Mostly Violin

Jan Dejnožka

October 15, 2003, updated December 29, 2022





Introduction

I read once that most people think the violin is a natural instrument while the electric guitar is artificial, since the violin is made of wood, and its sound is acoustic (unaided by electronic production), while the electric guitar is mostly plastic and metal, and its sound is electronically produced. But, my reading source went on, in fact the violin is very artificial in the sense of being a sophisticated artifact, while electricity is a natural phenomenon. I think that is correct as far as it goes. And I might add that a violin is not entirely wood, and can be electronically enhanced. In fact, there are violins that are specifically designed to be eletronic violins, and they can be mostly plastic and metal. And the electric guitar has its traditional mostly wood acoustic counterpart. Even an electric guitar can be played acoustically, but it just won’t sound very good, because it was not designed for that.

The truth is that both instruments are artifacts that are not found in nature; and at the same time, both are subject to the laws of physical nature. And while the plastic and metal materials composing an electric guitar are themselves artifacts, so are violin varnish and the parts of a violin. But what most people think is, in in a rather obvious sense, not wrong. For the average violin is more natural than the electric guitar. Namely, even aside from the materials (wood is more natural than plastic or metal alloys), the sound is produced more naturally if it comes to us directly from the instrument itself without the aid of electric power. This is so even though, say, a Stradivarius is far more sophisticatedly and delicately artificed than a beginner’s electric guitar, or in simplest terms, far more art is involved. This is in Aristotle’s sense of art as human production of changes to natural materials. But when we are dealing with things as complex as these two musical instruments, there is no yardstick for measuring degree of artificiality or naturalness. It would be like comparing apples and oranges. One could imagine building a series of violins that get progressively more artificial, and a series of electric guitars that get progressively more natural, until they meet at some logically indeterminate middle.

The distinction between natural and artificial blurs even more deeply when we recall that many other species make and use things. Birds build nests. Bees build hives. Spiders build webs. Beavers build dams. Some primates make and use tools. Thus making things is itself apparently a natural behavior. If we define “instinctive” as unlearned and unchosen, then making some artifacts seems instinctive, or largely instinctive. Surely birds, bees, and beavers at least choose the locations and materials. They do not build just anywhere, and do not choose just any materials. This raises the question whether there is any real difference between making an artifact and modifying one’s environment. And if we define “culture” as behavior that is taught and learned across at least one generation, following James Deetz, then it seems that some other species even have cultures of making artifacts.

The distinction between natural and artificial is reversed completely on the deepest level of the distinction, for those who believe that God exists and that God created nature out of nothing. For this makes nature itself God’s artifact. In this regard, God has been called “The Great Artificer.” And if God created us as well, and made it our nature to make things, then it is as exactly natural for us to make artifacts as it is for birds to build nests and bees to build hives. Yet at the same time, human nature is itself more deeply an artifact than any human artifacts, since God’s choice to create us was purely free and independent of his nature. On this divine level, the violin and the electric guitar seem equally natural and equally artificial. The difference is only in the details, and in which came earlier in the historical development of our knowledge and technology, and therefore appears to us to be further from nature. I myself am agnostic, and I’m making only a conceptual point. And in a very ordinary sense, that is an intellectual artifact. It came fairly naturally to me, since I’m naturally suited to be a philosopher. Here I’m trying to bring out that there are nuances in the uses of the artificial terms “natural” and “artificial.” To what extent or in what sense or senses is English a natural or artificial language? To what extent or in what sense or senses is music natural or artificial? To what extent or in what sense or senses is music a language? Certainly it has various notations. My best music teacher, Louis Krasner, said that music is a kind of thinking, and that every new musical phrase is a new thought, like turning a corner. But enough philosophy of art, that is, of philosophy of artifacts, including the fine arts as species of artifact production (paintings, sculptures, music compositions and performances). On to the fine art of music!



Advice to beginners in classical music

It's not at all necessary to enjoying classical music, but almost nothing is as helpful as playing it, however poorly. That puts you inside classical music as an active participant, an artificer. Only composing it can put you more inside, for then you are creating it at its deepest and most original level. I never played or composed very well, but the rewards for my understanding and enjoyment were almost unimaginable over the years. Exponential is scarcely the word!

The nice thing about violin and viola is that they are played exactly the same, except that a viola is bigger and tuned a fifth lower. The viola has a softer, warmer, mellower tone, and is often called philosophical. It's not hard to learn the alto clef (viola) if you know the treble clef (violin), but you don't even have to do that if you just want to play solo violin music on the viola. You can also play the mandolin, since it is tuned in fifths exactly the same as a violin. But you should play the instrument you would most like to, as motivation is key. My older daughter started on piano and violin, moved to flute, and then to French horn, while my younger daughter started on piano and moved to flute. I'm just happy that they played something, however briefly. This includes singing, where your instrument is your own voice.

