Robin Stowell (ed.) - The Cambridge Companion to the Violin

The Cambridge Companion to the Violin

The Cambridge Companion
to the Violin

Edited by

ROBIN STOWELL

Professor of Music,

University of Wales College of Cardiff

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Cambridge University Press 1992

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1992

Twelfth printing 2008

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

The Cambridge companion to the violin / edited by Robin Stowell.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0 521 39033 6 (hardcover). - ISBN 0 521 39923 8 (paperback)

1. Violin. 2. Violin music - History and criticism. I. Stowell.

Robin

ML800.C35 1992 91-34017 CIP

787.2 - dc20

ISBN 978-0-521-39033-0 Hardback

ISBN 978-0-521-39923-4 Paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Information regarding prices, travel timetables, and other factual information given in this work is correct at the time of first printing but Cambridge University Press does not guarantee the accuracy of such information thereafter.

Contents

Illustrations

23 (a) Schematic representation of the motion of a bowed string arrested at two different times during its cycle;
(b) a string vibrating in its individual modes of vibration

The contributors

PETER ALLSOP

Peter Allsop is a Lecturer in Music at Exeter University and specialises in Italian seventeenth-century instrumental music. He is the author of The Italian Trio Sonata (Oxford University Press, forthcoming) and General Editor of New Orpheus Editions (devoted to the publication of the trio sonata repertory). His study of this subject is a direct result of his lifelong interest in the violin, which he began learning at the age of nine. Over recent years he has concentrated mainly on the Baroque violin.

PETER COOKE

Dr Peter Cooke is the UKs senior ethnomusicologist and teaches at the University of Edinburgh. Apart from being editor-in-chief of the ethnomusicology contributions to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, he has written extensively on the music of Scotland and is the author of the highly praised study of Shetland fiddle playing, The Fiddle Tradition of the Shetland Isles (Cambridge, 1986), in the series Cambridge Studies in Ethnomusicology.

JOHN DILWORTH

John Dilworth graduated from the Newark School of Violin Making in 1979. He has since worked for Charles Beare in the London workshops of J. & A. Beare Ltd as a restorer of violins, violas and cellos. During this time he has made several instruments, including reproductions of classical examples. He also writes for The Strad and Das Musikinstrument, contributing articles based on practical experience and research into the history of the violin and its makers.

ADRIAN EALES

Having graduated with first-class honours from the University of Wales (Cardiff) in 1976, Adrian Eales initially made his mark as an award-winning violinist. Radio broadcasts followed and subsequently an extensive career with many distinguished orchestras, including principal positions with the BBC Concert and Royal Philharmonic Pops orchestras. In recent years, freelance activities, especially in the television and recording industries, have complemented his teaching role as Head of Strings at Marlborough College.

MAX HARRISON

Max Harrison for many years wrote classical music criticism for The Times and many British and foreign periodicals. He still contributes to some of the latter, and has had books on Scriabin and Brahms published. He has also written much on jazz for magazines in the UK and abroad, and contributed the main jazz entry in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, since re-published in expanded form in The New Grove Gospel, Blues and Jazz. His collection of essays, A Jazz Retrospect, has lately appeared in paperback and he is currently at work on vol. II of The Essential Jazz Records.

SIMON McVEIGH

Simon McVeigh is a Lecturer in Music at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His Oxford dissertation on eighteenth-century violinists has recently been published, and he is currently completing a book on concert life in London in this period.

BERNARD RICHARDSON

Bernard Richardson is currently a Lecturer in Physics at the University of Wales College of Cardiff. His research activities in musical acoustics stem from a long-standing passion for making and playing musical instruments. He lectures world-wide on the subject.

ROBIN STOWELL

Educated at the University of Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music, Robin Stowell is currently a Professor of Music at the University of Wales College of Cardiff. He is a practising violinist and Baroque violinist as well as a music editor and author, and has written extensively about the violin and the conventions of performing early music. The author of Violin Technique and Performance Practice in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, he has also written articles for numerous music journals and contributed chapters to several collaborative volumes.

ERIC WEN

Eric Wen attended Columbia and Yale Universities, and was awarded a research grant for advanced study at the University of Cambridge. He taught music theory and analysis at the Mannes College of Music, Goldsmiths College (University of London) and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and has published a number of articles in the field of Schenkerian analysis. Eric Wen was editor of The Strad (19869) and Musical Times (198890), and is currently director of Biddulph Publications and Recordings.

PAUL ZUKOFSKY

A pupil of Ivan Galamian, Paul Zukofsky is currently Director of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute. He conducts at the Juilliard School, and is founder and Music Director of the Iceland Youth Orchestra. He is a specialist in the performance of contemporary music for the violin and writes with special authority on twentieth-century violin technique.

Preface

The chapters which make up this volume were commissioned from various friends and colleagues, all experts in their fields. The principal objective has been to provide the reader with a compact, composite survey of the history of the violin from its origins to the present day, focusing in particular on the instruments structure and development, its fundamental acoustical principles, its chief exponents, its technique and teaching principles and its repertory and pedagogical literature, but embracing also its folk traditions and its role in jazz. If we have been successful in stimulating constructive, penetrating thought about the past, present and future of the art of violin playing and its numerous related aspects, our joint purpose will have been realised.