Chapter XVI: Tone and the Violin Player

Let us first briefly consider the relationship between the player and the violin. Here we find a condition unlike that existing, to the same degree, in any other combination of player and instrument. While it would be far from fact to say the piano, for instance, produces its tone-quality quite independently of the player, it does, none the less, produce its tone mechanically. That is to say, one may believe that a person inexpert in playing upon the instrument and unable to execute even the simplest of airs, capable of striking one key and producing a tone of more or less quality and refinement--depending upon the instrument. This is far from the case with the violin. In the hands of the inexpert even the finest-toned violin will produce only a vile, scraping noise; if it produces anything at all. Everybody is aware that the beginner draws forth a miserable and irritating noise; the amateur will achieve anything from very bad to very good, and the artist a tone of ethereal beauty--all from the same instrument! Let us look into the reasons for this. The first fact to be noted is that the violin does not produce its tone mechanically; the second, that a really fine instrument, although it possesses all the possibilities, gives forth only that tone which the player is capable of demanding from it.

In considering this subject it is extremely difficult to cite anything in the nature of a clear illustration, but we may be allowed to liken the tone of a good violin to the inanimate clay from which the sculptor models a figure. One may suppose the perfection of this figure to depend on the sculptor’s idea of perfection in form. If his clay be of good, even colour, and of fine, plastic quality; if his ideals be high and his ability as an executant well seasoned by experience, one can hardly expect anything save a satisfactory result. This result, it is true, may be bizarre, unusual, grotesque; may carry the marks of genius gone awry, but it will not be amateurish, or lacking in any of the elements of a profound and settled purpose. The player of the violin is confronted with a somewhat similar proposition. The tone of his instrument may be likened to the sculptor’s clay, yielding to nothing save ideals and the ability to express them. In both technical skill is necessary, but it is a mistake to suppose this does more than remove obstacles in the way to a free expression of ideals. One more illustration. It does not require a deal of technical ability to play a simple aria on the violin. Many amateurs are capable of giving a marvellously good rendition without doing anything which the hearer considers at all remarkable; but a great violinist will play the same thing, without embellishment, and in quite the same simple manner, and _then_ the aria becomes remarkable!

Here is seen that gulf which always exists between player and fiddle; that obstacle which only the few appreciate, many ignore, while others are unaware of its existence. It is the gulf dividing the artist from the player. Every devotee of the fiddle comes to it sooner or later, and there most of them remain, unaware that their progress towards tone has come to a dead stop. A clear understanding of the nature of this obstacle and the manner in which it may be bridged will go further towards assisting the player to a grand tone than years of laborious practice. Indeed, neither practice nor experience will, of themselves, lead a single step in that direction.

To continue the illustration, let us say (for our purpose) both the amateur and the artist employed the same simple fingering as well as the same violin and bow in playing the aria, and that both played in the same hall before the same audience. To what, then, is this difference in tone to be attributed? Is it that one has more experience than the other? Is it due to some virtuosic but invisible touch of bowing or fingering? Or is it that one has a higher conception of tone-beauty? Let us see. Many violinists of long experience are utterly incapable of producing a really beautiful tone from _any_ violin; years of playing has given them a technical equipment, but the results aimed at are not achieved. Furthermore, they can play practically anything, to say nothing of a simple aria, and yet they remain only a degree superior to a fair amateur, so far as tone is concerned.

Nothing, then, is left to account for this difference save that it is due to ideals. If one player possesses higher ideals than another it seems reasonable to say all his experience and technic will (perhaps unconsciously) be directed towards the expression of them. Thus will tone-beauty be constantly demanded from the instrument, while those without ideals simply play the fiddle, asking for nothing more in the way of tone than that the violin be in tune. We cannot do better in closing this chapter than quote the following from Messrs. Hill’s “Antonio Stradivari,” p. 162:--

“That the sense of beauty or distinction of tone is to-day cultivated to the same extent as formerly is, we venture to think, more than doubtful. The custom in modern orchestral scoring of sacrificing the individuality of the instrument in order to obtain effects of greater sonority, or of technical dexterity, and the abuse of the full-sized concert grand pianoforte in chamber music, seems to be largely destructive of the feeling for beauty of tone.”