THE GREATEST DIFFICULTY TO OVERCOME
"You ask me what is most difficult in playing the violin? It is bowing. Bowing makes up approximately eighty per cent. of the sum total of violinistic difficulties. One reason for it is that many teachers with excellent ideas on the subject present it to their pupils in too complicated a manner. The bow must be used in an absolutely natural way, and over elaboration in explaining what should be a simple and natural development often prevents the student from securing a good bowing, the end in view. Sarasate (he was an intimate friend of mine) always used his bow in the most natural way, his control of it was unsought and unconscious. Were I a teacher I should not say: 'You must bow as I do'; but rather: 'Find the way of bowing most convenient and natural to you and use it!' Bowing is largely a physical and individual matter. I am slender but have long, large fingers; Kreisler is a larger man than I am but his fingers are small. It stands to reason that there must be a difference in the way in which we hold and use the bow. The difference between a great and a mediocre teacher lies in the fact that the first recognizes that bowing is an individual matter, different in the case of each individual pupil; and that the greatest perfection is attained by the development of the individual's capabilities within his own norm.
Jacques Thibaud
MARSICK AS A TEACHER
"Marsick was a teacher of this type. At each of the lessons I took from him at the Conservatoire (we went to him three days a week), he would give me a new étude—Gavinies, Rode, Fiorillo, Dont—to prepare for the next lesson. We also studied all of Paganini, and works by Ernst and Spohr. For our bow technic he employed difficult passages made into études. Scales—the violinist's daily bread—we practiced day in, day out. Marsick played the piano well, and could improvise marvelous accompaniments on his violin when his pupils played. I continued my studies with Marsick even after I left the Conservatoire. With him I believe that three essentials—absolute purity of pitch, equality of tone and sonority of tone, in connection with the bow—are the base on which everything else rests.
THE MECHANICAL VERSUS THE NATURAL
IN VIOLIN PLAYING
"Sevčik's purely soulless and mechanical system has undoubtedly produced a number of excellent mechanicians of the violin. But it has just as unquestionably killed real talent. Kubelik—there was a genuinely talented violinist! If he had had another teacher instead of Sevčik he would have been great, for he had great gifts. Even as it was he played well, but I consider him one of Sevčik's victims. As an illustration of how the technical point of view is thrust to the fore by this system I remember some fifteen years ago Kubelik and I were staying at the same villa in Monte-Carlo, where we were to play the Beethoven concerto, each of us, in concert, two days apart. Kubelik spent the live-long day before the concert practicing Sevčik exercises. I read and studied Beethoven's score, but did not touch my violin. I went to hear Kubelik play the concerto, and he played it well; but then, so did I, when my turn came. And I feel sure I got more out of it musically and spiritually, than I would have if instead of concentrating on its meaning, its musical message, I had prepared the concerto as a problem in violin mechanics whose key was contained in a number of dry technical exercises arbitrarily laid down.