Lucien Louis Capet was a French violinist, pedagogue and composer.

Career

Capet came from the Paris proletariat. By the age of fifteen, he had to maintain himself by playing in bistros and cafes. He studied at the Conservatoire de Paris

Conservatoire de Paris

The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795, now situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France...

 where he was a pupil of Jean-Pierre Maurin and later appeared as soloist with French orchestras.
Between 1896 - 1899 he was the concertmaster of l'Orchestre des Concerts Lamoureux.
He also taught violin at the Société Sainte-Cécile de Bordeaux (1899–1903). His notable students include Jascha Brodsky

Jascha Brodsky

Jascha Brodsky was a Russian-American violinist and teacher.Born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Russian Empire, he began his violin studies with his violinist father at the age of six. He later studied at the conservatory in Tbilisi, Georgia, and by 1926, was performing successfully all over the Soviet Union...

  and Ivan Galamian

Ivan Galamian

Ivan Alexander Galamian was an influential Armenian violin teacher of the twentieth century.He was born in Tabriz, Iran, but his family soon emigrated to Moscow, Russia. Galamian studied violin at the School of the Philharmonic Society there with Konstantin Mostras until his graduation in 1919...

, both of whom became influential violin teachers of the latter part of the Twentieth Century.

Jascha Brodsky

Jascha Brodsky

Jascha Brodsky was a Russian-American violinist and teacher.Born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Russian Empire, he began his violin studies with his violinist father at the age of six. He later studied at the conservatory in Tbilisi, Georgia, and by 1926, was performing successfully all over the Soviet Union...

's students include: Hilary Hahn

Hilary Hahn

Hilary Hahn is an American violinist.Hahn was born in Lexington, Virginia. Beginning her studies when she was three years old at Baltimore's Peabody Institute, she was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia at age ten, and in 1991, made her major orchestral debut with the...

, Joseph de Pasquale

Joseph de Pasquale

Joseph de Pasquale is an American violist.Joseph de Pasquale was a student of Louis Bailly, Max Aronoff and William Primrose at the Curtis Institute of Music. He was the principal violist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1947 to 1964, and later the Philadelphia Orchestra...

, Leila Josefowicz

Leila Josefowicz

Leila Bronia Josefowicz , is an American/Canadian classical violinist.-Biography:Josefowicz was born in Missisauga, Ontario, Canada. When she was a young child her family moved to Los Angeles, California where she started studying violin at the age of three and a half using the Suzuki method...

, Joey Corpus

Joey Corpus

Joey Corpus is a prominent violin teacher living in New York City.He studied the violin in Philadelphia with the late Jascha Brodsky. He was also influenced by Nelly Soregi and Alberto Lysy. He studied chamber music with Orlando Cole, among others....

, Juliette Kang, Judith Ingolfsson

Judith Ingolfsson

-Biography:Already at the age of five, Ingolfsson appeared in a performance on Icelandic TV, and she made her solo orchestral debut in Germany at the age of eight....

, Herbert Greenberg and Chin Kim

Chin kim

Chin Kim is a Korean-born American classical violinist, largely educated in the United States through the Juilliard School, and the Curtis Institute of Music.-Activities:...

.

Ivan Galamian

Ivan Galamian

Ivan Alexander Galamian was an influential Armenian violin teacher of the twentieth century.He was born in Tabriz, Iran, but his family soon emigrated to Moscow, Russia. Galamian studied violin at the School of the Philharmonic Society there with Konstantin Mostras until his graduation in 1919...

's students include Sally Thomas

Sally Thomas

Sally Gordon Thomas AM was a Judge of the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory, Australia from 1992 - 2009. She was appointed to the Court on 10 August 1992 and was the first female to be appointed a Judge of the Court.-Early life:...

 (who became his assistant), Michael Rabin

Michael Rabin (violinist)

Michael Rabin was an American virtuoso violinist whose fame has continued despite his death at the age of 35.Michael Rabin was of Romanian-Jewish descent. His mother Jeanne was a Juilliard-trained pianist, and his father George was a violinist in the New York Philharmonic...

, Itzhak Perlman

Itzhak Perlman

Itzhak Perlman is an Israeli-born violinist, conductor, and instructor of master classes. He is regarded as one of the pre-eminent violinists of the 20th and early-21st centuries.-Early life:...

