Violin Treatises 1600 - 1820

Violin history and repertory, 1600–1820: Treatises

Roger North wrote of techniques ‘which may be knowne but not described’. Some subtleties are indescribable, and some, particularly in the 17th century, may have been kept as mysteries of the trade. For all that, the most obvious sources of information on technique and performing practice are treatises. A great deal of fascinating information is contained in two great encyclopedic works, Praetorius's Syntagma musicum and Mersenne's Harmonie universelle (1636–7). With these outstanding exceptions, however, most 17th-century treatises were written by generalists and directed at amateur players, and confine themselves to rudimentary matters. This tradition of what Boyden (1965), picking up on the title of a 1695 publication, called ‘self-instructors’ continued throughout the first half of the 18th century.

Many tutors addressed to amateurs do little more than sketch the topography of the fingerboard and provide a few simple tunes. Speer (1697) concluded his instructions for the violin with the frustrating comment: ‘a true teacher will be sure to show his student what remains: how to hold the violin properly, how to place it on the breast, how to manage the bow, and how to play trills, mordents, slides and tremolos combined with other ornaments’. Where these writers did venture into technical matters their advice may be suspect.

Some, like Prinner (1677) and Berlin (1744), are manifestly non-specialist since they were probably not string players and set out (like Speer) to give instruction in a whole range of musical instruments.

Such volumes are, however, not entirely without interest. John Lenton's The Gentleman's Diversion, or the Violin Explained (London, 1693), for example, manages – despite its quite explicit targeting of hobbyists – to give us some tantalizing glimpses of the practices of advanced players in turn-of-the-century England. Even such a publication as Robert Bremner's Compleat Tutor for the Violin (London, after 1761) helps in an oblique way to fill out the picture. Addressed to beginners, its eight pages of instruction contain almost nothing useful about violin technique. But it includes a charming frontispiece of a violinist with portraits behind him of Corelli and Handel (an indicator of taste), a revealing one-page dictionary of musical terms, and a fascinating advertisement for musical accessories (e.g. ‘mutes or sardines’) sold by Bremner.

The picture changed markedly in the mid-18th century with an explosion of treatises written by real violinists for those aspiring to be real violinists: Geminiani's The Art of Playing on the Violin (London, 1751), Leopold Mozart's Violinschule (Augsburg, 1756), Herrando's Arte y puntual explicación del modo de tocar el violín (Paris, 1756) and L'abbé le fils's Principes du violon (Paris, 1761). Two other manuals should really be included in this group: Quantz's Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen (Berlin, 1752), since it contains a great deal which is specifically relevant to violin playing, and Tartini's Traité des agréments, published posthumously in 1771 but circulating in manuscript for some years before that. Of the many later 18th-century manuals, probably the most significant are G.S. Löhlein's Anweisung zum Violinspielen (1774), the French publications of C.R. Brijon (1763), T.-J. Tarade (c1774) and Antoine Bailleux (1798), and the first volume (on violin playing) of Francesco Galeazzi's Elementi teorico-pratici di musica (1791).

All of these treatises must be approached with a sense of context (and hence of the limits of their applicability). Quite apart from broad differences in stylistic orientation, performers obviously had diverse ideas, then as now, on matters of technique and interpretation. Geminiani, the pupil of Corelli, is often regarded as an exponent of an Italian violin tradition, but by 1751 he had become fascinated with French music. The hybrid character of his style led John Potter to observe in 1762, ‘his taste is peculiar to himself’, and even his great admirer, Sir John Hawkins, doubted ‘whether the talents of Geminiani were of such a kind as qualified him to give a direction to the national taste’ (1776). Hence he should be regarded as a rather idiosyncratic guide to Baroque practice. It is difficult even to establish a context for some volumes. Giuseppe Tartini’s precepts were published in the Traité des agréments de la musique (Paris, 1771) shortly after his death, but it is generally assumed that at least some of it must have been written before 1756 since Leopold Mozart referred in his Violinschule (1756) to Tartini's remarks on the augmented-2nd trill, and virtually plagiarized Tartini's notes on vibrato. It is not known when exactly this work was compiled or how much of it was written by pupils; nor is it clear how to reconcile, for example, Tartini's advice (in the letter to Signora Maddalena Lombardini) to ‘make yourself a perfect mistress in every part of the bow’ with his puzzling injunction (in the ‘Rules for Bowing’) never to play near the point or heel. As sources of information on performing practice, treatises must take their place alongside other invaluable (but often also equivocal) forms of evidence such as paintings, observers’ accounts of performances, records of payment for instruments and musical services – and, most importantly, the music itself.

(b) Holding the violin.

