Chapter 11

"And what is mastery of the whole? Mastery of the whole, real violin mastery, I think, lies in the control of the interpretative problem, the power to awaken emotion by the use of the instrument. Many feel more than they can express, have more left hand than bow technic and, like Kubelik, have not the perfected technic for which perfected playing calls. The artist who feels beauty keenly and deeply and whose mechanical equipment allows him to make others feel and share the beauty he himself feels is in my opinion worthy of being called a master of the violin."

XVIII

ALEXANDER SASLAVSKY

WHAT THE TEACHER CAN AND CANNOT DO

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

Beginning at the beginning, I asked Mr. Saslavsky to tell me something about methods, his own in particular. "Method is a flexible term," he answered. "What the word should mean is the cultivation of the pupil's individuality along the lines best suited to it. Not that a guide which may be employed to develop common-sense principles is not valuable. But even here, the same guide (violin-method) will not answer for every pupil. Personally I find De Bériot's 'Violin School' the most generally useful, and for advanced students, Ferdinand David's second book. Then, for scales--I insist on my pupils being able to play, a perfect scale through three octaves--the Hrimaly book of scales. Many advanced violinists cannot play a good scale simply because of a lack of fundamental work.

"As soon as the pupil is able, he should take up Kreutzer and stick to him as the devotee does to his Bible. Any one who can play the '42 Exercises' as they should be played may be called a well-balanced violinist. There are too many purely mechanical exercises--and the circumstance that we have Kreutzer, Rode, Fiorillo, Rovelli and Dont emphasizes the fact. And there are too many elaborate and complicated violin methods. Sevčik, for instance, has devised a purely mechanical system of this kind, perfect from a purely mechanical standpoint, but one whose consistent use, in my opinion, kills initiative and individuality. I have had experience with Sevčik pupils in quartet playing, and have found that they have no expression.

WHAT THE TEACHER CAN AND CANNOT DO

"After all, the teacher can only supply the pupil with the violinistic equipment. The pupil must use it. There is tone, for instance. The teacher cannot _make_ tone for the pupil--he can only show him how tone can be made. Sometimes a purely physiological reason makes it almost impossible for the pupil to produce a good natural tone. If the finger-tips are not adequately equipped with 'cushions,' and a pupil wishes to use the _vibrato_ there is nothing with which he can vibrate. There is real meaning, speaking of the violinist's tone, in the phrase 'he has it at his fingers' tips.' Then there is the matter of _slow_ practice. It rests with the pupil to carry out the teacher's injunctions in this respect. The average pupil practices too fast, is too eager to develop his Art as a money maker. And too many really gifted students take up orchestra playing, which no one can do continuously and hope to be a solo player. Four hours of study work may be nullified by a single hour of orchestra playing. Musically it is broadening, of course, but I am speaking from the standpoint of the student who hopes to become a solo artist. An opera orchestra is especially bad in this way. In the symphonic _ensemble_ more care is used; but in the opera orchestra they employ the _right_ arm for tremolo! There is a good deal of _camouflage_ as regards string playing in an opera orchestra, and much of the music--notably Wagner's--is quite impracticable.

"And lessons are often made all too short. A teacher in common honesty cannot really give a pupil much in half-an-hour--it is not a real lesson. There is a good deal to be said for class teaching as it is practiced at the European conservatories, especially as regards interpretation. In my student days I learned much from listening to others play the concertos they had prepared, and from noting the teacher's corrections. And this even in a purely technical way: I can recall Kubelik playing Paganini as a wonderful display of the _technical_ points of violin playing.

A GREAT DEFECT

"Most pupils seem to lack an absolute sense of rhythm--a great defect. Yet where latent it may be developed. Here Kreutzer is invaluable, since he presents every form of rhythmic problem, scales in various rhythms and bowings. Kreutzer's 'Exercise No. 2,' for example, may be studied with any number of bowings. To produce a broad tone the bow must move slowly, and in rapid passages should never seem to introduce technical exercises in a concert number. The student should memorize Kreutzer and Fiorillo. Flesch's _Urstudien_ offer the artist or professional musician who has time for little practice excellent material; but are not meant for the pupil, unless he be so far advanced that he may be trusted to use them alone.

TONE: PRACTICE TIME

"Broad playing gives the singing tone--the true violin tone--a long bow drawn its full length. Like every general rule though, this one must be modified by the judgment of the individual player. Violin playing is an art of many mysteries. Some pupils grasp a point at once; others have to have it explained seven or eight different ways before grasping it. The serious student should practice not less than four hours, preferably in twenty minute intervals. After some twenty minutes the brain is apt to tire. And since the fingers are controlled by the brain, it is best to relax for a short time before going on. Mental and physical control must always go hand in hand. Four hours of intelligent, consistent practice work are far better than eight or ten of fatigued effort.

