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Simon Jones, Pre-chinrest string playing, Early Music, Volume 42, Issue 1, February 2014, Pages 128–129, https://doi.org/10.1093/em/cau005
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Extract
As the worlds of historically informed performance (HIP) and mainstream ‘modern’ performance become ever more intertwined, so the whys and wherefores of historical practices have become of greater interest and practical relevance to a larger number of performers than ever before. Matters of performance style, encompassing vibrato, articulation, phrasing, tempos and appropriate ornamentation styles are now no longer the preserve of specialist early music students in conservatories, but are taught across the board as the profession increasingly demands a greater range of stylistic awareness and knowledge of historical context. The relatively recent advent of historically informed performances of Brahms, Stravinsky et al. has encouraged many professional players to diversify and invest in the appropriate equipment to perform these works in an informed style. At the same time the most detailed instrument-specific matters are increasingly a matter of general debate rather than specialist obsession. As a result, many performers who were not originally trained in these aspects are now finding, often mid-career, an interest in the topic, and, in many cases, even employment in this area. So there is clearly a demand for a book that discusses the underlying philosophy of HIP style and deals with the practical details of early string performance, and Stanley Ritchie’s comprehensive new study of early violin playing is therefore a welcome arrival. Ritchie dedicates the book to ‘those imbued with the same genuine, untainted desire to master the skills of historical performance that excited the pioneers of the Early Music Movement’, though the treatise is equally useful to the casual reader as to the HIP purist.
