Bowhold Comparison

(Update: Check out this great video of Itzhak Perlman talking about his bowhold!
And, watch a video of me teaching a Basic Bowing Lesson, excellent for understanding
the basics to achieving a great and steady tone! )
Finally, the photos of a few of historys violin Greats and their bow holds are here!
In general, there have been two schools of thought concerning the bow hold: the
Russian bow hold, and the Franco-Belgian bow hold (although, there is what can be
considered either a third school or a variation on the Franco-Belgian; this hold is
generally called the Galamian bow hold). Arguably, it appears that more violinists have
favored the latter hold(s), and the Galamian is the bow hold most predominantly taught
to beginners, at least as of late. However, as you observe the gallery of historic pictures,
notice how each bow hold becomes a variant on the theme, adequately suited for the
individuals hand, and sometimes the distinction between the main holds is fuzzy.
Nathan Milstein and Jascha Heifetz. Notice the sharp leaning of the hand toward the
index finger, and the leaning of the whole body, really, into the instrument. In the
Russian hold, pressure is exerted through the bow by way of weight in the right index
finger, providing great power and sharp rhythmic control to the violinists tone. It is said
that some Russian-grippers do not often approach the frog, due to the lack of flexibility
in the right fingers. Perhaps to compensate this phenomenon, the bow hair is kept looser
(it is not stretched so tightly, and therefore feels softer along the strings). Milstein is said
to have been the master of bow speed and contact point, moving his bow rapidly near
the fingerboard.
Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, David Oistrakh, Yehudi Menuhin, Pablo de
Sarasate, Isaac Stern, Joshua Bell, and Shinichi Suzuki. Characteristics of the FrancoBelgian bow hold include flexible, rounded fingers (especially the rounded pinkie, as
opposed to the straight pinkie of the Russian hold), a slightly defined rise in the right
wrist, tighter or firmer hair, and a tendency to tilt the bow-stick away from the violinist.
The Galamian hold seems very similar, except for a smaller, more natural spread of the
index finger and a flatter wrist. It has been noted that this hold is more and more the
American school of current bow holds. Zukerman, a recognized master of the
Galamian hold, is said to have used more bow pressure than speed in his sound. For
both of these like-minded holds, it is the fingers and wrist that do much of the work in
the bow stroke.
It is important to note that there is more to a violinists tone than the shape of their bow
hold; namely, bow speed, contact point, and bow pressure or weight. The combination
of these factors , while shaped by the bow hold, is what brings color and emotion to the
music. Also, notice the slight variations, or hybrids, in the different bow holds. Every
violinist is unique, and each of these presented in the gallery has more than proved their
technical capability! The ideal bow hold, therefore, is one that simply does the job of
emoting the subtleties of the musical style most fitting to an individual performer. Each
one has tended to remain within a Classical flavor that compliments their style of
playing; in a word, its comfortable for them to play, it suits them.

Aaron Rosand on how to produce a beautiful tone

In the first of a series of articles on violin technique, the American
violinist examines the role of the bow in tone production

December 19, 2013

How do you produce a beautiful tone? It is a question frequently asked. The simple
answer is: with the bow. There is no sound until the bow touches the strings. Several
factors are involved and coordinated in order to achieve the desired tone using the bow:
grip, finger pressure, bow speed and bow changes.
With the grip, the fingers must be close together not spread apart with the index finger
extended. Three fingers draw the sound, with the little finger close but not pressing. The
basic grips primarily in use today stem from two schools: the Franco-Belgian (pictured
bottom left), epitomised by Eugne Ysae, and the Russian School (bottom right), by
Leopold Auer. My great teacher Efrem Zimbalist, who was a pupil of Auer, introduced
me to the Russian School. He was an exponent of the long bow and drawing a thick
sound on the flatter hair. When playing a work such as the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto
I use the Russian grip because I want a thicker sound. It was Leon Sametini, a pupil of
Ysae, who taught me the Franco-Belgian grip that I use for playing works by
composers such as Mozart and Bach, and pyrotechnical works. I employ both grips
depending on the composer, and the textures and nuances you can achieve will be subtly
affected by the grip you use.
With both types of grip, one must practise creating the sound that can be made when
one draws the bow without exerting pressure on the stick. Most importantly, do not
tighten the hair so much that the bow loses its arc. The bow stick must vibrate to
produce its own sound a good reason why bows by makers such as Peccatte or Tourte
are so expensive. The pressure should only come from your hand and fingers, not your
arm. The amount of pressure applied must be proportionate to your bow speed herein
lies the secret to creating a quality tone rather than a forced tone. Try using a flat hair on
the down bow to get a thicker tone. Draw with the fingers working closely together and
the palm facing out. On the up bow, the stick is turned slightly and played at an angle.
Remember that all moves are circular at the point and frog. We perform figure of eights
at all times. When I was twelve years old I auditioned for Leon Sametini, and after I had
played he told me that my left hand was good enough to play anything but my right
hand needed work. For six months I had lessons on open strings, drawing the bow from
frog to tip. For diversion I was given Handels Sonata in D major, but I never got past
the first two lines of the first movement. An occasional wrap on the wrist with a
yardstick kept my wrist down and flexible so that my fingers could affect seamless bow
changes. My best advice would be to spend the first five to ten minutes of your daily
practice session drawing bows on an open A string, making sure that between the up and
down bows the sound does not break. If you can master this bow technique, your tone
will certainly improve.

The Russian violin school is largely misunderstood

Russian violinist, teacher and conductor Igor Bezrodnyi gave his

thoughts on the Russian method of string playing before his death
in 1997

November 4, 2014

What is most characteristic of the Russian school? Firstly, the maximum naturalness of
the handwork I mean the violinists motor process. I think the best Russian violin
teachers were trying to instill in the violinist an exact realisation of the fact that each
hand had to be extremely productive which part, which muscle or group of muscles
to use. Thats the way to achieve naturalness. I remember one of Abram Yampolskys
phrases: Remember that the muscle which works when you play must be elastic.
The second feature is that a great deal of attention is paid to the violinists feeling for
acoustics and its possibilities. I mean the sound of the violin. Yampolsky and several
other great Russian teachers made great demands on the sound, on its purity, richness
and colourfulness.
Another feature which is unusual and I think important, is the Russian schools full
freedom of execution. In my opinion, all variations of interpretation are possible, apart
from tasteless ones.
The typical Russian school is perceived in an inexact way. It was distorted by
representatives of the school now teaching in the West. Todays representatives use
individual superficial devices of the Russian school and assert them dogmatically. I
have to listen to people saying that what is characteristic of the Russian violin school is
that it dictates. That is, it makes categorical demands on how to play, how to move ones
arms, how to interpret music. And the violin must be played only like that, not in any
other way, they say. The Russian violin school is also accused of playing very fast and
loudly to the point of aggressiveness.

You need to know where all this stems from. This gives rise to the question of
international competitions, which I have experienced both as a participant and a juror. A
competition jury is made up of various musicians of different schools with different
views as to how the violin should ideally be played. Marks are awarded. I can give the
highest mark to a violinist with a vivid individuality who fascinates me, but next to me
another professor will not accept this and gives a low mark. Our marks are added
together, and as a result the interesting, promising violinist ends up with a lower mark
than someone who corresponds to all the criteria, but who did not move or enthral
anyone. Say for instance a very young violinist who is still studying learns about the
results of the competition. He says to himself, I don t really like that violinist, but he
won the first prize so thats probably how I have to play at competitions, to achieve
recognition and get on to the stage via these competitions and give concerts.
So thats how one layer goes on top of the other (there are a lot of competitions) and
gradually an urgent style develops, which, unfortunately, has often justified itself by
receiving the first prize. The style of playing has been standardised and an upbeat,
penetrating style has developed. And its just that style which is now often perceived as
containing the main chalacteristics of the Russian violin school. It is an annoying
misunderstanding.
I would like my pupils to understand that the violin is an aristocratic instrument. I
sometimes say to them: If you want to mess around and make impressive sounds which
will shock the listener go for a different instrument, dont touch the violin. I think
the violin is basically a singing instrument. We all know what has been happening to the
violin lately: it sounds like a saw, a percussion instrument. I dont think that is native to
the violin.
Naturally, there are works or sections of works which demand a genuinely virtuoso
violinist. I often use the example of two remarkable violinists who have gone down in
history: Heifetz and Kreisler. Listen to Heifetz and Kreisler play the finale of the
Mendelssohn Concerto. Both are virtuosos, with just one difference: Kreisler plays the
finale of the Mendelssohn Concerto about twice as slowly as Heifetz. And they are both
virtuoso players! This means that it is not simply a matter of speed, but the masterly
manner in which they play. We see that nowadays many young violinists are fascinated
by speed alone. I dont think this is necessary.
Nowadays everyone is worried about the environment. They are afraid of perishing. But
what about perishing spiritually? I would compare the current situation in Russian art
with a poisoned ocean. There are still small islands of sincerity and truth, but these
islands are getting smaller. My musician friends tell me that the attention-seeking
performances of today are a result of peoples needs. But if music is a gift from God,
can you imagine a minister in a church before beginning his sermon, which is going to
be on something lofty and eternal, saying to the worshippers, What would you like to

hear today? What would you like me to talk about? I think that would be an unnatural
situation.

