Brussels. The advanced violin courses were created by Charles-Auguste de Bériot, a Belgian violinist and composer who taught at the Brussels Conservatoire between 1843 and 1852. De Bériot and his most immediate successor at the Brussels Conservatoire, Hubert Léonard, wrote treatises that provide firsthand insights into the Franco-Belgian school’s pedagogical practices. Students are immediately introduced to the use of all four left-hand fingers, on the G string followed by the other strings. They also immediately learn to play the fourth finger in unison with the adjacent open string “to acquire pure intonation.” The early nineteenth-century Paris and German violin schools came to be viewed as musically outdated, partially due to their lack of interest in performing contemporary music. Henri Vieuxtemps was a Belgian violin prodigy who studied with de Bériot early on.
