Re recent e-mails on the above subjects: I think J. S. Skinner in "A Guide to Bowing" 'hit the nail on the head' when he wrote:
"An artist must be richly endowed by nature, but he must subject himself for a time to the rules and restrictions of technical art. From these some performers never escape, but a really great artist soars away into a region of freedom after his apprenticeship to art. The shackles to which he submitted are for him no longer 'bonds, but wings'. "............that which makes him [an artist] a living, moving power is not only personal aptitude, but a long apprenticeship to rule and method which lies like hidden machinery behind the outward final result. This previous training, which is indispensable in all forms of art, is an essential requisite for attaining excellence in strathspey playing. It is quite true indeed that there is a scarcely any form of music where the personal element has freer scope for its manifestation than in playing strathspeys. The written text gives no adequate idea of the effect which a masterly rendering produces. To the dexterity acquired by training and practice there is superadded the inborn fervour and faculty of the performer..... "But this ought not discourage the neophyte. He should consider that, as one indispensable element of success, he must first overcome the mechanical difficulties of performance, become expert in all the technical details of fingering and bowing, which are peculiar to the strathspey; and when this has been accomplished, he may follow the bent of his genius..........." Alexander Mac Donald Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
