Books › Modern violin-playing, 1920 › scan 112
Scan 112
Modern violin-playing, 1920
14 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 52. See the scan on archive.org.
1Students have been told, with great seriousness, that the jaw should always be placed on the violin, and not the chin. And this maxim of prudence has been enforced by reference to a well-known engraving of Joseph Joachim in his later years. But there are many portraits of Joachim in existence which show him with his chin clearly placed on his instrument. Also, it is a well-known fact that he saw very badly; and, as he grew old, hardly at all with his right eye.
3These are samples of the "rules" that are carefully barnacled onto the beginner's little skiff by the pedant. But the only rule that is worth a snap is the rule to know your principles, and then to suit yourself. What is good for you in ordinary life is good for you as a violinist. Don't raise either of your shoulders. Don't push your stomach forward. Don't rest the weight of the thorax on the pelvis. Don't pre-arrange one pose, as if you had a taste for cataleptic fits. Be easy, and you will be graceful.
5In particular, remember that, if you over-tire one part of your body, you will soon feel its effects elsewhere, in loss of attention and muscular control. To put it more precisely: localized bodily fatigue is quickly converted into general bodily fatigue.
7To these purely physical points one small point of psychology may be added. A big audience, throbbing and glowing with the ecstasy of a G-string melody (let us say), is inclined to regard musical emotion as a purely personal matter. The violinist, from their point of view, is telling them all about his joys and sorrows, his present and past love-affairs, his worldly and celestial aspirations.
9But a big audience is not therefore a discerning audience. Indeed, it is quite certain that its discernment decreases in inverse ratio with its size. After the 5000-limit has been passed, it becomes almost an animal—Plato's "big brute," in fact, the brute that may be teachable, but is at present untaught.
11Let the violinist, then, face this fact fairly and squarely: that, whatever influence life itself has on an artist, a musical composition is not a record of a composer's individual experiences, and therefore assuredly not that of a player's.
13The sincere artist should not antagonize his audience either by holding himself aloof, or by acting every passage that he plays. And he may be quite sure that, the more he divests his art of all suggestion of personal reminiscence in its emotional expression, the more profoundly will he touch the hearts of those whose hearts are worth touching.
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