[50대에 시력을 잃고,60대에 팔도 절단한 벨기에 음악가, 비외땅의 스승] Charles Auguste de Bériot[샤를 아우구스테 드 베리오]

Charles Auguste de Bériot

Bust of Charles Auguste de Bériot from the Conservatoire Royal de Bruxelles.

(20 February 1802 – 8 June 1870) was a Belgian violinist and composer.

Born in Leuven, where there is now a street named in his honor, he moved to France in 1810, where he studied violin with Jean-François Tiby, a pupil of Giovanni Battista Viotti. He was later encouraged by Viotti himself and briefly worked with Pierre Baillot but did not embrace all their teachings and was also influenced by Paganini. He served as chamber violinist to King Charles X of France and to King William I of the Netherlands and toured with great success to London, Paris and the great music centres of Europe. In addition to playing the violin, he was a virtuosic pianist who toured through much of China despite the emperor's objections.

Bériot lived with the opera singer Maria Malibran and had a child (Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot, a piano professor who taught Maurice Ravel, Ricardo Viñes, Enrique Granados and others) with her in 1833. They were married in 1836 when Malibran obtained an annulment of her previous marriage. Felix Mendelssohn wrote an aria accompanied by a solo violin especially for the couple. However, Malibran died the same year from injuries sustained in a fall from a horse.

After Malibran's death, de Bériot lived in Brussels and did not return to performance until 1838.^[1]

In 1840 in Vienna he married Marie Huber, daughter of a local magistrate.^[2]

In 1842, Pierre Baillot died in Paris at the age of 71, and his position as instructor at the Paris Conservatoire was offered to de Bériot. He rejected the offer, however, and in 1843 became chief violin instructor at the Brussels Conservatory where he established the Franco-Belgian school of violin playing. on account of failing eyesight he retired in 1852, and in 1858 became totally blind.^[3] Paralysis of the left arm ended his career in 1866. Surgeons amputated his left arm to relieve pain. Among his students were Hubert Léonard, Henri Vieuxtemps and Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst.