Books › Modern violin-playing, 1920 › scan 80
Scan 80
Modern violin-playing, 1920
14 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 40. See the scan on archive.org.
1tion or even to the continuation of a school. His extraordinary control of expression by means of the bow always remained something of a mystery to him.
3In fact, those who surrounded him were responsible for what became known as "the Joachim bowing." And nothing has been so much misunderstood, caricatured, and maligned as this bowing.
5The object of his followers was simply to imitate the pose and appearance of his big wide hand. And, as Joachim himself never got much further in his explanation of his own technique than "flexibility of the wrist," the most outrageous exercises were invented by his disciples.
7Things even went so far that pupils were led by their instructors to hang chairs on their forearms just above the wrist, while practising sideways movements of the hand that were an outrage and an abomination to nature.
9Those who succeeded in imitating somewhat the appearance of Joachim's right-hand, and who could swing their own right-hands sideways over a wide arc were said "to have the Joachim bowing." Their playing might sound as scrawny as a midnight concert of cats. But even under these aural disabilities, they were upheld by the mystical belief that they "had the Joachim bowing." It was a sort of conviction of inward salvation, whose outward futility did not forbid them to hope that in time accomplishment might follow on appearance.
11Not all succeeded—even to the point of appearance. But those who succumbed, succumbed as martyrs. As a rule their martyrdom was spoken of as an honourable achievement, entitling them to rank and precedence only just below that of the noble army of violin-saints. They also served, in a way; but, of course, without doing much active playing. For the melancholy truth must be told that, as signs of their martyrdom, they usually bore large wens on their wrists, or suffered the agonies of vocational cramp.
13Is it necessary to add that, in encouraging these eccentricities and perversions, that great artist and noble-spirited man, Joseph Joachim, took no part whatever?
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