Books › The story of the violin, 1904 › scan 343
Scan 343
The story of the violin, 1904
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 289. See the scan on archive.org.
1A Prodigal
3mere runs and trills à la Lolli to an elaborate fantasia or a pretty romance and rondeau à la Jarnowick; and when it had reached the paradisiacal stage of the Air Varié, it made halt and waxed exceeding popular.
5I need not tell you of the Air Varié. Its popularity at one time can only be compared to that of certain domestic preparations of to-day. It swamped the concert-rooms and parlours, and threatened to invade the kitchen also. The big and the small all varied airs. Paganini accommodated his devils in this obliging abode. Like the wild animals at the Zoo, they—pizzicati, harmonics, etc.—each had a separate cage to perform their tricks. Ernst, too, installed his gentler but not less exacting gnomes and fairies there; and De Bériot, Vieuxtemps, Bazzini, Alard, David, Léonard, Wieniawski—all "aired" varied airs. The Air Varié is practically dead now—it died from over-prodigality; but it left us its grandfather, the small piece.
7Yes, the small piece, the "Character and Fantasie Stück," we have still with us. Under a hundred and one names it figures on our publishers' lists and lives in the hearts of the people. Now, the form in which Schumann, Chopin, Henselt, Stephen Heller, etc., have given almost their best on the piano—at any rate their most spontaneous, inmost self—the small piece should also be the form of expression best suited to the nature of the most graceful of instruments. But alas! nothing demonstrates more painfully the doleful sterility in present-day violin
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