Fiddle playing

“ The inviolable law of beautiful playing is that there must be no angles. As I have shown you, right and left hand coördinate. The fiddle hand is preparing the change of position, while the change of strings is prepared by the right hand. And always the slides in the left hand are prepared by the last played finger—the last played finger is the true guide to smooth progression—just as the bow hand prepares the slides in the last played bowing. ”

“ For you must know it was the same beggar-man who had got them all three; he had only changed his shape each time, that the lad might not know him again.
"I have always had such a longing to hear a fiddle go, and see folk so glad and merry that they couldn't help dancing," said the lad; "and so, if I may wish what I choose, I will wish myself such a fiddle, that everything that has life must dance to its tune." ”

“ Some one has written a book to show that playing second fiddle is just as worthy an office as playing first. This doubtless is true, but there are so many more men who can play second, that it behooves every player to relieve the stress by playing first if he can.67 Niccolo played first and then was called upon to play solos. ”

“ The fiddler was a young man with long legs, a curving back, and a neck of the crane fashion, embellished with an Adam's apple which made him look as though he had made an unsuccessful effort to swallow his own [41] head. But he was a very important personage at the dance. With great dignity he unwound his bandana handkerchief from his old fiddle and proceeded to tune for the fray.
Did you never hear a country fiddler tune his fiddle? He tuned, and he tuned, and he tuned. He tuned for fifteen minutes, and it was like a melodious frog pond during a shower of rain. ”

“ Double corners produced a new constructive feature, viz. the 'middle bouts,' or simply the 'bouts,' the ribs which curve inwards between the two corner-blocks. While the corner-blocks enormously increased the resonance of the fiddle, the bouts liberated the right hand of the player. In early times the hand must have been kept in a stiff and cramped position. The bouts for the first time rendered it possible for the fiddler to get at his strings: and great stimulus to playing must have been the consequence. ”

“ I wanted to hear "Rosin the Beau," the cradle-song of the fiddle,—the sweet, simple, foolish old song, which every "blind crowder" who could handle a fiddle-bow could play in his sleep fifty years ago, and which is now wellnigh forgotten. It is not a beautiful air; it may have no merit at all, musically speaking ”

“ So went I with the Fairy Queen in her golden coach drawn by six white mice, and, behold, I was in Camilla's concert-room.
It is to be a fiddle affair. Now I am free to say, if there is anything I hate, it is a fiddle. Hide it away under as many Italian coatings as you choose,—viol, violin, viola, violone, violoncello, violoncellettissimo, at bottom it is all one, a fiddle; in its best estate, a diddle, diddle, frivolous, rattling, Yankee-Doodle, country-tavern-ball whirligig, without dignity, sentiment, or power ”

“ They denied having taken it, so he had to depart, leaving his fiddle behind him. The chief's son, being a musician, used to play on the Jogi's fiddle, and in his hands the music it gave forth delighted the ears of all who heard it. [44]
When all the household were absent at their labours in the fields, the Bonga girl used to come out of the bamboo fiddle, and prepared the family meal. Having eaten her own share, she placed that of the chief's son under his bed, and covering it up to keep off the dust, re-entered the fiddle. ”

“ Another, who is no fiddler, may love a fiddle too; for its symmetry, its neatness, its color—its delicate grainings, the lovely lines and curves of its back and front—for its own sake, so to speak. He may have a whole galleryful of fiddles to love in this innocent way—a harem!—and yet not know a single note of music, or even care to hear one. He will dust them and stroke them, and take them down and try to put them in tune—pizzicato!—and put them back again, and call them ever such sweet little pet names: viol, viola, viola d'amore, viol di gamba, violino mio! ”

“ Might it not have been the soul of the fiddle stirred by a mountain breeze to life, getting itself in tune with the frantic transports of the heart against which it lay? They say a soundpost sometimes comes to life, and that all the tuneful sprites that burrow and buzz in the vibrant caverns of a fiddle are set a-humming and a-thrumming when Cupid peeps in at the slit. ”

“ Compere Martin, as he was commonly called, was the factotum of the place-sportsman, schoolmaster, and land surveyor. He could sing, dance, and, above all, play on the fiddle, an invaluable accomplishment in an old French Creole village, for the inhabitants have a hereditary love for balls and fetes; if they work but little, they dance a great deal, and a fiddle is the joy of their heart. ”