If you can't play an instrument, I would recommend listening as actively as possible. In this way, you can still be an active participant as a audience. People think of audiences as passive listeners, perhaps because they are pictured as just sitting in seats. But sitting and listening are two very different things. Only poor audiences are passive listeners. Good audiences listen actively. Try to hear as many notes, tones, and nuances as possible, and to see as many relationships as possible-- how things work together, and impact on each other. Ask yourself why the players play as they do. Active listening is a very rewarding kind of work. Many pieces are quite intelligible on first hearing, but it's hard to understand other pieces without hearing them many times. I would even suggest that music is not as rewarding if you can't keep coming back to it to learn new things. But this should not be drudgery. There's no point in listening if you're not enjoying it. And you can overdo it. I've listened to some pieces too many times, and sometimes to classical music too much. This sort of oversaturation is not much different from anything else.

Another way to get inside music is to make an instrument yourself. I made a cigar box violin in 2006. To plan it, I learned from the Web and from an amateur violin maker. I also improvised, sawing off the tops of large barbecue chop sticks for the tuning pegs. It was eye-opening to make even this primitive violin, which took me only three or four hours of work, once the planning was done and the parts acquired. In fact, I called it the "Weekend Violin" - made on Saturday, and tuned on Sunday. Imagine how much more one could learn by making a good violin and test playing it.



Louis Krasner's advice for beginning violin / viola players

I do not think Prof. Krasner would have minded my sharing the advice he gave me while I was his viola student at Syracuse University, 1969-70. In fact, if it helps people play better, I think he would have liked that very much. The advice below applies to the whole string family, and some of it to all musical instruments. This is the advice I mentioned in the reminiscence as growing on me over the years until my tone came together. As I recall Krasner’s tips, they are:

1. Take a piece of chalk and mark the bow into four quarters. Learn to play in any quarter.

2. Press tightly with the left fingers, but keep the right hand loose-- relaxed and flexible.

3. Use the right pinkie finger for more bow control.

4. Think of the bow as a tooth brush and the hair as the bristles. You have to make every bristle pluck the string.

5. (Then) think of the strings as coated with a wad of chewing gum. You have to play through the gum.

6. (Then) think of the strings as being an inch thick in diameter. You have to play down through the string to the core.

7. Music is thinking. Every phrase is a single musical thought. Each time you move to a new phrase, it should be like turning a corner.

8. If you can't play it slow, you can't play it fast.

9. Watch yourself play in a mirror. (I think that was his advice, about your posture and its effect on your playing.)

10. If you can't do vibrato, at least wiggle your finger to put a little life into it.

11. Listen to yourself play. This means that the sound should control what you are doing. If it doesn't sound right, you need to change what you're doing. That may sound obvious, even trivial. But the unfortunate fact is that we quickly learn to stop listening to what we are doing wrong, and it can become habitual to ignore the sound we are actually producing. This point is the foundation of all good musical method, and can overrule the other tips. The sound is the music. The music is the goal. Therefore the sound is the goal, and the feedback. But consider also the old joke, "Wagner's music is better than it sounds, while Puccini’s music sounds better than it is." (Another version says this of Brahms and Tchaikovsky.) That point applies to both performers and conductors. A performer or conductor can look or sound good on the surface, but not be producing anything of substance or merit. High school parents in particular can fall for a high school orchestra conductor who looks and sounds great, but who is only conducting simple and easy works that do not challenge the orchestra to develop, or even to learn anything. It happens because the parents just don’t know any better. And that can be the ruination of the whole point of teaching music (not just orchestra) at all.



Advice from a teacher at Star Lake String Music Workshop, summer of 1968

You don't have to tighten the bow that much. Try a looser bow. Bow tightness affects tone, control, and volume. Try changing the tightness for different effects in different pieces. Concert violinists often use a tighter bow to increase volume and brilliance for large audiences, but it may sound worse to a listener who is only five or ten feet away.



Reading suggestions

Schonberg, Harold. C. 1981. The Lives of the Great Composers. New York: W. W. Norton, 3d ed. 1997.

Goulding, Phil G. 1995. Classical Music: The 50 Greatest Composers and Their 1,000 Greatest Works. New York: Fawcett Columbine. 1992. My daughter Marina liked this one while she was in middle school.

Perhaps the best idea is to browse a major library or bookstore. Wow, I suppose that really dates me! But it is best to have someone who knows classical music well to help you. Another idea is to listen to a good classical FM station. You can also record, download, request from a library, or purchase any performances you like on the radio.



Recommended DVD

The Art of Violin. This is better than The Art of Piano,which omits the greatest recorded pianist, Ferruccio Busoni, or The Art of Conducting, which is good but has too much talk.



Video clips and audio clips

Jascha Heifetz - in my view, he was the greatest violinist after Paganini, though we only have eyewitness accounts of Paganini. (The composer Franz Schubert, on hearing Paganini, said “I have heard an angel sing.”) Some of the performances below are old favorites from vinyl LPs in my high school days.