A NATIONAL CONSERVATORY

"Some five years ago too many teachers gave their pupils the Mendelssohn and Paganini concertos to play before they knew their Kreutzer. But there has been a change for the better during recent years. Kneisel was one of the first to produce pupils here who played legitimately, according to standard violinistic ideals. One reason why Auer has had such brilliant pupils is that poor students were received at the Petrograd Conservatory free of charge. All they had to supply was talent; and I look forward to the time when we will have a National conservatory in this country, supported by the Government. Then the poor, but musically gifted, pupil will have the same opportunities that his brother, who is well-to-do, now has.

SOME PERSONAL VIEWS AND REFLECTIONS

"You ask me to tell you something of my own musical preferences. Well, take the concertos. I have reached a point where the Mendelssohn, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Brahms concertos seen to sum up what is truly worth while. The others begin to bore me; even Bruch! Paganini, Wieniawski, etc., are mainly mediums of display. Most of the great violinists, Ysaye, Thibaud, etc., during recent years are reverting to the violin sonatas. Ysaye, for instance, has recently been playing the Lazzari sonata, a very powerful and beautiful work.

"My experiences as a 'concertmaster'? I have played with Weingartner; Saint-Saëns (whose amiability to me, when he first visited this country, I recall with pleasure); Gustav Mahler, Tschaikovsky, Safonoff, Seidel, Bauer, and Walter Damrosch, whose friend and associate I have been for the last twenty-two years. He is a wonderful man, many-sided and versatile; a notably fine pianist; and playing chamber music with him during successive summers is numbered among my pleasantest recollections.

"In speaking of concertos some time ago, I forgot to mention one work well worth studying. This is the Russian Mlynarski's concerto in D, which I played with the Russian Symphony Orchestra some eight years ago for the first time in this country, as well as a fine 'Romance and Caprice' by Rubinstein.

"Is the music a concertmaster is called upon to play always violinistic? Far from it. Symphonic music--in as much as the concertmaster is concerned, is usually not idiomatic violin music. Richard Strauss's violin concerto can really be played by the violinist. The _obbligatos_ in his symphonies are a very different matter; they go beyond accepted technical boundaries. With Stravinsky it is the same. The violin _obbligato_ in Rimsky-Korsakov's _Schéhérazade_, though, is real violin music. Debussy and Ravel are most subtle; they call for a particularly good ear, since the harmonic balance of their music is very delicate. The concertmaster has to develop his own interpretations, subject, of course, to the conductor's ideas.

VIOLIN MASTERY

"Violin Mastery? It means to me complete control of the fingerboard, a being at home in every position, absolute sureness of fingering, absolute equality of tone under all circumstances. I remember Ysaye playing Tschaikovsky's _Sérénade Mélancolique_, and using a fingering for certain passages which I liked very much. I asked him to give it to me in detail, but he merely laughed and said: 'I'd like to, but I cannot, because I really do not remember which fingers I used!' That is mastery--a control so complete that fingering was unconscious, and the interpretation of the thought was all that was in the artist's mind! Sevčik's 'complete technical mastery' is after all not perfect, since it represents mechanical and not mental control."

XIX

TOSCHA SEIDEL

HOW TO STUDY

Toscha Seidel, though one of the more recent of the young Russian violinists who represent the fruition of Professor Auer's formative gifts, has, to quote H.F. Peyser, "the transcendental technic observed in the greatest pupils of his master, a command of mechanism which makes the rough places so plain that the traces of their roughness are hidden to the unpracticed eye." He commenced to study the violin seriously at the age of seven in Odessa, his natal town, with Max Fiedemann, an Auer pupil. A year and a half later Alexander Fiedemann heard him play a De Bériot concerto in public, and induced him to study at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, with Brodsky, a pupil of Joachim, with whom he remained for two years.

It was in Berlin that the young violinist reached the turning point of his career. "I was a boy of twelve," he said, "when I heard Jascha Heifetz play for the first time. He played the Tschaikovsky concerto, and he played it wonderfully. His bowing, his fingering, his whole style and manner of playing so greatly impressed me that I felt I _must_ have his teacher, that I would never be content unless I studied with Professor Auer! In 1912 I at length had an opportunity to play for the Professor in his home at Loschivitz, in Dresden, and to my great joy he at once accepted me as a pupil.

