Violin Mastery: Talks With Master Violinists And Teachers - free ebook by Frederick Herman Martens

FREDERICK H. MARTENS

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FOREWORD

The appreciation accorded Miss Harriette Brower's admirable books on Piano Mastery has prompted the present volume of intimate Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers , in which a number of famous artists and instructors discuss esthetic and technical phases of the art of violin playing in detail, their concept of what Violin Mastery means, and how it may be acquired. Only limitation of space has prevented the inclusion of numerous other deserving artists and teachers, yet practically all of t

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THE TOOLS OF VIOLIN MASTERY

Who is there among contemporary masters of the violin whose name stands for more at the present time than that of the great Belgian artist, his "extraordinary temperamental power as an interpreter" enhanced by a hundred and one special gifts of tone and technic, gifts often alluded to by his admiring colleagues? For Ysaye is the greatest exponent of that wonderful Belgian school of violin playing which is rooted in his teachers Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski, and which as Ysaye himself says, "during

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A METHOD WITHOUT SECRETS

When that celebrated laboratory of budding musical genius, the Petrograd Conservatory, closed its doors indefinitely owing to the disturbed political conditions of Russia, the famous violinist and teacher Professor Leopold Auer decided to pay the visit to the United States which had so repeatedly been urged on him by his friends and pupils. His fame, owing to such heralds as Efrem Zimbalist, Mischa Elman, Kathleen Parlow, Eddy Brown, Francis MacMillan, and more recently Sascha Heifetz, Toscha Se

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HUBAY AND AUER: TECHNIC: HINTS TO THE STUDENT

Notwithstanding the fact that Eddy Brown was born in Chicago, Ill., and that he is so great a favorite with concert audiences in the land of his birth, the gifted violinist hesitates to qualify himself as a strictly "American" violinist. As he expresses it: "Musically I was altogether educated in Europe—I never studied here, because I left this country at the age of seven, and only returned a few years ago. So I would not like to be placed in the position of claiming anything under false pretens

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LIFE AND COLOR IN INTERPRETATION. TECHNICAL PHASES

To hear Mischa Elman on the concert platform, to listen to him play, "with all that wealth of tone, emotion and impulse which places him in the very foremost rank of living violinists," should be joy enough for any music lover. To talk with him in his own home, however, gives one a deeper insight into his art as an interpreter; and in the pleasant intimacy of familiar conversation the writer learned much that the serious student of the violin will be interested in knowing. Mischa Elman We all kn

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TECHNIC AND MUSICIANSHIP

Samuel Gardner, though born in Jelisavetgrad, Cherson province, in Southern Russia, in 1891, is to all intents and purposes an American, since his family, fleeing the tyranny of an Imperialistic regime of "pogroms" and "Black Hundreds," brought him to this country when a mere child; and here in the United States he has become, to quote Richard Aldrich, "the serious and accomplished artist," whose work on the concert stage has given such pleasure to lovers of violin music at its best. The young v

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THE PROBLEM OF TECHNIC

Arthur Hartmann is distinctly and unmistakably a personality. He stands out even in that circle of distinguished contemporary violinists which is so largely made up of personalities. He is a composer—not only of violin pieces, but of symphonic and choral works, chamber music, songs and piano numbers. His critical analysis of Bach's Chaconne , translated into well-nigh every tongue, is probably the most complete and exhaustive study of "that triumph of genius over matter" written. And besides bei

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THE DANGER OF PRACTICING TOO MUCH. TECHNICAL MASTERY AND TEMPERAMENT

Mature in virtuosity—the modern virtuosity which goes so far beyond the mere technical mastery that once made the term a reproach—though young in years, Jascha Heifetz, when one makes his acquaintance "off-stage," seems singularly modest about the great gifts which have brought him international fame. He is amiable, unassuming and—the best proof, perhaps, that his talent is a thing genuine and inborn, not the result of a forcing process—he has that broad interest in art and in life going far bey

