Books › Modern Violin-playing, 1920 › scan 39
Scan 39
Modern Violin-playing, 1920
14 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1CHAPTER III
3THE LEFT-HAND: PRACTICE
5The practical side of the simple left-hand technique can be summed up in the two words "muscular control."
7The aim of the present chapter must therefore be to lay out a scheme of muscular training. And the student, besides following it out, must keep its importance clearly before his eyes. Its object is, not only to give him the power of contracting any desired muscle alone, but also the sense of muscular relaxation; and to give him both so completely developed that he will be able to contract certain muscles while relaxing others, and to sense the relaxations just as keenly as the contractions.
9The words "muscular contraction and relaxation" thus amplify and explain the words "muscular control." Only it must be noted that, in the delicate art of playing the violin, the great difficulty is to acquire a vivid consciousness of the difference between contraction and relaxation. Yet the unerring faculty of discriminating between the two processes must be acquired. Otherwise, there is no hope of banishing unwilled muscular activity. To put the matter familiarly: if one does not know when a muscle is contracted and when it is relaxed, that muscle will be apt to do as it pleases.
11If there is any doubt of the fact that muscular movement is often quite unconscious, it can be satisfied by a simple experiment. Ask a friend to allow you to raise his arm. Then, after raising it, suddenly let it go. In all probability your friend's arm will remain in mid-air, kept there by his own unconscious muscular action. For, the very suggestion that you are going to raise his arm is enough to set his motor-apparatus in action, without any conscious intention on his part.
13Our scheme of muscular training, then, must have as its object the acquisition of this sense, so vital to the violinist. Of the ten exercises which we shall prescribe for the student, the first seven are directed solely to this end. The last three are practically a basic study of the left-hand technique; only that the right-hand is substituted for the actual violin. This change is made, partly because the exercises can
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