, Pinchas Zukerman

Pinchas Zukerman

Pinchas Zukerman is a world-renowned violinist, violist, and conductor. He is considered one of the greatest violinists of the 20th and 21st centuries, and his ongoing 45-year career has seen him perform with the world's best-known orchestras and record over 100 works...

, Isidor Lateiner

Isidor Lateiner

Isidor Lateiner was a Cuban/American violinist. He was the brother of pianist Jacob Lateiner....

, Kyung-wha Chung

Kyung-wha Chung

Kyung-wha Chung is a Korean violinist.- Biography :Kyung-wha Chung's musical career began at the age of three. Her fame in the seventies and eighties was at the top level, and ranked alongside the great violinists Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman...

, Glenn Dicterow

Glenn Dicterow

Glenn Dicterow , is an American violinist and is currently concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.Mr. Dicterow's musical gifts became apparent when, at age 11, he made his solo debut with the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra...

, David Nadien, Erick Friedman, Jaime Laredo

Jaime Laredo

Jaime Laredo is a violinist and conductor. Currently the conductor and Music Director of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, he began his musical career when he was five years old. In 1948 he came to North America and took lessons from Antonio DeGrass...

, Arnold Steinhardt

Arnold Steinhardt

Arnold Steinhardt , is an American violinist, best known as the first violinist of the Guarneri String Quartet....

, Charles Castleman, Miriam Fried, James Buswell, Sergiu Luca

Sergiu Luca

Sergiu Luca was a Romanian-born American violinist, renowned as an early music pioneer who first introduced playing J. S...

, Charles Treger, Ani

Ani Kavafian

Ani Kavafian is a classical violinist and professor at the Yale School of Music.Kavafian was born in Istanbul to parents of Armenian descent. In 1956 she moved with her family to Detroit, by which time she had begun playing piano. She began on violin at age nine, studying under Ara Zerounian and...

 and Ida Kavafian

Ida Kavafian

Ida Kavafian is a classical violinist and violist.Kavafian was born in Turkey to Armenian parents. She moved with her family to America in 1956, and began studying violin in Detroit at age six...

, Kaoru Kakudo

Kaoru Kakudo

Kaoru Kakudo , a violinist born in Japan, who performed internationally in recital and solo orchestral appearances. She was a concertmaster of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra in the Netherlands.-Biography:...

, Ray Dotoratos, Chin Kim

Chin kim

Chin Kim is a Korean-born American classical violinist, largely educated in the United States through the Juilliard School, and the Curtis Institute of Music.-Activities:...

, Eugene Fodor

Eugene Fodor

Eugene Nicholas Fodor, Jr. was the first American violinist to win the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.Fodor was born in Denver, Colorado. His first ten years of study were with Harold Wippler...

, Daniel Phillips, Berl Senofsky

Berl Senofsky

Berl Senofsky was a violinist of the twentieth century.He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Russian immigrant violinists. He received his first music lessons from his father at the age of three. By the time he was six he had won a scholarship to study with Louis Persinger, a...

, Betty Jean Hagen, Young Uck Kim, Stuart Canin, Eugene Sarbu, Dong-Suk Kang

Dong-Suk Kang

Dong-Suk Kang is a South Korean violinist.-Biography:Kang played his first concert at the age of eight. He went to New York in 1967 to study at the Juilliard School and completed his education with Ivan Galamian at the Curtis Institute of Music...

, Gregory Fulkerson, Simon Standage

Simon Standage

Simon Andrew Thomas Standage is an English violinist and conductor best known for playing and conducting music of the baroque and classical eras on original instruments.- Biography and career :...

, and Kate Stenberg of Del Sol Quartet

Del Sol Quartet

The Del Sol Quartet is a string quartet based in San Francisco, California. Del Sol is known for actively working with living composers from a wide range of cultural perspectives, and recording and performing exclusively 20th and 21st century music...

.

