Violin case

“ The sound of the violin stands like a slender girl above it and is clear and alone. The voices cease and the violin continues alone. In the night it is so thin it sounds frozen; one must stand close up; it would be much better in a room;—out here it makes a man grow sad. ”

“ 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? ”

“ You cannot reach my soul through touch or gaze;
Be our full lips with infinite meanings rife:
The longed-for words, which of us ever says?
THE VIOLIN.
Touch gently, friend, and slow, the violin, So sweet and low,
That my dreaming senses may be beckoned so
Into a rest as deep as the long past "years ago!"
So softly, then, begin;
And ever gently touch the violin,
Until an impulse grows of a sudden, like wind
On the brow of the earth,
And the voice of your violin shows its wide-swung girth
With a crash of the strings and a medley of rage and mirth ”

“ The solo violin chants a gentle theme against which the strings and clarinet weave in equally gentle background. There is a spirited change of mood as the melody is followed by rhythmic passage-work sustained over a marked bass. The first theme returns as the movement draws to a close, more deliberate now. The flute takes it up as the violin embroiders richly around it. ”

“ Violins are the lively, forward, importunate wits that distinguish themselves by the flourishes of imagination, sharpness of repartee, glances of satire, and bear away the upper part in every concert. I cannot however but observe that, when a man is not disposed to hear music, there is not a more disagreeable sound in harmony than that of a violin. ”

“ And yet you shall hear this identical violin, in the hands of an everyday performer, emit such squeals and screams as shall set your teeth on edge for a twelvemonth, curdle your whole frame, and make you vehemently anathematize all benevolent institutions for the relief of deafness.
Verily your violin is an exclusive instrument, and approachable by none but the eldest born of Apollo, who, in all the majesty of hereditary prerogative, calmly sway the dominions of their sire; while usurpers (as is the meed of all who grasp unrighteous rule) are plunged in utter confusion and ruin. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Those old painters were right who put violins into the hands of their musical angels. Give a violin time enough, and the music of it will gradually eat up the whole body, or etherealize it, till some day the musician, touching carefully his precious film of a Cremona, will find it melt in his hands, and disappear in a harmonious sigh. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Certain it is that the violin is the noblest of all instruments that the Faustian soul has imagined and trained for the expression of its last secrets, and certain it is, too, that it is in string quartets and violin sonatas that it has experienced its most transcendent and most holy moments of full illumination. ”

“ 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 violin is, perhaps, only useful to one person. But how much more intimate it is! Tucked under the chin it becomes almost a part of the player—as the sculls used to be to the Autocrat when he went rowing. The tones of the violin are yours and have to be evoked through your own patient effort; the pianoforte stands glistening and repellent, almost impervious to your personality. I would have children taught to play the violin, or violoncello in preference to the pianoforte, and I look forward to the time when we shall train our young people to play other orchestral instruments as well. ”

“ He meant you to take up his violin and see at a glance its whole outline traced and emphasized by a sharp purfling carried out in the head by a deep rim of black varnish. This brooding over the beauty of curves, this anxiety that they should be manifest to all men is most instructive and touching; neither the purfling nor the black varnish added to the tone, nor even the preservation of the instrument—it was the art instinct of the old makers piercing the manufacture. ”

“ I am in hopes, therefore, my dear young pupil, that your violin will occupy your attention at just those very times when, if you were immoral or dissipated, you would be at the grogshop, gaming-table, or among vicious females. Such a use of the violin, notwithstanding the prejudices many hold against it, must contribute to virtue, and furnish abundance of innocent and entirely unobjectionable amusement. ”

“ In turning to the nineteenth century we shall find little or no more of this sort of pure music. Apart from a few brilliant concert or salon pieces which have little beyond brilliance or charm to recommend them, the considerable literature for the violin consists of sonatas and concertos in which the accompaniment is like the traditional half, almost greater than the whole. In other words we have no longer to do with music for which the violin is the supreme justification, but with music which represents a combination of the violin with other instruments. ”

