his cantabile playing, cannot be surpassed; but he does not execute
great difficulties." His compositions are marked by vivacity, grace, and
sweet sentimentality, but he has neither the depth of feeling, the grand
pathos, nor the concentrated energy of his master Tartini.

Antonio Lolli, who was born at Bergamo about 1730, appears to have been
somewhat of a charlatan. He was self-taught, and, though a performer of
a good deal of brilliancy, was but a poor musician. He was restless,
vain, and conceited, and addicted to gambling. He is said to have played
the most difficult double-stops, octaves, tenths, double-shakes in
thirds and sixths, harmonics, etc., with the greatest ease and
certainty. At one time he appeared as a rival of Nardini, with whom he
is said to have had a contest, and whom he is supposed to have defeated.
According to some accounts, he managed to excite such universal
admiration in advance of the contest that Nardini withdrew.

Lolli was so eccentric that he was considered by many people to be
insane, and Doctor Burney, in writing of him, says, "I am convinced that
in his lucid intervals, he was in a serious style a very great,
expressive, and admirable performer;" but Doctor Burney does not mention
any lucid interval.

Early in the eighteenth century Franz Benda was born in Bohemia at the
village of Altbenatky, and Benda became the founder of a German school
of violin playing. In his youth he was a chorister at Prague and
afterward in the Chapel Royal at Dresden. At the same time he began to
study the violin, and soon joined a company of strolling musicians who
attended fêtes, fairs, etc. At eighteen years of age Benda abandoned
this wandering life and returned to Prague, going thence to Vienna,
where he pursued his study of the violin under Graun, a pupil of