:: Historical Notes ::

THE ART OF THE BOW

“You see,” he continued, “the secret of really beautiful violin playing lies in the bow. A Blondin crossing Niagara finds his wire hard and firm where he first steps on it. But as he progresses it vibrates with increasing intensity. And as the tight-rope walker knows how to control the vibrations of his wire, so the violinist must master the vibrations of his strings. Each section of the string vibrates with a different quality of tone. Most pupils think that a big tone is developed by pressure with the bow—yet much depends on what part of the string this pressure is applied. Fingering is an art, of course, but the great art is the art of the bow, the ‘art of bowing,’ as Tartini calls it. When a pupil understands it he has gone far.

“Every pupil may be developed to a certain degree without ever suspecting how important a factor the manipulation of the bow will be in his further progress. He thinks that if the fingers of his left hand are agile he has gained the main end in view. But then he comes to a stop—his left hand can no longer aid him, and he finds that if he wants to play with real beauty of expression the bow supplies the only true key. Out of a hundred who reach this stage,” Mr. Kneisel went on, rather sadly, “only some five or six, or even less, become great artists. They are those who are able to control the bow as well as the left hand. All real art begins with phrasing, and this, too, lies altogether in the mastery of bow—the very soul of the violin!”

I asked Mr. Kneisel how he came to write his own “Advanced Exercises” for the instrument. “I had an idea that a set of studies, in which each single study presented a variety of technical figures might be a relief from the exercises in so many excellent methods, where pages of scales are followed by pages of arpeggios, pages of double-notes and so forth. It is very monotonous to practice pages and pages of a single technical figure,” he added. “Most pupils simply will not do it!” He brought out a copy of his “Exercises” and showed me their plan. “Here, for instance, I have scales, trills, arpeggios—all in the same study, and the study is conceived as a musical composition instead of a technical formula. This is a study in finger position, with all possible bowings. My aim has been to concentrate the technical material of a whole violin school in a set of études with musical interest.”

And he showed me the second book of the studies, in ms., containing exercises in every variety of scale, and trill, bowing, nuance, etc., combined in a single musical movement. This volume also contains his own cadenza to the Beethoven violin concerto. In conclusion Mr. Kneisel laid stress on the importance of the student’s hearing the best music at concert and recital as often as possible, and on the value and incentive supplied by a musical atmosphere in the home and, on leaving him, I could not help but feel that what he had said in our interview, his reflections and observations based on an artistry beyond cavil, and an authoritative experience, would be well worth pondering by every serious student of the instrument. For Franz Kneisel speaks of what he knows.

Violin Mastery
Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers
by Frederick H. Martens
Published 1919

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THE GENERAL FAULT

“My experience has shown me that the fundamental fault of most pupils is that they do not know how to hold either the bow or the violin. Here in America the violin student as a rule begins serious technical study too late, contrary to the European practice. It is a great handicap to begin really serious work at seventeen or eighteen, when the flexible bones of childhood have hardened, and have not the pliability needed for violin gymnastics. It is a case of not bending the twig as you want the tree to grow in time. And those who study professionally are often more interested in making money as soon as possible than in bending all their energies on reaching the higher levels of their art. Many a promising talent never develops because its possessor at seventeen or eighteen is eager to earn money as an orchestra or ‘job’ player, instead of sacrificing a few years more and becoming a true artist. I’ve seen it happen time and again: a young fellow really endowed who thinks he can play for a living and find time to study and practice ‘after hours.’ And he never does!

“But to return to the general fault of the violin student. There is a certain angle at which the bow should cross the strings in order to produce those vibrations which give the roundest, fullest, most perfect tone [he took his own beautiful instrument out of its case to illustrate the point], and the violin must be so held that the bow moves straight across the strings in this manner. A deviation from the correct attack produces a scratchy tone. And it is just in the one fundamental thing: the holding of the violin in exactly the same position when it is taken up by the player, never varying by so much as half-an-inch, and the correct attack by the bow, in which the majority of pupils are deficient. If the violin is not held at the proper angle, for instance, it is just as though a piano were to stand on a sloping floor. Too many students play ‘with the violin’ on the bow, instead of holding the violin steady, and letting the bow play.

“And in beginning to study, this apparently simple, yet fundamentally important, principle is often overlooked or neglected. Joachim, when he studied as a ten-year-old boy under Hellmesberger in Vienna, once played a part in a concerto by Maurer, for four violins and piano. His teacher was displeased: ‘You’ll never be a fiddler!’ he told him, ‘you use your bow too stiffly!’ But the boy’s father took him to Böhm, and he remained with this teacher for three years, until his fundamental fault was completely overcome. And if Joachim had not given his concentrated attention to his bowing while there was still time, he would never have been the great artist he later became.

