Books › Modern Violin-playing, 1920 › scan 25
Scan 25
Modern Violin-playing, 1920
26 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1stinging smack in the palm of the hand. The downward motion of the hammer comes to a sudden stop when it strikes the anvil. But the energy seeks and finds an outlet in the upward motion of the handle, pivoting round the hammer-head at its point of contact with the anvil.
32. The pivotal point from which a blow is to be delivered, or from which pressure is to be exerted, must (if it is to be effective) be in the same plane as the surface on which the blow is to be struck.
5This, again, may be illustrated by the action of pounding a table. To do so effectively, one instinctively places one's elbow (the pivotal point) in the same plane as the surface of the table. Otherwise the knuckles would be grazed. If one wishes to pat a friend on the back, one takes exactly the same instinctive precautions—only it is with the wrist as the pivotal point this time.
7Let us emphasize this matter of the pivot by means of three very simple diagrams, Figs. 5, 6, 7.
9Travelling clockwise round the circle in Fig. 5, one proceeds from left to right along the semicircle A C; and from right to left along the semicircle C A. Along the semicircle D B one ascends; along the semicircle B D one descends.
11If one divides the circle into four equal parts, the points A, B, C, D are the only theoretical points at which, if one stopped, one would be facing in a direction parallel either to A C or to B D. At all other points one would face slantingly to right or to left.
13Figs. 6 and 7 show an anvil and a hammer; the latter pivoted at E, the centre of the circle.
15In Fig. 6 the surface of the hammer is placed at C in the same plane as the pivot. The hammer would therefore strike an effective blow, expending all its energy downwards.
17In Fig. 7, however, the anvil is placed either above or below the plane A C. It would therefore strike a blow, part of whose force would be directed to the right or to the left. Its downward efficiency would be impaired.
19Now for the application of this little lesson in natural philosophy.
21First, consider that the finger is the hammer, while the string and finger-board are the anvil.
23Next, notice that the finger pivots from the knuckle. To do this, look again at Fig. 6, and think of the knuckle as E, and the finger-tip as the hammer-head.
25Is it not obvious that, for a stroke of maximum efficiency, both
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