Scan 46
The violin : solo playing, soloists and solos, 1905
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 30. See the scan on archive.org.
1more than scholastic study of scales and exercises, so criticism has been considered as merely the art of finding faults. But this is the criticism of ostentation. True criticism is a liberal and humane art. It is the offspring of good sense and refined taste. It aims at acquiring a just discernment of real merit. It teaches us, in a word, to admire and to blame with judgment.
3Now, all violinists must apply criticism to their playing. The exercise of taste and of sound criticism is in truth one of the most improving employments of the understanding to examine what is beautiful, and why it is so; to employ ourselves in distinguishing accurately between the specious and the solid. Criticism is an art founded wholly on experience. Taste and criticism are words that go together. Taste is a faculty common in some degree to all players. But although none be wholly devoid of this faculty, yet the degrees in which it is possessed are widely different. In some players only the feeble glimmerings of taste appear: the beauties which they relish are of the lightest kind, and of these they have but a weak and confused impression; while in others taste rises to an acute discernment, and a lively enjoyment of the most refined beauties in playing. This inequality of taste among violinists is owing, without doubt, in part, to the different frame of their natures, to finer innate powers, with which some are endowed beyond others. But if it be owing in part to nature, it is owing to education and culture still more. The illustration of this leads to my next remark on this subject, that taste is a most improvable faculty. Experience every day shows that nothing is more improvable. A very good instance is when one is only beginning his acquaintance with compositions of genius, the sentiment which attends them is generally obscure and confused. He cannot point out the several excellences or blemishes as he first hears or studies them; he is at a loss on what to rest his judgment; all that can be expected is that he should tell in general whether he is pleased or not. But allow him more experience in compositions of this kind, and his taste
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