Scan 68
Violin mastery; talks with master violinists and teachers, 1919
6 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1before I played them with ease and facility. What did I practice? Scales in double-stops—they give color and variety to tone. And I gave up a certain portion of my regular practice time to passages from concertos and sonatas. There is wonderful work in double-stops in the Ernst concerto and in the Paganini Études, for instance. With octaves and tenths I have never had any trouble: I have a broad hand and a wide stretch, which accounts for it, I suppose.
3"Then there are harmonics, flageolets—I have never been able to understand why they should be considered so difficult! They should not be white, colorless; but call for just as much color as any other tones (and any one who has heard Mischa Elman play harmonics knows that this is no mere theory on his part). I never think of harmonics as 'harmonics,' but try to give them just as much expressive quality as the notes of any other register. The mental attitude should influence their production—too many violinists think of them only as incidental to pyrotechnical display.
5"And fingering? Fingering in general seems to me to be an individual matter. A concert artist may use a certain fingering for a certain passage which no pupil should use,
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