Where exactly on the upper body the violin rested was not completely standardized until late in the 18th century. In the early Baroque era, violinists might hold their instruments almost as low as their waists (as some traditional fiddlers still do). When Nicola Matteis arrived in England in the 1670s, observers were struck by the way he held the violin against ‘his short ribs’. Many players preferred to support the violin against their chests just beneath the collar-bone. John Playford (i) (1654), addressing amateurs, advocated this breast position (fig.16), but so too did Geminiani writing nearly a century later with much more accomplished players in mind. Even in the later 17th century some chose to rest the violin on the collar-bone with the option of using their chins to steady the instrument, particularly when shifting. Lenton (C1693) advocated resting the instrument on the collar-bone but without chin pressure:

I would have none get the habit of holding an Instrument under the Chin, so I would have them avoid placing it as low as the Girdle, which is a mongrel sort of way us'd by some in imitation of the Italian. … The best way of commanding the Instrument will be to place it something higher than your Breast your fingers round and firm in stopping.

Obviously, none of these positions can be regarded as standard. G.B. Rangoni's essay on Nardini, Lolli and Pugnani published in 1790 argues that:

Just as each person is differently built, it follows that the position of the instrument shouldn't be the same for all; and that making anyone hold the violin in a way contrary to their natural bearing (which is always related to the constitution of their limbs) would introduce obstacles in a student's progress and prevent the development of their talent.

As early as 1677, however, Prinner asserted that the violin should be held ‘so firmly with your chin that there is no reason to hold it with the left hand – otherwise it would be impossible to play quick passages which go high and then low or to play in tune’. Corrette (C1738) and Berlin (C1744) both regarded chin support as essential when shifting (advice repeated by Bailleux in 1779). In 1756 Leopold Mozart offered violinists a choice between a chest-high hold (elegant, he thought, but inconvenient for shifting) and an under-the-chin method (comfortable and efficient). In the same year, Herrando stated simply that ‘The tailpiece must come under the chin, being held by it there, turning the head slightly to the right’ (fig.17).

Various other methods in the second half of the 18th century describe the violin as being held on the collar-bone without specifying whether or not to stabilize it with the chin. In 1761 L'abbé le fils proposed that the chin should be on the G-string side of the instrument, but this practice was apparently still not completely accepted by the end of the 18th century. In 1796 Francesco Galeazzi attacked the idea of playing with the chin on the E-string side, and his vehemently defensive tone makes it clear that this must still have been an issue; he claimed that it looked ridiculous, necessitated unwieldy movements with the bow and numbed the left ear because of the proximity of the instrument. The Paris Conservatoire Méthode of 1803 states quite unequivocally that ‘the violin is placed on the collar-bone, held by the chin on the left-hand side of the tailpiece, and inclined a little to the right’. By the late 18th century chin pressure on one side or the other must have been standard; but this meant something quite different from modern practice. Bartolomeo Campagnoli's treatise of 1824 stresses that the pressure exerted by the chin on the tailpiece must be light and that the head should be held as upright as possible. The inventor of the chin rest, Louis Spohr, listed among its advantages the fact that it makes it easier to hold the head upright. He claimed in his Violinschule (1832) that in the ten years since he had invented it, the chin rest had found favour with many violinists; but the Méthode de violon (1858) by the great Belgian violinist Charles-Auguste de Bériot fails to acknowledge its existence.

With the exception of Herrando, all of these writers identified shifting as the principal reason for applying pressure with the chin (see Fingering, §II, 2). Yet it is obvious that many skilled violinists who held the instrument beneath the collar-bone (and probably others who held it on the collar-bone but without chin support; for illustration see Veracini, francesco maria) were capable of playing virtuoso repertory requiring an advanced shifting technique. Even Prinner, the earliest and most vehement advocate of chin-on playing, conceded (1677): ‘I have known virtuosos of repute who irrespective of this put the violin only against the chest, thinking it looks nice and decorative’. Pictorial evidence from the 17th and 18th centuries seems to reflect what must have been a genuine diversity in ways of holding the violin. A number of paintings, in fact, depict several violinists, each holding his instrument differently, playing in a single ensemble. For all that, the vast majority of violinists depicted in the art of the period use holds in which the chin could not be used to stabilize the instrument. Geminiani's instructions for shifting (described in Fingering, §II, 2(i)) are predicated on such a hold and we can only assume that many virtuosos had mastered such a technique (as, in fact, a good number of period instrument players did in the later 20th century).

It may be that chin stabilization was disdained by 17th-century virtuosos but adopted by amateurs as a stratagem that got them around the most perplexing technical problem: that of shifting. In the course of the 18th century the situation reversed itself; by around 1800 professional players were unanimous in resting the chin (however lightly) on the tailpiece, while chin-off methods (especially ways of holding the violin lower than the collar-bone) were the preserve of tavern and traditional fiddlers. (There is a parallel with the adoption of the end-pin on the cello, recognized as a possibility by the early 18th century but spurned by advanced players for almost two centuries thereafter.)

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