17th November 2004

Schenker divided the world into two groups of people: those who, for want of time, energy, or spirit, have no ear for music, and those who do (Robert Snarrenberg's Schenker's Interpretative Practice : 141).

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. . . But do you know who I am? I will tell you:

      That I am not Sebastian Bach, not Handel, not Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, not Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms - that I know better than all of you.  Before them I am dust, not worthy of the wind that carries it off.  What all of you, each and every one of you, do not know, but what I know very well, it that to create even the likes of me has not been given unto you, nor will it ever be given.

      Favored by the grace of our greatest ones, I hold a mirror to the art of tones as no philosopher of antiquity, the Middle Ages, or of modern times, nor any of the musicians, music historians, aestheticians, not all these together, have been able to.  I am the first to show music's own laws, wherein its own life obtains, I show the German masters' soaring ear, their improvisatory capacity, their synthesis.  I show their boldness in the dimension of the ear, such as man has experienced it till now only in the dimensions of the other senses.  I have, as it were, for the first time opened the dimension of the ear to word and communication, according to our masters, and thereby enriched the existence of man with a new dimension

Heinrich Schenker (Der Tonwille 5: 54-55)

ABOUT HOLDING BOW:

"The fingers must feel rooted to the bow as though they are part of the stick.  The grip of the fingers on the bow is always a clinging one, firm but not tense."   Demetrius Dounis

"One must have a hand of iron and an arm of cotton."  Pablo de Sarasate

"Every finger on the frog plays, not merely holds, the bow."  Lev Aronson

"The changing pressure of the fingers on the stick depends on what the music demands in either lightness or power."  Joseph Fuchs

"The artistic satisfaction is in direct proportion to the development of the sensibility of every finger on the stick."  Lucien Capet

"Various finger pressures should be used on the bow to determine at exactly what parts these subtle pressures should be applied."  Isaac Stern

Quoted from The Strad (2004 Nov), p. 1189.