Scan 59
The violin : solo playing, soloists and solos, 1905
2 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 43. See the scan on archive.org.
1by affording an adequate instruction, from elementary to advanced, and by offering as an inducement to exertion, honours and distinction to those deserving of them. It is a fair question how far either of these purposes have been served as regards violin-playing. As to the preservation, perhaps, an affirmative may be acceded, but as regards the promotion, it is very doubtful, beyond the creation and preservation of a uniform style of playing, throughout England generally. It is this suppression of originality, this levelling of all capacities to one standard, that is the chief danger to be guarded against in an academic education. That a number of students constantly aiming at the same ends, playing the same pieces in the same manner, should acquire a very great sameness of interpretation and style, is not extraordinary; and it is this consummation, the trim method of mediocrity, that is the shoal that the academic helmsman has to avoid. Practical and oral instruction should be made equally competent in academies. Practical instruction, proceeding from a prominent source, is the only corrective or preventive of this general mere technical tendency of academic education. It should, therefore, be the aim of all academies to appoint all the great violinists who visit this country at one period and another, during the year, to give frequent violin recitals on all the various styles of playing. Then there should be lectures constituting the substance of an academic course of study, on the history of the violin, on the principles of the violin, and the practice of the violin. These violin recitals should be given to show what may be done, by pointing out what has been done: to distinguish between what is essential and what is not; what to be emulated and what to be deprecated. It is perfectly true that academies are not necessary to the production of great soloists; it is also an incontestable fact that few academic students ever make a good soloist;—at any rate in this country. Premiums are distributed to rear talent and stimulate emulation, and stipends are granted to relieve the wants of genius, and finish education. And what is the result?
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.