The Violin

By way of tail-piece to this chapter, I am tempted to present a brief sketch of an individual in whose hands the Violin, as respects its lower range of capabilities, was long, and most conspicuously, illustrated. Having devoted our attention at some length to the instrument, under its English aspect, shall we refuse a passing glance at the Scotch Fiddle, in the person of one of its most restless and remarkable expositors?

Neil Gow – the head of a race of north-country instrumentalists, and one of the most zealous in the line where Music is the special handmaid of the Dance – was born in Strathband, Perthshire, in the year 1727, of humble parentage. His first efforts were made at the age of nine; but he had no instructor till, at thirteen, he was taken in hand by one John Cameron. Whilst yet a youth, he carried off the prize at a trial of skill among the best performers in that rather out-of-the-way district – on which occasion, one of the minstrels who was the umpire (a blind man) declared that he could distinguish the stroke of Neil’s bow among a hundred players! In process of time, while thus vigorously engaged in working his way, Neil obtained the patronage of the Athol family, and the Duchess of Gordon, whereby he became noticed and sought after in the fashionable world. He was eminent in one department of Scotch national music – the livelier airs belonging to the class of what are called the strathspey and the reel. The characteristic expression of the Highland reel depends materially on the power of the bow, and particularly on the upward (or returning) stroke; and herein Neil was truly great – “un homme marquant,” in a two-fold sense. His mode of bowing, indeed, by which he imparted the native Highland gout to certain Highland tunes (such as “Tulloch Gorum” for instance), was never fully attained by any other player. He was accustomed to throw in a sudden shout, as an addendum in the quick tunes, so as to electrify the dancers! In short, his fiddling – for its communication of saltatory fury to the heels of his countrymen – was like the bite of a tarantula.

This active promoter of activity was also a compiler of national airs and tunes, and dabbled occasionally in composition – his son Nathaniel arranging and preparing the whole for publication. Forcible humour, strong sense, knowledge of the world, propriety of general conduct, and simplicity in carriage, dress, and manners, were combined recommendations of Neil Gow, who has figured on the canvas of Raeburn and of Allan. His brother Donald, a “fidus Achates,” was of good service to him as his steady and constant Violoncello. Neil died in 1807, at Inver, near Dunkeld.

CHAPTER VII

AMATEURS

“Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb?” —Beattie.

It is as plain to the understanding, as it is palpable to the ear, that Amateurs, or dilettante performers, on an instrument like the violin, so rich in its capabilities, but so exacting in its demands, are in a very trying situation. The amount of mere mechanical labour – the simple manipulation – which it is essential to employ, before the very finest mental disposition can express itself even passably on the violin, is a thing to startle the coolest enquirer. Giardini, when asked how long it would take to learn to play on the fiddle, answered, “twelve hours a day, for twenty years together.” There may be hyperbole in this – but it is only truth in too swelling a garb. There is the strongest meaning and reality in the sentiment of difficulty which the reply was intended to convey.62 It has been said of a professor of some eminence, who was current some years ago in London, that he has devoted himself for a month together, during the whole disposable hours of each day, to the practice of the passages contained in one single page of music; and many remarkable instances might be adduced (were the point sufficiently doubtful to require it) in proof of the prodigious exertions in private, that have indispensably preceded those public displays by which the excellence of great performers has been established. “Nocturnâ versate manu, versate diurnâ,” is indeed that precept whose spirit is the guide of the destined Violinist.

Ilium non rutilis veniens Aurora capillisCessantem vidit, non Hesperus!

His fiddle must be his inseparable companion, cultivated before all other society, beloved before all other worldly objects – the means and the end, the cause and the reward, of his assiduous toils. Such are the conditions on which the mastery of this “so potent art” depends. Through this road must they travel, who aspire to real excellence. Alas! what sort of compliance with such discipline are we to expect from the miscellaneous, fitful gentleman whom we designate too roundly by the term Amateur! What full conquest can we anticipate for him, who is the volatile lover of a mistress so jealous that she was never yet entirely won, save by the most refined arts of study, and by attentions the most persevering and the most delicate? No – there is no sane hope of consummate swam upon easy terms; and accordingly we find that, although Amateurs are sufficiently abundant, good players among them are not very numerous – and accomplished ones, positively few.