STUDYING WITH PROFESSOR AUER

"Studying with Professor Auer was a revelation. I had private lessons from him, and at the same time attended the classes at the Petrograd Conservatory. I should say that his great specialty, if one can use the word specialty in the case of so universal a master of teaching as the Professor, was bowing. In all violin playing the left hand, the finger hand, might be compared to a perfectly adjusted technical machine, one that needs to be kept well oiled to function properly. The right hand, the bow hand, is the direct opposite--it is the painter hand, the artist hand, its phrasing outlines the pictures of music; its _nuances_ fill them with beauty of color. And while the Professor insisted as a matter of course on the absolute development of finger mechanics, he was an inspiration as regards the right manipulation of the bow, and its use as a medium of interpretation. And he made his pupils think. Often, when I played a passage in a concerto or sonata and it lacked clearness, he would ask me: 'Why is this passage not clear?' Sometimes I knew and sometimes I did not. But not until he was satisfied that I could not myself answer the question, would he show me how to answer it. He could make every least detail clear, illustrating it on his own violin; but if the pupil could 'work out his own salvation' he always encouraged him to do so.

"Most teachers make bowing a very complicated affair, adding to its difficulties. But Professor Auer develops a _natural_ bowing, with an absolutely free wrist, in all his pupils; for he teaches each student along the line of his individual aptitudes. Hence the length of the fingers and the size of the hand make no difference, because in the case of each pupil they are treated as separate problems, capable of an individual solution. I have known of pupils who came to him with an absolutely stiff wrist; and yet he taught them to overcome it.

ARTIST PUPILS AND AMATEUR STUDENTS

"As regards difficulties, technical and other, a distinction might be made between the artist and the average amateur. The latter does not make the violin his life work: it is an incidental. While he may reasonably content himself with playing well, the artist-pupil _must_ achieve perfection. It is the difference between an accomplishment and an art. The amateur plays more or less for the sake of playing--the 'how' is secondary; but for the artist the 'how' comes first, and for him the shortest piece, a single scale, has difficulties of which the amateur is quite ignorant. And everything is difficult in its perfected sense. What I, as a student, found to be most difficult were double harmonics--I still consider them to be the most difficult thing in the whole range of violin technic. First of all, they call for a large hand, because of the wide stretches. But harmonics were one of the things I had to master before Professor Auer would allow me to appear in public. Some find tenths and octaves their stumbling block, but I cannot say that they ever gave me much trouble. After all, the main thing with any difficulty is to surmount it, and just _how_ is really a secondary matter. I know Professor Auer used to say: 'Play with your feet if you must, but make the violin sound!' With tenths, octaves, sixths, with any technical frills, the main thing is to bring them out clearly and convincingly. And, rightly or wrongly, one must remember that when something does not sound out convincingly on the violin, it is not the fault of the weather, or the strings or rosin or anything else--it is always the artist's own fault!

HOW TO STUDY

"Scale study--all Auer pupils had to practice scales every day, scales in all the intervals--is a most important thing. And following his idea of stimulating the pupil's self-development, the Professor encouraged us to find what we needed ourselves. I remember that once--we were standing in a corridor of the Conservatory--when I asked him, 'What should I practice in the way of studies?' he answered: 'Take the difficult passages from the great concertos. You cannot improve on them, for they are as good, if not better, as any studies written.' As regards technical work we were also encouraged to think out our own exercises. And this I still do. When I feel that my thirds and sixths need attention I practice scales and original figurations in these intervals. But genuine, resultful practice is something that should never be counted by 'hours.' Sometimes I do not touch my violin all day long; and one hour with head work is worth any number of days without it. At the most I never practice more than three hours a day. And when my thoughts are fixed on other things it would be time lost to try to practice seriously. Without technical control a violinist could not be a great artist; for he could not express himself. Yet a great artist can give even a technical study, say a Rode _étude_, a quality all its own in playing it. That technic, however, is a means, not an end, Professor Auer never allowed his pupils to forget. He is a wonderful master of interpretation. I studied the great concertos with him--Beethoven, Bruch, Mendelssohn, Tschaikovsky, Dvořák*, the Brahms concerto (which I prefer to any other); the Vieuxtemps Fifth and Lalo (both of which I have heard Ysaye, that supreme artist who possesses all that an artist should have, play in Berlin); the Elgar concerto (a fine work which I once heard Kreisler, an artist as great as he is modest, play wonderfully in Petrograd), as well as other concertos of the standard repertory. And Professor Auer always sought to have us play as individuals; and while he never allowed us to overstep the boundaries of the musically esthetic, he gave our individuality free play within its limits. He never insisted on a pupil accepting his own _nuances_ of interpretation because they were his. I know that when playing for him, if I came to a passage which demanded an especially beautiful _legato_ rendering, he would say: 'Now show how you can sing!' The exquisite _legato_ he taught was all a matter of perfect bowing, and as he often said: 'There must be no such thing as strings or hair in the pupil's consciousness. One must not play violin, one must sing violin!'

*Transcriber's note: Original text read "Dvorák".

