Violin Staccato in the 18th Century

Author(s): Sol Babitz

Source: The Musical Times, Vol. 96, No. 1349 (Jul., 1955), p. 376
Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/937295
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THE MUSICAL TIMES

376

July 1955

Lettersto the Editor

The Golden Past
How altogetheradmirable,how utterly to the point
are Mme. Weingartner'sobservations on the great
singers du tempsjadis. Particularlydoes one welcome
her remarkson one of the most wonderfulsingersof all
time, Melba, about whom probably more malicious
and slanderousnonsense has been written and uttered
than about any other great singer. We have been told,
among many other things, that the phrases she sang
so incomparably'had to be hammered into her',
that she 'was no musician' u.s.w. ad nauseam et
absurditatem. Now anyone who has ever looked
throughsome of the old H.M.V. recordcatalogueswill
see that la Melba was singing and recording,at a time
when they were scarcelymore than names in Englishspeaking countries, such then contemporarymasters
as Chausson, Duparc and Debussy, as well, naturally,
as the regularrepertoryof the fioriturasoprano, and
singing them with such incrediblebeauty as has, in my
experience,not only never been surpassed but never
equalled. And John Brownlee, the distinguished
Australiantenor,has recentlytold us of the superlative
opinion of Melba's art that was expressedby the illustriousNikisch,one of the greatestconductorsof modern
times, who called her ' the greatestof the great'.
And when someone like Mme. Weingartnerdraws
attentionto the catastrophicdecheancethat has come
upon singing in these days as comparedwith the great
names of whom she speaks, someone is pretty sure to
hap along trotting out the hoary discreditedtwaddle
about how much better we do things in opera today
than in the day of the supremely great singers. ...

'A

far more intelligent and musicianly presentation',

as one suchcliche-mongerrecentlyput it... Oh yes !...
we know it all, don't we? . . .' ensemble' . . . 'team
work'. . . . When 'singers' are so abominable as to

be intolerablesingly, it is thought that they are made

more bearableif thereis a ' team ' of them.
Are we then seriouslyaskedto believethat conductors
of the order of Richter, Mottl, Seidl, Campanini,
Bellezza, and, above all, Nikisch and Mahler would
have tolerated any less an 'intelligent and musicianly
presentation' than Mr. Insignificance,Herr Gar Nix,
Monsieur Petit Rien, Signor Nullo Niente, with
'singers ' whose singing is inaudibleon account of the
noise made by their' interpretations' ?
SORABJI
SHAPURJI
KAIKHOSRU

Violin Staccato in the 18th Century

The idea that the sharp staccato attack is proper in

the performance of eighteenth-centurymusic is one
which has been gaining popularity among performers
and writers. Robert Donington's generally excellent
writings on eighteenth-century performance in the new
Grove's Dictionary are marred by a dozen references
to the need for a ' crisp ' attack.
There is no historical evidence to support this idea.
All the evidence points rather in the opposite direction
-to a gentle method of bowing in which the average
stroke was begun and ended softly and the accented
note shortened but still without a hard attack. The
biting attack is nowhere found.
Quantz alone mentions a staccato with pressure
('durch einen Druck markiret', ch. XVII, ii, 27);
but he is obviously describing a bouncy, non-biting
staccato since he says first that this is to be produced by
' lifting ' the bow and immediately afterward by ' somewhat ' lifting the bow from the string. The use of this
ambiguous instruction is illuminating since it describes
most accurately the vague parlando bounce in which
it is impossible to say whether or not the bow actually
leaves the string between the strokes.
Leopold Mozart provides us with the most illuminat-

ing instructions on this subject when he says that

'every note, even the strongest attack, has a small,

even if barely audible, softness at the beginningof the

stroke; for it would otherwise be no note but only
an unpleasantand unintelligiblenoise.'

In order to justify his 'crisp' attack Robert Donington tries to evade this clear statement by finding a
'contradiction' several paragraphs later, where Mozart

says that certain bow strokes must begin forte. But

there is no contradiction here. If' every tone, even the

strongest attack, has a small . . . softness at the begin-

ning', then a tone which starts merelyforte also has

'a small softness at the beginning', and the 'crisp'

attack is unjustified.
L. Mozart is not alone in his description of the
eighteenth-century bow stroke, and Tartini, Hiller,
Viotti, l'Abbe, Brijon and Geminiani give ample
substantiation to this point of view.
To many eighteenth-century writers the terms
spiccato and staccato were synonymous, inasmuch as
the chief distinguishing factor of modern playingthe crisp attack-did not yet exist.
In addition to historical evidence there is the evidence
of the eighteenth-century bow which, when held with the
early grip, can produce the bounding staccato only
without a crisp attack, because any attempt to eliminate
'the small softness' at the beginning of the stroke

resultsin what Mozart and Tartinicall ' an unpleasant

unintelligible noise.'
In view of these facts, and in the absence of eighteenth-century support for staccato, let us hope that the
idea will be laid to rest for once and for all.
SOL BABITZ
California, U.S.A.

'Easter in Europe'
In his June Radio Notes, Prof. Arthur Hutchings
chides me for allowing 'the pure gold of Palestrina's
Improperia' to lie in 'the filth' of W. R. Rodgers's

verse narrationin the programme' Easter in Europe '.

The best answer to this intemperatecriticismlies in
the fact that when ' Easterin Europe' was first broadcast (in its full version) severalyears ago it was enthusiastically received by listeners of all Christian
denominations, and for this reason, if for no other
it has been repeatedin a condensedversiona numberof
times since.
There were, naturally, some dissentient voices, but
no criticismthat I saw went so far as to stigmatizethe
work of a respected poet and a sincere Christian as
'filth'. There were, I will admit, some poetic conceits
in the narrationthat struck me as being strainedand
artificial; but it was my job to edit the music, not the
narration,and to see that the leads up to the musicwere
appropriate. These leads, which Prof. Hutchings
does not appearto have noticed,werealmostinvariably
taken from the Gospels or from the liturgical texts
concerned.
I first saw Mr. Rodgers's narration when we
assembled in the studio to put the programme together

and it seemedto me then,as now,a reverent,striking,and

-in the main-a

successful attempt to bring home to a

mixed audiencethe bitter truth of the Passion, and the

joyful truth of the Resurrectionof our Lord.
ALEC ROBERTSON

A Kiss
In your excellentreview of my book, ' God save the
Queen ' it was stated, on my authority, that 'in 1831
Dr. Crotch, the first principal of the R.A.M., was

dismissed for kissing a young pupil'.

There is some error here. This anecdote does not

occur in my book, nor do I know its source.
PERCYA. SCHOLES