“ It is also more or less of an art, but only the connoisseur is able to explain wherein and why. To the “man in the street” a fiddle is just a fiddle, as like any or all other fiddles, as one pea is like another. ”

“ I gave him a penny, for which he thanked me, and then I asked about the fiddle. He carved and made it himself out of firewood in the workhouse! The handle part (forgive my barbarism!) is "a bit of ash." It was much about the level of North American Indian art, but very touching as to patient ingenuity. He asked if anybody had told me about him. I said, "No. But I've a husband who plays the fiddle," and I gave him the balance of my loose coppers! He said, "Have you? He plays, does he? Well. ”

“ He glanced at the violin as it lay within; then he took it out. He handled it reverently. I have noticed that a genuine musician always does handle a fiddle—even a common fiddle—with a sort of reverence. ”

“ Its main excellences are purely mechanical, and though most good fiddles are also well-designed and handsome, not a few are decidedly ugly. Leopold Mozart, in his Violin-School, has some pertinent remarks on this fallacy. To choose a fiddle for its outward symmetry and varnish, he says, is like choosing a singing bird for its fine feathers. ”

“ In fact, with great respect for my friend Mr Bunting, the fiddle it is that ought to be our national instrument, as it is that which is most closely and agreeably associated with the best and happiest impulses of the Irish heart. The very language of the people themselves is a proof of this; for whilst neither harp nor bagpipe is ever introduced as illustrating peculiarities of feeling by any reference to their influence, the fiddle is an agreeable instrument in their hands, in more senses than one. ”

“ Indeed, strong advocates for STAG and FOX hunting hold this sport exceedingly cheap, and satirically say, "it is better calculated for the initiation of juveniles, the entertainment of women, and the amusement of those gentlemen in the more advanced stages of life, who, like the old woman in the farce, is highly pleased with the sound of the fiddle, though no longer able to dance." ”

“ After repeated trials and no music, she grew discouraged; even her untrained ear found something very, very wrong. “It’s the fiddle,” she concluded, “it’s too old. It won’t work. If I only had a new one now, brandy-new from the store, I know I could do it. I hear lots of songs in my head, but I can’t hear them in the fiddle.” However, the idea that the violin was too old was soon corrected.
One Sunday morning Chee sat in church, thinking [20] there must be baby birds just outside a window near. The songs the old birds were singing made her think so. ”

“ Forty-five fiddlers to play the fiddle;
Eight foot, left foot, down the middle.
Conjuring tricks with the poker and tongs,
Riddles and Forfeits, singing of songs;
One fat man, too fat by far,
Tried "Twinkle, twinkle, little star!" ”

“ There is also a tune called the Elf-king's tune, which several of the good fiddlers know right well, but never venture to play, for as soon as it begins both old and young, and even inanimate objects, are impelled to dance, and the player cannot stop unless he can play the air backwards, or that some one comes behind him and cuts the strings of his fiddle. ”

“ One of my earliest recollections is of hearing, as a tiny thing in petticoats, the tedious noises of the professional musician, and the E A D G of the fiddle was the accompaniment to all my games. From noon until seven in the evening I played amid the squeak of the fiddle, the chant of the 'cello, the solemn throb of the double bass, and [Pg 97] the querulous wail of flute and piccolo; and always the music was the music of Italy, for these elders worked in operatic orchestras. ”

“ SINGER. To start? Ah yes, we start this afternoon. Well, we have had a pleasant holiday and must get to work again.
DAUGHTER (eagerly) . And I am coming with you.
FIDDLER. It is settled?
DAUGHTER. Oh yes, I think so.
FIDDLER. It is the best life. (TO DAUGHTER) Play something.
[As the DAUGHTER goes to the spinet, the SINGER goes out.]
(They play. When it is over, the DAUGHTER turns round and looks at the FIDDLER, and sighs.)
DAUGHTER. That is all you want? Just you and your fiddle and the open road?
FIDDLER. It is the best life. ”

