Request Corner
Posted by Lorine Parks
on Apr 28, 2015
by Lorine Parks
What Rotary-related subject would you like researched and reported on, by your Hubbub staff? Today’s query comes from concert-goer Down-Town Ray Brown. Ray enjoyed the recent Downey Symphony performance, but he asks, “what happens to left-handed violin players?”
The Request Corner is disappointed to report that while there are left-handed violinists, they play right handed.
There are left handed violinists, but they just don't “play” left handed. At the professional level, they've more than likely been trained to play right handed.
This is because violins are crafted to be played with the bow in the right hand.
The left has a passive role, while the right hand has an active role in the co-ordination of movements. Power, intensity and the sound nuances, come through control of the movements and the bow’s pressure on the strings.
To play left-handed on a right-handed violin, a person would have to play upside down and backward. The instrument looks symmetrical but the pitch of the strings does vary. The notes, beginning from the right side to the left are, G-D-A-E and the peg hole’s position match the strings’ order.
They do make a left-handed violin and chin rest, which is a mirror-image of a right-handed violin. Users hold it in their right hand and rest it upon their right shoulder. The bow is held and is coordinated by the left hand.
But if the violinist goes professional (joins an orchestra) the symmetry is off. It's an ensemble instrument. If you've got ten violinists sitting next to each other in an orchestra, and one is the fish swimming upstream it throws off both the look and the essence of the whole group performing as a single unit.
So although lefties are a special breed, comprising an elite 10% of the population, and Leonardo and Beethoven and Einstein were lefties, they would all have had to play the violin right-handed.
The question of Paul McCartney playing the guitar left-handed goes under a separate heading, “Concerning the Dead Paul…”
As one commentator said, certain things in this world are adapted to better fit lefties, like scissors. Violin is just one of those things that you have to suck it up and play it the "right" way. I'm guessing that the modern violin as we know it was first invented by a rightie!