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THE VIOLIN AS A MEANS OF EXPRESSION AND EXPRESSIVE PLAYING

The writer talked with Lieutenant David Hochstein, whose death in the battle of the Argonne Forest was only reported toward the end of January, while the distinguished young violinist, then only a sergeant, was on the eve of departure to France with his regiment and, as he modestly said, his "thoughts on music were rather scattered." Yet he spoke with keen insight and authority on various phases of his art, and much of what he said gains point from his own splendid work as a concert violinist; f

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PERSONALITY IN ART

The influence of the artist's personality in his art finds a most striking exemplification in the case of Fritz Kreisler. Some time before the writer called on the famous violinist to get at first hand some of his opinions with regard to his art, he had already met him under particularly interesting circumstances. The question had come up of writing text-poems for two song-adaptations of Viennese folk-themes, airs not unattractive in themselves; but which Kreisler's personal touch, his individua

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THE PERFECT STRING ENSEMBLE

Is there a lover of chamber music unfamiliar with Franz Kneisel's name? It may be doubted. After earlier European triumphs the gifted Roumanian violinist came to this country (1885), and aside from his activities in other directions—as a solo artist he was the first to play the Brahms and Goldmark violin concertos, and the César Franck sonata in this country—organized his famous quartet. And, until his recent retirement as its director and first violin, it has been perhaps the greatest single in

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THE TECHNIC OF THE MODERN QUARTET

What lover of chamber music in its more perfect dispensations is not familiar with the figure of Adolfo Betti, the guiding brain and bow of the Flonzaley Quartet? Born in Florence, he played his first public concert at the age of six, yet as a youth found it hard to choose between literature, for which he had decided aptitude, [A] and music. Fortunately for American concert audiences of to-day, he finally inclined to the latter. An exponent of what many consider the greatest of all violinistic s

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THE TECHNIC OF BOWING

Hans Letz, the gifted Alsatian violinist, is well fitted to talk on any phase of his Art. A pupil of Joachim (he came to this country in 1908), he was for three years concertmaster of the Thomas orchestra, appearing as a solo artist in most of our large cities, and was not only one of the Kneisels (he joined that organization in 1912), but the leader of a quartet of his own. As a teacher, too, he is active in giving others an opportunity to apply the lessons of his own experience. When asked for

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF VIOLIN TEACHING

That David Mannes, the well-known violinist and conductor, so long director of the New York Music School Settlement, would be able to speak in an interesting and authoritative manner on his art, was a foregone conclusion in the writer's mind. A visit to the educator's own beautiful "Music School" confirmed this conviction. In reply to some questions concerning his own study years Mr. Mannes spoke of his work with Heinrich de Ahna, Karl Halir and Eugène Ysaye. "When I came to de Ahna in Berlin, I

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JOACHIM AND LÉONARD AS TEACHERS

Tivadar Nachéz, the celebrated violin virtuoso, is better known as a concertizing artist in Europe, where he has played with all the leading symphonic orchestras, than in this country, to which he paid his first visit during these times of war, and which he was about to leave for his London home when the writer had the pleasure of meeting him. Yet, though he has not appeared in public in this country (if we except some Red Cross concerts in California, at which he gave his auditors of his best t

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THE SINGING TONE AND THE VIBRATO

Maximilian Pilzer is deservedly prominent among younger American concert violinists. A pupil of Joachim, Shradieck, Gustav Hollander, he is, as it has already been picturesquely put, "a graduate of the rock and thorn university," an artist who owes his success mainly to his own natural gifts plus an infinite capacity for taking pains. Though primarily an interpreter his interlocutor yet had the good fortune to happen on Mr. Pilzer when he was giving a lesson. Essentially a solo violinist, Mr. Pi

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TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES: SOME HINTS FOR THE CONCERT PLAYER

