OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Viollet, Paul Marie

See also Paul Viollet on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​VIOLLET, PAUL MARIE (1840– ), French historian, was born at Tours on the 24th of October 1840. After serving his native city as secretary and archivist, he became archivist to the national archives in Paris in 1866, and later librarian to the faculty of law. In 1890 he was appointed professor of civil and canon law at the ecole des chartes. His work mainly concerns the history of law and institutions, and on this subject he published, two valuable and scholarly books Droit public: Histoire des institutions politiques et administratives de la France (1890–08), and Précis de l’histoire du droit français (1886).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène Emmanuel

See also Eugène Viollet-le-Duc on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​VIOLLET-LE-DUC, EUGÈNE EMMANUEL (1814–1879), French architect and writer on archaeology, was born in Paris on the 21st of January 1814. He was a pupil of Achille Leclere, and in 1836–37 spent a year studying Greek and Roman architecture in Sicily and Rome. His chief interest was, however, in the art of the Gothic period, and, like Sir Gilbert Scott in England, he was employed to "restore" some of the chief medieval buildings of France, his earliest works being the abbey church of Vezelay, various churches at Poissy, St Michel at Carcassonne, the church of Semur in Cote-d'Or, and the fine Gothic town halls of Saint-Antonin and Narbonne, all carried out between 1840 and 1850. From 1845 to 1856 he was occupied on the restoration of Notre Dame in Paris in conjunction with Lassus, and also with that of the abbey of St Denis. In 1849 he began the restoration of the fortifications of Carcassonne and of Amiens cathedral; and in later years he restored Laon cathedral, the chateau of Pierrefonds, and many other important buildings. He was an intimate friend of Napoleon III., and during the siege of Paris (1871) gave valuable help as an engineer to the beleaguered army. He held many important offices, both artistic and political, and was for many years inspector-general of the ancient buildings throughout a large part of France. His last work was the general scheme ​for the Paris exhibition buildings In 1878. He died on the 17th of September 1879 at Lausanne.
As a designer Viollet-le-Duc occupied only a secondary place; but as a writer on medieval architecture and the kindred arts he takes the highest rank. His two great dictionaries are the standard works in their class, and are most beautifully illustrated with very skilful drawings by his own hand. Viollet-le-Duc was a man of the most varied and brilliant abilities, endowed with a power of work which has seldom been equalled. He was at once an artist, a man of science, a learned archaeologist and a scholar. The map in his Le Massif du Mont Blanc, showing the rock contours and the glaciers of Mont Blanc, is a model of its kind, which combines great artistic beauty with the accuracy of the most skilful engineer. His strong poetical fancy enabled him to reconstruct the life and buildings of the middle ages in the most vivid way.
His principal literary works were the Dictionnaire de l'architecture française du XI. an XVI. siècle (1854–68); Dictionnaire du mobilier français (1858–75); L'Architecture militaire au moyen âge (1854); Entretiens sur l'architecture (1863–72); Cites et ruines américaines (1863); Memoire sur la defense de Paris (1871); Habitations modernes (1874–77); Histoire d'une maison (1873); Histoire d'une forteresse (1874); Histoire de l'habitation humaine (1875); Le Massif du Mont Blanc (1876); L'Art russe (1877); Histoire d'un hôtel-de-ville et d'une cathedral (1878); La Décoration appliquée aux édifices (1879); as well as many minor works dealing with separate buildings.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Viotti, Giovanni Battista

