Band Music

There is one very marked physical difference between the violin group of instruments and all others—with one exception which is negligible for the moment—and that is that the tone and the pitch are controlled wholly by the player.

In other instruments there are keys, pedals, frets or some other means of assisting the player to maintain the pitch. The violin has a plain fingerboard, strings, a bow and—the fingers of the violinist. What kind of tone will you get out of it? Will your tone be true to the pitch? That depends on you. And because of these things the music of the violins is more intimate, more personal than that of any other instrument.

Another interesting fact concerning the violin is that while almost all other instruments have been improved upon, the violin alone has undergone no change and no improvement since Stradivarius put by the last violin he was to make. That was about 1737. And so the violin may be regarded as the one accomplishment of human craftsmanship that has reached perfection.

Perhaps it is because of these things that violin music occupies a quite unique place in human experience. There is nothing more deeply thrilling than the violin’s low-pitched “G” string and nothing quite so light-hearted and fairy-like as the “E” string. With such a range from grave to gay there is never a human mood nor emotion but what the violin can reach and express it more keenly than any other single instrument—and in the form in which we have it today it has been the sharer of our joys and sorrows for more than two hundred years.

Consciously or unconsciously we feel the need of some standard of comparison, some sort of yardstick by which we may measure human achievements, and this seems to be especially so in all instrumental music.

No one would have any very serious difficulty in telling why he found enjoyment or dissatisfaction in the recitation of a poem, but it is just as easy to pass judgment on the playing of a violin solo. The enunciation of the words and their pronunciation—the intelligible or muddled treatment of the phrases, the use of pauses, the pitch of the voice and its dramatic shading would all have something to do with your opinion of a recitation, and those are much the same standards by which the technical and interpretative skill of the violinist are to be determined. The performance is good or bad, depending upon how well or ill it meets much the same requirements that you would impose upon the “reader” of the recitation. It is easier in the case of the poem, because we all get a good deal of practical experience in the delivery of words, whereas most of us have had no experience in the delivery of musical tones.

To recognize these various effects and to appreciate the influence they have on the interpretation of the music, is to enjoy an added pleasure in the world’s best violin music, practically all of which will be found in the Victor Record Catalogue by world-famous artists.

If the Victrola, reproducing the music of the violin in all its exquisite beauty, could do no more than that, it would justify its existence by that one service alone; but shut your eyes and the Victrola becomes whatever instrument you may wish it to be, including the most wonderful of all—the human voice.

Whatever other records you may select, we feel very sure you will find untold satisfaction in any of the following. The Caprice Viennois, the Schubert Ave Maria, the Scherzo Tarantella, the Humoresque, the Mendelssohn Concerto, the Nocturne in E Flat and Moszkowski’s “Guitarre.”