First Preface

For almost two decades, I have intended to pass on my experiences to the growing generation of cellists, experiences gained during a long concert career and enriched through extensive pedagogical activity.

As the theories derived from my own empirical research proved themselves in practical teaching applications, my desire grew to move beyond the original sphere of subjective conjectures into the realm of objectively verifiable results. This ardent wish for an impartial authority drawing its criteria from scientific sources has long awaited fulfillment.

No one welcomed the appearance of Steinhausen’s^[1] work on the physiology of bowing more enthusiastically than I did. For it seemed to me that, for the first time, an attempt was being made to move away from the unproductive debate of personal opinions and more or less subjectively colored views, and to transfer the decision on such important methodological questions—which also deeply influence artistic activity—into the domain of scientific analysis.

Unfortunately, my hopes were only partially fulfilled. The discussion about Steinhausen’s insights soon fell silent after the researcher’s exaggerations and errors, stemming from a certain one-sidedness, were unduly emphasized.

Steinhausen nonetheless deserves the credit for having initiated the clarification of highly important matters. However, instead of continuing along the thorny path of knowledge, people persisted on the comfortable side street of personal and impersonal opinions. To this day, theories are proposed without aligning them with the fundamental physical and physiological facts of the playing process and without proving their necessity and general validity!

I am convinced that a way of playing through which someone has achieved artistic success due to individual predisposition should not, for that reason alone, be elevated to a pedagogical method. Rather, the usefulness of such an approach must be demonstrated by whether it helps a larger number of normally gifted talents to develop their abilities more quickly and enables the exceptionally gifted to attain mastery of their instrument in the shortest possible time.

Equally important, I believe, is the demand for a unified treatment of the instrument from both the mechanical side and the side of pure artistic expression. Artistically flawless performance presupposes absolute mastery of mechanical means. With insufficient means, one may perhaps convey an idea of the artwork given one’s musical intelligence, but never achieve its complete realization. Thus, mechanics deserve the sovereign command of all technical means, which is the result of serious, probing work. I speak of “research work,” and in this, every performing concert artist will agree with me, because productive study can never be achieved through mere mechanical activity alone, but through a wise disposition of existing natural abilities, through a logical approach to overcoming difficulties, and through a kind of analysis of the individual components of the musical work.

Despite this intellectual activity, from which every musician’s empirical principles stem, and which, in fact, results in a shortening of the study process, even the most daring impetus need not suffer. For the easily mastered control of all possible means of expression on one’s instrument allows artistic imagination to manifest itself unhindered. The freedom of expression begins where the inner musical conception is naturally complemented by the appropriate technical means. The less mechanical difficulties play a role in the creation of a musical work, the more completely the musician can fulfill the external artistic demands set forth by the composer.

Engaging in musical analysis aimed at the complete realization of the intended expression naturally transcends technical difficulties. Having had the opportunity during my study period to become acquainted with the German, French, Italian, and Belgian schools, I sought to think through the playing process independently and to test the teachings I received for their validity. The more I delved into the difficult matter of mechanical analysis, the more intensely I became aware that Steinhausen’s thoughts, expressed in an essay in Musik, volume 1903/04, Issue 23, about “The Laws of Bowing on String Instruments,” are accurate. He states: “For the educator, there is the inexorable obligation to utilize the results of scientific research in their teaching activities. For even the next generation will hold their teachers accountable if the now established path has not been tested. Therefore, a new method must be created, naturally not by artists and educators alone, but with the involvement of physiologists.”

An artist’s insights may be expressed through the most beautiful self-control and most skillful execution, but they will always remain the expression of individual success as long as scientific investigation does not elevate them to the level of universally applicable laws.

The findings of physical and acoustic science have been available for a long time.^[2] Based on the fundamental fact of physics that a string sounds purest when set into regular vibrating motion, I have aimed above all for a bowing technique where the bow first meets the string at an angle, avoiding impractical longitudinal friction, and secondly, always acts on the strings with the same hair weight. All technical details have arisen from these two cardinal requirements.

The next important question arises immediately: How do I adapt my body’s performance to the necessary performance of the bow? How should I hold the bow, how must I guide it, and what forces are to be applied? Here, difficulties of a special kind arise if I do not consider active organs, since explaining the purposefulness and regularity of their functions is always complicated.

Equally important as bowing is the mechanics of the left hand. Both have their specific difficulties, to which I have dedicated a large portion of my time studying. However, neither a maximum of bow dexterity nor the extreme speed of the left hand is an end in itself. The perfection of playing rests only on the synthesis of both mechanisms.

By chance, I met the cellist Dr. Rynar, who had been engaged for a long time in movement physiological works similar to those of Steinhausen. As previously mentioned, I had been deeply engaged with this subject. A remarkable coincidence between the general results of his research and the specific findings that I had already gained empirically over many years awakened in me the desire to thoroughly work through the entire vast field of cello technique together with him—a task which I had previously agreed upon with Steinhausen but was prevented by the untimely death of that researcher. In the meantime, advances in science have brought new insights, and it is certainly not disadvantageous that the delayed publication of this book now includes the latest findings from movement physiology. May it contribute to steering the discussion in an important area of music away from trivialities and towards significant matters.

Hugo Becker

Full Professor, State Academy of Music, Berlin
Visiting Member of the Royal Academy, Stockholm