A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Durand, Auguste
DURAND, alias DURANOWSKY, Auguste Frédéric, violin-player, born at Warsaw about 1770. After having received his first instruction on the violin from his father, a musician at the court of the king of Poland, he was sent in 1787 to Paris by a nobleman. Here he studied under Viotti, but appears not so much to have adopted the style of his master, as to have followed the bent of his own talent for the execution of technical tours de force. In 1794 and 95 he travelled in Germany and Italy, meeting everywhere with great success. Suddenly however, discarding the violin, he entered the French army, and became adjutant to one of the generals. Owing to some misconduct he was imprisoned at Milan, and had to quit the service. He then returned to the violin, and till 1814 led an unsettled life in Germany, continually changing his abode. He finally settled at Strassburg as leader of the band, and was living there in 1834. The date of his death is not known.
According to Fétis, Paganini confessed that his peculiar style and many of his most brilliant and popular effects were to a considerable degree derived from Durand, whom he had heard when young. There can be no doubt that Durand'a technical skill was extraordinary and his treatment of the violin full of originality. The full development of his talent appears however to have been impeded by his irregular habits of life. It is amongst other things related that he often had no violin of his own, and would play in public on any instrument he could get hold of, however bad. His compositions—concertos, airs varies, and a number of smaller pieces for the violin—show him to have been but an indifferent musician.[ P. D. ]