The decline of the 19th-century German school of violin playing Clive Brown

There has been much recent debate about the notion of 'Schools' of musical
performance. It is clear, however, that musicians frequently believed themselves to
belong to a school and often saw themselves in opposition to another school, which
espoused different aesthetic values or technical means. In the history of violin playing,
schools have often been identified by contemporaneous commentators, sometimes when
they perceived the emergence of distinctive technical and stylistic features that
distinguished the playing of one group of violinists from others. This was certainly the
case with the school variously identified as Viotti, Paris, or French around the
beginning of the nineteenth century. Thus a reviewer of a concert at the Leipzig
Gewandhaus in 1803 noted that It is well known that Messers Rode, Kreutzer, Baillot
etc. form a high-school of violin playing in Paris such as could scarcely be said to have
existed before (Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung,5(1802-3), col. 585). And by 1825 G.
C. F. Lobedanz, discussing whether there could be schools in music as there were
perceived to be in painting, stated that a precondition for the existence of such a school
was that its founder must have developed a previously unknown style, which was
acknowledged by the best authorities of his time as a model (in article: Gibt es in der
Musik, wie in der Malerey, verschiedenen Schulen, und wie wren solche wohl zu
bestimmen? Ccilia, 2(1825), p. 265). With respect to violin playing, he observed there
was a French School, founded by Viotti, Rode and Kreutzer, which had been more or
less adopted by almost all present-day violin virtuosos (Ibid., p. 267).
The case was somewhat different with the schools that were identified by
contemporaries in the middle years of the nineteenth century as Franco-Belgian and
German. Whereas the Viotti/Paris/French school was seen to have dominated the
world of string playing for several decades at the beginning of the nineteenth century,
the Franco-Belgian school, generally regarded as having its roots in the playing and
teaching of Charles de Briot (1802-70), was perceived to exist alongside and, to some
extent, in opposition to a less clearly defined German school (it should be understood
that throughout this article the word school is used as an historical term rather than a
substantial concept). Like the Franco-Belgian school, this German one had also been
inspired by the tenets of the Viotti/Paris/French school as interpreted by such influential
teachers as Louis Spohr (1784-1859) and Joseph Boehm (1795-1876). Of course,
neither school was monolithic, nor did they remain static in their teachings or stylistic
precepts. The practices and principles of the Franco-Belgian tradition were moulded and
amplified by such influential figures as Henri Vieuxtemps (1820-81), Henryk
Wieniawski (1835-80), and Eugene Ysae (1858-1931), while those of the German

tradition were further transmitted and developed by pupils of Spohr and Boehm, most
notably Ferdinand David (1810-73), Jacob Dont (1815-88), Joseph Hellmesberger
(1828-93), and Joseph Joachim (1831-1907). Joachim (a pupil both of Boehm and
David), a towering figure in late nineteenth-century performance and a revered teacher,
was widely seen by the end of the century as the personification of a distinctive tradition
in German violin playing. By the early years of the twentieth century, however, the
artistic and technical precepts that lay at the core of this German tradition were
becoming increasingly out of touch with the changing tastes of the day. Within a
generation of Joachims death in 1907 few of the aesthetic aims, and virtually no trace
of the distinctive techniques that had characterised his approach to violin playing (laid
out in painstaking detail in the Joachim and Moser Violinschule of 1905) survived in the
world of professional music making.
The third volume of the Violinschule begins with a series of ten short essays entitled
On Style and Artistic Performance (Vom Vortrag). Although these was written by
Moser, they undoubtedly reflected Joachims views, for in his preface to the first
volume, Joachim stated that even the most insignificant questions of detail were subject
to joint scrutiny and nothing was decided until we were in total agreement.
(Violinschule I, p. 4. My translations; Moffats English translation is not always
reliable.) Mosers final essay discusses changes in violin playing that had occurred
during Joachims lifetime. It begins with a reference to Wagners account of the Paris
Conservatoire Orchestras performance of Beethovens Ninth Symphony in 1839, in
which he praised the masterly skill of the French string players. Moser commented
that the violinists of the celebrated Conservatoire Orchestra were at that time still fully
in possession of the classical traditions of the Italian bel canto, and of a bowing
technique that is closely related to it, adding that, as pupils of Viotti, Rode and
Kreutzer, or at least of Baillot and Habeneck, they came under the influence of a school
of which almost all trace has since disappeared in France (Ibid, III, p. 32). In other
words, Moser believed that the newer Franco-Belgian School had almost entirely
displaced the older Viotti/Paris/French School.
Moser characterised the older school as teaching above all a singing tone on the violin,
free from mannerism and artificiality, a left-hand technique required by the nature of
the instrument, and a supple and independent style of bowing that served the
characteristics of the various types of bowstroke. He stressed that this was not merely
a style and technique appropriate to virtuoso violin playing but that the teaching and
technical acquirements of that school lay at the roots of the treatment of the instrument
by all masters of instrumental music from Haydn to Mendelssohn. Having identified
Joseph Boehm (a pupil of Rode), alongside Dittersdorf, as one of the agents by which
this Italian style of playing reached Vienna, he referred to Spohrs residence in the city,
describing him misleadingly as a product of the Mannheim School, which always
cherished a special predilection for the classical Italian-French style of violin playing, to
which their own school was closely related. He completed his panegyric on the style of

playing he believed to have been cultivated by members of this Italian-French-German

school with the statement:
If we go on to consider that Joseph Haydn wrote the majority of his string
quartets and all his violin concertos for his friend and intimate, the Italian artist
L[uigi] Tomasini, that Mozart was brought up as a violinist by his father in the
Tartini tradition, and Beethoven was alternately connected with Kreutzer, Rode
and Bhm [sic], it is clear that we must look upon the compositions and studies
of that classical school as the violinistic model and standard for all the chamber
and orchestral music that was created on Austrian soil; and only those who make
the teaching of that school their own will be able to satisfy the demands this
music makes on the performers technical capabilities, so that the animating
spirit of these art-works can receive meaningful expression.
Moser concluded his introductory remarks with the observation that the essence of this
tradition could be summed up with Tartinis dictum: Per ben suonare, bisogna ben
cantare ('to play well it is necessary to sing well' Ibid, III, p. 32).
With these arguments and assertions Moser advanced the case for seeing a direct and
intimate connection between Joachims approach to violin playing and the principles
that had determined the treatment of the instrument by great composers from Haydn to
Mendelssohn (and, by implication, Brahms). Mosers portrayal of the characteristics
and ideals of this school and his assertion that Joachim, as its heir, was in a position to
perpetuate its teachings may be problematic from the point of view of historical
accuracy, yet there can be no doubt that Joachim, a protg of Mendelssohn in the early
1840s, genuinely believed himself to be a guardian of the true traditions of classical
violin playing as he understood them.
Underlying Mosers argument, but in fact central to it, is the supposition that the
principles and practices preserved and disseminated by Joachim through his teaching
and playing offered the only key to performing the German musical classics in the
manner intended by their composers. The purpose of his exposition becomes clear when
Moser turns to a consideration of the direction string playing began to take in the second
half of the nineteenth century; he immediately refers to Franco-Belgian violinists and
the peculiar aspect works by Bach, Mozart and Beethoven take on in their hands. The
reason for this, he writes, is that although these virtuosos may possess an astonishing
left-hand technique, they have not only completely forgotten that healthy and natural
method of singing and phrasing, that is based on the bel canto of the old Italians [...] but
have continuously offended against it. After further criticism of their bowing and tone
production which aim merely at sensuousness of sound and fail to achieve the
characteristic qualities of different bowstrokes, he condemns them outright because
they do not bring out the spirit of the art-work they imagine they are playing, but
merely exhibit faults and mannerisms that result from deficient bowing, hand in hand
with those bad habits of singing, which fail to take account of the most elementary

demands of natural melody. Although he admitted that among the products of this
tendency there might be some truly sympathetic and even distinguished artists, this
seems more like unwillingness to offend individuals than a genuine acknowledgement
of the validity of alternative approaches (Ibid, III, p. 32f).
Mosers account of how this situation came about clearly reflects Joachims view of the
developments in violin playing he had experienced during his career. Joachim was born
at the time of Paganinis epoch-making tours of Europe north of the Alps, which
shattered any notion of the hegemony of a Viotti/Paris/French School, and he must
quickly have become aware during his early youth of the tensions this phenomenon
created. As a student of Boehm in Vienna, around 1840, he was in the midst of a
musical society that was still trying to come to terms with the technical and aesthetic
implications of Paganinis playing. Under Boehms tutelage he will have been made
acquainted with all the new publications of violin literature, for he [Boehm] was of the
opinion that only all-round technical ability made for independent violin playing.
(Andreas Moser, Joseph Joachim. Ein Lebensbild, 2nd edn, 2 vols. (Berlin: Verlag der
Deutschen Brahms-Gesellschaft, 190810), I, p. 30. My translation.) Joachims study
material at this time may already have included music by Paganini, but it is certain that
he played Paganini in Leipzig shortly afterwards under the tuition of Ferdinand David
(who was to publish an annotated edition of Paganinis Caprices in the early 1850s), for
he wrote to Boehm on 15 October 1844, telling him that he was working at music by
Spohr, Paganini and Bach.(Letters From and To Joseph Joachim,selected and trans.
Nora Bickley (London, Macmillan, 1914), p. 2) It is nevertheless clear that at the root
of Joachims schooling under Boehm were the fundamental precepts of the
Viotti/Paris/French style as it was practised, in Lobedanzs words, by almost all
present-day violin virtuosos during the period immediately preceding Paganinis advent
in Vienna. Thus Moser focused on the aspects of Paganinis influence that Joachim
believed to have been most damaging. Attempting to emulate the tremendous technical
feats on the fingerboard, which were peculiar to Paganinis idiosyncratic technical
abilities, caused his imitators not only an immense expenditure of time and labour, but
also meant the denial of the nature of our instrument. The neglect of the instruments
singing qualities soon led to the utter downfall of bow technique in its classical sense.
French violinists employed artificial bowstrokes to achieve astonishing effects, but
their stiff bowing inhibited their ability to achieve vocal and spiritual ends. This
meant that they could not interpret musical art-works in the spirit of their creator. At
that point Moser had the difficulty of explaining the career of another Boehm pupil,
Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst (1812?-1814), whom Joachim deeply admired. Ernst had been
one of the most successful of Paganinis imitators, but Moser explained that he escaped
the worst consequences of developing his virtuoso technique because of his healthy
musical nature and the training he had received under Joseph Bhm, and because he
already had such an established artistic personality when he went to Paris that he was
quite safe from the dangers to which, to the detriment of art, his French rivals
succumbed (Joachim/Moser, Violinschule, III, p. 33).

