V.com weekend vote: What source do you mostly use for fingerings?
It takes a while to get really good at coming up with the right fingers to use in playing a piece of repertoire on a stringed instrument.
Luckily enough, when it comes to the standard repertoire, we can build on the previous discoveries of generations of other violinists, violists and cellists. For something like the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, for example, there are numerous editions, made by famous violinists past and present, that can point us in the right direction.
In addition, teachers can be a great source of help. Often the first step, when a student starts a new piece, is to copy his or her teacher's fingerings into their part. This usually gives the student some good, educated ideas about what fingerings to use.
As a student matures, he or she will likely start coming up with his or her own fingerings. This week, Penny Kruse posted a wonderful article that outlines some guidelines that are helpful when choosing one's own fingerings.
For me, I relied for many years on my teachers' fingerings, and I continued to use many of those long after graduating from those teachers. In more recent years, I've been more aggressive about making fingerings fit my own hands; as none of my teachers had the same-size hands as me.
In the end, it doesn't matter the source: the best fingering is the one that works for you, while preserving the kind of sound for the music that you are playing. What is your current best source of good fingerings? While it is likely to be a combination of things, please pick the answer you feel best reflects the fingerings you tend to follow currently, and then tell us all about it.
You might also like:
- Demystifying Violin Fingerings: Guidelines for Making Good Choices
- Guidelines for Marking Music - Yours or Your Student's
- Finding Your Own Best Fingerings in Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin Tweet
Replies
I cannot really vote. Depending on the situation, I may take any one of the first three options or a combination.
I like to start from scratch: the ur-text, or the published orchestra score, or the cues in the piano part. I don't want to be overly influenced by performance tradition. I know that sounds arrogant, especially coming from a minor-league player. As a teacher, for problem bowing or fingering spots, I want to suggest at least two options, and let the student decide. My first teacher, for the first 6 years, always had me work out my own markings. At the opposite end of the scale; I had an orchestra colleague, an excellent player from Russia. I heard him back-stage playing Prokofief C. 2, at performance-ready quality. Curious, I looked at his copy. There were No pencil markings at all! Was he following Oistrakh's version exactly, or improvising his fingerings, or just so advanced that he didn't need that designing the choreography stage of learning a piece. Whatever-he was certainly out of my league.
As a Musician, First, I use ~
My father's profound overview's of All Unaccompanied Bach Sonatas & Partitas + Bach's 1st Violin Concerto in a minor, the 'Double' Concerto for 2 Violins, the Brandenburg's, plus all of Nathan Milstein's uncanny bowing's in All Bach Solo Sonatas
& Partitas, Bach's Violin Concerti + most major Violin Concerto concert repertoire, (revisited w/NM), yet several sets of altered
fingering's to suit my hand. Bowing's are so musically in sync with the musicality and Spirituality of Bach's 'Holy' Offerings, there is little need to dramatically alter over 40 years in concert
NM smoothed chording, even employing Guitar technique if & when appropriate in cantilena moments but with the Bow, but Only Changes occur with newer Life Experience & some of it
so poignant, it pushes one's Spirit Down to enriched depths of consciousness which can require amendments in phrasing by an earlier less deepened Self ~
Bowing is Breath, so Musical Messages dictate bowing's which pull the left hand around, thusly creating fingering's which are supple & easy rather than virtuosic complications & especially so in Bach ~
Other major Violin repertoire is varied yet I even altered long used bowing's & in turn fingerings employed in violin concerti of Aram Khachaturian, Brahms, Sibelius & Shostakovich #1 in a minor, Op. 99, upon suffering major loss with attending grief ...
Mood always affects bowing's/fingerings & NM's extraordinary use of The Bow liberated my own musical imagination to travel more deeply into scores of Great Works for the Violin, focusing
on The Musical 'Storyline' & fragrance of given works + colours required in intonation depending on Stylistic considerations in various Periods of Musical Composition ~
This is a Huge Subject yet too much intellectual over-kill Talk & analytical examination block truly natural human response ...
For Now ~
Elisabeth Matesky *
*It's imperative to Not change bowing in mid-phrase's of Bach.
https://www.violinist.com/directory/bio.cfm?member=Milstein
I almost completely ignore performance tradition and work out my own fingerings, mostly out of necessity. I've never met another adult with shorter fingers than mine, not even people a foot shorter than me. And I play a 15-3/4" viola. As a result, I have some difficulty using any fingering I've ever seen in printed editions, so I only use printed fingerings in etudes where there is a specific purpose for the fingering. Occasionally I take fingerings from other violists in orchestras, but even then, my fingerings tend to be drastically different from my stand partner's. I spend a lot of time in second position and do a lot of stepwise shifting because I generally try to avoid both string-crossing and using the 4th finger a whole step above the 3rd finger (because it's already a full-stretch extension for me).
