The violinist, composer, violin teacher and publisher Henri Marteau (1874-1934) is one of the tragic figures of music history.

He started his career as a child prodigy who was encouraged and highly praised by the likes of Brahms, Bruch, Gounod and Massenet before celebrating great successes on extensive concert tours throughout Europe and the USA, and even his critical peer and rival Carl Flesch said of him: "At the turn of the century he was justifiably considered one of the finest violinists of his time." Having succeeded the eminent violinist Joseph Joachim at the Berlin College of Music in 1908, Marteau was the leading violin teacher in the German-speaking world. However, as the son of a French industrialist and a German mother, Marteau was a French citizen and, what is more, a reserve officer of the French army; arrested as an enemy alien at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he was released and rearrested several times and was not allowed to return to his villa in the Upper Franconian town of Lichtenberg until 1917, after some humiliating internments. He was ignominiously stripped of his position in Berlin and not reinstated after the war ended. Neither as a soloist nor as a teacher was he able to replicate his pre-war success. His shellac recordings, which came too late for him, merely showed him to be no longer in full control of his faculties.