Principles of Violin Playing and Teaching

Ivan Galamian, Sally Thomas, Stephanie Chase

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780486320649
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

A celebrated instructor explains his philosophy of teaching and practice methods, including the appropriate combination of technique and interpretation. Ivan Galamian, a longtime Juilliard professor, incorporates aspects of both the Russian and French schools in a system both ingenious and logical. His tutelage has produced astonishing results with students, many of whom rank among the world's most acclaimed concert artists and orchestral concertmasters.
Suitable for violin teachers and students of all ages and levels, this guide presents general principles and offers practical suggestions related to posture, holding the instrument and bow, vibrato movements, intonation, tone production, bowing patterns, double stops, trills, and many other facets of playing and practice. This edition features a new Introduction by Sally Thomas, violin virtuoso and Galamian's former student.

Chapter One

TECHNIQUE AND INTERPRETATION

TONE, PITCH, AND RHYTHM are the basic elements of all music. It is only logical, then, that the technique of the violin be firmly founded on these three elements in terms of beauty of tone, accuracy of intonation, and precise control of rhythm. Technique has to combine with interpretation for successful performance, and the favorable issue of the performance depends upon the following factors:

1. The Physical Factor: consisting of (a) the anatomical make-up of the individual, in particular the shape of his fingers, hands, and arms, plus the flexibility of his muscular apparatus; (b) the physiological functioning with regard to the playing movements and the muscular actions that bring them about;

2. The Mental Factor: the ability of the mind to prepare, direct, and supervise the muscular activity;

3. The Aesthetic-emotional Factor: the capacity to understand and feel the meaning of the music, plus the innate talent to project its expressive message to the listener.

ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE VALUES

In violin playing we have to deal with two distinct categories of values. One of these can be called the absolute or unchangeable values and the other, the relative or changeable values. As the name implies, the first category is not affected by alterations of circumstances, whereas the second category may be modified or varied by the style of the period, a change of locale, or the taste of the performer.

Among the absolute values are (a) the necessity for total technical control and (b) the requisite of completely unqualified knowledge of the music to be played in all of its details, including a thorough understanding of its harmonic and formal structure. These requirements are obviously timeless. Certainly the ability to play in tune and in rhythm and to produce all of the varieties of tone colors and bowings likewise can never go out of fashion. Enlarging upon this, even though a tone color produced by a certain type of vibrato might be contrary to the taste of a particular place or time (might not be in style or in fashion), the ability to produce it cannot become obsolete, and, thus, it has a definite place within the inventory of the absolute values of a complete technical equipment.

Conversely, the relative values deal with the interpretive side of the performance. Interpretation, as the word itself implies, contains a strong subjective element, namely, the performer’s personal conception of what the music should sound like. Since this subjective element is vitally influenced by taste, style, and fashion (which all vary from individual to individual, from place to place, and from one period to another), interpretation has to be classified as a changeable value.

The music of Bach serves as an example. If we knew (which we do not) exactly how Bach wanted his music to sound, there still would remain the question of whether it should be played precisely in the historical style of Bach’s day, or whether the style should be adapted to fit modem ideas, means, and surroundings. This is a highly controversial question, and no conclusive answer is possible. For example, I might mention the discussion about the use of spiccato in Bach’s works. One school of thought condemns its use, because the bowing was supposedly unknown at the time. Another school defends the use of the spiccato with the argument that if Bach had known this bowing he would certainly have approved its use. There is no way to settle this argument. Similar controversies have been raging about other aspects of Bach interpretations, such as the use of crescendos and decrescendos (which are frowned upon by purists), as well as the use of rubato, vibrato, and so on.

This example may serve to indicate the wide scope within which individual interpretations of the same piece of music can vary from one another and also why everything that has to do with interpretation belongs, of necessity, to the relative or changeable values. In the long run, every student who aspires to the level of true artistry will have to form his own opinion, make his own choice, and take his own responsibility. Therefore, the important point, fundamentally, is that the student must become fully equipped with all of the technical tools so that his musical ideas may be fully realized.

TYPES OF TECHNIQUE

Technique is the ability to direct mentally and to execute physically all of the necessary playing movements of left and right hands, arms, and fingers. A complete technique means the development of all of the elements of the violinistic skill to the highest level. In short, it is the complete mastery over all of the potentialities of the instrument. It implies the ability to do justice, with unfailing reliability and control, to each and every demand of the most refined musical imagination. It enables the player, when he has formed an ideal concept of how any work should sound, to live up to this concept in actual performance. A technique which fulfills these ultimate requirements can be called an accomplished interpretive technique. It is the fundamental goal for which one must strive, because it, and it alone, opens the way to the highest artistic accomplishment.

