Put Your Fingerings to the Test

You know, if you take just about any passage of music in the violin repertoire and gather 5 players to play it, chances are you will see 5 different fingerings being used.

This may not be the case, however, if those 5 players came from the studio of one teacher.

Now, I consider that I have had four main teachers in my life.

What is interesting, as I look back, is that two of them tended to have specific fingerings for any given passage, and sought to adjust my technique to accommodate them.

The other two took a very different tack.

In high school I studied with a very gifted Italian violinist by the name of Guido Mansuino. His theory was, if you couldn’t play a passage with a given fingering after 3 honest attempts, it was time to find a new one.

Milstein was much the same way.

In the interim, however, I spent 3 years with Eudice Shapiro, at the USC School of Music. Now Shapiro was a truly extraordinary violinist, one of the finest of the 20th century, in fact. Yet I would still place her firmly in the school of ‘adaptive technique’, where fingerings were concerned.

And I must admit to having chaffed at the bit in this regard whilst under her tutelage.

It was only when I arrived at Milstein’s door that I again began to feel the excitement of musical exploration, of personal innovation.

And fingerings were a big part of this agenda.

He himself was constantly looking for new and innovative ways of doing things; often playing different fingerings in successive performances – he was unrivalled in his ability to do this.

In short order I found myself investigating three, four, or more ways of fingering a passage before coming to one that allowed for the right musical impact as well as a fluid, facile execution for my hand.

And it fired my imagination to do so.

Admittedly, there are times when your fingering options are limited, and you really must rely solely on technique to get the job done.

Yet that is truly more rare than most violinists realize.

So if you run into a problem playing a passage, stand back and take a fresh look at those fingerings. Chances are, with a little investment of time, you’ll surprise and delight yourself with a much more effective way of getting the job done.

And you’ll actually be SAVING time and effort in the bargain.

All the best, Clayton Haslop

P.S. Now, the fingerings you find in ”Kreutzer for Violin Mastery are the result of considerable attention on my part. Yet as you go through these etudes/caprices absorbing all I have to say about technique and practice, I do challenge you to improve upon them. In the process you will learn a great deal about what YOUR left hand is all about.