In considering this subject it is extremely difficult to cite anything in the nature of a clear illustration, but we may be allowed to liken the tone of a good violin to the inanimate clay from which the sculptor models a figure. One may suppose the perfection of this figure to depend on the sculptor’s idea of perfection in form. If his clay be of good, even colour, and of fine, plastic quality; if his ideals be high and his ability as an executant well seasoned by experience, one can hardly expect anything save a satisfactory result. This result, it is true, may be bizarre, unusual, grotesque; may carry the marks of genius gone awry, but it will not be amateurish, or lacking in any of the elements of a profound and settled purpose. The player of the violin is confronted with a somewhat similar proposition. The tone of his instrument may be likened to the sculptor’s clay, yielding to nothing save ideals and the ability to express them. In both technical skill is necessary, but it is a mistake to suppose this does more than remove obstacles in the way to a free expression of ideals. One more illustration. It does not require a deal of technical ability to play a simple aria on the violin. Many amateurs are capable of giving a marvellously good rendition without doing anything which the hearer considers at all remarkable; but a great violinist will play the same thing, without embellishment, and in quite the same simple manner, and then the aria becomes remarkable!
Here is seen that gulf which always exists between player and fiddle; that obstacle which only the few appreciate, many ignore, while others are unaware of its existence. It is the gulf dividing the artist from the player. Every devotee of the fiddle comes to it sooner or later, and there most of them remain, unaware that their progress towards tone has come to a dead stop. A clear understanding of the nature of this obstacle and the manner in which it may be bridged will go further towards assisting the player to a grand tone than years of laborious practice. Indeed, neither practice nor experience will, of themselves, lead a single step in that direction.
To continue the illustration, let us say (for our purpose) both the amateur and the artist employed the same simple fingering as well as the same violin and bow in playing the aria, and that both played in the same hall before the same audience. To what, then, is this difference in tone to be attributed? Is it that one has more experience than the other? Is it due to some virtuosic but invisible touch of bowing or fingering? Or is it that one has a higher conception of tone-beauty? Let us see. Many violinists of long experience are utterly incapable of producing a really beautiful tone from any violin; years of playing has given them a technical equipment, but the results aimed at are not achieved. Furthermore, they can play practically anything, to say nothing of a simple aria, and yet they remain only a degree superior to a fair amateur, so far as tone is concerned.
Nothing, then, is left to account for this difference save that it is due to ideals. If one player possesses higher ideals than another it seems reasonable to say all his experience and technic will (perhaps unconsciously) be directed towards the expression of them. Thus will tone-beauty be constantly demanded from the instrument, while those without ideals simply play the fiddle, asking for nothing more in the way of tone than that the violin be in tune. We cannot do better in closing this chapter than quote the following from Messrs. Hill’s “Antonio Stradivari,” p. 162:—
“That the sense of beauty or distinction of tone is to-day cultivated to the same extent as formerly is, we venture to think, more than doubtful. The custom in modern orchestral scoring of sacrificing the individuality of the instrument in order to obtain effects of greater sonority, or of technical dexterity, and the abuse of the full-sized concert grand pianoforte in chamber music, seems to be largely destructive of the feeling for beauty of tone.”
CHAPTER XVII
THE IDEAL TONE
The ideal tone is that which satisfies the player and also “holds the audience spell-bound.” It is said of a very famous violinist that he one day entered the shop of a celebrated London dealer and heard, in the room above, the tones of a violin with which he was instantly fascinated. This instrument he determined to possess, and succeeded, after much trouble, in finally becoming its owner at the handsome price of two thousand pounds. This violinist made his choice of tone through being, for the moment, a spell-bound audience of one, and not through playing upon the instrument himself. It is impossible adequately to judge tone by playing upon the fiddle; the player is too close; he cannot tell whether the tone is “carrying” or not; its beauties, or frailties, are, like a picture, only appreciated at a distance, and the violinist can no more get away from his tone than a singer can get away from his voice. But he has this advantage over the vocalist: he can become, so to speak, an audience and hear the tone-quality inherent to a given instrument produced by another; but not, bear in mind, as he will produce it. None the less he may, by this means, select his voice with a measurable degree of certainty, if he has some idea of what constitutes an ideal of violin tone. There are few matters connected with the violin approached more lightly and with less understanding than this question of ideals of tone, whether in the violin or the player. As we have seen in previous chapters, some violin makers ignore it entirely, being content simply to make the fiddle, just as some players ignore it, and are content merely to play the fiddle. These are continually seeking the instrument which, through the perfection of its tone, will turn them into virtuosi—a thing it never will do.
Although the great artist never hears himself as others hear him—even on the gramophone!—much experience enables him to know something of the tone effect he is producing. We studied this matter with a favourite pupil of the late Dr. Joachim for a subject, whose opinions on tone are interesting. “The most an artist can do,” he says, “is to study the tone of his violin with painstaking care, and, by constant practice, fit such tone ideals as he may possess to those of the instrument. This must be done with such thoroughness that the two ideals become one, otherwise he will be continually at conflict with his violin, and unable to devote an undivided attention to the expression of tone and technic in a manner which experience will teach him is most impressive to the hearer. This ‘manner’ of expression becomes in time, and in its turn, second nature, and only when this final point is reached is the artist entirely unconscious of possessing either a violin or method, and the expression of tone becomes untrammelled as the expression of thought—to which, indeed, it may be likened. This is the only ‘secret of tone,’ and, until it is accomplished, no player can truthfully say he understands, or is able to express, the true tone of the violin—or even such ideals as he may possess.”
I will now devote a short chapter to the method by which a tone ideal may be cultivated and acquired. It would certainly be too much to say this method (or any other) is an unfailing producer of virtuosity. It is but one of many guides, and, as such, I believe it cannot fail to interest every keen student of Tone.