s somewhat hesitant about
publishing--there are many things I might publish, but I have seen so
much brought out that was banal, poor, unworthy, that I have always been
inclined to mistrust the value of my own creations rather than fall into
the same error. We have the scale of Debussy and his successors to draw
upon, their new chords and successions of fourths and fifths--for new
technical formulas are always evolved out of and follow after new
harmonic discoveries--though there is as yet no violin method which
gives a fingering for the whole-tone scale. Perhaps we will have to wait
until Kreisler or I will have written one which makes plain the new
flowering of technical beauty and esthetic development which it brings
the violin.

"As to teaching violin, I have never taught violin in the generally
accepted sense of the phrase. But at Godinne, where I usually spent my
summers when in Europe, I gave a kind of traditional course in the works
of Vieuxtemps, Wieniawski and other masters to some forty or fifty
artist-students who would gather there--the same course I look forward
to giving in Cincinnati, to a master class of very advanced pupils. This
was and will be a labor of love, for the compositions of Vieuxtemps and
Wieniawski especially are so inspiring and yet, as a rule, they are so
badly played--without grandeur or beauty, with no thought of the
traditional interpretation--that they seem the piecework of technic
factories!

VIOLIN MASTERY

"When I take the whole history of the violin into account I feel that
the true inwardness of 'Violin Mastery' is best expressed by a kind of
threefold group of great artists. First, in the order of romantic
expression, we have a trinity made up of Corelli, Viotti and Vieuxtemps.
Then there is a trinity of mechanical perfection, composed of Locatelli,
Tartini and Paganini or, a more modern equivalent, Cesar Thomson,
Kubelik and Burmeister. And, finally, what I might call in the order of
lyric expression, a quartet comprising Ysaye, Thibaud, Mischa Elman and
Sametini of Chicago, the last-named a wonderfully fine artist of the
lyric or singing type. Of course there are qualifications to be made.
Locatelli was not altogether an exponent of technic. And many other fine
artists besides those mentioned share the characteristics of those in
the various groups. Yet, speaking in a general way, I believe that these
groups of attainment might be said to su