4 - Technique

Summary

In Chapter 2 we considered the principal primary sources of information about historical performance on the violin and viola, including the most significant pedagogical treatises and their nature and purpose. This chapter is a digest of the details of their technical content and how the two instruments were played, the treatment of individual techniques reflecting not only the nature and priorities of the works and writers themselves but also the viola's lesser importance in the musical establishment and the predominance of violin treatises in the pedagogical material available to string players. Such a digest can pinpoint only mainstream developments across the various national idioms outlined in Chapter 5, so readers are cautioned to be selective in the implementation of technical issues and always to keep national style differences in mind.

Posture

Eighteenth-century violin and viola treatises consistently emphasised the importance of a comfortable, free and natural posture, but it was not until the early nineteenth century that there was any general agreement as to the optimum playing position. Most nineteenth-century players sought a noble and relaxed bearing, with head upright, feet normally in line but slightly apart, and with body weight distributed towards the left side, somewhat in the fashion of Baillot's illustration in Fig. 4.1. Baillot's ideal seated position is also shown.