@Andrewc Hsieh ~
Try Reaching Back from the Higher Note. Think: Reach Back, Not Stretch Up!!! The former idea can cause all sorts of itis's. The Reach Back idea/Technique, deletes most injury to the left hand, & I must add, later on, to bowing Itis's ...
EM ~
I occasionally put in shifts but feel that if I can't instinctively feel the fingering as I play then I probably shouldn't be playing the piece.
I already do that, and advise other violists with small hands to do it.
"Reach back" is the only way I can play an octave in 1st position at all, and it's maximum stretch. I barely reach an octave on a piano. I've learned to play the octaves without risking injury when I have to (and have never had a hand injury caused by playing viola), and this does not keep me from playing standard repertoire, but generally the fingerings that other people use are not well suited to my hand.
@Andrew Hsieh ~
"Other people" are just that!! Other People with other physiques requiring tailor-made 'This's' and 'That's'!!!!
You are True to yourself when following Laws of your
own physical & spiritual Nature ~
Wishing you The Best for your inner & outer Self ...
Elisabeth Matesky
Since I am a teacher, I can't use my teacher's fingerings at least on the violin/viola. The cello I still have a teacher and I use her fingerings. I usually ask why so I know what to look for.
In revisiting a piece, I invariably find a new fingering that suits my present state of technical choice.....sometimes better, sometimes not....but always a delightful challenge
I use printed editions because I figure guys like Galamian and Gingold and Francescatti were not village idiots. On the other hand, when you see that each of these men edited approximately 10,000 pages of violin studies and repertoire, one wonders how careful they were. You wonder if they tried stuff or if they just thought, "That ought to work," or maybe "That's the fingering I gave to Josh Bell when he was 15, and he did okay with it."
My teacher changes a lot of fingerings in my editions. Sometimes I do too, but then I ask my teacher's opinion about it, and often he agrees with me. So many different ways to go wrong!
I don't have tiny hands, but I didn't develop good stretches between my third and fourth fingers as a young student. As a result when I am playing a Rode or Dont study or even some Schradieck sometimes there are WTF kinds of fingerings where you wonder how on earth anyone does that without shifting back and forth. So I try to stretch as much as I can to improve in that area.
Folks who play both violin and viola will tell you that there is a different decision balance for half position vs. high fourth finger. All those Dont studies where you move around between first, second, and half position are very valuable for anyone but especially for those with small hands -- or anyone wanting to play jazz.
You left out one source for fingerings: The composer. I am thinking of Haydn quartets where in at least two instances he indicates shifts on one finger (also called glissando): In the minuet of op. 33 no. 2 (in the trio) and also famous in op. 67 no. 2 ("Quintenquartett")in the finale. These fingerings are missing in all of the older editions. To even learn about them one needs to look at Urtext editions.
And if I may be allowed another remark: Fingerings are not always by guys like Francescatti whom one is bound to take seriously; they are just as often by editors whose names you have never heard and will never hear again. E.g. the Peters edition of the aforementioned Haydn quartets. There are three kinds: 1. Those which every midlevel player would choose spontaneously without any help, 2. The really bad or uncomfortable ones, 3. Those that are not there at all, usually in places where finding a good fingering is not easy, leaving a poor sight-reader without help where they need it most.
I have very short pinkies and thumb. I don't remember any teacher actually saying they were modifying a fingering to suit my hand. They certainly had me doing drills such as Schraideck to try to strengthen my pinkie, but you can't strengthen joints and ligaments, only muscles, and the actual finger doesn't contain muscles.
Now that I teach, I always consider the needs of my students with regard to fingerings. I can really see how my pinkie was a problem for my teachers, as it lets me down the moment I leave 1st position, and this also happens for some of my students. Violin is such an awkward instrument to play...
Paul - those folks were not village idiots, but Gingold tended to favor high positions on lower strings. So, you have to watch for that and see how it works for you.
Speaking of teachers and their fingerings, etc., I had a famous teacher named Rene Benedetti for a year when I lived in Paris in the mid-1960s. I used a some of the editions he edited, particularly for Mozart #3. Funny thing was, in teaching me (a rank amateur, unlike the rest of his students), he hand wrote on my copy a number of revised fingerings and bowings that he thought worked better. I jokingly refer to that sheet music as M. Benedetti's edits of his edits.
This article has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.
August 31, 2019 at 10:21 PM · I feel like I'm still a novice (adult returner in her 60s who learned to play in public elementary through high school) and I really like my teacher, who talks about why he uses particular fingerings. He's also open to discussion when I (rarely) disagree. Same with bowings. I'm really glad i found him!