Such a complete mastery over the technical equipment is not only necessary for the soloist who wishes to achieve his own interpretation of the music, but also, in equal measure for the player who has to yield his own ideas to those of a leader (such as the conductor of the orchestra), or who must, in playing chamber music, coordinate his playing with that of the other members of the group. Without the mastery supplied by an adequate interpretive technique, a player can neither properly lead nor properly follow.

By differentiation, one can speak also of a virtuoso technique, which, although a technique of brilliant execution, is nevertheless not always under complete control. The fingers will often move too fast, with an effect of great speed and extraordinary facility, but without proper rhythmical discipline. Obviously, a technique of this kind, however spectacular, is not always a fully reliable tool in the service of the interpretive ideas formed by the artist.

TECHNIQUE AND CORRELATION

The foundation upon which the building of technique rests, as mentioned shortly heretofore, lies in the correct relationship of the mind to the muscles, the smooth, quick and accurate functioning of the sequence in which the mental command elicits the desired muscular response. From here on this mental-physical relationship will be referred to as correlation.* It is the improvement of this correlation which provides the key to technical mastery and technical control and not, as apparently is commonly believed and taught, the training and building of the muscles. What counts is not the strength of the muscles, but their responsiveness to the mental directive. The better the correlation, the greater the facility, accuracy, and reliability of the technique.

The question becomes, thus, one of how to improve the correlation. The answer is that the player has to present the mind-muscle unit with problems to solve, problems that proceed from the simple to the ever more complex. The problems best suited for this purpose are those of rhythm and coordination. They will be dealt with in some detail in the chapter On Practicing. Here it is sufficient to say that such problems may take the form of (a) a variation of time values (rhythms) which are the concern of the left hand, of (b) bowing patterns for the right hand, of (c) the combination of both of the preceding as coordination problems, and finally of (d) the superimposition of accents which may further complicate the problems to be solved. Any scale or passage that the player can perform with a great many different rhythms, accentuations and bowings is one that has been completely assimilated by the mind and muscles.

INTERPRETATION

Interpretation is the final goal of all instrumental study, its only raison d’être. Technique is merely the means to this end, the tool to be used in the service of artistic interpretation. For successful performance, therefore, the possession of the technical tools alone is not sufficient. In addition, the player must understand the meaning of the music thoroughly, must have creative imagination and a personal emotional approach to the work if his rendition is to be lifted above the dry and the pedantic. His personality must be neither self-effacing nor aggressively obtruding.

If we ask what makes a good performer, it is pertinent to think of the qualities that make a good public speaker, because they are closely related. A good speaker is one who has a good voice, good elocution and delivery, who has something important to say and says it with authority in a way that can be understood by everyone. In analogy, a good musical performer is one whose delivery combines complete technical mastery with an interpretation understandable and convincing to everyone.

There is also another analogy. A speaker will rarely move an audience if every word, every inflection, and every gesture gives the impression of careful, studied preparation. The same words would be infinitely more impressive if they seemed to come to the speaker’s mind in the very moment at which they are uttered, and if the intonation of his voice, his pauses, his gestures, and all other features of his delivery seem to be genuinely and spontaneously prompted by the thoughts he expresses at the time. In other words, the less rehearsed the speech sounds, the more effective it will be.

The same holds true of the musician. The best performance always partakes of the nature of an improvisation in which the artist is moved by the music he plays, forgets about technique, and abandons himself with improvisatory freedom to the inspiration of the moment. A performance of this nature is the only one which is capable of transmitting the essence of the music to the listener with the immediacy of a true re-creation. On the other hand, the player who studies in advance how to achieve the impression of a certain emotion by figuring out every shake of the vibrato, by mathematically calculating every nuance, by planning according to an exact time-table every rubato so that there can be no “improvisatory nonsense”—such a player substitutes a synthetic feeling, a mechanically contrived facsimile of an emotion, for genuine inspiration. He may deceive the ear of the auditors as to the nature of this procedure but he will never deceive their emotions. The public as a whole may not have a profound reasoning power on such matters, but it has an uncanny instinct for what is genuine and what is not.

Naturally, the improvisational element must not be overdone, and a player who is not yet musically and technically matured must beware of letting his emotions run wild during a performance. Also, the improvisation has to remain within the framework of an over-all plan so that it will always do justice to the elements of style and the formal structure of the work being played. Freedom of interpretation can be soundly based only on a complete technical mastery over the means of expression.