FIDDLE AND STRINGS

"I do not see how any artist can use an instrument which is quite new to him in concert. I never play any but my own Guadagnini, which is a fine fiddle, with a big, sonorous tone. As to wire strings, I hate them! In the first place, a wire E sounds distinctly different to the artist than does a gut E. And it is a difference which any violinist will notice. Then, too, the wire E is so thin that the fingers have nothing to take hold of, to touch firmly. And to me the metallic vibrations, especially on the open strings, are most disagreeable. Of course, from a purely practical standpoint there is much to be said for the wire E.

VIOLIN MASTERY

"What is violin mastery as I understand it? First of all it means talent, secondly technic, and in the third place, tone. And then one must be musical in an all-embracing sense to attain it. One must have musical breadth and understanding in general, and not only in a narrowly violinistic sense. And, finally, the good God must give the artist who aspires to be a master good hands, and direct him to a good teacher!"

XX

EDMUND SEVERN

THE JOACHIM BOWING AND OTHERS: THE LEFT HAND

Edmund Severn's activity in the field of violin music is a three-fold one: he is a composer, an interpreting artist and a teacher, and his fortuitous control of the three vital phases of his Art make his views as regards its study of very real value. The lover of string music in general would naturally attach more importance to his string quartet in D major, his trio for violin, 'cello and piano, his violin concerto in D minor, the sonata, the "Oriental," "Italian," "New England" suites for violin, and the fine suite in A major, for two violins and piano, than to his symphonic poems for orchestra, his choral works and his songs. And those in search of hints to aid them to master the violin would be most interested in having the benefit of his opinions as a teacher, founded on long experience and keen observation. Since Mr. Severn is one of those teachers who are born, not made, and is interested heart and soul in this phase of his musical work, it was not difficult to draw him out.

THE JOACHIM BOWING

"My first instructor in the violin was my father, the pioneer violin teacher of Hartford, Conn., where my boyhood was passed, and then I studied with Franz Milcke and Bernard Listemann, concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. But one day I happened to read a few lines reprinted in the _Metronome_ from some European source, which quoted Wilhelmj as saying that Emanuel Wirth, Joachim's first assistant at the Berlin _Hochschule_, 'was the best teacher of his generation.' This was enough for me: feeling that the best could be none too good, I made up my mind to go to him. And I did. Wirth was the viola of the Joachim Quartet, and probably a better teacher than was Joachim himself. Violin teaching was a cult with him, a religion; and I think he believed God had sent him to earth to teach fiddle. Like all the teachers at the _Hochschule_ he taught the regular 'Joachim' bowing--they were obliged to teach it--as far as it could be taught, for it could not be taught every one. And that is the real trouble with the 'Joachim' bowing. It is impossible to make a general application of it.

"Joachim had a very long arm and when he played at the point of the bow his arm position was approximately the same as that of the average player at the middle of the bow. Willy Hess was a perfect exponent of the Joachim method of bowing. Why? Because he had a very long arm. But at the _Hochschule_ the Joachim bowing was compulsory: they taught, or tried to teach, all who came there to use it without exception; boys or girls whose arms chanced to be long enough could acquire it, but big men with short arms had no chance whatever. Having a medium long arm, by dint of hard work I managed to get my bowing to suit Wirth; yet I always felt at a disadvantage at the point of the bow, in spite of the fact that after my return to the United States I taught the Joachim bowing for fully eight years.

"Then, when he first came here, I heard and saw Ysaye play, and I noticed how greatly his bowing differed from that of Joachim, the point being that his first finger was always in a position to press _naturally_ without the least stiffness. This led me to try to find a less constrained bowing for myself, working along perfectly natural lines. The Joachim bowing demands a high wrist; but in the case of the Belgian school an easy position at the point is assumed naturally. And it is not hard to understand that if the bow be drawn parallel with the bridge, allowing for the least possible movement of hands and wrist, the greatest economy of motion, there is no contravention of the laws of nature and playing is natural and unconstrained.

"And this applies to every student of the instrument, whether or no he has a long arm. While I was studying in Berlin, Sarasate played there in public, with the most natural and unhampered grace and freedom in the use of his bow. Yet the entire _Hochschule_ contingent unanimously condemned his bowing as being 'stiff'--merely because it did not conform to the Joachim tradition. Of course, there is no question but that Joachim was the greatest quartet player of his time; and with regard to the interpretation of the classics he was not to be excelled. His conception of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms was wonderful. The insistence at the _Hochschule_ on forcing the bowing which was natural to him on all others, irrespective of physical adaptability, is a matter of regret. Wirth was somewhat deficient in teaching left hand technic, as compared with, let us say, Schradieck. Wirth's real strength lay in his sincerity and his ability to make clear the musical contents of the works of the great masters. In a Beethoven or Spohr concerto he made a pupil give its due emphasis to every single note.

A PRE-TEACHING REQUISITE