Having dealt with this difficult issue, Moser returned to his description of the spiritual
decay of Franco-Belgian violin playing, which required him to discuss the career of
Henri Vieuxtemps, the most prominent Franco-Belgian violinist of his time. Elsewhere
Joachim had expressed the view, that although he greatly admired Vieuxtemps as a solo
player, he considered him less impressive in chamber music because like most
violinists of the Franco-Belgian school in recent times he adhered too strictly to the
lifeless printed notes when playing the classics, not understanding how to read between
the lines. (Moser, Joseph Joachim, II, p. 292) It was impossible for Moser (Joachim) to
deny that Vieuxtemps was just as much a brilliant virtuoso as an extraordinarily gifted
composer for his instrument, but he was characterised, with undisguised disapproval, as
the most typical representative of that kind of musical pathos that is commonly
designated modern French. Moser grudgingly conceded that although he did not
question the right of this kind of pathos to exist as such, its influence beyond its own
sphere, particularly through the agency of Vieuxtemps imitators had been disastrous
(Joachim/Moser, Violinschule, III, p. 33). These inadequate violinists,
in order not to seem uninteresting when inner feeling failed or, when,
where it was present, it could not express itself because of bad
mannerisms, made up for the lack of natural expression in cantabile by
means of that flickering tone production resulting from unbearable
vibrato, which combined with a portamento that was mostly incorrectly
executed, is the deadly enemy of all healthy music-making.
As a result of these deficiencies, Moser explained:
the epigones of those masters who a century ago approached so closely
to the ideal that is noblest in musical performance, now not only debase
the compositions of the classical German masters by treating them in an
operatic manner, but are no longer capable of interpreting even the old
masterpieces of their own country with purity of style. France today
probably does not possess a violin player who is capable of rendering
Viottis 22nd concerto in a manner worthy of that wonderful work or its
creator (Ibid, III, p. 34).
In a final condemnation of those violinists, Moser protested:
greater distinctions between the classical exponents of French violin
playing and representatives of the newer Franco-Belgian tendency can
hardly be imagined: on the one side natural singing and healthy musicmaking, on the other bad performance mannerisms and a total lack of
style! That which strikes us as so alien in the performance of classical
works by the more recent Franco-Belgian virtuosos is only to the
smallest extent to be put down to differences in national sensitivities, for
at an earlier period when the musical world was still under the influence

of a universal language, rooted in Italian singing, those distinctions were

hardly perceptible (Ibid, III, p. 35).
Although these words were penned by Moser, there can be little doubt that they
precisely reflected Joachims opinion. Indeed, scrutiny of Mosers later writings,
published years after Joachims death, when the style he had championed had been
virtually ousted from the public sphere, reveals almost nothing of this disapproval of the
Franco-Belgian Schools style, and its exponents inability to perform the music of the
classical masters in an appropriate manner. Mosers Geschichte des Violinspiels (1923)
levelled no criticism directly at players such as Kreisler for his vibrato, or Thibaut for
his portamento, which were of a kind that must have made Joachim turn in his grave,
even though the German classics lay at the heart of the repertoire of both these
violinists. (Andreas Moser Geschichte des Violinspiels (Berlin, 1923), p. 462 (Thibaut)
and p. 472f (Kreisler). He avoids discussion of schools of playing in his own time.) In
the Geschichte des Violinspiels Moser failed to discuss portamento, as such, at all and
levelled only one barbed shaft at vibrato usage, in the final pages of the book, where he
referred to the abuse of this fashionable violinistic disease of our time, about which
even whole books that preach its continual use have recently been published (Ibid, p.
564).
*
At the distance of a century it is difficult for us to appreciate the distinctions between
stylistic practices that were so apparent to people in the early twentieth century and
provoked such strong feelings. Differences of technique and style between the
conservative and progressive string players of the period are subtle and complex, and
the relative importance of particular aspects of performing practice did not all change at
the same rate or in the same manner. Early recordings, however, can complement or
elucidate written texts, allowing us greater insight into the changing aesthetics and
practices of the period than either type of evidence provides on its own. But by the time
recording becomes available, the style of violin playing advocated by Joachim was
almost dead. Although Joachim himself made five short recordings in 1903, few players
who were regarded at the time as faithful representatives of his style were considered
worthy of the recording studio during the next couple of decades.
Among Joachims later pupils who made recordings were Karl Klingler (b. 1879), and
his great-niece Adila Fachiri (b. 1886); but both of these players were trained at a time
when Joachims style of violin playing was already coming to be seen by most younger
players as old-fashioned, and their recordings reveal a curious mixture of older and
newer traits. Karl Klingler pursued a successful career in Berlin until the 1930s as
leader of a quartet that was widely regarded as the successor to Joachims quartet, but he
did not establish a reputation as a solo player. Moser remarked that despite the
excellent state of his technical capability he has not really been able to make his mark
on the wider public (Moser Geschichte, p. 553). Klinglers recordings, apart from a

movement of a Mozart Duo, are all of quartets. The recordings date from 1911-1934.
The earlier ones contain many features that suggest kinship with Joachims chamber
music performances, in some of which Klingler had taken part during his masters last
years, but notwithstanding Carl Fleschs comment in 1933 that Klingler has not yet
succeeded in getting away from the spiritual fetters of his teacher, which have held him
in bond for thirty years (Carl Flesch The Memoirs of Carl Flesch,trans. H. Keller
(London, 1957), p. 82), the recordings suggest a progressive, if cautious assimilation of
more modern vibrato practice, alongside characteristics such as portamento, bowing and
treatment of rubato that remained closer to Joachims style. In Adila Fachiris recording
of Beethovens Violin Sonata op. 96, made with Donald Francis Tovey in 1928, her
occasional portamento is light and her vibrato quite obvious and frequent in cantilena
passages, though not entirely continuous, producing a sound noticeably different from
Joachims. Her playing also exhibits little of Joachims approach to rhythmic flexibility,
especially agogic accent. Tovey is closer to Joachim in this respect. (As a young man
Tovey had frequently accompanied Joachim. See Mary Grierson, Donald Francis
Tovey. A Biography Based on Letters, (London, New York, Toronto, Geoffrey
Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1952))
Leopold Auer (b. 1845), who studied for two years with Joachim in 1861-3 is the oldest
of his students to have made any recordings, but he was even older than Joachim when
he did so in 1921 and it is difficult to know to what extent age may have affected his
playing (Leopold Auer, Violin Playing as I teach it (London, 1921), p. 4). In any case,
as an influential teacher in St Petersburg for many years, he had undoubtedly developed
his own approach to violin playing that will have differed from Joachims in significant
respects, not least because of his development of the so-called Russian bow grip. (See
Carl Flesch, The Art of Violin Playing, trans F. Martens (New York, Carl Fischer,
1924, revised edition 1933), p. 54, and Leopold Auer, Graded Course of Violin
Lessons (New York, Carl Fischer, 1925), I, p. 12.) About the time Auer made his
recordings he railed against excessive use of vibrato and portamento in terms even more
violent than Joachims (Auer, Violin Playing, p. 59ff). Although his recordings reveal
rather more frequent use of vibrato than one might expect, it is far closer to Joachims,
both in terms of application and execution, than to that of any of his own students
(among them Heifetz, Elman, and Zimbalist) who made gramophone recordings. In his
recording of Tchaikowskys Mlodie Auer employed prominent portamento, including
the type of French portamento, much more frequently than his treatment of the subject
in Violin Playing as I teach it would suggest, and in ways that appear to contradict his
own instructions (Ibid., p. 63f).
The only one of Joachims older recorded pupils, who was clearly and frequently
described by contemporaries as playing in a style that closely resembled his was Marie
Soldat (1863-1955). (After her marriage in 1889 she was variously known as RoegerSoldat and Soldat-Roeger (or Rger). Some sources, including Grove 3, give her birth
year as 1864.) In 1883 Clara Schumann, greatly impressed by Soldats playing of
Mendelssohns Violin Concerto, noted in her diary I think she has a future. One

immediately hears that she is of the Joachim School (quoted from Barbara Khnen
Marie Soldat. Aspekte der Biographie einer vergessenen Musikerin. Wissenschaftliche
Hausarbeit zur Ersten Staatsprfung fr das Lehramt an Gymnasien. Universitt Kassel:
Unverffentlichtes Typoskript, 1995, p. 29 on the MUGi website http://mugi.hfmthamburg.de/A_lexartikel/lexartikel.php?id=sold1863).
During Soldats first visit to England in 1888 The Musical Times commented on her
performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto: Her method and style are those of her
master, who must have found it an easy task to direct the studies of a young lady so
highly gifted with musical feeling and intelligence (The Musical Times, 29(1888), p.
218). And in 1896 a reviewer of her quartets performance of works by Mozart,
Beethoven and Mendelssohn in Berlin observed: It appears to me as if the dashing
leader has best understood Joachims style. With closed eyes one could believe that the
Master were sitting at the first desk. (Kleines Journal, 19 Jan. 1896, quoted in Urtheile
der Presse ber das Streichquartett Soldat-Roeger (Vienna, 1898), p. 2f.) Although
Moser, in his Geschichte des Violinspiels, might have cited Marie Soldat alongside
Klingler as a worthy standard bearer of their masters ideals, he confined himself to
characterising her in a short paragraph as having made a resounding name just as much
through the performance of classical compositions, including the Brahms Violin
Concerto at the time of her tours with the Meiningen Orchestra under Steinbach, as
through her leadership of a string quartet consisting exclusively of ladies, which she
founded in Vienna (Moser, Geschichte, p 549). As Mosers account suggests, however,
she enjoyed a high reputation in her youth both as soloist and quartet player. She was
particularly noted for her performances of Brahms; in the year after Joachims death
The Musical Standard remarkedthat in Brahms Violin Sonatas Frau Marie SoldatRoeger has no rival (TheMusical Standard, 30(1908), p. 302). By the time she made
her only recordings, in 1926, she was in her sixties, and we cannot know to what extent
her playing might have changed in the intervening years. It seems almost inconceivable
that she could have been completely impervious to the developments in violin playing
that were happening around her, yet her style in those recordings still displays
remarkable similarities to the tantalising glimpses of Joachims that can be heard in his
1903 recordings.
Marie Soldats position in the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century violin
playing has received little attention. Biographical material from the diaries of Margaret
Denecke and other English sources are examined in Michael Musgrave, Marie Soldat
1863 1955: An English Perspective, in Reinmar Emans and Mattias Wendt (eds),
Beitrge zur Geschichte des Konzerts Festschrift Siegfried Kross zum 60. Geburtstag,
(Bonn, Gund Schrder, 1990), p. 326. Further biographical and bibliographical
information can be found on the Music and Gender website
(http://mugi.hfmthamburg.de/A_lexartikel/lexartikel.php?id=sold1863). The most
substantial recent discussion of her violin playing is in David Milsoms online essay,
Marie Soldat-Roeger (1863-1955): Her Significance to the Study of NineteenthCentury Performing Practices (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/music/dm-ahrc/docs/Marie-