Lucien Capet had a successful career as a soloist and chamber musician, forming the Capet Quartet

Capet Quartet

The Capet String Quartet was a French musical ensemble founded in 1893, which remained in existence until 1928 or later. It made a number of recordings and was considered one of the leading string quartets of its time.- Personnel :...

 in 1893. The quartet went through many changes of personnel and made several recordings of Beethoven string quartets and Romantic

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 and Classical

Classical music

Classical music is the art music produced in, or rooted in, the traditions of Western liturgical and secular music, encompassing a broad period from roughly the 11th century to present times...

 works. Capet was also a well-regarded teacher, known especially for his bow technique.

With the violinist and chamber musician Suzanne Chaigneau

Suzanne Chaigneau

Suzanne Chaigneau, born Chailly-en-Bière, 14 June 1875, died Paris 13 April 1946, was a French violinist and chamber musician....

, Capet founded the Institut moderne du violin in 1924.

Capet wrote a book on "Superior Bowing Technique" which is an essential treatise on all aspects of bowing technique for the violin; reprints are available (including translations into English by Margaret Schmidt and Stephen Shipps).

Lucien Capet also worked closely with bowmaker Joseph Arthur Vigneron

Joseph Arthur Vigneron

Joseph Arthur Vigneron was an important French Archetier / Bowmaker.He served his apprenticeship with his stepfather Charles Claude Husson in Mirecourt, where he studied side by side with Joseph Alfred Lamy père , who was less than a year older than he was...

 to develop a Lucien Capet model bow (modele Lucien Capet was often stamped on such bows).
Vigneron's concept /design for these bows was a sort of rounded triangular cross section which added stability to the bow (lower centre of gravity)."

Quotes

Compositions

• Le Rouet, poème symphonique
• Prélude religieux for orchestra
• Devant la mer for voice and orchestra
• Poème for violin & orchestra
• 5 string quartets
• 2 sonata
  Sonata
  Sonata , in music, literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata , a piece sung. The term, being vague, naturally evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms prior to the Classical era...
  
  s for violin & Piano
• 6 études for violin
• Aria for violin, viola, and piano

Recordings by the Quatuor Capet

(Made c.1925-1930)

• Beethoven: Quartet in A major op 18 no 5 (Columbia Records, D 1659-62).
• Beethoven: Quartet in F major op 59 no 1 (Col. D 15065-70).
• Beethoven: Quartet in E flat major 'Harp', op 74 (Col., L 2248-51).
• Beethoven: Quartet in C sharp minor, op 131 (Col., L 2283-87).
• Beethoven: Quartet in A minor, op 132 (Col., L 2272-76).
• Mozart: Quartet in C major K 465 (Col., L 2290-93).
• Schumann
  Robert Schumann
  Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
  
  : Quartet in A minor op 41 no 1 (Col., L 2329-31).
• Debussy: Quartet in G minor op 10 (1893) (Col., D 15085-8).
• Franck
  César Franck
  César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life....
  
  : Quintet in F minor, with Marcel Ciampi
  Marcel Ciampi
  Marcel Paul Maximin Ciampi was a French pianist and teacher. He held the longest tenure in the history of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris and also became head of piano classes at the Yehudi Menuhin School in England...
  
   (pno) (Col., D 15102-6).
• Haydn: Quartet in D major op 64 no 5 'Lark' (Col., D 13070-2).
• Ravel: Quartet in F major (Col., D 15057-60).
• Schubert: Quartet in D minor 'Death and the Maiden' (Col. D 15053-6).

Sources

• A. Eaglefield-Hull, A Dictionary of Modern Music and Musicians (Dent, London 1924).
• L. Capet, Technique de l'Archet.
• R.D. Darrell, The Gramophone Shop Encyclopedia of Recorded Music (New York, 1936).
• Memoirs of Carl Flesch
• Encyclopedia of the Violin - Alberto Bachmann

External links

• Capetmusic.com
• Portrait et document
• Young Lucien Capet
• Lucien Capet Quartet
• Robert Casadesus & Lucien Capet "Robert (Casadesus) then entered the class of Lucien Capet, who had exceptional influence. Capet had founded a famous quartet that bore his name and in which two of Robert's uncles played: Henri and Marcel. The Quartet often rehearsed in the Casadesus home, and so it was that Robert was initiated into chamber music. The Beethoven Quartets held no secret for him—he knew them backwards and forwards without ever having played them! "