See also Giovanni Battista Viotti on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​VIOTTI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA (1753–1824), Italian violinist and musical composer, was born at Fontanetto in the province of Turin on the 23rd of May 1753. He learned the rudiments of music from his father, a blacksmith who played the horn, and in 1764 Giovannini taught him the violin for a year. Two years later he was placed at the cost of the prince de la Cisterne under the violinist G. Pugnani at Turin, where he became violinist in the court chapel. In 1780 Viotti, having already made himself a name, travelled through Germany and Poland to Russia, where the empress Catherine honoured him with marks of extraordinary favour. He next appeared in London, in company with Pugnani, and at once achieved a brilliant and lasting reputation. In 1782 he was equally successful in Paris. Two years later he was appointed leader of the prince de Soubise's private orchestra; and in 1788 he undertook the direction of the opera, raising the performances, with Cherubini's assistance, to a very high level. He had also started an Italian opera in co-operation with the barber Léonard, which was opened in 1789 in the Tulleries, being subsequently amalgamated with the Théâtre de la Foire St Germain in 1790 and finally merged in the new Théâtre Feydeau in 1791. In 1791 the Revolution compelled Viotti to fly to London, where he took part in the Hanover Square concerts, but being suspected to be an agent of the Revolutionary Committee in Paris he was compelled to retire for a time to the neighbourhood of Hamburg, which he subsequently quitted, although the date of his departure, often given as 1795, does not seem probable. It is possible that he was already in 1794 in London, where he took shares in a wine business, and he resided almost uninterruptedly there until 1819, when he once more settled in Paris, resumed the direction of the opera, and retired in 1822 with a pension. He died in London on the 10th (or 3rd) of March 1824.
Viotti's playing was distinguished by an extreme purity of style, a magnificent tone, and an inexhaustible variety of poetical and imaginative expression. Among his works are 29 violin concertos, a series of symphonies concertantes for two violins, 45 duos, 18 trios and 21 quartets, and a great number of sonatas, notturnos and other instrumental works. His school was worthily perpetuated by his pupil Rode.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Viol

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​VIOL, a generic term for the bowed precursors of the violin (q.v.), but in England more specially applied to those immediate predecessors of the violin which are distinguished in Italy and Germany as the Gamba family. The chief characteristics of the viols were a flat back, sloping shoulders, “c”-shaped sound-holes, and a short finger-board with frets. All these features were changed or modified in the violin, the back becoming delicately arched, the shoulders reverting to the rounded outline of the guitar or troubadour fiddle, the shape of the sound-holes changing from “c” to “f,” and the fingerboard being carried considerably nearer the bridge. The viols, of which the origin may be traced to the 13th and 14th century German Minnesinger fiddle, characterized also by sloping shoulders, can hardly be said to have evolved into the violin. The latter was derived from the guitar-fiddle through the Italian lyre or viol lyra family, distinguished as da braccio and da gamba, and having early in the 17th century the outline and “f” sound holes of the violin. The viol family consisted of treble, alto, tenor and bass instruments, being further differentiated as da braccio or da gamba according to the position in which they were held against the arm or between the knees. The favourite viol da gamba, or division viol, frequently had a man or a woman's head instead of the scroll finish to the peg-box, and sometimes a few fine wire sympathetic strings tuned an octave higher than the strings in the bridge.
Michael Praetorius mentions no less than five sizes of the viol da gamba, the largest corresponding to the double bass, and in a table he notes the various accordances in use for each. He carefully distinguishes these instruments as violen and the viole da braccio (our violin family) as geigen. Of the latter he gives six sizes, the highest being the pochette with vaulted back, a rebec in fact, and the lowest corresponding to the violoncello, which he calls bass viol or geige da braccio.
The viols were very popular in England in the 16th and 17th centuries, holding their own for a long time after the introduction of the louder-toned violin; they are fully described and figured in the musical works of the period, and more especially in Christopher Simpson's Division Viol (1667), Thomas Mace's Musick's Monument (1676) and John Playford's Introduction to the Skill of Music. (K. S.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Violoncello

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​VIOLONCELLO (Fr. violoncelle, Ger. Violoncell, Ital. violoncello), the bass member of the violin family. Although the word violoncello is a diminutive, signifying "small violone," or double bass, the instrument is really a bass violin, formed on a different model from the violone, which has the sloping shoulders and flat back of the viol family, whereas those of the violoncello are rounded as in the violin. The construction of the violoncello is therefore the same as that of the violin (q.v.) but on a much larger scale. It is either held, on account of its size, between the performer's knees, or rests on the floor supported on a foot or spike.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vionville