Violin Mastery
Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers
by Frederick H. Martens
Published 1919

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THE FIRST VIOLIN IN CHAMBER MUSIC VERSUS
THE ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR

The comparison which I asked Mr. Kneisel to make is one which he could establish with authority. Aside from his experience as director of his quartet, he has been the concert-meister of such famous foreign orchestras as Bilse’s and that of the Hofburg Theater in Vienna and, for eighteen years, of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in this country. He has also conducted over one hundred concerts of the Boston Symphony, and was director of the Worcester Music Festivals.

“Nikisch once said to me, after he had heard us play the Schumann A minor quartet in Boston: ‘Kneisel, it was beautiful, and I felt that you had more difficulty in developing it than I have with an orchestral score!’ And I think he was right. First of all the symphonic conductor is an autocrat. There is no appeal from the commands of his baton. But the first violin of a quartet is, in a sense, only the ‘first among peers.’ The velvet glove is an absolute necessity in his case. He must gain his art ends by diplomacy and tact, he must always remember that his fellow artists are solo players. If he is arbitrary, no matter how right he may be, he disturbs that fine feeling of artistic fellowship, that delicate balance of individual temperaments harmonized for and by a single purpose. In this connection I do not mind confessing that though I enjoy a good game of cards, I made it a rule never to play cards with my colleagues during the hours of railroad traveling involved in keeping our concert engagements. I played chess. In chess the element of luck does not enter. Each player is responsible for what he does or leaves undone. And defeat leaves no such sting as it does when all may be blamed on chance. In an ensemble that strives for perfection there must be no undercurrents of regret, of dissatisfaction—nothing that interferes with the sympathy and good will which makes each individual artist do his best. And so I have never regretted giving cards the go-by!”

HINTS TO THE SERIOUS VIOLIN STUDENT

Of late years Mr. Kneisel’s activity as a teacher has added to his reputation. Few teachers can point to a galaxy of artist pupils which includes such names as Samuel Gardner, Sascha Jacobsen, Breskin, Helen Jeffry and Olive Meade (who perpetuates the ideals of his great string ensemble in her own quartet). “What is the secret of your method?” I asked him first of all. “Method is hardly the word,” he told me. “It sounds too cut-and-dried. I teach according to principles, which must, of course, vary in individual cases; yet whose foundation is fixed. And like Joachim, or Leschetiszky, I have preparatory teachers.

Violin Mastery
Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers
by Frederick H. Martens
Published 1919

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“ENSEMBLE” REHEARSING

“You ask what are the essentials of ensemble practice on the part of the artists? Real reverence, untiring zeal and punctuality at rehearsals. And then, an absolute sense of rhythm. I remember rehearsing a Volkmann quartet once with a new second violinist.” [Mr. Kneisel crossed over to his bookcase and brought me the score to illustrate the rhythmic point in question, one slight in itself yet as difficult, perhaps, for a player without an absolute sense of rhythm as "perfect intonation" would be for some others.] “He had a lovely tone, a big technic and was a prize pupil of the Vienna Conservatory. We went over this two measure phrase some sixteen times, until I felt sure he had grasped the proper accentuation. And he was most amiable and willing about it, too. But when we broke up he pointed to the passage and said to me with a smile: ‘After all, whether you play it this way, or that way, what’s the difference?’ Then I realized that he had stressed his notes correctly a few times by chance, and that his own sense of rhythm did not tell him that there were no two ways about it. The rhythmic and tonal nuances in a quartet cannot be marked too perfectly in order to secure a beautiful and finished performance. And such a violinist as the one mentioned, in spite of his tone and technic, was never meant for an ensemble player.

“I have never believed in a quartet getting together and ‘reading’ a new work as a preparation for study. As first violin I have always made it my business to first study the work in score, myself, to study it until I knew the whole composition absolutely, until I had a mental picture of its meaning, and of the interrelation of its four voices in detail. Thirty-two years of experience have justified my theory. Once the first violin knows the work the practicing may begin; for he is in a position gradually and tactfully to guide the working-out of the interpretation without losing time in the struggle to correct faults in balance which are developed in an unprepared ‘reading’ of the work. There is always one important melody, and it is easier to find it studying the score, to trace it with eye and mind in its contrapuntal web, than by making voyages of discovery in actual playing.

“Every player has his own qualities, every instrument its own advantages. Certain passages in a second violin or viola part may be technically better suited to the hand of the player, to the nature of the instrument, and—they will sound better than others. Yet from the standpoint of the composition the passages that ‘lie well’ are often not the more important. This is hard for the player—what is easy for him he unconsciously is inclined to stress, and he must be on his guard against it. This is another strong argument in favor of a thorough preliminary study on the part of the leading violin of the construction of the work.”

Violin Mastery
Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers
by Frederick H. Martens
Published 1919

Select Violins Home