Soldat-Roeger-Article/MarieSoldat-RoegerandherSignificancetotheStudyofNineteenthCenturyPerformingPractices.doc), which reflects research we undertook together during

his AHRC Fellowship at Leeds University between 2006-9. Despite her neglect in the
literature, the importance of her recordings for understanding the momentous changes in
technique and aesthetics that took place in the early twentieth century cannot be
overestimated. These recordings, which reveal a very impressive technique despite her
age, preserve a style of playing that must already have seemed distinctly old-fashioned
to younger musicians. Her apparent unwillingness to adapt significantly to the
prevailing taste of the time, rather than any failure of her technical powers, was almost
certainly a key factor in the decline and virtual eclipse of her public career. Not only her
fidelity to Joachims portamento and vibrato aesthetic, but also her style of bowing and
phrasing, as well as her rubato were increasingly out of step with public taste. The brief
entry on her by Walter Cobbett in the 1927 edition of Groves Dictionary is written as
though her career was over and concludes with the unenthusiastic comment that she
had a following among those who admire solid before brilliant acquirements.(Groves
Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 3rd edn, IV, p. 800) Paul Davids judgment, that
Joachims similar style of playing appeared especially adapted to render compositions
of the purest and most elevated style(Ibid, II, p. 779, reprinted with additions from the
1904 2nd edition of Grove) suggests the extent to which taste had changed since the
early years of the century. In fact, however, as late as the seasons of 1929 the critic of a
London journal reviewed sonata performances by Marie Soldat and Fanny Davies
appreciatively (Gamba, The Strad, 40(June 1929), pp. 69-70); it was a lasting
impression, for in the following season he recalled: 'I heard them play a Brahms sonata
last year and it was memorable' (Gamba, The Strad, 41( June 1930), pp. 70-71).
The biographical details of Soldats early career may be briefly summarised. Born in
Graz she first studied violin with a local musician, Eduard Pleiner, between 1871 and
1877, then with August Pott, who had been a pupil of Spohr in the early 1820s. In
summer 1879, during a concert tour of Austrian spas, her playing so impressed Brahms
that he introduced her to Joachim, and in the autumn of the same year she enrolled at the
Hochschule fr Musik in Berlin, where she studied violin with Joachim and piano with
Ernst Rudorff, winning first prize in the Mendelssohn competition in 1882 for a
performance of Mendelssohns Violin Concerto. After her graduation she remained in
Berlin until 1889 and continued to receive lessons, free of charge, from Joachim. During
this time she made her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in December 1882
with Bruchs Kol Nidrei. In the spring of 1884 in Vienna she gave a series of
performances, including Spohrs Eighth Violin Concerto, which was considered a real
delight and after which there was no end of hearty applause (The Monthly Musical
Record,Music in Vienna. [From our special correspondent],14(1884), p. 104), as well
as Mendelssohns Violin Concerto, which obtained for her a genuine triumph, and
Brahmss G major Violin Sonata (The Musical World, Foreign Budget. (From
Correspondents), 62(1884), p. 229). Then, in 1885, she became the first female
violinist to play Brahmss Violin Concerto in public, giving a stunning performance in
Vienna, conducted by Hans Richter, after which she was called for with a storm of

applause again and again.(The Monthly Musical Record,Music in Vienna. [From our
special correspondent], 15(1885), p. 81) The delighted composer is reported to have
exclaimed: Isnt little Soldat a brave fellow? Isnt she equal to ten men? Who could do
it better? (Ist die kleine Soldat nicht ein ganzer Kerl? Nimmt sie es nicht mit zehn
Mnnern auf? Wer will es besser machen? Max Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms (Berlin,
1904-1915), V, p. 159) And he presented her with his own richly bound full score. Three
years later she gave a highly successful performance of the concerto in London (it was
reviewed enthusiastically in The Musical World, The Musical Times, and The Saturday
Review among others), which marked the beginning of an association with Britain that
lasted until the 1930s. Her close musical relationship with Brahms lasted until the end
of his life; they played together and she was said to be his favourite violinist for his
sonatas (The Musical Times,74(1933), p. 548). In Fig. 1 Soldat is standing immediately
behind Brahms

Fig. I: Brahms with Marie Soldat (left) and two other ladies c. 1894
Shortly before the composers death, Soldats quartet, with Richard Mhlfeld, played
him his Clarinet Quintet Op. 115, a work they had already performed together. (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2 Programme of Concert in Graz 13 March 1896 (In private possession)

Among the most significant aspects of her activity in these early years was her
involvement in quartet playing. In 1884 it was already reported that she was said to

play also in quartets in a superior manner (The Monthly Musical Record,14(1884), p.

105). Three years later she established her first professional ladies string quartet in
Berlin, but this lasted just one season, for in 1889 she married, gave birth to a son the
following year and retired temporarily from professional life. She resumed her musical
career in 1892, however and founded a second ladies string quartet in Vienna in 1894
with the same cellist as in Berlin, Lucy Campbell (later replaced by Leontine Grtner),
and two other Viennese musicians, Ella Finger-Bailetti (later Else von Plank) and
Natalie Bauer-Lechner, as second violin and viola (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 From left to right Marie Soldat, Lucy Campbell Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Ella
Finger-Bailetti
Many early reviews of Soldats quartet playing evince great enthusiasm. The contrast
between the cool retrospective estimation of her violin playing in 1927 and the positive
reaction that had greeted her early performances is striking.
Soldats continuing relationship with Joachim is well documented. During her 1888
concert tour to England she and Joachim played together on several occasions, and
newspaper reports show that they continued to collaborate closely until at least 1901.
Among the material in a private Viennese collection belonging to descendents of Ella
Finger-Balletti and Natalie Bauer-Lechner is a fan on the segments of which are
inscriptions typical of an autograph album. Across the three central segments is a
portrait of Joachim by Ludwig Michalek together with, in Joachims hand, a musical
quotation of the beginning of Brahmss A minor String Quartet and a dedication Zum
Andenken an das / Berliner Quartet / dem lieben Mitglied / des Wiener Quar / tets /
Joseph Joachim / Berlin d. 5 Febuar / 1897 (Fig. 4).

The similarity of her manner of playing to Joachims was apparently both a blessing and
a curse for Marie Soldat. It was a significant factor in her rise to prominence, but after
the turn of the century it seems increasingly to have become a hindrance to the further
development of her career. The growing popularity and influence of the style of the
Franco-Belgian violinists, against whom Joachim and Moser had directed their barbs in
the 1905 Violinschule, rapidly made the markedly different sound and style espoused by
Joachim and other violinists who shared his aesthetic seem outmoded. Joachim himself
had such a firmly established reputation that he retained his following until his death in
1907 (despite recognition that his technique was no longer entirely reliable in later
years). But by that date the tide of public taste was turning; in the early years of the
twentieth century, and especially after the First World War, the rising generation of
musicians and music lovers were predominantly concerned with progress and there
was an increasingly wholesale rejection of ideals and practices associated with the
nineteenth century. In this context the later representatives of Joachims school found
that they had either to adapt their playing or reconcile themselves to a slow but
inexorable decline in popularity. While Klingler managed to adapt to a certain extent,
Marie Soldat seems to have remained much more faithful to the style of the 1880s. The
situation is nicely illustrated by a journal article in 1910, which described her as a very
interesting personality amongst the lady violinists of today, not only on account of her
qualities as an artist, but also because she is the representative of a class which is
rapidly becoming rare. She represents the Joachim school at its best period, and is
imbued with all the traditions of the great classical school (Barbara Henderson, Marie
Soldat-Roeger, The Strad, 21(1910), p. 362).
Marie Soldats recordings, therefore, offer us a remarkable glimpse into the rapidly
darkening twilight of a nineteenth-century tradition of violin playing that had flourished
for more than a century. They reveal a quite different approach to vibrato, portamento,
bowing, phrasing, and rubato than that of the vast majority of recorded violinists.
Vibrato