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​VIONVILLE, a village of Lorraine, between Metz and the French frontier, celebrated as the scene of the battle of Vionville (Rezonville or Mars la Tour), fought on the 16th of August 1870 between the French and the Germans (see Metz and Franco-German War).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Vinton, Frederic Porter

See also Frederic Porter Vinton on Wikipedia; and our 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica disclaimer.
​VINTON, FREDERIC PORTER (1846–), American portrait painter, was born at Bangor, Maine, on the 29th of January 1846. He was a pupil of Duveneck, of William M. Hunt in Boston, of Léon Bonnat and Jean Paid Laurens in Paris, and of the Royal Academy of Munich. In 1891 he was elected a full member of the National Academy of Design, New York.
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Fiddle

From volume 1 of the work.
​FIDDLE. The old English word, before 'viol' came in, and still the more idiomatic of the two. Both are possibly derived from the same root—vitula, a calf, from the springing motion of dancers (Dies and Littré; and compare the connection of Geige and jig). Fiddlestick is the violin-bow, as in the Epigram on a Bad Fiddler:—
Old Orpheus play'd so well he mov'd Old Nick, Whilst thou mov'st nothing—but thy fiddlestick.
[ G. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Fibich, Zdenko

[ M. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Festing, Michael

From volume 1 of the work.
​FESTING, Michael Christian, an eminent performer on, and composer for the violin, was the son of a flautist of the same names, who was a member of the orchestra of the King's Theatre in the Haymarket about 1727. Festing was at first a pupil of Richard Jones, leader of the band at Drury Lane, but subsequently studied under Geminiani. He first appeared in public about 1724. He became a member of the king's private band and first violin at an amateur association which met at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand, under the name of the Philharmonic Society. On the opening of Ranelagh Gardens in 1742 he was appointed director of the music as well as leader of the band.
[ W. H. H. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Fiasco

From volume 1 of the work.
[ G. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Fevin, Antoine

From volume 1 of the work.
[ J. R. S.-B. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Fiala, Joseph

From volume 1 of the work.
[ M. C. C. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Fidelio

From volume 1 of the work.
[ G. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Festa, Costanzo

From volume 1 of the work.
​FESTA, Costanzo, one of the earliest composers of the Roman school, was born somewhere towards the close of the 15th century. He was elected a member of the Pontifical choir in 1517, and died April 10, 1545. He eventually became Maestro at the Vatican, and his nomination was so far singular that he was at that time the only Italian in a similar position throughout the Peninsula. His genius cannot be doubted, and Dr. Burney, who had been at the trouble of scoring a great number of his Madrigals, was astonished at the rhythm, grace, and facility of them. The Doctor calls one of Festa's Motetti, 'Quam pulchra es, anima mea,' a model of elegance, simplicity, and pure harmony, and says that 'the subjects of imitation in it are as modern, and that the parts sing as well, as if it were a production of the eighteenth century.' Festa, according to Baini, fell in his motets into a fashion too prevalent in his day, of setting distinct words to each voice. The Abbé ('Life of Palestrina,' vol. i. pp. 95–103) explains in great detail the lengths to which this absurd and undignified affectation was carried, and quotes with obvious and well merited approval a rebuke administered by the Cardinal Capranica, in the pontificate of Niccolo V, to some singer who had asked him to admire the caprice. 'Mi pare,' said the Cardinal, 'di udir una mandra di porcelli, che grugniscono a tutta forza senza profferire però un suono articolato, non che una parola.'
[ E. H. P. ]
# A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Fesca, Friedrich

From volume 1 of the work.
[ M. C. C. ]
# A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Salome

