Scan 13
Violin master works and their interpretation, 1925
12 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1the soul of the composer's music, it underlies the interpretation of every important work in violin literature, classic as well as modern.
3In dealing with the interpretation of the masterworks of the violin repertoire, my one great object has been to supply the serious student with hints and suggestions based on my own experience and practice, and on that of some of the greatest interpreting artists of the instrument the world has known, artists who were the contemporaries of my younger days, and anent whose ideas of style and interpretation I can speak from actual knowledge and observation.
5The observations, hints and suggestions which I have to offer are not put forward as ironclad rules, as uncontrovertible laws. While they endeavor to determine the rightful values of nuance and shading in the playing of the great repertoire works they are often tentative—one must always remember that in many compositions, in many individual passages the aesthetic sense permits of conceptions which may differ, and which in spite of the fact are justified by the best canons of musical and artistic good taste. Yet in general, especially in the case of certain outstanding works, the work itself, its character, is so clear that irrespective of variations in detail presentation the interpretation, broadly speaking, must follow certain obvious lines of development.
7I have tried in every case, where a detail of interpretation might be open to question, to give reasons which have prompted my own idea of how it should be handled, with due regard for the validity of other and dissenting opinions.
9As I already have stated musical style and interpretation can be considered only from a purely individual standpoint. Yet without losing sight of this fact, or that tradition is all too often only the dead letter of the law of musical beauty and not its living spirit, there remains much to be said which should be of direct and practical benefit to the student anxious to express in his playing the true inwardness of the great repertoire works. In the following pages I have tried to give the student a better insight into the meaning, the expressive content of the Violin Master Works. Should they help him to express more perfectly the soul, the thought, the spirit of the creators of all that is finest in violin music, I shall be well content.
11The Author.
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.