“ A triumphal march, performed by twenty instruments, in honour of his rival, succeeded in overturning the reason of the unhappy youth. His fiddle was before him on the table—that [Pg 227] fiddle which had disappointed his hopes. Exasperated, out of his senses, the brewer's son seized the instrument—a moment he held it aloft at the corner of the chimney, and yielding to the rage that gnawed his soul, he dashed it into a thousand pieces. Faults, like misfortunes, never come single. ”

“ The Old Women give a shrill cry, and instantly there are seen coming down the ladder the same three musicians who played at the Man's ball. The fiddler folds a handkerchief on his shoulder, to form a pad for his fiddle, and they begin to play with extraordinary energy. ”

“ Our manners, however, are changed, and neither the fiddler nor the dancing-master possesses the fine mellow tints nor that depth of colouring which formerly brought them and their rich household associations home at once to the heart.
One of the most amusing specimens of the dancing-master that I ever met, was the person alluded to at the close of my paper on the Irish Fiddler, under the nickname of Buckram-Back. This man had been a drummer in the army for some time, where he had learned to play the fiddle ”

“ His hands were clasped over the smaller end of a violin-case that stood upright before him, and his forehead fell wearily upon them.
"Look there!" said one of the young men, turning to his companions, who were descending the stairs, "don't that look tremendously like a fiddle?"
"A fiddle! a fiddle!" ran from lip to lip, till the sound ended in a shout up stairs. "Let us see where it is. Where did it come from?"
This clamor aroused the young man, who lifted his forehead from the violin-case and turned a pair of full blue eyes misty from fatigue or some other cause, upon the group. ”

“ The other children choose any instrument they like. Holy Gabriel pretends to play the fiddle, and all the other children play their own instruments until Holy Gabriel changes his to one of theirs, when that one must immediately begin to play the fiddle, and continue until Holy Gabriel takes another instrument or returns to the fiddle. ”

“ Then another jump, and another howl, as if the piano had two tails and you had trod on both of 'em at once, and then a grand clatter and scramble and string of jumps, up and down, back and forward, one hand over the other, like a stampede of rats and mice more than like anything I call music. I like to hear a woman sing, and I like to hear a fiddle sing, but these noises they hammer out of their wood-and-ivory anvils—don't talk to me ”

“ While, after the fifteenth century the profession of the minstrel became entirely degraded, and he was looked upon more than ever as a rogue and vagabond, the fiddle accompanied him, and it long remained, as it still remains in Ireland, the favourite instrument of the peasantry. The blind fiddler, even at the present day, is not unknown in our rural districts. ”

“ In connexion with this, a good deal of enthusiasm has been lavished by connoisseurs on the beauty of design and varnish of the old Cremona Violins, and even in some useful and reputable works on this subject this enthusiasm has been carried to a point where it can only be described as silly and grotesque. A fiddle, after all, even a Stradivari, is not a work of pure art, like a piece of painting or sculpture: it is as merely a machine as a watch, a gun, or a plough. ”

“ Hawksley's fiddle! He had all but forgotten. All right. If the poor beggar wanted to scrape a fiddle, scrape it he should. The least he, Cutty, could do would be to accede to any and every whim Hawksley expressed. Wasn't he planning to rob the beggar of the drums, happen they ever turned up? But how the deuce to pick out a fiddle which would have a tune in it? ”

“ There was bowing and shuffling of feet and, as the tempo of the fiddle increased, heels clicked against the bare floor and the caller’s voice rang out above music and laughter:
They danced to the fiddle music of O Suzanna and Life on the Ocean Wave, and Uncle Mose had calls to suit any tune:
Now and then a breathless girl would drop out and rest a moment leaning against the wall. And just for fun an oldster like Old Buck Rawlins, who didn’t even have a partner, caught up one boot toe and hopped off to a corner moaning:
Sometimes a young miss limped off to a chair. ”

“ Even if you don’t play yourself, your friends might like to entertain themselves with a little music while you were mudding.’
‘I shall get one at once if you like,’ said Pitman nervously, anxious to please. ‘I play the fiddle a little as it is.’
‘I know you do,’ said Michael; ‘but what’s the fiddle—above all as you play it? What you want is polyphonic music. And I’ll tell you what it is—since it’s too late for you to buy a piano I’ll give you mine.’
‘Thank you,’ said the artist blankly. ”