Charles Auguste de Bériot

Charles Auguste de Bériot (; 20 February 18028 April 1870) was a Belgian violinist, artist and composer. Biography Charles de Bériot was born in 1802 in Leuven, France (now part of Belgium) into a noble family but was orphaned at the age of nine. He was given to the custody of his music teacher and friend of his father, Jean-François Tiby (1772–1844). De Bériot began studying violin with Tiby, who trained him in the French style as exemplified by Giovanni Battista Viotti. In 1811 he performed for the first time in public, playing a concerto by Viotti. François-Joseph Fétis says that Tiby sent de Bériot to Paris at the age of 12 (1814), however de Bériot’s own correspondence confirms that he only arrived in Paris in 1821. (This mistake is attributed to the advanced age at which Fétis wrote his final biographical note on de Bériot. ) While in Paris, de Bériot studied briefly at the Paris Conservatory under Pierre Baillot and played for Rodolphe Kreutzer and Viotti. The latter encouraged de Bériot to “..listen a lot…and take what seems good to you, be like the bees and you will create a genre…” After being refused a subsidy by William I of the Netherlands, he returned briefly to B