Today violinists in the orchestra all play the type of instrument evolved during the 18th century, with a Tourte design bow. The more fortunate among them possess original but modified violins of the Cremonese school. These fetch very high prices in the auction rooms today. In the last century £200 to £5oo (then about $800 to $2000) was considered to be an excessive price for a Guarnerius or an Amati for, it was pointed out, the principal violin makers of the late 19th century, Thibouville-Lamy, with extensive premises in London and Paris, manufactured and sold violins for four shillings and sixpence (then about one dollar) and made a profit of 15%.

Technique

Rank and file violinists need to possess a technique that is almost equal to that of a soloist. Back desk players are no less important than those at the front of the double file, and playing second fiddle is not necessarily the lowly and subservient role implied by the common expression. All orchestral violinists have to have a wide repertoire of fingering and bowing techniques, many of which they will have to demonstrate if they are called to audition for a place in an orchestra.

The violinist makes his own notes and from the start is taught seven basic positions for the left hand fingering of the strings; these positions correspond to the seven diatonic notes of the scale. Each position provides sixteen diatonic notes — four to a string. An advanced student will learn half positions. Crisp and fast chromatic scales, such as can be played on the piano, are not possible on the violin.

Like fingering, bowing is an art of some complexity which has developed gradually over the centuries. Only the more obvious orchestral devices can be described here.

There is a difference in sound between an up and a down bow because of the way the bow is held, it being possible to exert more pressure at the heel than at the tip. For emphasis a down bow is used, and for passages consisting of a series of powerful strokes, the part of the bow near the heel is used. The up bow is less emphatic and the tip is used for light, quiet passages. Long full bows are used for legato, and short bows for spiccato or saltando, both forms of bouncing bow. A common device is tremolo, more graphically and simply described as scrubbing. Composers sometimes indicate the type of bowing they want, but on the whole they leave it to the discretion of the violinists and/or the conductor.

Double-stopping consists of playing two strings in harmony, each string being fingered differently. Unisons (the same note on two strings) are also produced in this manner. On account of the arching of the bridge it is not possible to play on more than two strings at a time and chords consisting of three or four notes have to be spread. Chords of harmonics are not possible. Harmonics are produced by lightly touching the string and lightly bowing.

The plucked sound of the strings was originally a substitute for mandoline sounds, and therefore pizzicato is the least original of violin playing devices, although there are original devices such as pizzicato with the left hand, with the strings bowed at the same time. Tremolando, or strumming, is also typical of plucked string instruments like the guitar.

The sound of harmonics has an ethereal quality, but bowing very close to the bridge — sul ponticello — or over the fingerboard — sal lasto — produce other degrees of attenuated timbres. A more unusual and rather skinny sound is produced by bowing, striking or plucking the portion of string between the bridge and the tail piece. Col legno means `with the wood’, and a desiccated sound is produced by striking the sounding length of the string with the stick of the bow.

Some of the terms used for violin strokes are reminders of the fact the fiddle was used to teach dancing — jeté, loure, sautille — but on the whole the terms used today are Italian in origin, some of them being borrowed from singing — cantabile, mezza and sotto voce and portamento.

The use of the mute is indicated by the words con sordine in most scores, but in English the word mute is used and this should not be confused with the Italian muta, which means change, and is used to indicate to a player that he is to change instruments, from flute to piccolo for example, or from oboe to cor anglais.

The accordatura of the violin is the ordinary tuning, but scordatura indicates a different tuning; this device is found more in zoth century than 19th century works and it is used to enable the violinist to perform more unusual passage work or, on occasion, to produce a different timbre. But the music of Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber (1644-1704), himself an expert string player, abounds in alternative tuning, making possible a great variety of unusual double-stops.

Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola also contains scordatura.

Repertoire

The orchestral repertoire for the violin is vast and varied in every respect. There is such a host of well-loved violin concerti performed by popular soloists all over the world that it is unnecessary to list them. In addition there are countless orchestral compositions which feature the solo violin, such as Rimsky-Korsakov’s Schéhérazade, in which the violin portrays the storyteller herself, or the second movement of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, in which the solo instrument is tuned a semitone high, so as to give it a slightly demonic flavour. And there are also many works specifically worth mentioning because they introduce the listener to some of the special effects in the violinist’s bag of tricks.

Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony and Rossini’s overture to La Scale di Seta include types of bowing called marcato or martele (`hammered’). (In Rossini’s overture to Il Signor Bruschino, the players are instructed to tap on their desks with their bows.) There are good passages of staccato in Beethoven’s First and Fifth Symphonies. Saltando, or bouncing bow, occurs in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. Two unusual forms of pizzicato, as well as passages sul ponticello, occur in Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta: in the first the pizzicato is produced with the fingernail, and in the second the string is pulled hard enough to cause it to rebound off the finger board. Col legno occurs in both Copland’s Four Dance Episodes from Rodeo and in Mahler’s First Symphony. The use of sul tasto, like many of these curiously weedy or rather thin sounds, belongs to the later composers such as Ravel, in his version of Schéhérazade, and Mahler in Das Lied von der Erde. Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, a revolutionary work also mentioned in the section on Voice, requires a number of special effects, including sul ponticello, natural harmonics and the use of specific strings for certain passages.

Two major and more familiar works exclusively for strings, Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro and BartOk’s Divertimento for String Orchestra, give by contrast an idea of the different ways of writing for strings: the first being based on the classical tradition and the second on the more rugged and adventurous traditional techniques, in this case those of the Balkans. These peasants with their horny hands, stiff it would seem from manual labour, have an important place in the history of violin technique. Those who have heard them, such as Liszt, Bartok and Kodâly, have been inspired by their vivacity and their varied forms of bowing and chording, often only made possible by the fact that some of them never abandoned the flatter bridge.

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dodoGuitar, Piano, String Instruments, Violin20 Jul, 2008