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Books › Modern Violin-playing, 1920 › scan 11

Scan 11

Modern Violin-playing, 1920

16 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.

1MODERN VIOLIN-PLAYING
3CHAPTER I
5THE THREE LINKS
7The object of this book is to help violin-players. To help them, that is to say, by offering them something that is quite new in the violin-world—an accurate study of the physical laws that govern violin-playing, and clear instructions for acquiring a sound violin-technique.
9The process of learning to play the violin has no direct connection with the art of music. It depends for its success solely on the proper understanding and application of the laws of anatomical action. And these, again, are merely specialized examples of the more general laws of mechanics.
11Till the violinist has mastered these laws and has learned to regard his violin as a machine, he should keep all his ideas on the expressive side of music under lock and key. Emotion, when pitted against the eternal laws of the universe, has a poor chance of success; and even when working in harmony with them, it only rarely manages to express itself. This is a hard row to hoe; but assuredly the only one worth the hoeing. And if some bitterness and impatience tend to rise in the student's mind, he should ask himself how he would like to take a railway-journey over the bridges of an emotional engineer, whose sympathetic soul was ignorant of the stresses and strains of his instrument—steel.
13"But," the student may ask "surely all violinists do not need to go through this stern mechanical training? Surely some are born with the divine gift of violin-playing? And if some, why not I?"
15Well, the strict and truthful answer to this query is that, first of all, nobody is born with a divine gift of violin-playing any more than he is born with a divine gift of walking, or of talking the language of his own parents. He has to learn all three.

The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.