“ With the violin thought commences with the means. The hand is trained; we say set the fingers so, and the thumb so. Now practice; when the action is perfect the tone will be right. Briefly in singing we strive for the tone and the action follows, in the violin we strive for the action and the tone follows. Thus it is clear that a knowledge of the structure of the hand is of distinct value to a violinist—in particular, a teacher—while, on the other hand, the knowledge of the anatomy of the throat can be little more than interesting to the vocalist. ”

“ The cause of this can not be entirely ascribed to those destroyers of violins who pretend to be repairers, but it generally rests with the owners of violins themselves, because they are usually ignorant as to who is master of the art of violin making and to whom a master violin may be entrusted. ”

“ It is partly for these reasons that players so seldom admit a strange violin is equal to their own. They are accustomed to their own violin and its tone. Its use has become second nature and, without meaning to be so, they are prejudiced in its favour. ”

“ As he hobbled on towards the public square, he came to an elm-tree which cast a thick cooling shade on the sidewalk, and sitting down, he laid his rickety crutch beside him, and drew out of the pocket of his home-made tow breeches a tangled mass of articles—pieces of violin strings, all of which had plainly seen service under the bow at many a dance; three old screws, belonging in their times to different violin heads ”

“ Indeed, this noble instrument, under the deft fingering and skilful bowing of a master-player, becomes almost sentient, and is shown to possess the superior and exclusive power of expressing nearly all the human voice can produce except the articulation of words. A music-teacher once wrote that "the art of playing on the violin requires the nicest perception and the most sense of any art in the known world;" ”

“ The violin shows the soul of this material in its highest refinement. No other instrument has so effectually caught the tones of the glorious mountain and the peaceful valley as has the choicely selected and deftly fashioned shell of the fiddle. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Some very excellent Christian people hold a strong prejudice against the violin because they have always known it associated with dancing and dissipation. Let it be understood that your violin is ‘converted,’ and such an objection will no longer lie against it . . . Many delightful hours may be enjoyed by a young man, if he has obtained a respectable knowledge of his instrument, who otherwise would find the time hang heavy on his hands ”

“ Famous composers, such as Tartini, Corelli, Spohr and Viotti have been great violinists, and by their compositions, as much as by their talents as virtuosi, have largely developed the capacity of the violin as a vehicle of profound musical expression. To the listener the violin speaks with an intensity, a sympathy, and evokes a thrill of the senses such as no other instrument can produce. For the player it seems to respond to every pulse of his emotions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As soon as he has finished a violin he plays on it himself for one or two hours, with very remarkable power and with the most exquisite expression, then he hangs it up beside the rest, and never touches it again or suffers anybody else to touch it. If a violin by any of the eminent old masters is hunted up anywhere, the Councillor buys it immediately, no matter what the price put upon it. ”

“ This is due to the fact that during that century there arose in northern Italy families of violin makers who, selecting generally the least clumsy of the types of bowed instruments, and particularly the violin, with marvellous workmanship and natural endowment of instinctive skill, developed them into instruments of a sweetness, flexibility, and power of expression which can be rivalled only by the human voice. ”

“ It is a very great mistake to let learners play with violin accompaniment until they have thoroughly mastered the piano-forte without it. Fingering, the first of fundamental acquirements, is almost sure to be overlooked by the master, whose attention is not on the hands of his pupil but on his own bow; and the pupil, anxious to keep up with the violin, slurs over rapid passages, scrambles through difficult ones, and acquires a general habit of merely following the violin in time and tune, to the utter disregard of steady, accurate execution. ”

“ An artistic public performance on the violin is widely divided from the poetry of violin-playing in solitude, out of sheer love to express the performer’s feelings and relieve the tension of sorrow and joy that is oppressing him. When I was a boy, staying at Leichardt, in Sydney, I heard someone playing the violin and accompanying his playing with his own voice. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With the sorrow in mine heart, I have studied and worked until I have made mineself one great artist. If you do not believe, I can show you the papers, where much has been written of me and mine violin. Women have cried when I have played, and have thrown their red roses to me. I had the technique, and when the hurt broke open mine heart, I was immediately one artist. ”