Books › Modern violin-playing, 1920 › scan 111
Scan 111
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.
1CHAPTER VI
3GENERAL POSITION. CARE OF THE VIOLIN
5Every soloist has to consider carefully the question of his general position when playing. He has to do this for his own artistic welfare, and for the sake of the hundreds of eyes that are sure to be fixed on him during his performance. We need not, then, think any the worse of him, if we find him giving some attention to this subject.
7Let it be confessed that a violinist, seen from the back of a concert-hall, is not a beautiful object. All the exquisite muscular movements that make his art what it is are there quite invisible. The ear alone is enchanted. The eye is continually faced with the struggling black silhouette on the platform. Sometimes it stands grimly glued to the floor, as if foredoomed to instant destruction should it move a single pace to left or right. Sometimes it is an inverted "V" that sways to-and-fro, battling with the music as a young pine-tree battles with the gale. But always it is a black unsubstantial silhouette, that holds a tiny toy in its hands, and is capped with a vague oval of pinkey-white.
9The truth of these facts—by no means new, but little dwelt-on by press-agents and concert-managers—can be tested by a few visits to any concert-hall in the world.
11The soloist, then, has to face some disabilities in trying to appear the romantic fellow that, of course, he always is. But, luckily for music, there is the other and more sincere side of his art. And it is on that side that we may approach him with confidence.
13There is really only one object in adopting a "position"; and that object is to secure the greatest bodily freedom and comfort in playing. Most of the "rules" that have been laid down on this matter are as one-sided as some of the players that are produced by them.
15For example, there are very few students who have not been told, at some time or other, that the whole weight of the body should be thrown on the left-leg. This solemn pronouncement is generally accompanied by the explanation that "by doing so, the right-side is freed." But this provokes the still more solemn, and quite unanswerable, question, "Then, what happens to the left-side?"
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