Interpretation, in its best artistic sense, cannot be taught directly, because only a personal, creative approach is truly artistic. One that is derived, second-hand, from the teacher cannot come under the heading of genuinely creative art. It is, therefore, a great mistake for a teacher to impose his own interpretation upon all of his students. From an early age in the student’s development the teacher should try to encourage a personal initiative while at the same time constantly strive to better the student’s understanding and to improve his taste and sense of style. The teacher must always bear in mind that the highest goal should be for him to make the student self-sufficient. The parrot method is not conducive to such a result. As Kreisler once said, “Too much teaching can be worse than too little.”

The mimicking of recordings is no less deplorable. It is far too easy today to procure the interpretive ideas of the great artists. A recording may be played over and over again until the student finally becomes unable to think of the composition except in terms of the recording artist. Such a procedure, when systematically applied, is bound to have a paralyzing effect on the musical growth of the aspiring artist. He becomes musically lazy and dependent. Neither his imagination nor his initiative are given a chance to grow, and consequently he does not develop a musical personality of his own.

A far better procedure for the serious student would be to listen to other works of the chosen composer (works that were not written for his particular instrument) and thereby acquire a feeling for the composer’s over-all style and personality.

A certain qualification has to be made, however, to the above statements, owing to the fact that there are wide differences in talent among the students, not only with regard to the technical ability but also with regard to musicianship and imagination. Not every student has the potentiality of creative imagination that can develop to the point where he can become a fine performer in his own right, even when his technical abilities may be unlimited. Broadly speaking, students may be divided into an “active” and a “passive” category. The active students are those who have the innate urge of a creative imagination. They are the truly challenging ones and can be made to grow into genuine artists. The other type, the passive students, can do nothing on their own, nothing that has not been shown them by the teacher or another performer. Not even the best teacher will be able to develop something out of nothing or be able to kindle a fire where no flammable material exists. Students of the passive type will never be able to stand on their own feet musically. They will always be dependent upon a crutch—a model to imitate. They will, at best, become skillful artisans, but never real artists.

(Some students develop their musical individuality rather late in life. The teacher should patiently encourage this development. It can be very wrong to classify as hopeless a student who is slow in acquiring musical personality and imagination.)

ACOUSTICAL ELEMENTS IN PERFORMANCE: “VOWELS” AND “CONSONANTS”

Knowledge of acoustical laws is a very important element in public performance.

Anybody who talks to a few people in a small room need not raise his voice. Even if his elocution is not of the best, and even if he speaks too fast, still he will, in general, have no difficulty in making himself understood. Speaking in a large auditorium, however, to an audience of thousands is obviously an entirely different matter. The speaker will have to speak louder, slower, and more clearly. These are obvious things, yet it is strange how few are the instrumentalists who realize that the same things apply to them when they perform in public. Many do not give a thought to the fact that what is right for the drawing-room is not right for the concert hall and vice versa. In the hall the performer has to project his playing in such a manner that it will reach, in clear and understandable form, the most distant listener in the audience: he must not play just for the people in the first few rows in front, but he must perform just as much for the man at the top of the balcony. How to do this will depend largely upon the size and the acoustical properties of the hall. If the auditorium is small and the acoustics are good, not too much adjustment will have to be made. The larger the hall, the more must consideration be given to the acoustical factors. If the resonance in the auditorium is dead, then all dynamics have to be upgraded. This is easy enough in soft passages, but when the forte and fortissimo are called for the player has to have flexibility, has to know how to change his bowing when needed, dividing strokes more often, in order to get the necessary amount of sound without forcing the tone.

The nature of the accompaniment will make a great difference, too. With piano it is easier than with orchestra. If the work being performed is a heavily orchestrated concerto and if an inconsiderate conductor permits his players to drown out the soloist, the soloist is truly confronted with a practically impossible task. Whatever the circumstances may be, the performer has to have a keen ear, ready adjustment, and fast adaptability to know how delicately he may, or how robustly he must, play in order to be heard in correct balance with the accompaniment.

Speed will also be an important factor which must now be considered a variable. Extreme speeds should better be avoided in large halls, and this is mandatory where any kind of echo effect is present in the acoustics. In such a case, too great a speed will have a tendency to blur the clarity.

To fill a hall with sound is, however, not just a matter of loudness but rather largely one of carrying power. The carrying power of a simple tone has something to do with the quality of the instrument, but still more with the quality of the tone production. The more correctly the tone is produced, the farther it will carry. On the violin the tone must not be forced.

Tone production on the stringed instruments does not consist of continuous sound only, but it has to have a certain admixture of percussive or accentuated elements, which give it character and contour.

In instrumental music, the relationship of the percussive elements to those of the purely singing sound is analogous to that of the consonants and vowels in speech and song. That consonants are essential for speech is shown by their omnipresence in every language. This same principle has to be transferred to instrumental music, where percussive sounds of a consonant character are often needed to give a clearer definition and form to the vowel sounds of the con...