A violinist’s left hand is a picture of focused fireworks, energy unleashed in a small area. Its requirements seem simple, on the surface. It has to maneuver four very distinct angles required by the strings. Complications ensue when the hundreds of finger combinations require awareness of countless new angles which tax the conscious mind but make total sense to the unconscious. The unconscious provides a flexible hand to maneuver an infinite number of possibilities, like a furniture caster with multiple ball bearings, in a multi-dimensional living room.
Different positions are simple when the violinist feels comfortable and confident with intervals and doesn’t hang on to one position any longer than necessary. Spaces between notes lock into the technical mind, and are connected to the ear by what can only be described as muscle memory and a musical miracle.
The Second Position Conundrum
By the time a student is introduced to second position, the bias of having learned third position first rears its ugly head. There is a mental block against second position, and in the peculiar “logic” and “intuition” that serves as the foundation of much musical perception, it’s not surprising that second position ends up being harder to learn than it needs to be. Keep reading...
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The brain of a violinist -- broken into a pie chart!
This was in response to Classic FM's cute series of pie charts about the brains of various kinds of instrumentalists and musicians. I thought they got the violinist pie chart wrong, as it seems they could only focus on things related to Joshua Bell! Understandable, we love the guy, too. But really, we have other things on our minds! What would YOU put on such a pie chart? And how about the violist pie chart? Keep reading...
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The Montreal International Music Competition announced 24 violinists who have been invited to participate in this year's violin competition, from May 22 to June 2 in Montreal.
As in other recent competitions, the majority of the violinists -- 66 percent -- are women, with 16 women and eight men from 15 countries. The highest number of candidates are from the Unites States (7) and South Korea (6), followed by Japan (3) and France (2). The remaining nine countries are represented by one participant each: Bulgaria, China, Finland, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Russia, Taiwan and Ukraine. The preselection jury included Jonathan Crow, Boris Kuschnir, Douglas McNabney, Lucie Robert, and Andrew Wan. Keep reading...
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