Scan 73
The violin : solo playing, soloists and solos, 1905
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 57. See the scan on archive.org.
1SOLO PLAYING, SOLOISTS AND SOLOS.
3eminent person whose interpretation may please them, they can never attain by these means alone to the perfection of their art, since it is obvious that one rarely "presses forward" who is content to follow behind. Such are my views, grounded, as I conceive, not on fancy and assumption, but on experience. I confine true art to no section of violinists; I readily admit that an artist may be found among amateur violinists. No system, if system it can be called, which is based on partial or exaggerated views, and which involves excess and defects in its details, can recommend itself to thinking minds. It may please the very young and inexperienced, the visionary, the lovers of change, of experiment and of things apparently new. Prejudice against classical music may last for a time, but it must soon die out. I am glad I can turn from the visionary schemes of these young Sarasates and Joachims, as the case might be, to the contemplation of those solid principles on which violin playing is built and of the many inestimable things it is capable of expressing, and to the pleasure it affords us all.
5I am fully persuaded that our most strenuous exertions in the field of classical music and artistic playing will contribute much to convince us of our ignorance, as well as to increase the sum of our positive knowledge. And here I freely confess that I attach the greatest importance to our having a right apprehension of our ignorance, not merely as a fact on which we are to soliloquize, but as a principle of a practical nature, keeping us at a distance from unwarrantable confidence. This ought not to enfeeble our energies, or dispirit or retard us in the examination of any of the important difficulties which we wish to conquer. No one deserves the name of a violinist who refuses to employ the intellectual powers in search of the artistic in violin playing, whether one is a good violinist or an indifferent one. But a just view of our ability ought to make us students rather than masters. This, in reality, is its real use, and forms its practical worth, which is beyond all price.
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