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Scan 16
The violinist, 1900
14 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1nic with either of these great men, and probably superior to them in their conceptions of true art, but who have not made themselves familiar to the masses in the same way. Both Ole Bull, who was in many ways self taught and had many crudities, and Paganini were known to the common people, to the bootblacks and newsboys, and the man who scrapes the street, as no living violinist is known. This was because they had the subtle qualities which appeal to the masses. In other professions these men would doubtless have been great generals or scientists, or poets.
3Kubelik, although many think he lacks soul, is probably, of the violinists now living, the best known to the general public. His career has been like a fairy story. The son of a poor gardener, educated by rich and charitable people who recognized his genius, he sprang into immediate and immense fame when he began to appear before the public. His supreme art conquered the heart of a Hungarian countess who laid aside thoughts of noble birth, and became the wife of the poor gardener's son. He now has the world of violin playing at his feet. His last American tour brought him a large fortune and added fame. At one concert at the New York Hippodrome the house was sold out, hundreds of chairs were placed on the stage for late comers and the receipts of the concert were $8,000. The tour even extended to the Canadian Northwest, where crowded houses were the rule at places like Calgary and Saskatoon, where it is cold enough to freeze the chin-rest off a fiddle. It is said that the profits of the tour were more than $100,000.
5Since the days when Paganini flashed like a meteor over the musical heavens, with his bewildering technical feats of artificial harmonics, scales in left hand pizzicato, sensational bowing effects, double harmonics, etc., the world has found little that is really new in the way of pure technic. The Italian wizard seems to have exhausted the technical resources of the violin at one bound. The great advancement which the world of violin playing has made since his day has been that composers have been shown the way by which they may make use of the enlarged technic which he developed in his compositions and public playing, resulting in a large number of violin works of the first importance which have been produced since. At first violinists of the strictly classical school like Spohr fought strenuously against his technical fireworks, his double harmonics, his extended scales in left hand pizzicato, etc., and would have none of them; but the musical world has come to accept them all, and good composers use them.
7There are probably hundreds of violinists now living, who, if they had lived in the days of Paganini, would have been famous all over Europe, as solo violinists, for they are able to play the compositions of Paganini, as well as the advanced modern works. In his day he was at first the only one who could play such works, although he soon found imitators. His fame and wonderful feats in violin playing gave an immense impetus to the art, resulting in a gradual increase in the average technical skill of violinists which has endured down to the present day. Students in our day master as a matter of course violin compositions which in the early days of violin playing were only attempted by world famous violinists.
9The tendency in the United States as to the class of violin compositions demanded by audiences, has been steadily towards improvement during the past half century. In the early days of our country musical taste was at a low ebb, and audiences were best pleased by compositions which bordered on the jig type, pieces of imitative character, operatic airs with long strings of variations, etc. Ole Bull achieved some of his greatest successes with pieces which he composed in honor of the Americans, such as "To Niagara Falls," "Solitude of the Prairies," "To the Memory of Washington," etc. These pieces were effective enough with mixed audiences when played by Ole Bull, but had small musical value, and have not survived.
11John S. Van Cleve, the well known Ohio blind musician and critic, used to tell a good story, illustrating the state of music in the early days of this country. It seems that a noted foreign violinist was playing a concert in a small town one night and the audience was pitifully small. The man-
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