To modern ears it is the treatment of vibrato that most obviously differentiates string
players recorded during the first decades of the twentieth century from one another. This
is not only a question of whether they used it selectively or more continuously, but also
a matter of how they executed it and where they employed it. For Joachim, as for all
nineteenth-century treatise writers, vibrato was only to be used as an occasional
ornament. In his view a violinist of taste and healthy sensitivities will always recognise
the steady tone as the norm and use vibrato only where the requirements of the
expression make it absolutely necessary Joachim/Moser, Violinschule, II, p. 96a). Thus
the Joachim and Moser Violinschule reiterated the orthodox guidance that had prevailed
throughout the nineteenth century in all the methods that addressed the matter (some
ignored it altogether), which was to treat vibrato as an embellishment, to use it only in
appropriate places, to vary the rapidity of the oscillations, and to ensure that its
amplitude remained very narrow. (See Clive Brown, Classical and Romantic, p. 545ff.)
In fact, rather than including a wholly original section on the subject, more than half of

the one-page treatment of vibrato in the technical part of the 1905 Violinschule (it
warranted another page in Mosers essays in volume 3) was quoted verbatim from
Spohrs Violinschule of 1833 (Joachim/Moser Violinschule, I, p. 96).
Not until 1910 did a treatise appear in which continuous vibrato as an aspect of
beautiful tone production was openly advocated. (Siegfried Eberhardt, Der beseelte
Violin-Ton (Dresden, Gerhard Khtmann, 1910), English translation as Violin Vibrato
its Mastery and Artistic Uses (New York, Carl Fischer, 1911)). By that date, however,
recordings make it abundantly clear that most prominent string players were already
employing vibrato more as a continuous element of tone than as an ornament.On the
other hand, recorded violinists born before the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and
many born somewhat later, did not use a fully continuous vibrato; they tended to
employ it on most or all longer notes, but left many shorter ones without noticeable
vibrato. Joachims 1903 recordings, therefore, in which it is still an occasional ornament
(many notes having no detectable vibrato), stand in sharp contrast to the majority of
other early recordings of concert violinists. At the beginning of the twentieth century,
however, there were undoubtedly still many violinists, not celebrated enough to have
made solo recordings at that time, who employed vibrato even less than Joachim, or not
at all; the playing of the un-named violinist who provided an obbligato for the castrato
Moreschi in the Bach-Gounod Ave Maria in 1904 reveals no trace of vibrato (Opal CD
9823).
In 1933 Carl Flesch, a reformer of violin technique, and advocate of more continuous
vibrato, who considered that even the greatest violinistic genius will play out of tune
without a levelling and corrective vibrato (Flesch, Memoirs, p. 21), described the
changes he had observed in his own lifetime, stating that even in 1880 the great
violinists did not yet make use of a proper vibrato but employed a kind of Bebung, i.e. a
finger vibrato in which the pitch was subject to only quite imperceptible oscillations,
and observing that it was regarded as unseemly and inartistic to use vibrato on
relatively inexpressive notes. He identified Ysae as the first to make use of a broader
vibrato and attempting to give life to passing notes, and Kreisler as not only resorting
to a still broader vibrato, but also trying to ennoble faster passages with it (Ibid,
p.120). Kreisler himself believed that what he referred to as French vibrato went back
further than Ysae, identifying Wieniawski as having intensified the vibrato and
brought it to heights never before achieved, and also stating, rather implausibly, that
Vieuxtemps (fifteen years older than Wieniawski) also took it up. Of course Kreisler
could not have personally experience the playing of Wieniawski or Vieuxtemps. The
supposed founder of the so-called Franco-Belgian School, Charles de Briot, was, on
the evidence of his Mthode de Violon (1858), just as opposed to frequent vibrato as
Spohr and Baillot. He asserted that Ysae became its greatest exponent (Louis Paul
Lochner, Fritz Kreisler (London, 1951), p. 19), and considered himself his direct heir in
this respect, although Kreislers own vibrato was distinctly more pronounced and
continuous than Ysaes.

Moser, as the quotation from his Geschichte des Violinspiels indicates (footnote 18),
remained un-reconciled to the new aesthetic. He was certainly not alone, and resistance
to it continued after his death. In 1927 F. Bonavia labelled vibrato as a curse, calling it
death the leveller - for it kills all musical tone and at the climax of his vehement attack
declared: The fact that vibrato in excelsis is only useful and indeed necessary in the
jazz band, where it matches the bleating of the saxophones and the yawning of the
trombones, ought to be a sufficient deterrent. Is it not pretty obvious that what suits the
slobbery tunes of the jazz-band will not do for music?(The Musical Times,68(1927), p.
1077) In contrast, Boris Schwarz (1906-83), just old enough to have heard a few late
exponents of the older style of vibrato, was typical of younger violinists who had grown
up with continuous vibrato. He considered that with its adoption, the violin became a
much more sensuous-sounding instrument, and the public loved it. Soon, a violinist with
the old-style vibrato had no chance of being successful (Boris Schwarz, Great Masters
of the Violin (London, 1984), 285-6). Schwarzs use of the word sensuous is
significant, for it is precisely the substitution of sensuousness (specifically condemned
by Moser) for healthy music-making (Joachim/Moser, Violinschule, III, 35) that lies at
the core of the Joachim and Moser diatribe. That this tension between moral health and
sensuality in violin playing was current at the time is suggested by Fleschs
extraordinary evocation of the effect of Kreislers vibrato on young violinists around the
turn of the century, as creating an unrestrained orgy of sinfully seductive sounds,
depravedly fascinating, whose sole driving force appeared to be a sensuality intensified
to the point of frenzy (Flesch, Memoirs, p. 118).
Towards the end of his Geschichte des Violinspiels, Moser praised Karl Klingler for his
resistance to the vibrato epidemic (Moser, Geschichte, p. 564), approvingly quoting a
passage from Klinglers recently published Grundlage des Violinspiels (1921), which
warned against making the vibrations so wide that the pitch is no longer clear,
complaining that unfortunately this widespread bad habit, which to the universal
detriment of taste is only too often heard, even from famous violinists, particularly in
high positions. Although Klingler also reiterated the old teaching that vibrato, as a
means of expression, should only be used where it is supported and justified by
excitement or feeling (Karl Klingler ber die Grundlagen des Violinspiels (Leipzig,
1921), 18f. See also Leopold Auers much more vehement strictures against vibrato in
his Violin Playing as I teach it). It is clear from the later Klingler Quartet recordings
that, as stated above, he developed a vibrato quite different from Joachims. Even in the
early recordings Klingler seems to leave few longer notes without at least a hint of
vibrato, and in the later ones it is more continuous and broader, though still discreet by
comparison with most contemporaries.
Marie Soldats recordings, on the other hand, reveal a vibrato usage that closely
resembles Joachims, both in placement and execution. This is perhaps not surprising,
since her style was fully formed by the early 1880s; but it sets her apart from her exact
Austrian contemporary Arnold Ros, whose recordings show him to have used a much
more continuous and conspicuous vibrato, which may perhaps help to explain the

greater longevity of his career. Carl Flesch described Ross vibrato as noble if a little
thin (Flesch, Memoirs, p. 51); it was certainly much narrower and less continuous than
Fleschs, which to judge from his recordings was modelled on Kreislers. In comparison
with other violinists during the early years of the twentieth century, therefore, Soldats
very sparing use of vibrato may have contributed to adverse reactions to her tone. An
otherwise admiring reviewer in 1907 remarked that the quality of her tone struck one as
being rather thin (The Musical Standard, 28(1907), p. 345). This contrasts with a
comment a few years earlier about Ysae, with his much more prominent vibrato,
creating quite a sensation, the tone being so rich and full (The Violin Times, 8(1901), p.
146). But it also contrasts strongly with a review of Soldats performances in London in
1888, when Ysaes style of vibrato will have been unfamiliar in England, which
elicited the comment that in a performance of a Spohr duet with Joachim, she
demonstrated the same powerful tone and mastery over her instrument as she had done
in Brahmss difficult concerto (The Musical Times,29(1888), p. 217).
The vibrato in Soldats performance of the Largo from Bachs Solo Sonata BWV 1005
is remarkably like Joachims in the Adagio from BWV 1001; it is detectable only on a
few longer notes. The rapid Prelude from Bachs E major Partita BWV 1006, provides
little opportunity for it, but it occurs on two longer notes in the final bars. In the Adagio
from Spohrs Ninth Concerto she sometimes used vibrato where Spohr did not mark it
in the annotated version in his Violinschule (for instance the second bar), but there are
also places where she ignores his wavy line and plays a pure, un-vibrated note,
especially in higher passages on the E-string. Many sustained notes in her performance
of the Adagio have no discernible vibrato, and she was consistent in playing the longer
notes that occur on weak beats at the end of a phrase without any vibrato at all. In the
Beethoven F major Romance she used vibrato somewhat more often than Joachim
employed it in his own C major Romance, but it is remarkably similar to his, recalling
the finger vibrato described by Flesch as Joachims thin-flowing quiver; and like
Joachim she scarcely used it at all on higher notes. Vibrato is used rather more
frequently in the arrangement of Schumanns Abendlied, a favourite encore piece of
Joachims, but, as in the other pieces, it is very discreet. The recording in which vibrato
is most obviously used is Wilhelmjs arrangement of Bachs Air for the G string,
corresponding with nineteenth-century evidence that vibrato was more extensively used
in playing on the G string, but here too it is narrow and by no means continuous. See,
for instance, Spohrs annotations in the middle section of the Adagio from Rodes
Seventh Violin Concerto in his Violinschule, p. 209. All in all, her recordings indicate
that she was affected extraordinarily little by the stylistic changes that had occurred in
vibrato usage during her career.
Portamento

Another contributing factor to unhealthy music-making, in Joachims opinion, was

tasteless portamento. This clearly did not mean that he advocated the total suppression
of portamento, and his recordings show that he used it as a normal concomitant of
legato position changing, although perhaps introducing it rather less frequently than

some of his contemporaries might have done in that repertoire. As with vibrato, he was
concerned that it should be executed correctly and used in the right places. In fact,
portamento was evidently seen by Joachim as a more important, indeed
more indispensable aspect of expressive performance than vibrato, and it received
considerably more attention in the Violinschule, where its discussion, taking up six and
a half pages in the second volume, preceded that of vibrato. In the essays in the third
volume, Moser stated that portamento stands in the first rank among the vocal effects
that can be recreated on the violin (III, p. 8).
Relevant technical and aesthetic aspects of portamento have been discussed in detail
elsewhere (Brown, Classical and Romantic, pp. 558-587). It is sufficient here to
reiterate that audible shifting within and sometimes between bowstrokes was an
inevitable outcome of nineteenth-century teaching on position changing, but that the
location of a position change was expected to be selected on the basis of its musical
aptness, that the intensity (bow pressure) and speed of the shift should be determined by
musical considerations, and that certain types of portamento were regarded as tasteless
by some authorities. Warnings about the improper execution of shifts were already
made by Spohr, but the manner he condemned, in which the slide was made with the
finger that stopped the target note rather than that which was used for the starting note
(Spohr, Violinschule, p. 120), seems to have been used with growing frequency during
the second half of the century. It was commented upon in Germany and England from at
least the 1880s, often specifically referred to as French portamento. Hermann
Schrder, for instance, deplored it in 1889 as a perverted mannerism deriving from
French players, but now employed in Germany (Schrder, Die Kunst des Violinspiels, p.
33); and in 1898 John Dunn observed that this type of portamento was a striking
mannerism common to many, but not all, players of the modern French school ( John
Dunn, Violin Playing, (London, 1898), p. 31), while Flesch in 1924 wrote that among
the great violinists of our day there is not one who does not more or less frequently use
it (Flesch The Art of Violin Playing, p. 30). Early recordings provide a wealth of
information about the employment of portamento during the first half of the twentieth
century, confirming not only that the use of French portamento in various
manifestations became increasingly widespread during the early decades of the century,
but also that portamento as a whole was still extensively employed in string playing and
singing until at least the 1930s, after which it rapidly came to be regarded as a bad habit
and has been largely eliminated from more recent performing practice. (The suppression
of portamento went hand in hand with changes to fingering practices.) As part of the
process by which portamento became discredited during the twentieth century its
origins and function were forgotten. Few musicians of the present day are aware that its
employment as an indispensable expressive practice in string playing dates back to the
late eighteenth century, for along with other old practices, such as piano arpeggiation
and dislocation, the musical generation that rejected it seems to have believed it to be a
tasteless perversion indulged in by their recent predecessors.

