11. Technique, style and performing practice c.

1900 by Valerie Walden

Artists such as Lanzetti, Jean-Pierre and Jean-Louis Duport, Rombertg, Servais, Davidoff
and Casals helped to develop, modernize and mold performance techniques to ever-
changing stylistic requirements and reoginal preferences. Idiomatic performance
techniques: required the fundamentals of cello technique to be disengaged from those of
the violin and the viola da gamba.
Cello performance history two perspectives: Overview of how the instrument’s technical
methodology developed and particular information about individual musicians.
Methods and Works published before 1900:

 Instructional Methods: Correte, Crome, Azais, Baumgartner, Hardy and

Kauer. Focused on playing simple tunes and accompaniments. Cello was
compared with the viola da gamba in functions.
 Methods of Solo skills: Tilliere and Cupis in bowing, and Lanzetti in
Fingering patterns.
Attempts to define systematic rules for fingering and bowing.

 French Methods: Aubert, Bideau, Raoul, Müntzberger, Bréval, Duport and

the Paris Conservatoire.
 German Methods: Schetky (reiterated in the English tutors of Gunn and
Reinagle), Alexander and Fröhlich.
Late 1820s Tourte-design bow and musical Romanticism.

 Study materials: Baudiot, Hus-Desforges, Dotzauer, Kummer and Lee.

Influenced by Romberg.
 Other regional practices methods: Rachelle an Stiastny
Second half of 19th century cello pedagogy established. Cello´s popularity grows. Regional
variations in the notation used to write cello music. Moveable C clefs. Italian and French
systems were both used during the later years 18th century. Boccherini simplified the
Italian system to bass, tenor and treble clefs. Tricklir (1780´s) and Romberg adopted such
notation.
Romberg became the most advocate for notating cello music at pitch. He codified
notational indicator: the thumb sign and natural harmonics. He adopted directional
markings for down and up bow of Parisian violinists.
The position at the instrument

 Holding the cello: without an endpin on the final decades 19th century: Piatti,
Grützmacher, Hausmann, Rabaud, and Whitehouse. Those who adopted the
 device: Servais, Davidoff and De Swert. The Cello hold varied. 18th centuries players
larger cellos. Beginning 19th century French cellists rested the cello on the left foot,
and Lamare used this hold. Variations of holding for women such as placed both
legs to the left.
 Left Hand: it took the form influenced by violin posture, represented by Romberg
and initially advocated by Janson, Romberg and Vaslin. The other form was taught
by Des Swert, John Gunn and Jean-Louis Duport. Only one position was advocated
for the thumb.
 Holding the bow: 18th and 19th centuries, fall into 3 categories: over-hand above
the frog (followed violin practices), over-hand at the frog, and under-hand
(duplicated gambists, by Schetky) at the frog. In the 18th centuries cellist followed
Romberg´s suit using Tourte-design bows. Some of them were Dotzauer, Kummer
and Lee, as did later 19th centuries German and Russian cellists.
Development of fingering technique
Neck-position fingering was devised to two stratagems: early 18th centuries, one system
adapted violin fingerings. Later 18th centuries tutors designated a finger for each semitone
method in half, first, and second position. Lancetti and Baumgartner made distinctions
between third and fourth positions. Second method was eventually considered more
idiomatic. Extensions were limited to the second fingering. This system influenced by
Berteau was followed by Jean-Louis Duport who achieved sequential fingerings. Other
strictures of shifting were by same-finger pattern and finger-replacement shift, both
illustrated by Correte´s tutor. This shifting methodology followed the generation of
Duport, Baudiot and Romberg and it was used in different context and music necessities
like timbre, color, expression, visual, virtuoso effect, etc. Rabaud and Davidoff each
presented an in-depth discussion of the rule of changes positions. Reduce in two basic
principles old finger or new finger shifting.
The expansion of high register on the cello 1730’s solved implementing imitation of violin
shifting and thumb position. It is evidence in instructions from Correte and Lanzetti.
Fingerings using four fingers developed by Tricklir, Schetky and Romberg. These fingerings
were incorporated in French technique by Baudiot.
Before the 1820’s thumb-position was configured to play speed and in a block hand-
position. The effect to use a change of clef to indicate hand-position is found is works by
Boccherini, Filtz, Tricklir, Schetky, Jan Stiastny, Anton Kraft and Romberg. Next generation
of cellists continued to devise methods of fingering upper register. Such as Jean-Louis
Duport and Davidoff.
Elements of color
Bowing patterns and varied strokes were first devised by Italians such as Lanzetti. French
from the time of Lully used fundaments like détaché, slurs, arpeggios, slurres staccato and
natural harmonics. In the 18th century, Tillière and Cupis regaled the string-crossing
patterns. Duport provided instructions of Dotted rhythm and developed a third species of
harmonic. Berteau incorporated slurred staccato, and natural harmonics into solo
literature. French school incorporate natural and artificial harmonics. Austro-German
performers focused in contrasting sonorities and variable dynamics and the timbre of the
C string. this is evidenced in works of Haydn, Anton Kraft, Tricklir, Romberg, Beethoven,
Jan Stiastny and Ritter.
Others coloring devices between 18th and 19th century were vibrato and portamento. Both
recommended for Dotzauer, Kummer and Romberg. Opposing viewpoints were offered by
Broadley and Van der Straeten.
Accompanimental skills
In 18th century the principal purpose of cellists was the accompaniment and continuo part.
Throughout the middle of 19th century, the accompaniment won complexity adding
harmonic structure using arpeggio or chord-based patterns and improvisation or
embellishments. By 20th century improvisational skills in the cello came to be considered
anachronistic.
12. The development of cello teaching in the twentieth century by R. Caroline
Bosanquet
c.1900-c.1940