The Duke of Buckingham, Charles the Second’s rattling favourite, so noted for the versatility of his acquirements, is characterized, in one of Pope’s summary lines, as and the amount of his qualification in the two latter respects has been pretty nicely weighed and exhibited; but what kind of a fiddler was he? History is ashamed to say – but her silence is well understood by philosophy to signify contempt: it is a silence more expressive than words – than even those memorable words, “So much for Buckingham!”

Chemist, Fiddler, Statesman, and Buffoon;

Dr. Johnson, whose habit of sound judgment has marked itself on almost every subject that came within the grasp of his comprehensive mind, appears to have duly appreciated the exemplary labours which distinguish the Violinist by profession. We all know how little music there was in the great Doctor’s soul; but, even as regards the mechanical part of musical practice, few of us have given him credit for such a readiness to estimate fairly, as he has been really recorded to have shewn. The fact is, that he was a prodigiously hard-working man himself, and had an honest admiration for hard work, in whatever career manifested. “There is nothing, I think” (quoth he) “in which the power of art is shewn so much as in playing on the fiddle. In all other things, we can do something at first. Any man will forge a bar of iron, if you give him a hammer; not so well as a smith, but tolerably. A man will saw a piece of wood, and make a box, though a clumsy one; but —give him a fiddle and a fiddle-stick, and he can do nothing.”

If a learned man can thus calculate the value of professional application, a child can feel its results, and, feeling, can discern between the practised player and the deficient dilettante – as we have already seen in the little story which had for its hero the infant Earl of Mornington.

From the very marked disparity subsisting, of necessity, between the Professor and the Amateur – a disparity greater as respects the Violin, than is observable as to any other instrument – it should follow that modesty was a general characteristic of the non-professional class. Yet, as if to confirm the truth of the current axiom, that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” it occurs too often that the deference due to laborious attainment is withheld, and that the Amateur, content with a mode of playing as noisy as it is shallow, assumes a prominence which exposes him to ridicule, and gives pain to his friends, on his account, if not on their own. If he do not err after this fashion, he will perhaps affect to hold cheap the talent which he finds it were dear to imitate. It has been found, in the matter of hand-writing, that lordly personages have sometimes scrawled illegibly, rather than write in such fairer characters as might make them seem to possess a knowledge in common with clerks and schoolmasters. In like manner, certain dandy dilettanti, so far from regarding the interval of merit between themselves and the accomplished professor as a “hiatus valde deflendus,” or at least as a reason for becoming diffidence on their own part, have curled the lip of disdain, while hinting that their style of playing was not that of people who played to live; – as if, by a strange contrariety of ideas, it were depreciation to perform for a price! There is something to our purpose on this head in the first volume of Anecdotes, &c. by Miss Hawkins: and here is the passage: —

“Dr. Cooke, the composer, was giving lessons on the violin to a young man of a noble family. The young man was beginning to play; but, in the common impetuosity of a novice, he passed over all the rests. He therefore soon left his master far behind him. ‘Stop, stop, Sir!’ said the Doctor, ‘just take me with you!’ This was a very unpleasant check to one who fancied he was going on famously; and it required to be more than once enforced; till at length it was necessary to argue the point, which the Doctor did with his usual candour, representing the necessity of these observances. The pupil, instead of shewing any sign of conviction, replied rather coarsely, ‘Ay, ay, it may be necessary for you, who get your living by it, to mind these trifles; but I don’t want to be so exact!’”

The strong contrast afforded by the glare of pretension, against the opaqueness of incapacity, may often furnish forth a diverting picture. Michael Kelly, in his “Reminiscences,” has drawn such a one, from an original who flourished about sixty years since. “The Apollo, the Orpheus, of the age,” says he, “was the redoubted and renowned Baron Bach, who came to Vienna to be heard by the Emperor. He, in his own conceit, surpassed Tartini, Nardini, &c. This fanatico per la musica had just arrived from Petersburg, where he went to make his extraordinary talents known to the Royal Family and Court. Now, I have often heard this man play, and I positively declare that his performance was as bad as any blind fiddler’s at a wake in a country-town in Ireland: but he was a man of immense fortune, and kept open house. In every city which he passed through, he gave grand dinners, to which all the musical professors were invited: at Vienna, myself among the rest. One day, having a mind to put his vanity to the test, I told him that he reminded me of the elder Cramer. He seemed rather disappointed than pleased with my praise; – he acknowledged Cramer had some merit, adding that he had played with him out of the same book at Mannheim, when Cramer was First Violin at that Court; but that the Elector said his tone was far beyond Cramer’s, for Cramer was tame and slothful, and he was all fire and spirit – and that, to make a comparison between them, would be to compare a dove to a game cock! In my life, I never knew any man who snuffed up the air of praise like this discordant idiot. After he had been heard by the Emperor (who laughed heartily at him), he set off for London, in order that the King of England might have an opportunity of hearing his dulcet strains!”