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SALOME,
Wife of Zebedee, and mother of James the Greater, and John the Evangelist. She was one of those holy women who attended and ministered to our Saviour in his journeys. She requested of Jesus that her two sons might sit one on his right, and the other on his left hand. Mark xv. 40. She followed Christ to Calvary, and did not forsake him at the cross. She was one of those women who came early on Sunday morning with perfumes to embalm the body of Christ.
# A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Salvioni, Rosalba Maria

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SALVIONI, ROSALBA MARIA,
Was born at Rome in 1658. She studied the art of painting under Sebastian Copea, but devoted herself wholly to portraiture, which she excelled. She died in 1708.
# A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Sandford, Mrs.

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SANDFORD, MRS.,
Wife of the Rev. John Sandford, wrote a little work much commended on its appearance—"Woman in her Social and Domestic Character." This was reprinted in Boston in 1832. At that time few works on the subject of woman's duties and influence had appeared since Mrs. More and the Rev. Mr. Bennet wrote their stiff treatises. Mrs. Sandford keeps religion constantly in view, and thus inculcates moral goodness as the cardinal quality of worth for the sex. So far, her work is excellent; but she, like most writers on this subject, falls into the grave error of making reason and physical power superior to moral goodness. She constantly describes woman as inferior to man. While such is the tone of British writers their works will do little for the cause of Christianity. That the Saviour's precepts are more generally and perfectly obeyed by women than by men no person will question; if to be a Christian And do good is the highest glory of humanity, above physical strength, which is held in common with animals, above mental power, which, without this moral goodness, is used in the service of devils, then woman's nature is the superior; and those who teach otherwise are really promoting the kingdom of darkness—the reign of licentiousness and infidelity.
# A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Sainte-Nectaire, Magdalene de

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SAINTE-NECTAIRE, MAGDALENE DE,
Widow of Guy de St. Exuperi, was a Protestant heroine, who distinguished herself in the civil wars of France. After the death of her husband, she retired to her château at Miremont, in the Limousin, where, with sixty young men, well armed, she was accustomed to make excursions on the Catholic armies in her neighbourhood. In 1575, M. Mental, governor of the province, having had his detachments often defeated by Madame de Sainte-Nectaire, resolved to besiege her in her château, with fifteen hundred foot and fifty horse. Sallying out upon him, she defeated his troops; but finding, on her return, her château in possession of the enemy, she galloped to Turenne, a neighbouring town, to procure a reinforcement. Mental awaited her in a defile, but was vanquished and mortally wounded by her troops. The time of her death if not recorded.
# A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Sabliere, Madame de la

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SABLIERE, MADAME DE LA,
A French poetess, was the friend and benefactress of La Fontaine, who lived in her house for twenty years. Her husband was also a poet, and she is said to have assisted him in his writings. She was not, however, always faithful to her husband; but she expiated this sin, in the opinion of her contemporaries, by retiring to a convent, and consecrating the rest of her life to taking care of the sick. She died at Paris in the latter part of the seventeenth century.
# A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Sainte des Prez

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SAINTE DES PREZ,
A pupil of Agnes de Bragelonge de Planey, lived in the thirteenth century. She was a French poetess. At the age of twelve, she fell in love with Seymour, an English gentleman, who was then thirty, and who did not reciprocate her affection till ten years after, when he married her; but she died soon after. Guillebert d'Emeville, a celebrated troubadour, was one of her suitors.
# A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Sale, Lady

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SALE, LADY,
Wife of Sir Robert Sale, has distinguished herself greatly for the noble courage with which she bore the dangers and sufferings incident to the terrible war in Afghanistan, the generous assistance she rendered to others, and the calm good sense and unshaken faithfulness which characterize her record of the siege of Cabul and the retreat and destruction of the British army. Her work, was published in 1843—"A Journal of the Disasters in Afghanistan." The book must be read to form a correct idea of Lady Sale's character, and of the heroic fidelity to duty which lives in the soul of a woman. Sir Robert Peel said, when addressing Parliament on the subject of that war, "We are now acknowledging military services; but I never should excuse myself, if, in mentioning the name of Sir Robert Sale, I did not record my admiration of the character of a woman who has shed lustre on her sex—Lady Sale, his wife."
# A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Samson, Deborah

