A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Chiabran, Francesco
CHIABRAN, Francesco (alias Chabran, or Chiabrano), a violin-player, was boru in Piedmont about 1723. He was a nephew and pupil of the celebrated Somis. In 1747 he entered the royal band at Turin, and about the year 1751 appears to have gone to Paris, where his brilliant and lively style of playing created a considerable sensation. His compositions show that his character as a musician was somewhat superficial, and wanting in true artistic earnestness. The three sets of sonatas which he published in 1756 and the following years are flimsy in construction and devoid of ideas, and appear to be intended merely to give the player an opportunity of displaying his proficiency in the execution of double stops, staccato passages, harmonics, and other technical difficulties. He occasionally indulges in realistic traits of descriptive music.
If we consider that Chiabran, through Somis, was indirectly a pupil of Corelli, his deterioration from the noble style of that great master is really astonishing, though not without parallel in the present day, when the traditions of the great Paris school of Rode, Kreutzer, and Viotti appear almost equally forgotten in France.[ P. D. ]