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Scan 181
An Encyclopedia of the Violin, 1925
14 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 155. See the scan on archive.org.
1CHAPTER VIII
3VIOLIN TEACHING AND STUDY
5The goals toward which most of those strive who undertake the study of the violin seriously are either the professions of soloist or teacher. In the majority of cases the latter is the one which is finally settled upon, due to the fact that solo playing as a profession is not sufficiently lucrative, except for the favored few who come to be known as virtuosos.
7Where the serious student has one or the other of these aims, the selection of an able teacher is of the utmost importance. As a matter of fact, it is extremely difficult for a student or his parents to be sure that the choice they have made in a teacher is a wise one. The musical world is full of people who, with nothing more than a smattering knowledge of the art, undertake boldly to educate others and bring them to heights of musical knowledge which these so-called "teachers" have never attained.
9Many of these teachers "graduate" pupils who exhibit, through natural talent, a superficial ability of a showy type in which real musicianship plays no part whatsoever. The editor himself has been in contact with apparently brilliant performers on the violin, who could fiddle their way through showy pieces of the salon type, and yet were unable to even name the keys that they were playing in, or to denominate them as major or minor, or to play the ordinary scales in different keys properly.
11Any person desiring to study the violin in a serious way is entitled to receive from the teacher who proposes to instruct him real proof in some form that the instruction which he proposes to impart will be of a high character and capable of forming the student into a violinist rather than a fiddler. Every teacher who has had the proper fundamental training and is himself a musician, in the true sense of the word, can be readily judged by the course of training he lays out, by the type of instruction books which he uses and by the firm stand he will take with every pupil as regards his mastering the fundamental principles of music in general and the art of violin playing in particular. Teachers who make light of scale study, chord practice, the use of exercises and études, but who substitute a slovenly system of easy pieces or "recreations" are to be avoided because the student who wastes time with them only finds later that he must begin his work all over again if he desires to become a finished player or teacher.
13The situation is, of course, exactly the same with the pupil, who, if he is so fortunate as to be under the tuition of an able, conscientious and pains-
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