It
deals with the left hand, but displays the spirit so well that I feel
it is not out of place in this connexion. A thin, delicate lad, with
fingers "like needles"--as a brother violinist described them to
me--was sent to a German professor whose digits resembled nothing so
much as the handles of table knives. This was an excellent violinist,
or rather "geiger," for the Germans make this distinction, but owing
to the size of his fingertips he could only play semitones in the
third position by removing the finger stopping the lower note while
putting down the higher one. If he retained the second finger on E on
the A string, third position, the third finger would fall too sharp
for F natural. This seemed to him such an unalterable law of nature
that he made the lad do the same, notwithstanding that the boy could
have stopped quarter tones with ease had they been wanted!

Had this man made even a superficial study of the hand he would have
been spared much profanity and the pupil much heartache and
disappointment. Tuition is twofold. There is direct teaching and
there is development. The seed is sown and then the soil is watered
and tended in the manner calculated to nourish and develop the
particular plant to the best advantage. Again, the gardener does not
plant his roses in damp shady corners or his ferns in sand.

Teachers require to use more of the gardener's judgment. They must
cease to look upon their pupils as defective copies of themselves and
must not fit them out with technique as soldiers are with clothing.
The technique should be made for the particular player. A violinist
with an ill-fitting technique is about as elegant as a short man in
clothes intended for a tall one, or vice versa. Many cases of bad or
defective technique are directly attributable to the teacher's want
of perception of "fit."

Thus we see players whose natural movements are bold and free trussed
up in a small and finicking technique, and others whose bent is
towards neatness, struggling manfully with a cumbersome "large
style." I have heard a "gentleman" defined as "a man who wears
clothes that belong to him." Similarly we may say that a good
violinist is one whose technique belongs to him. Every movement
should come naturally, it should be as much a part of his personality
as his tone of voice or the glance of his eye, and it should be the
teacher's aim to develop this personality and not to stifle it as is
too often the case. Of