First violin

“ In the second divertimento, in B flat major (287 K.) , which is grand in design and composition, the first violin is treated as a solo instrument throughout, with a strong INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC. [306] tendency to bravura, the remaining instruments co-operating in such a way as to display the creative spirit of an artist in every detail, however delicate or subordinate. In the very first thematically elaborated passage the solo passages for the violin occur, which it is the chief concern of the second part to elaborate. ”

“ There is a wild, almost a savage vitality in the whole work. But there is hardly a trace of genuine quartet style in any movement. In the statement of the first theme the viola, it is true, imitates the violin; but the second violin and the cello carry on a wholly orchestral accompaniment. The climax in this statement, and the measures before the second theme almost cry aloud for the pounding force of the piano, or the blare of trumpets and the shriek of piccolos. In fact almost through the entire movement the style is solid, without transparency and without flexibility of movement. ”

“ In turning to the violin pieces of the great masters of music one finds first and foremost ideas, great or charming, which are wholly worthy of expression. As these find their outlet in music in melody, harmony, and rhythm, and take their shape in form, melody becomes intensified and suggests as well as sings, harmony [Pg 454] is enriched, form developed and sustained. Only the solo sonatas of Bach have demanded such manifold activity from the violin alone. Other composers have called to the aid of their ideas some other instrument—pianoforte, organ, or orchestra. ”

“ One peculiar charm about the violin is that though each of these strings has an individual character they “carry over” into each other so beautifully [40] that a good player can pass from one to another smoothly and evenly. He mixes them, as it were, into a lovely whole. In passing from one position to another the violinist often delicately slides with his finger up to, or down from, a note. This effect is called portamento; and it is one of the charms in violin-playing. Do not think that with his first fingers, the artist slides along the string until he finds the note he wants. ”

“ The wind instruments go on with the second phrase. Then come the famous and problematical four D sharps in the first violins. The short second theme is given out by wood-wind and horns in D major, repeated in D minor, and developed at length. The solo violin enters after a half cadence on the dominant. The first part of the movement is repeated. The solo violin plays the themes or embroiders them. The working out is long and elaborate. A cadenza is introduced at the climax of the conclusion theme. There is a short coda. ”

“ Violin players then knew nothing about changing of positions and therefore could play only in the first position. [44] Thus the tone [Pg 374] register of the violin was small. Some players, however, attempted to reach higher tones on the first string through the stretching of the fourth finger. Simple melodic phrases or figures were lacking in even quality of tone, in smoothness and in fluency. The art of legato playing was unknown and violinists could not play two or more notes with ‘one bow.’ Neither did they endeavor to conquer the technical difficulties of playing on the G string. ”

“ Gradually the vielle was made larger; and during this same Thirteenth Century, when there were many new ideas springing up in the world, somebody got the idea of cutting out the sides of the long instrument to form a kind of waist. And this waist was the first step towards our modern violin.
In the Fifteenth Century—two hundred years later—something else happened,—something of importance for the whole future of music. People began to make bowed instruments corresponding to the various kinds of human voices; consequently, these were the treble, or discant, viol; the tenor viol; the bass viol ”

“ At first he had appreciated only the material quality of the sounds which those instruments secreted. And it had been a source of keen pleasure when, below the narrow ribbon of the violin-part, delicate, unyielding, substantial and governing the whole, he had suddenly perceived, where it was trying to surge upwards in a flowing tide of sound, the mass of the piano-part, multiform, coherent, level, and breaking everywhere in melody like the deep blue tumult of the sea, silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight. ”

“ The bowed instruments were originally of two types, the first in the form of the lute or mandolin; the second probably derived from the Welsh crwth, consisting of a flat, long box strung with strings (called fidel from fides, “string”) . The combination of these types, which were subjected to the most fantastic changes of shape, led eventually to the modern violin family.
We know that the highest plane of perfection in the violin was reached in Italy about 1600. The Cremona makers, Amati, Guarnerius, and Stradivarius, made their most celebrated instruments between 1600 and 1750. ”

“ Indeed, very few of the greatest singers could ever produce such velvety, sweet, poignant, vibrant and insinuating notes as we hear from a luscious Stradivari, a sweet Amati, or a rich Maggini under the bow of a master-violinist.
Everything about a violin appeals to us. There is something so mysterious and ingratiating about the little instrument, neat and trig and curved at the waist, with lines as clean as those of a high-bred race-horse and nerves as tense with excitement, ready to be set quivering at the touch of the bow. ”

“ All are directed to play mezzo-forte, and the result is that the brass chords quite overpower the melody. A similar passage is to be found in the andante of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. No conductor can get a perfect balance of tone out of such passages. [Pg 119]
Contrast is obtained by employing instruments of different tone-quality to play the principal parts at different times. A principal melodic idea may be introduced by a trumpet or a clarinet, and continued by flutes or oboes, and finally sung by all the first violins. Sometimes the wood-wind plays alone, to be succeeded by the strings. ”

“ When it says his finger-tips were perfected by delicate rectitude of use, I think it means doing everything as it is done in heaven, and that anybody who wants to make a perfect violin must keep his eye open to all the beautiful things God has made, and his ear open to all the music he has put into the world, and then never let his hands touch a piece of work that is crooked or straggling or false, till, after years and years of rightness, they are fit to make a violin like the squire’s, a violin that can say everything, a violin that an angel wouldn’t be ashamed to play on. ”