In all but one instance (discussed below) the execution of Marie Soldats portamentos in
the 1926 recordings is entirely within the parameters of good taste that were laid out in
Spohrs Violinschule. In this respect, her treatment of the Spohr Adagio is particularly
revealing. There is good reason to believe that it was one of her regular repertoire pieces
from an early stage. She played it during her first visit to Britain in 1888 and at a
concert in Edinburgh was praised for performing it with a sweetness and purity of
expression that took the house by storm (The Musical World, 14(1888), p. 276). In
1896 the critic of the Athenaeum remarked that in this piece her style singularly
resembled that of Herr Joachim (The Athenaeum , 3604(1896), p. 722). It also appeared
in the programme of a concert given by her quartet in Olmtz on 6 January 1896
(programme in private possession). In her recording Soldat mostly seems to have
employed the fingering marked by Spohr, and executed the portamento implied by it,
but she occasionally departed from his fingering to achieve an additional portamento
effect (she executed twelve portamentos in the first sixteen bars, all but two of which
were implied by Spohrs fingering).
Portamento, though still an integral aspect of her expressive language, is less prominent
in Beethovens Romance in F, where its use is not so integral to the expression, although
all her position changes within legato passages are audible (as in Joachims playing)
and, in most cases, clearly chosen for their musical aptness. Prominent portamento is
even less evident in the first movement of Mozarts A major Violin Concerto, suggesting
her understanding that the embellishment was more appropriate in some repertoires than
others. This too was surely a legacy of her study with Joachim. (Karl Klinglers writings
make it clear that this kind of stylistic awareness was integral to the Joachim tradition.
See Karl Klingler: ber die Grundlagen des Violinspiels und nachgelassene
Schriften. ed. M. M. Klingler and A. Ritter (Hildersheim, Olms, 1990).) Soldats
performance of the Largo from Bachs C major Sonata for solo violin, therefore, is
somewhat unexpected. Although a reviewer in 1897 had observed that Marie Soldat
played two movements from Bachs suite in E, quite in the Joachim style (The Musical
Times,38(1897), p. 20), her recording of the Largo contains much more portamento than
Joachim used in his 1903 recording of the Adagio from the G minor Sonata (although
not more than Ros, for instance, employed in that Adagio). The character of Soldats
Bach performance seems considerably more impassioned than Joachims. It is unclear
what edition she may have learned the sonatas from, since Joachims own edition did
not appear until 1908, but it is likely that it was Ferdinand Davids; several of the
portamentos suggested by printed fingerings in that edition occur in Soldats
performance.
In any case, since a particular passage can be played with various fingerings, she also
introduced portamento in places where none is implied in the fingerings indicated in the
editions that would have been available to her. Her performance of Schumanns
Abendlied is also rich in portamento, although the piece could easily have been played
with very few position changes; it contains some twenty-three portamento effects
(many, however, quite subtle and unobtrusive) in twenty-nine bars, creating an

extremely expressive cantabile performance. All of these are of a kind that might have
been approved by Joachim, although whether he would have introduced so many and in
the same places cannot be determined. Joachim certainly used fewer portamentos in the
1903 recording of his Romance in C (the transcription in my book Classical and
Romantic Performing Practice (pp. 450-454) marks only the most prominent
portamentos; there are, for instance, seven quite audible position changes in the first
sixteen bars although I indicated only three of them.), but it may be argued that the
character of that music invites them less than the much slower-moving and more intense
Abendlied. The evidence of portamento fingering in Spohrs Violinschule, especially
in the Adagios of Rodes Seventh Concerto and his own Ninth Concerto suggests that
mainstream practice in the German tradition allowed more frequent portamento in
particularly expressive contexts than the rather puritanical Joachim might himself have
employed.
Soldats performance of the Bach-Wilhelmj Air on the G string stands apart from her
other recordings, all of which belonged to Joachims repertoire , not only because it is a
piece Joachim detested (Flesch, Memoirs, p. 48 footnote), but also because in
performing it, as well as using very frequent vibrato, she employed some French
portamento. Perhaps her sense of style and tradition, which determined the use of
classic portamento elsewhere, permitted her to use this much criticised portamento in
the context of a piece that belonged to a different tradition. Wilhelmj, a favourite pupil
of Ferdinand David (whose playing and teaching was seen as combining his inheritance
from Spohr with aspects of Franco-Belgian practice; see Ferdinand David as editor),
seems to have had more in common with the Franco-Belgian tendency than the
German. A sense of stylistic aptness similar to Soldats in this recording may explain
Joachims use of this French portamento in his recording of Brahms First Hungarian
Dance, presumably because it was also seen as a characteristic of Gypsy fiddling.
Bowing and phrasing

Styles of bowing can scarcely be discussed on the basis of recordings alone, for it is
frequently impossible to link the sounds heard in a recording to specific bowing types
or movements of the arm. The implications of Mosers strictures about the poor use of
the bow by Franco-Belgian musicians, therefore, are more difficult to investigate
through recordings. As with questions of vibrato and portamento usage, the necessary
comparison of written texts, annotated editions, iconography, and recordings has yet to
be undertaken extensively and systematically enough to achieve reliable conclusions.
One aspect of the physiology of bowing, however, that is abundantly clear from
documentary sources, is that a fundamental change in teaching about the position and
action of the right arm and hand occurred during the first half of twentieth century.
Standard instructions from the middle of the eighteenth to the early twentieth century,
illustrated graphically and photographically in numerous violin methods (see my
article Physical parameters of 19th and early 20th century violin playing), demanded
a lowered right elbow, quite restricted movement of the upper arm, very extensive
flexibility of the wrist between the point and heel of the bow, and, in most cases, a bow

grip in which the fingers lay close together and the stick rested between the first and
second phalanxes of the index finger. In the closing section of the Geschichte des
Violinspiels Moser had praised Karl Klinglers fidelity to the Joachim principles in
respect of bowing, but ten years later Carl Flesch criticised Klinglers bowing as still
dominated by the fallacious theory of the lowered upper arm and loose wrist
(Flesch, Memoirs, p. 250). In his Art of Violin Playing in 1924 (just three years after
the appearance of Klinglers Grundlagen des Violinspiels) Flesch rejected the old
German method of holding the bow declaring that the majority of contemporary
violinists have, however, already turned their backs upon it, and adding that the the
newer Franco-Belgian, as well as the Russian manner of holding the bow already
control the field absolutely and incontestably (Flesch, The Art of Violin Playing, p. 54).
He favoured the latter, which he attributed to Auer. If we cannot, in the present state of
knowledge, identify the progress and consequences of these changes more precisely in
early recordings, we can certainly hear the results of the older method in the recordings
of Joachim himself and his pupils Klingler and Soldat.
There is good reason to believe that Soldats bowing was broadly faithful to Joachims
method, not least because of the numerous reviews that referred to the similarity of their
playing style. Her mastery of the bow was acknowledged, for instance, in a review from
1909, which remarked upon her beautiful bowing being especially noteworthy in
performances of three Beethoven Violin Sonatas (The Musical Standard, 28(1907), p.
345). Among the features frequently mentioned in written accounts was its vigour. This
can be heard distinctly in her recordings, in the first movement of Mozart's A major
Violin Concerto, the middle section of Beethovens Romance, and Bachs prelude from
the E major Partita BWV 1006.
A review of her performance in Brahms B major Piano Trio and Bachs E major Partita
by the distinguished Manchester music critic, Samuel Langford, in 1908 provides an
interesting insight. He observed that she
plays Brahms to perfection, and did gloriously in the Trio; she also gave to
older music the E major sonata by Bach for violin alone a Brahmsian
breadth and vigour. We have never before heard the Sonata played so
vigorously throughout, and we certainly prefer the opposite method adopted
by Seor Casals, of finding all the lightness that is possible in Bach. But
whatever could be done by beautiful tone, intelligent phrasing and natural
dignity to add force to her method Madam Soldat-Roeger did admirably. She
might have convinced many that her style, too, was right, but we were not
of the number. [The Manchester Guardian, Nov. 2, 1908, p. 8. The reference
to Casals is interesting because he and Marie Soldat played piano trios
together, with either Leonard Borwick or Fanny Davies, between 1909 and
1913.]

This style of bowing for continuous passages of faster-moving notes is clearly related
to the type of dtach described in the Paris Conservatoire Mthode of 1803, Spohrs

Violinschule and many later German treatises, including the Joachim and Moser
Violinschule. In his Geschichte des Violinspiels Moser stressed the importance of this
bow-stroke; rejecting F. A. Steinhausens contention that the older teachers dealt only
with the use of the wrist, he insisted:
absolutely to the contrary, not only Joachim, Bhm and Rode, about whom
we definitely know it, but probably also their predecessors Viotti and
Pugnani etc., put much more emphasis on the cultivation of the elbow joint
to produce a spirited management of the bow, because without its
looseness a free forearm stroke, the most important for playing
passagework, can certainly not be achieved. (Ganz im Gegenteil haben nicht
nur Joachim, Bhm und Rode, von denen wir es positiv wissen, sondern
wahrscheinlich auch schon ihre Vordermnner Viotti und Pugnani usw. Zur
Erzielung einer schwunghaften Bogenfhrung ungleich mehr Nachdruck auf
die Kultur des Ellbogengelenks gelegt, weil ohne dessen Lockerheit ein freier
Unterarmstrich, der wichtigste fr das Passagenspiel, gar nicht zu erreichen
ist. [Moser, Geschichte, p. 555.]