Another curious story is that related elsewhere of an Amateur in Paris, who began each day of his existence by studying practically a sonata, but, in doing so, did not give himself the trouble to quit his bed, or to lay aside his cotton night-cap and its pertaining yellow ribbon, which might seem to represent on his brow the laurels and crown of the Cynthian Apollo!

The more clumsy and hard-going sort of those who play pour se distraire, ought not to distract their friends with their playing; but, when an Amateur is so bad as to be insensible of the fact, he is only the more apt to appeal to his acquaintance – not for advice, of course, but approval. If, in that state, he have any discernment connected with the object of his grand mistake, it is just of that kind and degree which enables him to select, for auditors, those of his friends who happen to be the most distinguished for patience and mildness of character. They, poor souls! at each preparatory screw of the fiddle-pegs, conscious of coming torture, wince and draw in their breath; at every saw of the sharp-set bow, they sigh with fear, or perspire with agony; for well do they know that

Some are sometimes correct, through chances boon,But Ruffman never deviates into tune!

Their sufferings, however, are silent; until peradventure, when ‘the operation’ is at length over, they do such discredit to their conscience as to stammer out a tremulous “bravo!” or a “very well!” in accents of courtesy that seem to sicken at their own import. Your very bad player, be it remarked, is hardly ever content with plain toleration – he must have the sugared comfits of praise63.

Admitting, as a reluctant principle, that we should lend our ears at all to those fanciers of the instrument who are so bad as to be out of sight of mediocrity, and below the point where improvement begins, it is clearly of urgent consequence that we should demand (or beseech) to be indulged with the shortest infliction that may be – an air without the variations, or a quick movement without the prefatory adagio. The Horatian precept, ‘Esto brevis,’ was never more applicable than here; but, alas! in no case is it less heeded. “As you are strong, be merciful,” says Charity; but the spirit of this fine recommendation is reversed by the Amateur belonging to “le genre ennuyeux” – reversed in conformity with his own predicament. As he is weak, he is cruel. He will not abate one minim, nor afford a single bar’s rest. He goes on and on, with no other limit, oftentimes, than that which is eventually imposed by the laws of physics, in the shape of personal fatigue. Such, in his worst state, is the Young Pretender!

But if so much is to be endured from an individual tormentor – from one exercise of a what are the sufferings which may be produced by a combination of such barbarous bowmen —all eager and emulous, all rough and ready? – The multiplication of discord thus generated, who shall calculate? It is past all understanding: it is the Babel of the tongues of instruments! This species of compound misery is too painful to dwell upon, unless in mollified association with the ludicrous. Under this impression, I will proceed to give a sketch of an affair of Amateur Chamber-Music – being the description of a Quartett-Party, freely drawn from the French of an eminent living writer, whose lively and graphic powers in the delineation of familiar scenes have procured him very extensive admiration among his own countrymen, and some share of credit parmi nous autres Anglais. Here then is the exposition: but let imagination first draw up the curtain, and place us in view of the convened guests at a musical soirée, given by some people of middling condition, but somewhat ambitious pretensions, in a private apartment somewhere in Paris: —

“violon faux, qui jure sous l’archet,”

“After several hours of the evening had worn away in lengthened expectation, till the assembled party, tired of speculating and talking, began to yawn, the old gentleman who usually undertook the bass instrument, was seen to look at his watch, and was heard to murmur between his teeth, ‘What a bore is this! How am I to get home by eleven, if the time goes on in this do-nothing way – and I here since seven o’clock, too! So much for your early invitations; – but they sha’nt catch me again.’

