Prelude

Lesson One takes the form of a practical introduction, advising the reader on the basic equipment needed for the course of study. Although various compromises are possible, the advantages of studying on authentic historical instruments as opposed to modern ones are made clear. The objection that studying the Baroque violin or viola will somehow “damage” the player’s modern technique is laid to rest: on the contrary, such study will enhance both one’s technique and one’s understanding of how to make music. The options for acquiring a suitable violin include buying one in its original Baroque condition, reconverting an old one that has been modernized, and buying a modern copy. The choice of a suitable bow is also discussed. There follows a short history of gut strings, a section on how to choose them, and a practical guide to fitting them. The lesson ends with a brief survey of Baroque pitch.

Straight from the Heart: The Great Vibrato Debate

Vibrato, its uses and misuses, has been a topic debated for centuries, with sources from all periods agreeing that it is an ornament to heighten expression that should not be over-used, which apparently it often was! This lesson traces the history of vibrato from the sixteenth century until today, using numerous quotes referring both to the violin and to other instruments. The continuous vibrato taught today as an essential aspect of sound production developed only in the twentieth century and was criticized at the time by prominent musicians. The lesson asks for what purpose and how much it was used in the Baroque period, by what technical means it was produced, and to what extent, if at all, it altered the pitch of a note. Two exercises seek to reproduce vibrato techniques as described at the start of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and another investigates how playing chinless affects vibrato.

In the Footsteps of Corelli

Technical information on the basic bow stroke of the giga and dynamic variation within it are the subject of two exercises. The sarabanda is contrasted with that of Corelli (Lesson Seventeen) and the student encouraged to realize the figured bass of this and other movements. Rhythm contains emotional information just as harmony does: altering the rhythms of a melody line by Pergolesi and comparing their impact demonstrates this point. Vivaldi uses syncopations, hemiolas, and ambiguities of time signature, and he tussles with the bass to give his corrente rhythmic interest, so maximizing the rhythmic impact is the purpose of Exercise 87. Last, the student is encouraged to read the by now familiar sonata from the original 1709 edition as a preparation to reading seventeenth-century notation in upcoming lessons. As usual, the lesson is packed with detailed observations of the text and technical and musical information.

Learning to Feel Comfortable on Gut Strings: The Left Hand

This lesson guides the fingers of the left hand, in coordination with the ear, into a healthy understanding of how gut strings, more supple than modern ones, behave. An exercise explores the amount of pressure each finger needs for the sound to be clear and how to avoid excessive pressure. The rest of the lesson deals with the fingers as “slaves of our inner voice,” conveying to the string the intricate subtleties of phrasing and timing that spring from our artistry and our imagination. Two basic ways of lowering and raising the fingers (active and passive) are discussed, but this is not a merely technical issue: it is a way of unblocking the channel between intention and realization, releasing the flow from our inner singing voice through the medium of our physical movements and on unimpeded into the sound.

Transforming Musical Decisions into Sound

This lesson revolves around no specific piece of music, dealing instead with essential issues common to all musicians. Music, whatever attributes it may have, is defined by a single word: sound. Sound, the materialization of the imaginative artist’s inner voice, is created through a complex cooperation of physical movements and reflexes, but those movements are meaningless unless controlled and inspired by what happens within oneself. This lesson shows the importance of listening to that inner voice and learning from it, for copying it is the key to the emergence of the independent artist. Active listening conceives, creates, and monitors the sound. The exercises are a guide to identifying and transforming musical intentions into sound. One barrier to listening is thought: students are advised to meditate, a way of freeing the mind from thought. The emerging Baroque violinist may be afraid of producing sound that seems too ‘modern,’ a fear that inhibits expression.

Bringing Fast Notes to Life

This lesson uses a fast movement from an Albinoni sonata to investigate various devices that are essential for bringing Baroque music to life. The main focus is on how to play a line of equal notes in an interesting way: three flexibilities are identified: rhythm, dynamics, and articulation, with special exercises devised to maximize the uses of each one. The question of sequences is explored in detail (there are eleven in the movement) along with the issue of adding (or not) slurs where the composer writes none.

Five Exercises to Help Accustom You to ‘Chinless’ Playing

Learning to play without grasping the violin with the chin involves a certain reorganization of the body; this lesson contains five exercises designed to help the body achieve this transition in a comfortable, tension-free way. Special attention is paid to the back and ways of monitoring and releasing tension while actually playing. Exercise 10 encourages the visualization of the ideal state of the back while playing. Exercise 11 demonstrates ways of training the hands to be active while the back and shoulders remain passive; this theme is developed further in Exercise 12. The use of a table for learning to release tension is the focus of Exercise 13, while Exercise 14 shows how to carry out a spot check while playing. Three causes of tension are identified: technical factors, emotional factors, and nerves. These exercises are useful to any violinist or violist, but their principles are equally applicable to any instrumentalist.

The Inner Life of Sound

One essential element of musical expression is the living sound, capable of holding the constant attention of the audience. This lesson traces that ubiquitous concept from Caccini’s “swelling and abating of the voice” (1602) to the violin études of Mazas (1843). In the Baroque sound world, free from the all-pervasive vibrato of modern times, it was the responsibility of the bow to provide this ‘inner life of sound.’ Based mainly on the writings of Tartini, Geminiani, and Leopold Mozart, all of whom are quoted, this lesson contains five exercises for perfecting the expressive device that guaranteed this living sound, the “Messa di voce.” The many different aspects of its technique, gleaned from the sources, are isolated and explained in detail, from simple pressure with the forefinger to the addition of vibrato: two composers who indicated this device in their compositions, Veracini and Piani, are quoted and illustrated.

Learning to Feel

Music communicates emotions through the media of sound. This lesson approaches the eighteenth-century concept of ‘affect’ by examining how sounds elicit specific emotions and how, by heightening our awareness of the impact of intervals, we can better communicate these emotions to the public. The lesson quotes Geminiani’s definition of “the Intention of Music,” writings of René Descartes, Johann Mattheson, Johann Joachim Quantz, and Johann Philipp Kirnberger as well as Quintilian’s treatise on rhetoric, Institutes of Oratory. The intrinsic messages aroused by sounds are labeled “emotional information,” a central concept of the book, and this intensification of feeling achieved by specially designed exercises is applied to music by Corelli. We learn to evoke particular emotions at will, as actors do, and practice by projecting contrasting emotions onto a movement by Handel. This approach contradicts modern “instrumentalism,” a more technique-based learning method.

Learning to Feel Comfortable on Gut Strings: The Bow

Gut strings sound, feel and react very differently to today’s strings. At the heart of this lesson is the need for a constant two-way flow of information between the ear and the hand, for which both must be in a state of total awareness. The strings are in a constant state of flux, shortening and lengthening as the hand moves around the fingerboard, and responding to the needs of the music with its continual shifts of dynamics. The seven exercises in this lesson help the gut string novice establish a living relationship with the strings, testing their resistance via the bow and the fingers. This process has two phases, the Experimental Phase, in which the fingers, through tactile awareness, feel the string and gauge the correct amount of pressure for obtaining a clear, basic sound, and the Evaluation Phase, when the ear evaluates its resultant quality.