 For the 20th century cello was considered a man’s instrument.

 Standards of playing were not high. Most of the literature of cello in that moment
was for adult beginners. However, small cellos starting to be more available.
 First half of the century Pablo Casals and Emanuel Feuermann incorporated new
physical movements and helped to transform cello performance.
 Pedagogical material was logically presented.
 The use of the spike was discussed Piatti and Fuchs. Piatti never use a spike,
conversely Fuchs stated to used it eventually.
 Teachers encouraged to use the whole bow and slow bow-start (still used today)
such as Percy Such and Fuch. Rethought by Suzuki and Rolland.
 Cellos pupils were expected to master the first position and instructed to hold
down as many fingers as possible. It is something still common by today and
criticized by Eisenberg, Bunting and Pleeth. Next, Shifting was allowed until 4
position and then between 5 and thumb positions. Thumb positions exercises were
not gradually, for instance, Grützmacher’s daily exercises.
 Cellist did not generally understand the natural work of the body as an entity.
Tutors prioritized some movements on the arm. Casals focused in the forearm,
Piatti in the wrist movements, and Fuchs the upper arm.
 The technical exercises from this period constitute the backbone of training
material for classical tonal music, and are still widely used, with the danger that old
‘stiff’ patterns are perpetuated despite modern advances in technical knowledge.
 Studies and exercises standard still very significant: Popper’s advanced High School
of Cello Playing g (1901–5), Grützmacher’s Daily Exercises (1909), Cossmann’s
Etudes (1900), Whitehouse’s Half Minute Violoncello Studies (1916), Becker’s
Finger and Bow Exercises and Scale Studies (1900).
 Thanks to them pedagogical works the most sought-after teachers were the
Germans Becker and Klengel.
 Cello instruction in Britain was boosted by the work of the Waddell School in
Edinburgh Waddell’s daughter Ruth started teaching the cello at his school. several
distinguished cellists such as Joan Dickson, Jane Cowan, Margaret Moncrieff and
Moray Welsh come from this school.
 Important event in the development of British string teaching was Rolland’s
theories based on the free use of the whole body in relation to string playing.
 In 1919 Herbert Walenn, a pupil of Becker, founded the London Cello School with
the encouragement of Casals, who became its patron. Many distinguished players
were taught at the school, including Zara Nelsova and Jacqueline du Pré as
children.
 Casals founded the Ecole Normale in Paris in 1919. Diran Alexanian made the work
Traité théoretique et pratique du Violoncelle (Paris, 1922) based on Casals’s ideas.
 The Ecole Normale in Paris was the center to which cellists from all over the world
came in the pre-war period for Casals’s masterclasses. he was giving similar
masterclasses in America.
 Casals never wrote much because he believed he was developing constantly, but
he provided the inspiration for books by Eisenberg and Bunting. Casals caused a
furore amongst the traditionalists by seeking to develop complete freedom of
movement in the right arm, including the elbow.
 Carl Flesch remarked, Casals showed the difference between technical glissandi,
and expressive and necessary glissandi.
 Casals advocated the individual use of the left-hand fingers instead of holding
them down, thereby facilitating vibrato. also differentiated between the dynamic
accent and the agogic accent forming the basis of the left-hand teaching of
Eisenberg, Bunting and Stutschewsky.
 Feuillard, teacher of Tortelier, produced Méthode du Jeune Violoncelliste (Paris,
1925) and Daily Exercises (1919). He also adapted Sevcík’s bowing exercises for the
cello in 1905.
 Bazelaire, like Feuillard, was a pupil of Delsart and he was a highly respected
teacher and composer, writing several pedagogical texts. Maurice Maréchal, Enrico
Mainardi and Gaspar Cassadó also made particular contribution to cello technique.
  Cassadó, pupil of Casals, was the first famous performer to use steel strings (as
early as the twenties) in his search for a big sound. Steel strings become popular
latter of the century.
 The American string teacher Paul Herfurth’s A Tune a Day (1937) for the cello was
the first publication intended for cello tuition in school classes and graded in order
of difficulty.
c. 1940 to the present

