Scan 68
The violin : solo playing, soloists and solos, 1905
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 52. See the scan on archive.org.
1CHAPTER XI.
3THE ARTIST.
5THERE are a good number of esteemed violinists who have acquired some knowledge of solo playing and who play certain kinds of pieces very well indeed. But ask them to play a Beethoven Sonata, or anything classical, and you will probably find their playing mechanical and cold. Their mind is always in one direction—time and notes. Their knowledge is only gained by practice. They never think of using their heads, consequently they have limited ideas of performing classical music. They merely exercise their fingers either for amusement or display. You could not desire a better proof of the want of depth in their minds, a shallowness in their conceptions. You may often hear them criticising sonatas as not being interesting enough for the violinist; but it is all rubbish, and mere "talk." It is simply because they possess no conception of the composer's ideas. Of all the parts of violin playing, practical or intellectual, by the universal acknowledgment of all ages and nations, the quality of all others, the most rare, the most impressive, and that which bears the most unequivocal marks of its divine origin, is undoubtedly conception. An artist must possess conception. He never ceases to find one, two, and shall I say a third meaning for every phrase. The artist is not merely a violinist, but a real musician. These qualities make his renderings inherently intellectual and attractive. He
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