Petit

Petit was a French violinist and composer of the eighteenth century whose career, as the sources themselves caution, remains unclear. Although several writers of the period attested to his reputation, very little reliable information survives about his life, and the year of his death is not known with certainty, tentatively placed in Paris after 1752.

He was one of the four French disciples of Tartini, alongside Pagin, La Houssaye and de Tremais, whose manner of playing pleased Parisian audiences at mid-century.

His debut at the Concert Spirituel took place on Christmas Day 1738, when he performed a concerto of his own; at that time he was in the service of the Polish king Stanislas, in his exile court at Lunéville. In the concerts of 1741 and 1742 he played a sonata by Leclair and concertos by Leclair and Tartini. He is known to have been living in Paris in 1753. According to Marpurg and Gerber, his compositions followed the style of Tartini, although they can hardly be assessed, since only a few short pieces published in anthologies survive. Pincherle further maintains that he studied with Leclair l'aîné, a claim that cannot be confirmed from other sources.

A common error has been to attribute to him the initials J.C., which in fact belong to J.C. Petit, musical director to the Duke of Saxe-Eisenach and to the Margrave of Baden-Durlach before 1730, and author of an Apologie de l'excellence de la musique published in London around 1740. The violin duets printed in Paris in 1788–1789 and attributed to this Petit, a pupil of Tartini, in fact belong to a younger Petit, a violin teacher and member of the orchestra of the Théâtre Italien, who later played for thirty years at the Opéra-Comique. His family relationship with the homonymous musicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries remains unresolved.