Maud Powell is often alluded to as our representative "American woman violinist" which, while true in a narrower sense, is not altogether just in a broader way. It would be decidedly more fair to consider her a representative American violinist, without stressing the term "woman"; for as regards Art in its higher sense, the artist comes first, sex being incidental, and Maud Powell is first and foremost—an artist. And her infinite capacity for taking pains, her willingness to work hard have had n

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HARMONICS

Leon Sametini, at present director of the violin department of the Chicago Music College, where Sauret, Heermann and Sebald preceded him, is one of the most successful teachers of his instrument in this country. It is to be regretted that he has not played in public in the United States as often as in Europe, where his extensive tournées in Holland—Leon Sametini is a Hollander by birth—Belgium, England and Austria have established his reputation as a virtuoso, and the quality of his playing led

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WHAT THE TEACHER CAN AND CANNOT DO

Alexander Saslavsky is probably best known as a solo artist, as the concertmaster of a great symphonic orchestra, as the leader of the admirable quartet which bears his name. Yet, at the same time, few violinists can speak with more authority anent the instructive phases of their Art. Not only has he been active for years in the teaching field; but as a pedagog he rounds out the traditions of Ferdinand David, Massard, Auer, and Grün (Vienna Hochschule ), acquired during his "study years," with t

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HOW TO STUDY

Toscha Seidel, though one of the more recent of the young Russian violinists who represent the fruition of Professor Auer's formative gifts, has, to quote H.F. Peyser, "the transcendental technic observed in the greatest pupils of his master, a command of mechanism which makes the rough places so plain that the traces of their roughness are hidden to the unpracticed eye." He commenced to study the violin seriously at the age of seven in Odessa, his natal town, with Max Fiedemann, an Auer pupil.

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THE JOACHIM BOWING AND OTHERS: THE LEFT HAND

Edmund Severn's activity in the field of violin music is a three-fold one: he is a composer, an interpreting artist and a teacher, and his fortuitous control of the three vital phases of his Art make his views as regards its study of very real value. The lover of string music in general would naturally attach more importance to his string quartet in D major, his trio for violin, 'cello and piano, his violin concerto in D minor, the sonata, the "Oriental," "Italian," "New England" suites for viol

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THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN ARTIST

For the duration of the war Albert Spalding the violinist became Albert Spalding the soldier. As First Lieutenant in the Aviation Service, U.S.A., he maintained the ideals of civilization on the Italian front with the same devotion he gave to those of Art in the piping times of peace. As he himself said not so very long ago: "You cannot do two things, and do them properly, at the same time. At the present moment there is more music for me in the factories gloriously grinding out planes and motor

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THE APPLICATION OF BOW EXERCISES TO THE STUDY OF KREUTZER

A. Walter Kramer has said: "Mr. Spiering knows how serious a study can be made of the violin, because he has made it. He has investigated the 'how' and 'why' of every detail, and what he has to say about the violin is the utterance of a big musician, one who has mastered the instrument." And Theodore Spiering, solo artist and conductor, as a teacher has that wider horizon which has justified the statement made that "he is animated by the thoughts and ideals which stimulate a Godowsky or Busoni."

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THE IDEAL PROGRAM

Jacques Thibaud, whose gifts as an interpreting artist have brought him so many friends and admirers in the United States, is the foremost representative of the modern French school of violin-playing. And as such he has held his own ever since, at the age of twenty, he resigned his rank as concert-master of the Colonne orchestra, to dedicate his talents exclusively to the concert stage. So great an authority as the last edition of the Riemann Musik-Lexicon cannot forbear, even in 1915, to emphas

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THE EDITOR AS A FACTOR IN "VIOLIN MASTERY"

The courts of editorial appeal presided over by such men as Wm. Arms Fisher, Dr. Theodore Baker, Gustav Saenger and others, have a direct relation to the establishment and maintenance of standards of musical mastery in general and, in the case of Gustav Saenger, with "Violin Mastery" in particular. For this editor, composer and violinist is at home with every detail of the educational and artistic development of his instrument, and a considerable portion of the violin music published in the Unit

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