 By the Second World War cello technique based on fluid and natural movements
completely at the service of the music.
 after 1945 innovative ways of teaching were evolved.
 In 1945, string programs were started in American public schools to match existing
wind programs.
 In 1948 the USSR established elaborate music talent programs, involving selection
of potential pupils for specialist training before the age of six. Also in 1948, Kodály
introduced his ‘Kodály System’ of music education into Hungarian schools.
 In Japan, Shinichi Suzuki started his ‘Talent Education’ at Matsumoto in 1945, first
for the violin and then adapted for the cello by Casals’s student Sato. In 1948
Hideo Saito, pupil of Feuermann, founded the Toho Gakuen High School for Music.
 In post-war England 1950s and early 60s the state peripatetic system was initiated,
offering was chosen children, free instrumental lessons. Talent schools have also
been developed, the Menuhin School, and the Purcell School, Chethams
(Manchester) and Wells Cathedral School. They offer scholarships for
instrumentalists, cellists included.
 Private cello teaching has also blossomed world-wide, prompted by social factors.
The Suzuki factory was a pioneer in the mass production of small instruments from
1945. Cellos flourished in the then communist countries.
 In the 1950s, most cello pupils used gut strings that were difficult to tune. Metal
strings as Dominant are similar in tension to gut, were an important innovation
since the early 1970s. Despite these improvements, cellists such as William Pleeth
and Steven Isserlis consider that gut gives the only true cello sound.
 Both Suzuki and Kodály considered their ideas as ‘mother tongue methods ", with
the premise that the learning method should be simple and should aim to build on
a safe hearing base.
 In 1946 The Hungarian Violinist Paul Rolland became a prime mover in founding
ASTA. Rolland developed a teaching method inspired by Suzuki’s work, a book and
set films The Teaching of Action in String Playing. He also produced teaching
material with Stanley Fletcher. Rolland’s ideas were not universally accepted; after
his death his work was followed up more in England than in the USA.
 Phyllis Young and Margaret Rowell evolved innovative ways of teaching children
for the Texas String Project.
 the ‘Colour Strings Method’ has been developed in Finland since 1971 by the
Hungarian Szilvay brothers followed the principles of Kodály.
 Important books on cello playing second half 20th century such as Eisenberg’s Cello
Playing of Today (1952) and Janos Starker’s An Organised Method of String Playing,
Violoncello Exercises for the Left Hand (1965). Paul Tortelier’s How I Play, How I
Teach (1975), Christopher Bunting’s Essay on the Craft of Cello Playing (1982) and
William Pleeth’s The Cello (1982).
 Starker and Bunting believed that the cello fingerboard needs redefining.
 Bunting and Tortelier both follow Casals’s principle of finger percussion.
 Pleeth discusses the cello intonation in different context.
 Tree of them made great progress in the evolution of cello technique but with
different points of view. Bunting and Tortelier thought that the final goal of music
is achieved only through technical mastery of the instrument, and Pleeth ‘that
technique per se cannot exist apart from the music it is meant to serve’.
 Joan Dickson wrote The Freedom of the Fingerboard and made a film on bowing
that are extremely useful.
 The Yugoslav Rudolf Matz produced much outstanding teaching material like The
First Years of the Violoncello. He simplifies each technique to its essence, treating
each element of left- and right-hand technique in parallel contexts: abstract
exercises, studies and pieces.
 Recent developments in cello teaching have emphasized the instrument as a
whole.
 The technique has continued with contemporary musical developments and
graded technical material that is reflected in works like the interval exercises of
Bunting and Tortelier and Siegfried Palm’s Pro Musica Nova, Studies in Playing
Contemporary Music (1985), Novsak and Stein’s accessible Fun with Double Stops
(3 vols., 1988), Bosanquet’s The Secret Life of Cello Strings (1996).
 Despite cello teaching and technique progress, some external improvements are
still needed like a super light and hard cello case or a suitable and adjustable chair.
 One of the most progressive developments in cello teaching in the 20 th has been
the increased opportunity for national and international interchange of ideas,
pioneered through ASTA, ESTA, and cello festivals of the USA and England.
 Another important development has been the change in attitude to the training of
string teachers such as the efficient training systems of communist countries. In
the USA, Texas String Project. In Finland one of the best courses for the training of
string teachers of the Sibelius Academy.
 Cello playing is currently growing in parts of the world not usually associated with
a cello tradition. For example, China and India.