“At length, the host, who had been passing the evening in running about to borrow instruments, and collect the ‘disjecta membra’ of the music, reappears, with a scarlet countenance, and in the last state of perspiring exhaustion – his small and feeble figure tottering beneath the weight of sundry large music-books and a tenor fiddle. ‘Here I am again,’ exclaims he, with an air that is rendered perfectly wild by his exertions: ‘I’ve had a world of trouble to get the parts together; but I’ve managed the business. Gentlemen, you may commence the quartett.’

“‘Ay, ay,’ said Mons. Pattier, the bass-fiddle man, ‘let us begin at once, for we’ve no time to lose – but where’s my part?’

“‘There, there, on the music-desk.’ —

“‘Come, gentlemen, now let us tune.’

“The constituent Amateurs proceed accordingly to the labour of getting into mutual agreement; during which process, the auditory shuffle about, and insert themselves into seats as they can. Already are yawn ing symptoms of impatience visible among the ladies, to whom the very mention of a quartett furnishes a pretence for the vapours, and who make no scruple to talk, for diversion’s sake, with the loungers behind their chairs. Whispering, laughing, quizzing, are freely indulged in, and chiefly at the special expense of the musical executioners themselves.

“The enterprising four, at length brought into unison, plant themselves severally before their desks. The elderly basso has stuck his circlet of green paper round the top of his candle, for optical protection from the glare: the tenor has mounted his spectacles: the second violin has roughened his bow with a whole ounce of rosin; and the premier has adjusted his cravat so as to save his neck from too hard an encounter with his instrument.

“These preliminaries being arranged, and the host having obtained something of a ‘lull’ among the assembly, by dint of loud and repeated exclamations of hush!– the First Violin elevates his ambitious bow-arm, directs a look of command to his colleagues, and stamps with his foot. ‘Are we ready?’ he enquires, with a determined air. —

“‘I have been ready any time these two hours,’ replies Mons. Pattier, with a malcontent shrug of his shoulders. —

“‘Stay a moment, gentlemen,’ cries the Second Fiddle; ‘my treble string is down. ’Tis a new string – just let me bring it up to pitch again.’

“The Tenor takes advantage of this interval, to study a passage that he fears is likely to ‘give him pause;’ and the Bass takes a consolatory pinch of snuff.

“‘I’ve done it now,’ ejaculates at length the Second Violin. —

“‘That’s well, then; attention again, gentlemen, if you please! Let us play the allegro very moderately, and the adagio rather fast – it improves the effect.’ —

“‘Ay, ay, just as you like; only, you must beat the time.’

“The signal is given; the First Violin starts off, the rest follow, after their peculiar fashion. It becomes presently evident that, instead of combination, all is contest; notwithstanding which evidence of honorable rivalry, somebody has the malice to whisper, pretty audibly, ‘The rogues are in a conspiracy to flay our ears!’

“Presently, the First Violin makes a dead halt – ‘There’s some mistake: we’re all wrong.’

“‘Why, it seems to go well enough,’ observes the Tenor.

“‘No, no, we’re out somewhere.’ —

“‘Where is it then?’

“‘Where? That’s more than I can tell.’ —

“‘For my part,’ says the Second Violin, ‘I have not missed a note.’ —

“‘Nor I either.’ —

“‘Nor I.’ —

“‘Well, gentlemen, we must try back.’

“‘Ay, let us begin again; and pray be particular in beating the time.’

“‘Nay, I think I mark the time loud enough.’

“‘As for that,’ exclaims the hostess, ‘the person who lodges below has already talked about complaining to the landlord.’

“The business is now resumed, but with no improved success, although the First Violin works away in an agitation not very dissimilar to that of a maniac. The company relax into laughter – and the performers come to a stand-still!

“‘This is decidedly not the thing,’ says the conducting violinist, Monsieur Longuet, – ‘There is doubtless some error – let us look at the bass part. – Why, here’s a pretty affair! —you are playing in B flat, and we are in D.’

“‘I only know that I’ve been playing what you told me – the first quartett in the first book’ – replies old Monsieur Pattier, florid with rage.

“‘How on earth is it then? let us see the title-page. Why, how is this? a quartett of Mozart’s, and we are playing one of Pleyels! Now really that is too good!’

“Renewed laughter is the result of this discovery, and the abortive attempt ends with a general merriment, the contagion of which, however, fails to touch old Monsieur Pattier, who can by no means turn into a joke his indignation at a mistake that has effectually put a stop to the performance of the Quartett.”