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SAMSON, DEBORAH,
Was the child of very poor parents, of Plymouth, Massachusetts. She was received into a respectable family, where she was kindly treated, but where her education was entirely neglected. She, however, contrived to teach herself to read and write; and, as soon as she was able, earned money enough to pay for her own schooling for a short time. When she was about twenty, the Revolutionary war in America commenced; and Deborah, disguising herself in man's apparel, and going to the American camp, enlisted, in 1778, for the whole term of the war, under the name of Robert Shirtliffe. Accustomed to out-door labour, she was enabled to undergo the same fatigues and exercises as the other soldiers. Her fidelity and zeal gained her the confidence of the officers, and she was a volunteer in several hazardous enterprises. She was twice wounded, at first in the head, and afterwards in the shoulder; but she managed to preserve the secret of her sex unsuspected However, she was seized with a brain-fever in Philadelphia, and the physician who was attending her discovered her sex, and took her to his own spouse. When her health was restored, her commanding officer, to whom the physician had revealed his discovery, ordered her to carry a letter to General Washington. Certain now of a fact of which she had before been doubtful, that her sex was known, she ​went with much reluctance to fulfil the order. Washington, after reading the message with great consideration, without speaking a word, gave her her discharge, together with a note containing a few words of advice, and some money. She afterwards married Benjamin Gannett, of Sharon, Massachusetts. She received a pension, with a grant of land, for her services as a revolutionary soldier.
# A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Sappho

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SAPPHO,
A celebrated Greek poetess, was a native of Mitylene, in the Isle of Lesbos, and flourished about B. C. 610. She married Cercala, a rich inhabitant of Andros, by whom she had a daughter named Cleis; and it was not, probably, till after she became a widow that she rendered herself distinguished by her poetry. Her verses were chiefly of the lyric kind, and love was the general subject, which she treated with so much warmth, and with such beauty of poetical expression, as to have acquired the title of the "Tenth Muse." Her compositions were held in the highest esteem by her contemporaries, Roman as well as Greek, and no female name has risen higher in the catalogue of poets. Her morals have been as much depreciated, as her genius has been extolled. She is represented by Ovid as far from handsome; and as she was probably no longer young when she fell in love with the beautiful Phaon, his neglect is not surprising. Unable to bear her disappointment, she went to the famous precipice of Leucate, since popularly called the Lover's Leap, and throwing herself into the sea, terminated at once her life and her love.
Sappho formed an academy of females who excelled in music; and it was doubtless this academy which drew on her the hatred of the women of Mitylene. She is said to have been short in stature, and swarthy in her complexion. Ovid confirms this description in his Heroides, in the celebrated epistle from Sappho to ​The Mitylenes esteemed her so highly, and were so sensible of the glory they received from her having been born among them, that they paid her sovereign honours after her death, and stamped their money with her image. The Romans also erected a monument to her memory. "It must be granted," says Rapin, "from what is left us of Sappho, that Longinus had great reason to extol the admirable genius of this woman; for there is in what remains of her something delicate, harmonious, and impassioned to the last degree. Catullus endeavoured to imitate Sappho, but fell infinitely short of her; and so have all others who have written upon love."
Besides the structure of verse called Sapphic, she invented the Æolic measure, composed elegies, epigrams, and nine books of lyric poetry, of which all that remain are, an ode to Venus, an ode to one of her lovers, and some small fragments.
# A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Sainte-Phalier, Francoise Therese Aumile de

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SAINTE-PHALIER, FRANCOISE THERESE AUMILE DE,
A French lady, who wrote "The Confident Rival," a comedy, and some other poetical pieces. She died at Paris in 1757.