“ The supreme interest of the violin lies in its simplicity, beauty, strength, subtilty, and indestructibility, and, above all, in its perfection as a musical instrument. It combines accent with modification of sustained tone. The organ has sustained tone without accent, the piano accent without sustained tone, the violin accent and sustained tone modified at will. Within its limits it is scientifically perfect; it has all the sensibility, and more than the compass, execution, and variety, of the human voice. It is not an invention, it is a growth ”

“ I felt that I blushed over and over again.
"Haak mentioned my name, praised my natural talent, and lauded the rapid progress which I had made in a short time.
"'And so you have chosen the violin as your instrument,' said the Baron. 'Have you considered, my son, that the violin is the most difficult of all instruments ever invented, and that it is one which, whilst it seems, in its extreme simplicity, to comprehend in itself the most luxuriant richness of music, is, in reality, an extraordinary mystery, which only discloses itself to a rare few, specially organized by nature to comprehend it? ”

“ Restricted as is its range of dynamics, the violin has had for its votaries men of such widely differing temperaments as Paganini and Spohr, Wilhelmj and Sarasate, Joachim and Ysaye. Its literature does not compare with that of the piano, for which Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, and Brahms have written their choicest music, yet the intimate nature of the violin, its capacity for passionate emotion, crowns it—and not the organ, with its mechanical tonal effects—as the king of instruments. Nor does the voice make the peculiar appeal of the violin. ”

“ Before the end of the fourteenth century viols were made in great profusion of every style and shape, but the rise of the true violin tribe begins with the rise of modern music. When the true octave and the perfect cadena had been discovered, and the human voice was found to fall naturally into soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass, viol instruments, adapted to these four divisions, were gradually separated from the confusion of instruments and brought to a perfection of adaptability. ”

“ The mystery and romance of that wonderful tone, enclosed within the apparently simple, box-like affair called the violin, has proved an irresistible attraction, and the reward awaiting those who discover the connection and its utilisation as in past times, has fired the zeal of honest builders, and drawn to the art a host of amateurs, experimenters, and theorists. Never has the violin been more earnestly considered at every point ”

“ The peculiar charm of the violin is the quality of the sound which a skilled player can elicit from it. That wonderful pleading, sympathetic, voice-like tone, which conveys so much emotional meaning to the trained musical ear, is due to the proper admixture of the harmonics, or overtones, with the fundamental notes. The string vibrates not merely as a whole, but in sections. Hence the place at which the bow touches must always be an anti-node, or ventral point, and the smallest change in this position greatly affects the quality of the tone. ”

“ The violinist is capable of a perfect rendering only if,—in addition to a firm, easy technique of the left hand, adroitness in bowing and susceptibility to the modifications of tone, and a technique equal to all demands made upon it,—he has under his control a higher spiritual musical development, fine taste, and a warm individual feeling. Only through the combination of all these qualities can one reinvest the dead signs of the composer with spirit and life, and cause his work to pass before the hearer’s soul as an ideal, living picture. ”

“ Each class of instrument had its own part and if all of them played together they must have made noise rather than music. We are also informed that previous to the year 1450 popes and princes employed ‘orchestras’ which combined ‘the voices, organ, and other instruments into the loveliest harmony.’ In spite of the almost entire lack of music for the violin we know that it was a favorite instrument and consequently that the players must have produced on it pleasing music of some kind. ”

“ The eighth was written on the way to a concert tour in Italy, and was intended especially to please the Italians, and written in a confessedly dramatic style, in modo d’una scena cantante. None of the concertos is, strictly speaking, virtuoso music. Naturally all reveal an intimate knowledge of the peculiarities of the violin; but these hardly over-rule the claim of the music itself. He calls for a sort of solid playing, for a particularly broad, deep tone in the cantilena passages, for a heavy, rather than a light and piquant, bow. ”

“ France always loved the flute, which was comparatively little cared for in Italy, where it was chiefly used in operas, as we have observed, for pastoral scenes.
The violin was becoming more and more popular every day. In every kind of music it took the lead. It had been so much used for dance-music that it had developed into a supple and graceful instrument and one that gave itself most willingly to many delicate shades of expression in the hands of a good player. The violin was often combined with the clavecin and theorbo. ”

“ Carrying Power.—Here we have that phase of tone which is most elusive. A violin seemingly loud, full and even brilliant, to the player, may, at a little distance, be thin and wailing. Such a violin is lacking in carrying power, and when played with a small orchestra, is rarely heard in the lower register by any save the player. The voice of a true-toned violin is rarely loud to the player, and, in the hands of many, such an instrument never has a chance to display its ability to lead the accompanying instruments. ”

“ Moreover, the very fact that age improves it, and that the longer it lives the sweeter and richer and lovelier it becomes, gives us almost a feeling of awe towards the violin. This delicate little instrument defies Time and disaster. In that it is superior to man himself: the violin is, therefore, almost superhuman! ”

“ At least, I hope you can see the reason, which is, as generally admitted, and is certainly my view of the matter, the strength is most wanted at the centre of the violin, as at the bridge, which the closeness of the reeds and narrowness of cell passages would supply. The broad reed is more volatile, and we put it to the edges, where it throws off the gathered activity of resonance, recurring so rapidly, which we increase by reducing the thickness of the plate there, bringing about that timbre so rich to the ear of the listener. ”

“ The quality of a violin depends upon the fineness and thinness of the wood, the curvings and arches, the strings, the varnish, the shape of the sound-holes or openings etc. The best violins were made at Brescia, Cremona, Mantua, Milan and Venice, where, on the southern slopes of the Alps, could be found the fine elastic pine best adapted to the purpose. Salo, Maggini, the Amati family, Joseph Guarnerius, called Gesu, and Stradivarius are among the most celebrated violin makers of Italy ”