Ole Bull, a memoir . but it was difficult to do it andanalyze it at the same time. Nay more, the very at-tempt threatened to throw us into confusion worse con-founded. The problem was at length solved in thiswise. Standing behind the musician, I requested himto entirely ignore me and my object, and to play someof his most impassioned pieces, the world forgettingand by the world forgot. Dividing the finger-boardinto four equal segments, I watched the play of the lefthand up and down the violin, and noted the positionsassumed by the thumb at different points. By noting the points of contact and
Ole Bull, a memoir . but it was difficult to do it andanalyze it at the same time. Nay more, the very at-tempt threatened to throw us into confusion worse con-founded. The problem was at length solved in thiswise. Standing behind the musician, I requested himto entirely ignore me and my object, and to play someof his most impassioned pieces, the world forgettingand by the world forgot. Dividing the finger-boardinto four equal segments, I watched the play of the lefthand up and down the violin, and noted the positionsassumed by the thumb at different points. By noting the points of contact and support when theindex and middle fingers pressed the strings at the up- 336 APPENDIX. per part of each fourth, I was enabled to establish fourdefinite positions. It should be noted that this divisionof the finger-board into fourths is not musical but purelyarbitrary, in order to establish the pose of the violin onthe thumb when the hand is at different points alongthe instrument. Thus we might hope to get an approxi-. Fig. 3. mate idea of the way in which the one position easilyglides into the next. The accompanying cuts mayserve to illustrate the four positions. Fig. 1, alreadyseveral times referred to, shows the first position. Theindex and middle fingers press the string at the lowerpart of the first fourth of the finger-board. The neck ofthe instrument rests along the whole length of the pal-mar line on the thumb, as represented in Fig. 2. The APPENDIX. 337 curve at the upper part of the body of the violin markedA (Fig. i) is seen to rest against the wrist. This israrely the case when Mr. Bull is playing; but it becamenecessary as a rest during the horrors of is perhaps unnecessary to again call attention tothe fact that the violin rests on an inclined plane, its
Size: 1434px × 1742px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, bookidolebullmemoi, bookyear1883
