Sealionii asks the very good question: why is the Roscivs anti-violin?
The answer is multifarious indeed. I likely will not be able to enumerate all the different reasons, but for Sealionii’s sake I will give it a try.
One rather large reason was that I was forced to play the violin and practice daily for twelve years of my life. I begged, swindled, and bargained with my parents to somehow give it up, but they were certain it was my gift. And I certainly can’t say it was all bad—it was my violin-playing skills that first wooed my now-wife. But the moment I moved out of my parents’ house, I stopped playing, and haven’t touched a violin since. So a good deal of my dislike of the instrument may simply be a reaction to being a slave to it for so many years.
But a larger reason, I think, is that the violin is tremendously difficult to play well, and I’m enormously picky. I was never satisfied with my own intonation or sound quality, and am rarely satisfied with that of performing artists—even quite famous ones. I can count on one hand the number of violinists I have heard play that didn’t have imperfections that made me cringe. Most people, I’m sure, wouldn’t even notice the flaws, much less have them detract from their enjoyment of the music. But for me, I hear them even in the most virtuouso of professional violinists.
I also don’t particularly like the timbre of the violin in general, even when played impeccably. I believe I prefer the sound of any other instrument to the violin. The stringed instruments in general share in my disfavor (although only the bowed ones; the plucked instruments escape my wrath), but at least the cello and viola aren’t so high-pitched and whiny as the violin. It just is not a beautiful instrument. (In my eyes, of course—non disputandum est.)
All in all, in a world with so many more beautiful-sounding instruments than the violin, why waste your time with an instrument so inferior, either when it comes to the time you spend listening to music or the time you spend producing it yourself?
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October 29th, 2007 at 9:32 am
I’ve never liked the violin, either. (For one thing, they tend to roam in /packs/.) But I thought it was just me.
Oddly, perhaps, I like the violin in non-orchestral/symphonic contexts: fiddle music, folk music, electric violin (say, /Matty Groves/ or /The Devil Went Down to Georgia).
December 3rd, 2007 at 11:24 pm
[…] than trying to hide it, in my opinion. But the performance still reminded me of several reasons I missed previously as to why I dislike the […]