For the credit of English Amateurs, it is to be hoped that so elaborate a display of incompetence – so complete a fiasco– as is presented in the foregoing sketch, has very rarely its parallel among ourselves.

Apropos of quartetts, it is related that His Most Catholic Majesty, Charles the Fourth, King of Spain, piqued himself not a little on his abilities as a violin-performer. Summer and winter, did this royal and reiterating practitioner perform, every morning, at six precisely, his quatuor, with three other violins; himself, of course, the violin par excellence: and, with the trifling drawbacks of missing his notes, and breaking his time (as if to mark his royal independence), he may indeed be said to have approved himself a king among fiddlers.

Another quartett-player of the class which Flattery herself can scarcely help frowning at, was the late Sir William Hamilton, whose acquirements in other ways must have contrasted oddly enough with his feebleness as a fiddler. “Sir William Hamilton, who was now at an advanced age,” says Ferrari, in his gossipping book, “was a kind and good-humoured man; but he used to bore us with his performance on the viola, especially in Giardini’s quartetts, which I verily believe derived their greatest value in his eyes from the circumstance of Giardini’s having been his master.” – Doubtless, with all his amiable qualities, Sir William had something of the obstinacy which belongs so closely to evil-doers on stringed instruments; doubtless there was no deterring him from “the uneven tenor of his way.”

The about-to-be subjoined sestett of condemnatory lines is not intended to apply to Sir William Hamilton (who had, at least, the merit of fostering Giardini), but, generally, to him who, having no sort of summons from Apollo, no musical vocation whatsoever from Nature, has persisted, nevertheless, to the end of his days, in being what is called a tormentor of catgut. A person of this peculiar turn of mistake, may be said to fright the fiddle from its propriety – for surely, in his hands, it wholly loses its temper and character. Making his fiddle-bow the stalking-horse of his vanity, he walks over the strings in an adagio, or curvets in an andante, with action that has nothing of the graceful, and much of the ludicrous. Such a being is in the extreme of the wrong. He hunts after a shadow: like Ixion, he embraces a cloud. His pursuit is frivolous, because it is without a chance of attaining its object. Unable to play in time, he is perpetually out of season: unable to stop in tune, he is ever in a false position. He wears out his existence in an unconscious dream; and his harsh discords and unpleasing sharps are as the snoring thereof. He dies in a delusion; his ricketty crotchets and uneasy quavers are exchanged for one long rest; and here is the amount of his value, in six lines —

ON AN AGED MUSICAL TRIFLERThe silly dilettante, whoA thankless violin doth woo,Till old he looks as Saturn,Can (to denote just what he is)No name receive so fit as this —A spoon, of fiddle-pattern.

By way of disporting a little further on this theme, I have spun a few lines in which the reference is to that incongruous identity so often found within the circle of private life – a good man, and bad fiddler: —

Ralph Rasper is an honest man,Prone to do all the good he can;He never lets the piteous poorGo meatless from his open door:He loves his wife – he pays his bills —And with content his household fills.He seeks, in short, the rule of right,And keeps his conscience pretty white:But save, oh, save us from his fiddling!It is so very —very middling!

Enough, however, of the indicative kind, as concerning the sins and follies of the Amateur species. Are they unpardonable? Nay – they claim indulgence through the very cause which produces them. It is the inspiring motive – the instrumental love, or love of the instrument – which redeems, in some sort, the errors to which it gives birth. We must not be too severe on the zeal which is indiscreet, lest we discountenance good faith, and nip affection in the bud. Shall we excommunicate our brother, for that he is too fond of fiddling? Nay, rather, let us reserve our censure for him who hath no fiddling in his soul. Cease we, then, to dwell on deficiencies – let us “leave off discourse of disability,” – except so far as may be necessary towards administering any little further wholesome advice, with a friendly view to practical improvement. In the past observations, let me not be thought to have had no better purpose than that of playing the cynic for my own indulgence. Myself an Amateur, and one of by no means large calibre, I should indeed be doing what were equally graceless and witless, did I seek the damage of the class to which I belong – that is, to which I have belonged, in practice, and still belong, by inclination and sympathy. My object is reform – the reform of acknowledged errors and proved abuses – but, while advocating the principles of that reform to the utmost extent that is compatible with reason and propriety, I will never consent to abandon my “order.”