Scan 362
Grove's dictionary of music and musicians ed. by J. A. Fuller Maitland, 1910
12 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 328. See the scan on archive.org.
1any Conservatoire. It is obvious how much orchestral performances must have gained by this general spread of executive skill, and we can safely assume that at no period of musical history has orchestral music been so generally well executed as at the present day.
3At the same time we cannot speak of a modern violin-technique and a modern development of such technique as we speak of it in reference to piano-playing. The development of the technique in any instrument, as a matter of course, goes along with the perfecting of its mechanical structure. Now in the case of the pianoforte this gradual perfecting of the mechanism has continued up to the present time. Thus the technique of Mozart probably stands in the same relation to the technique of Liszt as an old Vienna harpsichord to a modern Broadwood. In the case of the violin it is not so. For more than three hundred years the violin has undergone no structural alteration whatever, and no important change in the principles of execution has taken place since the days of Corelli. The advance made in mastering difficulties since the early days of violin-playing is more apparent than real. There are but few points of modern technique which one or another of the old masters had not already attempted (Locatelli, Lolli, Bach, etc.), and it is owing only to the more complicated nature of modern music (not to speak of the morbid tendency towards exaggeration in every respect) that the execution of great difficulties is more often demanded. It is only in reference to 'bowing' that we can speak of a modern development, and that for the very good reason that the modern flexible bow attained its present form but very gradually at the end of the 18th century. In the art of bowing we do find, as in piano-playing, a modern development which follows the gradual perfecting of the instrument. Tourte, of Paris, made the modern bow what it is, and the violinists of his time were not slow to avail themselves of its immense advantages. Hence resulted a rapid progress in the art of bowing, which culminated in Paganini, and there reached a point of perfection which is not likely to be surpassed.
5Notices will be found elsewhere of most of the artists whose names appear in the following article.
7Since the above remarks were printed, the tendencies noted have become still more marked. The success of the lady violinist is now firmly established; she stands upon the concert platform almost coequal with artists of the other sex, able to give a rendering of the great masterpieces of violin literature no less interesting than theirs, though differing in character. Wilma Norman-Neruda (Lady Hallé) reached her seventieth year on March 21, 1909, and retains even yet her old supremacy. Teresina Tua (Countess Franchi) leads a somewhat retired life in Rome. On the other hand several ladies of considerable ability are now before the public, amongst them Marie Hall, Emily Soldat, Gabriele Wietrowetz, Renée Chénet, Sofie Jaffé, Maud Powell, Leonora Jackson, Vivien Chartres, Kathleen Parlow, Leonora von Stosch (Lady Speyer), May Harrison, Jessie Grimson, Nora Clench, and Beatrice Langley, the last five resident in London. Lady amateurs are counted by thousands, and if they do not already form the majority, bid fair to do so in the near future. As orchestral players they have not made, and cannot, for obvious physical reasons, be expected to make, the same progress, few of them possessing the force and intensity which belong to the average male performer; but in chamber music the lady violinist holds her own, imparting into it the delicate, and in some works welcome, charm of femininity.
9The general standard of ability among violinists has gone on improving. Were it not so, the scores of modern composers would be impossible of realisation. The technique of a good soloist is now required of the average orchestral player, who must not only exhibit facility in the playing of artificial harmonics, rapid pizzicato and altissimo passages, difficult double stops, etc., if he is to affront with assurance the parts placed before him in the symphonies of to-day, but must be ready to play them at sight from manuscript, and sometimes, at concerts dominated by the interests of the box office, to give a good account of them after a single rehearsal. The success achieved by British orchestral players in this direction is more noteworthy than any achieved by soloists. Solo-playing had reached its apogee long before the above article was written; what has happened since is the multiplication of the virtuoso to such an extent that executants, however acrobatic, cease to inspire wonder, and audiences are beginning to ask, not what a newcomer can do, but how he can do it. This results from a general improvement in the methods of violin teaching, though another result, less conducive to good art, is the overcrowding of the concert platform by rapidly trained players, many of whom lack the essential qualities which entitle an artist to a public hearing.
11Two of the most prominent figures in the violin world have passed away since the articles appended to their names in earlier volumes of the present edition were written — Joseph Joachim on August 15, 1907, and Pablo de Sarasate on September 20, 1908. The former remained to the end a fount of inspiration for every performer of chamber music; with his death disappeared not only an artist, but an art of interpretation of which he alone had the secret. Sarasate continued his career as a travelling virtuoso almost to the day of his death. The net artistic result of such a life
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