During the early twentieth century this bowing style was rapidly being displaced by the
lighter type of bowing referred to in Langfords review, which involved quite
different movements of the arm and hand. Although springing bowings of various types
were certainly employed by Joachim and his pupils, they were equally certainly not
employed in the same way or in the same contexts as nowadays.
Another aspect of Soldats bowing can be heard particularly in the legato sections of the
Beethoven Romance, Schumanns Abendlied, and Spohrs Adagio. These pieces
reveal her remarkable cantilena, in which the bow changes are often almost
undetectable. Such extreme smoothness of bowing is seldom encountered to this extent
in recordings by younger performers, who could undoubtedly have achieved it, but
seem not to have been concerned to do so. The Adagio also demonstrates her perfect
command of the Spohr or firm (festes) staccato, executed with remarkable delicacy
and precision.
Rubato
Joachim was famed above all for his incomparable ability to bend the music
expressively within an essentially constant pulse. Both Karl Klinglers and Marie
Soldats recordings present many examples of similar qualities, which, combined with
other stylistic features, must have played a part in fostering the widespread opinion that
their playing was very much in his style. This was not, however, merely a peculiarity of
the performing style of Joachim and his pupils at the beginning of the twentieth century;
players with quite different backgrounds employed related types of rubato, for instance
Ysae and Flesch, but in ways that were different from Joachims. (This can be easily
observed subjectively. A more empirical investigation of different types of rubato in
early recordings is still to be undertaken.) The Joachim style of rubato is closely
paralleled, however, in the piano playing of Carl Reinecke (1824-1910), suggesting a

connection with Leipzig traditions stretching back at least to Mendelssohns time.

Joachim specifically referred to Mendelssohns elastic management of time as a subtle
means of expression (Violinschule, III, p. 228); and Spohr clearly described this kind of
rubato in his 1833 Violinschule (p. 119). Particular aspects of the rubato heard in
Mozart and Beethoven recordings by Klingler, Soldat, and Reinecke, particularly the
unequal performance of slurred figures in which the elongation of the first note is
compensated for by hurrying the subsequent notes under the slur, appear to represent the
preservation of eighteenth-century traditions. (See Clive Brown Performing Classical
repertoire: the unbridgeable gulf between contemporary practice and historical reality.
Basler Jahrbuch fr historische Musikpraxis XXX (2006) (Winterthur, Amadeus Verlag,
2008), 31-44, and Leopold Mozarts Violinschule and the performance of W. A.
Mozarts violin music in Cordes et claviers au temps de Mozart / Strings and Keyboard
in the Age of Mozart ed. Thomas Steiner (Lausanne, Peter Lang, 2010) pp. 23-49). All
of them also played dotted figures freely, often over-dotting in a manner that recalls
Leopold Mozarts advice, but was also an aspect of Brahms performing practice, as a
reviewer in 1933 pointed out with reference to Soldats flexible performance of the
dotted figures in the second movement of the G major Violin Sonata op. 78 (The
Musical Times,74(1933), p. 548)
Soldats masterly performance of the Adagio from Spohrs Ninth Concerto represents a
freer style of tempo rubato that corresponds closely to Spohrs precepts and gives a very
strong impression of preserving the style of performance its composer envisaged. Either
Pott, whose years of study with Spohr were close to the composition of the Ninth
Concerto, or Joachim, who had heard and admired Spohrs playing, or perhaps both of
them, may have been responsible for coaching her in the composers style of performing
this music. Comparison of Soldats performance with accomplished modern
performances of the same piece, in which, however, it is played more or less strictly in
time, with continuous vibrato, scarcely a hint of portamento, modern bowing, and far
from seamless legato (Ulf Hoelscher CPO 999 232-2 and Christine Erdinger Marco
Polo 8.223510); Erdinger plays the Spohr staccato, marked with dots under a slur, with
separate bows, creating an entirely different effect from the one intended, while
Hoelschers slurred staccato is crude in comparison with Soldats pearl-like execution of
that characteristic 19th-century bowstroke. This reveals how fundamentally different
such music becomes when played with the styles of tempo rubato, ornamental vibrato,
expressive portamento exquisite phrasing , and distinctive style of bowing that were
cultivated by Spohr, Joachim, Soldat and other violinists in the nineteenth-century
German tradition.
*
It is clear from her recordings that Marie Soldat was an artist in her own right, not
merely an epigone of Joachim. At the same time, however, it is evident that, more
perhaps than any other recorded violinist, her performances preserved many of the
essential features that led her to be described as a faithful student of the Joachim School.

It is also credible that she was directly linked through August Pott to a Spohr tradition,
and tempting, indeed plausible, to imagine that her manner of playing the Adagio from
Spohrs Ninth Concerto would have seemed perfectly idiomatic in almost every respect
to its composer.
For musicians who aspire to perform 19th-century music, and perhaps also that of the
late 18th-century, in a manner that more closely reflects the expectations of its
composers, Soldats recordings offer many fascinating perspectives in all the areas
examined above. Although modern or period violinists may not wish to play Bach in the
19th-century manner created by Ferdinand David, Joseph Joachim and their
contemporaries, there is every reason to believe that in repertoire from Mozart to
Brahms, her way of playing is far closer to a stylistic world with which those composers
would have been familiar, than any kind of modern performance we are likely to hear at
present, historically informed or not.

The Russian style, for many years, had to do only minimally with the bow
hold, but much more with an approach to sound and style, and also with
choice of repertoire, and choice of career path. I am remembering Oistrakh's
recordings of Mozart Concertos and Sonatas, which were marvelously
Russian in terms of slow tempos, big lush sound, choice of long on the string
bowings, etc. etc.
Today's musicians are characterized by their broad, eclectic range of
activities, such as Yo Yo Ma delving into jazz and HIP playing, Perlman
playing Klezmer, Rachel Barton Pine playing with a rock group, Joshua Bell
and Nadia Salerno Sonnenberg conducting from the concertmaster chair,
Hilary Hahn interviewing other musicians on Youtube, Charles Yang doing
multimedia, Mark O'Connor breaking down more barriers every year, etc,
etc.

In the beginning, there was Italy

Italy was the birthplace of the European Renaissance. Starting from the late 15th
century, it saw an explosion of art of all kinds. As the Renaissance grew and developed,
it began to spread an artistic influence over all the other countries of Europe. During this
time, the violin and the violin family saw a significant growth in popularity. Italian and
Italian-trained musicians began to number a majority of European positions (the Italiantrained George Frideric Handel (1685-1789) and the Italian violinist and composer
Francesco Geminiani (1687-1782) are two such examples). The influence of Italy also
gradually brought about a decline in the distinctness of local traditions of playing and

composition, so by the mid-18th century until the early 19th century, the Italian school
had become dominant in most countries of Europe. Paganini was the pinnacle of this old
Italian tradition. His virtuosity and output will always have a lasting impact on violin
technique and methods of composition for the violin. However, Paganini didnt have
much effect on the pedagogical passing down of violin technique to future
generations. Only two of the students he accepted enjoyed a lasting success, and neither
one considered Paganini helpful or inspirational.
However, before Paganini, there were two main figures near the end of the 17th century
who were to have a lasting impact on Italian violin playing: Arcangelo Correli (16531713) and Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741). Through them, traditions were passed down
and developed by great teachers like Somis and Pugnani, resulting with Giovanni
Battista Viotti (1755-1824). Most scholars identify Viotti as the most influential figure
to define and spread the techniques that were to lie at the heart of European schools of
violin playing. Viotti even influenced Paganini through his student August Duranowski.
In France, his influence on performance style was firmly established upon his French
pupils Pierre Baillot (1771-1842), Rudolphe Kreutzer (1766-1831) and Pierre Rode
1774-1830). Each of them became professors at the Paris Conservatory. Their lasting
impact on the identity of the French school of violin playing is what earned Viotti the
often-coined title as the father of the French school.
Then there was France
Even though Germany demonstrated a marked level of individuality in violin playing
(seen most notably through the treatises of Leopold Mozart and Louis Spohr) and
particularly in composition, France was the one country where Italian tastes and playing
methods were challenged by native scholars and performers. As far back as the
Baroque, French practices were more distinct and followed different rules (much more
specific rules, I might add). And in spite of the fact that Viotti a highly influential
artist and product of strong Italian tradition made his mark there, the pupils he met
had been raised in the French system. Its not surprising then, that by the beginning of
the 19th century, there was a shift. The French style of playing, now beefed up by the
Italian tradition, earned an international reputation of violin playing that had previously
been dominant in Italy.
The French assimilated and continued the traditions of the Italians. Baillot, for example,
wrote his extensive treatise: The Art of the Violin. His work however, unlike Italian
versions that had come before, focused not on the amateur violin pupil but instead
focused on training the professional. Furthermore, it was French luthiers who
established the practice of rebuilding old instruments to achieve better capabilities
(resulting in the modern violin), and the French innovator, Francois Tourte, who
developed the modern bow.
The French tradition can still be seen today what serious violin student hasnt studied
the etudes of Kreutzer or Rode? Later figures were Charles Dancla (1817-1907) and
Lambert Massart (1811-1892), who taught Fritz Kreisler and Martin Marsick. Marsick
taught Carl Flesch and George Enesco. It is said that the techniques of the French
School represented a violinistic technique that was driven by good taste, but that
double-stops or harmonics were not often employed. Baillot also gives directions in his

