Books › The story of the violin, 1904 › scan 306
Scan 306
The story of the violin, 1904
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 252. See the scan on archive.org.
1Story of the Violin
3Symphony (though I should not like to commit myself on this score)—or whether the reason lay in another direction, dating back to certain old-caste prejudices, the remnant of a mediæval spirit which found their fitting expression in the well-known and oft-quoted advice of Lord Chesterfield to his son¹,—I do not venture to decide or even discuss here.
5If this noble lord's opinion is to be taken as a fair criterion of the general esteem in which professional fiddle-playing in England was held in those times, it is no wonder that under such existing conditions the better middle-class elements, whose active devotion to the young art would have been of incalculable benefit to it, were withheld. This state of things as regards the earliest stages of violin art in England is all the more surprising, as with Henry Purcell (1656-95) national English music reached for the time its culmination. But then it was chiefly vocal music with Purcell, and after him, Handel's all-powerful influence lay in the same direction.
7That England produced, nevertheless, somewhat later, a number of violinists, more or less distinguished, goes without saying. The Geminiani, Girdini, Veracini, Cramer, Viotti, etc., could not have helped endearing that sweetest of voices to the English; and gradually the prejudicial cobwebs of earlier centuries were also swept away. Great is now the number of its devotees of both sexes
9¹ Hart, The Violin—"If you love music, hear it; pay fiddlers to play for you, but never fiddle yourself."
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