Tchaikovsky - Violin Concerto, Movement 1 (ed.), 12:35, Fritz Reiner cond., from the Carnegie Hall movie

Tchaikovsky - Trio in A Minor, 41:28, with Artur Rubinstein and Gregor Piatigorsky

Mendelssohn Trio, Movement 1, 7:05, live with Artur Rubinstein and Gregor Piatigorsky

----- Movement 2, 6:51

----- Movement 3, 3:30

Prokofiev - March, 1:33

Debussy - La Fille Aux Cheveux de Lin, 2:33

Paganini - Caprice 13, 3:20

Paganini - Caprice 24, 5:41

Schubert - Ave Maria, 4:43 - one commentator says this is the performance Heifetz recorded in 1917 at age 16. I agree.

Mendelssohn - Violin Concerto, Movement 3, 5:17 - performance video from the They Shall Have Music movie. The conductor is fake, but the youth orchestra is wonderful and real.

Mendelssohn - Violin Concerto, 24:18 - the whole concerto. It doesn’t get better than this.

Portrait of an Artist (1953), short movie, 25:31 - “Heifetz answers questions by a group of college students and performs Mendelssohn's 'SWEET REMEMBRANCE,' Brahms' 'SCHERZO' and 'HUNGARIAN DANCE NO. 7,' Gluck's 'MELODY,' Prokofieff's 'MARCH,' Wieniawski's 'POLONAISE' and Dinicu's 'HORA STACCATO.'”

Bach - Chaconne, 12:48, performed live on his 70th birthday TV special.

Bach - Partita 3, Prelude, 3:24

Ravel - Trio. Movement. 1. Movement. 2. Movement. 3. Movement. 4, with Artur Rubinstein and Gregor Piatigorsky. RCA Victor Red Seal LM 1119.

Brahms - Concerto for Violin and Cello, with Gregor Piatigorksy, cello. Alfred Wallenstein conducts RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra. RCA Victor LD 2513.



Steven Staryk

Bach - Sonata in E minor, Movement 1, Prelude: Adagio ma non tanto, 1:17, Kenneth Gilbert, harpsichord, Baroque Records BC 2858. The brief wow or flutter is not on the vinyl LP. Here is the same performance without the wow or flutter. It’s also the entire album (two sonatas). Movement 1 occurs 9 minutes and 40 seconds into the link.



Isaac Stern

Beethoven - Violin Concerto, 42:48 - a high school favorite; the album belonged to my parents.



George Enescu / Enesco, composer

Corelli - La Folía, 8:53



Alexander Markov

Paganini - Caprice 4, 6:34

Paganini - Caprice 21, 3:22

Paganini - Caprice 24, 4:52



Shlomo Mintz

Paganini - Caprice 4, 6:30

Paganini - Caprice 24, 4:41

Paganini - 16 Caprices



Henryk Szeryng

Brahms - Violin Concerto, Movement 1, 22:30

----- Movement 2, 9:04

----- Movement 3, 8:01



Midori Goto

Ravel - Tzigane, 10:51

I first saw this performance in the 1980s on Breakfast with the Arts, a wonderful Canadian Sunday morning program on the Arts and Entertaiment channel many years ago, when it actually had arts. I wish the program were still with us.

Paganini - 24 Caprices (playlist). The playlist is to the right of the clip that is playing. Midori was 19 when she played these. I’ve loved this CD for many years.



Anne-Sophie Mutter

Berg, Violin Concerto. 1. Andante-Allegro. 2. Allegro-Adagio. James Levine conducts Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft DGG 437 093-2. Recorded in 1992. This performance is also included on Mutter’s multi-CD Modern, along with her performances of the Bártok and Schoenberg (né Schönberg) violin concertos.



Brahms Piano Quintet, Opus 34

Movement 1 - Yelena Grinberg, piano, Eric Silberger and Emilie-Anne Gendron, violins, Daniel Adams, viola, Jia Kim, cello

Movement 2 - Condoleezza Rice, piano, Ken Hamao and Eric Wong, violins, Lydia Bunn, viola, Aleisha Verner, cello. Aspen Music Festival and School, August 2, 2008. See August 11, 2008 news report on Rice.

Movement 3 - without the first few notes - David Golub, piano, Pinchas Zukerman and Ida Kavafian, violins, Paul Neubauer, viola, Gary Hoffman, cello

Movement 4 - David Golub, piano, Pinchas Zukerman and Ida Kavafian, violins, Paul Neubauer, viola, Gary Hoffman, cello



Jan Dejnožka and Julie Dejnožka play Jan Dejnožka, “Song”

Song. Op. 3, No. 1. The song will appear in your download tray, and you can play it from there. Photo 1. Photo 2. Jan Dejnožka, composer and violin. Julie Dejnožka, piano. I initially composed the piece for piano solo on June 24, 1974, and added the violin part on April 27, 2004 for my daughter Julie’s piano recital, May 1, 2004. Julie was 9. Video or photos, I don’t remember which, by my wife Chung Hwa Dejnožka. World premiere, LOL! My first public performance in 35 years, since 1969, my last year in high school orchestra. You can see my younger daughter Marina in the lower right hand corner when the violin comes in. She’s paying no attention and chatting away, and rightly so! I’m not showcasing my meager talent as a violinist, but my meager talent as a composer.



Return to Jan Dejnožka Home Page