treatise for holding the bow, using a straight thumb and straight fingers. However, I
imagine the best models for studying the playing style of the French School would be to
study the works by Viotti, Baillot, Kreutzer and Rode. The four of them together
composed more than 70 concerti (!) as well as countless other pieces.
Germany, Hungary and Belgium
The rise and influence of the French School is said to have a diminishing quality on the
distinctiveness of other schools, similar to Italys affect a century earlier. One thing that
might have contributed to this has to do with the construction of railways throughout
Europe, which is a smaller-scale version of what has happened globally since World
War II (Ill write more about that below). An example of this diminishing quality is on
Louis Spohr (1784-1859). Spohr had a very inventive and unique style that was very
much affected by the German traditions that had been passed down by Johann Anton
Stamitz. However, after hearing a concert by Rode, Spohr became entranced with the
French style and sought to emulate Rode in his playing and even in composition. One of
Spohrs concertos was modeled after Rode and won Spohr great success. After that
Spohr never quite fell back on his German heritage according to one writer (forget the
name), who also points out the influence of Rode in Spohrs treatise: Violinschule.
The main figure of the German school became Joseph Joachim (1831-1907). I read
mention that a feature of this German school was a low right arm and emphasis on right
wrist movement in playing. Joachims pedigree can be traced back to Viotti through
Dont, Bhm, and Rode. Joachim and Dont in turn taught Leopold Auer, father of the socalled Russian School.
It is interesting to see how the students of Viotti branched out to form the different
schools of playing that were so often referred to during the 20th century. The Hungarian
violinist Joseph Bhm (1795-1876) is a particularly interesting figure, and though it is
said that he taught Auer for a time (leading to the Russian school), he also taught many
Hungarian students in Vienna, a few who became very influential in their homeland: i.e.
Jeno Hubay and again, Joachim.
Joachim and Hubay formed a line of influence in Hungary, which has even reached
down to two very modern proponents trained in Budapest: Kato Havas and Paul
Rolland. It should be noted, however, the emergence of new philosophies in violin
pedagogy that occurred around the beginning of the 20th century in Hungary. It seems
to be provoked by a book by the author Friedrich Adolf Steinhausen titled: The
Physiology of Bowing. What Ive been able to find out is that Steinhausens brother was
a student of Joachim, who encouraged Steinhausen to write the book. Steinhausen
however was not a professional violinist, but a doctor! The books principals became
deeply imbedded in the teaching of Imre Waldbauer, who taught both Havas and
Rolland in Budapest. Rolland credits Waldbauer as the most significant influence to his
playing and teaching, which in turn has influenced so many players of America today.
Rolland even goes on to say that Waldbauer did him the favor of stripping away the old
German-Hungarian tradition passed down by Hubay, which had negatively affected his
playing previously.

But I digress back to Viotti. Another of his students, Charles de Beriot, formed a line
that leads down through Vieuxtemps and Wieniawski to Ysae, forming what many
know as the Belgian violin school. That same line continues then to Enescu, Thibaud
and Gingold. The Belgian school was highly influenced by the French school but is still
said to have formed its own identity, one that was increasingly more romantic in style.
Players today often refer to the Franco-Belgian bow hold, wherein the fingers make
contact to the bow closer to the first joint and much emphasis is placed on finger
movement in bowing and coll.
Russia
The influence of Viotti and his students is something I find pretty miraculous. In fact,
what I find is that the violinistic pedigree of virtually ALL modern classically trained
violinists can be traced back to Viotti in some way, shape or form. Fascinating!
As I mentioned before, Leopold Auer (1845-1930) is often referred to as the father of
the Russian School. His students include Heifetz, Elman, Zimbalist, Yampolsky,
Graffman and many more. Auers school almost entirely transported to America as a
result of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. One of his pupils, Abraham
Yampolsky, carried on his traditions in Russia, teaching Leonid Kogan who in turn
taught Viktoria Mullova. Many players today refer to the Russian bow hold as an aspect
of Auers Russian school. The characteristics of this bow hold feature the index finger
making contact at the second joint, and the whole arm engaging in sweeping motions of
the bow.
However, what is often not mentioned (at least in America) is that there were TWO very
distinct Russian schools. Another of Viottis students, Friedrich Wilhelm Pixis, formed a
line of students that leads all the way down to Sevcik and Stolyarski. Stolyarski is the
father of the second Russian school. He had an eye for cultivating talent in young
students and was the teacher of David Oistrakh, Igor Oistrakh and Nathan Milstein to
name a few. David Oistrakh taught Gidon Kremer and many others, and Igor Oistrakh
was one of Zakhar Brons principal teachers. Bron has become one of the most famous
teachers in the world today (with students like Vengerov, Rapin, etc.).
If one were to compare the two Russian schools, I think of Auers heritage as being born
out of French (via Dont), German (via Joachim) and (pre-Steinhausen) Hungarian
influence. Stolyarskis school on the other hand was more Belgian influenced through
Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski and Ysaye who all spent considerable time in Russia.
American in the 20th Century
So, Ive shown how from Viotti, several branches of violin pedagogy were established
that branched and lead to somewhat distinct schools of violin playing. But branching
out continues from all of those sources as well, branches overlap in several places and it
all just gets increasingly more and more confusing. So, for the purposes of outlining
violin playing (or schools) in the 20th and 21st centuries, I will focus (at least mostly)
on America.

Probably the most influential teachers in America during the 20th century were Joseph
Gingold and Ivan Galamian, followed closely by Dorothy DeLay. Gingold was born in
Belarus and studied in New York with Graffman (a student of Auer). He then lived in
Belgium for several years, studying with Eugene Ysae. He spent several years as the
concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra but is best known for the position he held as
violin professor at Indiana University. Some of his best-known students are Joshua Bell,
Jaime Laredo, Dylana Jensen, Joseph Silverstein and Miriam Fried. Galamian was born
in Tabriz, Iran to Armenian parents ad his initial studies were in Moscow with
Konstantin Mostras, who was a student of Auer. After that he studied in Paris with
Lucien Capet, a desendent of Baillots teaching and the French School (incidentally,
Capet wrote a very enlightening treatise on bow use called: Superior Bow Technique).
Galamian taught for several years in Paris but his eventual and primary position was in
New York at Juilliard. He has taught countless influential violinists of today such as
Perlman, Zukerman, Laredo, and Dicterow. Perhaps part of the genius of Gingold and
Galamian is that they each represented their own hybrid school that used the best
from their varied backgrounds.
When Galamian died, his assistant, Dorothy DeLay, took over his studio at Juilliard.
DeLay students abound the concert halls of America today. Highlights of a few of her
students are Midori, Perlman, Zukerman, Nigel Kennedy, Gil Shaham, Sarah Chang and
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg (thats only a small handful).
Now, if we look at teachers in America today, things get much more confusing. There
are hundreds of hybrid schools. Several teachers stick out as being more influential than
others, but violin virtuosos are popping up from all over the place, from hundreds of
different teachers. The lines are all crisscrossed.
America in the 21st Century: The Digital Age
Earlier, I mentioned the building of railroads in Europe and how that assisted the rise
and influence of the French School at the beginning of the 19th century. The French
School had such an impact in fact; that national styles of playing which had been
distinct from the French (or earlier Italian) School began to die out (most notably some
German traditions). This is a small-scale version of what has happened today since
World War II. With the creation of jet planes and the Internet, the world is so much
smaller (figuratively speaking). Gobs of information can be found right at our
fingertips. Areas that had been more isolated are suddenly international hubs. Russian is
a great example, now that the iron curtain is (more or less) gone.
In my experience, it seems like several minds are still stuck in the mid-20th century
where talk of specific schools like Russian and Franco-Belgian was still applicable to
the playing characteristics of the day. But I cannot honestly agree that these schools
exist anymore! Nobody has sufficiently documented what has happened in the violin
world over the past 30 years. All violinists have become products of hybrid schools
whose definitions are even more varied than Galamian or Gingold. Very few players
show distinct school styles in their playing because we all study and are influenced by a
handful of teachers from varied backgrounds, absorb the best of each and assimilate
them in personal ways.

An unfortunate result of this, however, is that few modern violinists especially those
now studying in Colleges or Universities (I was one of them) have a reasonable
understanding of the history of the techniques or artistic heritage that is being passed
down to them, and the wealth of experience developed in different geographical areas is
diluted. But I think it is important to preserve the past, to understand it and learn from it.
It would be great if there was some kind of violinist database, where one can go online
and trace their own personal violinistic pedigree.
One must raise the question, however; what are the advantages here? For example, just
because it is more difficult to define geographically distinct heritages of performance
does not mean there is any shortage of different opinions or viewpoints. Violinists of
today have more freedom to seek out their own unique pathways and study with those
teachers they identify with the most. So then perhaps it can be said that today, the main
distinguishing feature of players is the approach to sound, not setup. Judgements of
sound can be subjective, nonetheless, I can instantly tell differences in an approach to
sound or phrasing from one player to the next.
There are so many specializations nowadays as well: one person may focus on and
make a career playing contemporary music from todays composers; another may focus
on symphonic repertoire, take auditions and maintain a career in a major orchestra; still
another might make a living playing chamber music; while another devotes their life to
training future violinists, thereby passing on their own vision (or school) of sound that
becomes part of the individuality of future generations who absorb that vision in unique
ways. Choice of pedagogical repertoire can also be a major factor in developing specific
concepts of sound, or more engagement in alternative styles.
There are also pedagogical trends that didnt exist before. The Suzuki philosophy
(which is not a method by the way) has totally changed violin pedagogy in America
and throughout the world. But its also a great example of a new phenomenon there
are several new approaches developing due to extreme cultural and lingual differences.
The Suzuki philosophy, for example, is the result of western traditions remolded
through the filter of Japanese early childhood instruction. Is this a sign of something
new happening?
To answer that let me start from the beginning. First there was Italy who developed and
spread technique resulting in specific national styles; the French School absorbed all the
best features of those styles and then branched out again; the same thing is happening
today, in which players are absorbing the best from all schools. So what is for the
future global styles? Do we already have them? I think so. Where do popular and
ethnic styles fit in (look at the Indian approach for example completely different)?
Give it some time and there may be a South American style, an Asian style, an African
style, or a middle-eastern style. Then if we follow the same circular pattern, what will
result? Its fun to think about, but who knows what will happen. All in all, its an
exciting time to be a musician!