I’ve known a few, and that’s my impression as well, but I’m partly interested in the direction of causality. Is your impression that conditional on the songs being equally difficult, violinists would still be more neurotic?
If so, then I’m wondering if it has to do with the orchestral setting of playing in unison, where even a few cents difference is painfully obvious (at least to the other violinist)?
Or is it more the other way around, that violin calls to folks with a higher neurosis level?
I’d tried to include something coherent about the causation in my first reply, couldn’t quite figure it out. :P Hold on, I can tell already the structure’s gonna be pretty rough...
It’s sorta hard to imagine classical violin having songs only as difficult as the fiddle repertoire, because in some sense the difficulty is the whole point. The challenge is never to make something sound more beautiful, it’s to include {insert a difficult to explain violin technique, +/- equivalent to tying your hand around your back} even if it sounds slightly worse as a result. (That’s not true, violinists spend a lot of time trying to make things sound more beautiful, and trying to make groups sound even moderately synchronized, but it points at something. (Is this what “directionally correct” means?))
I mean, there are lots of ways in which the violin is a batshit crazy instrument, but while fiddle music embraces the ensuing idiosyncrasies (pitch should slide around a lot, tone should usually be muddy instead of clean, you’re allowed to change the key-center of your tune to better make use of the (usually constant-pitched) open strings as a drone voice, when ur bowing quickly it’s alright if the resulting rhythm is a little wonky, etc.), classical violin tends to try to eliminate these idiosyncrasies. When violinists chat, they don’t talk about melodies or the emotional impact of the music or really anything that could be understood by non-violinists, they talk about just indescribably minute details. “The angle of the last joint of your right-hand pinky seemed a bit flat, there. I mean… you know Bach was Baroque-era, right??” (I could be mixing up the jargon here; it’s been a long time.) Maybe this is evidence in favor of “violin calls to people who are already neurotic”? hm.
Misleading headline; it was a survey of 100 “child prodigies” the study author could find, and one former prodigy who teaches violin claimed the “1 in 10″ stat. Eh, might point to something. I know a violinist who attempted suicide, and that was for pre-existing reasons. ¯\(ツ)/¯
I lean towards “✨something ✨about violin attracts neurotic people, which led to the repertoire and shibbolethry becoming absurdly difficult and abstruse, respectively”, but the causality probably goes the opposite way too, to some degree.
Nah, in my experience fiddle players are a lot less neurotic.
I’ve known a few, and that’s my impression as well, but I’m partly interested in the direction of causality. Is your impression that conditional on the songs being equally difficult, violinists would still be more neurotic?
If so, then I’m wondering if it has to do with the orchestral setting of playing in unison, where even a few cents difference is painfully obvious (at least to the other violinist)?
Or is it more the other way around, that violin calls to folks with a higher neurosis level?
I’d tried to include something coherent about the causation in my first reply, couldn’t quite figure it out. :P Hold on, I can tell already the structure’s gonna be pretty rough...
It’s sorta hard to imagine classical violin having songs only as difficult as the fiddle repertoire, because in some sense the difficulty is the whole point. The challenge is never to make something sound more beautiful, it’s to include {insert a difficult to explain violin technique, +/- equivalent to tying your hand around your back} even if it sounds slightly worse as a result. (That’s not true, violinists spend a lot of time trying to make things sound more beautiful, and trying to make groups sound even moderately synchronized, but it points at something. (Is this what “directionally correct” means?))
I mean, there are lots of ways in which the violin is a batshit crazy instrument, but while fiddle music embraces the ensuing idiosyncrasies (pitch should slide around a lot, tone should usually be muddy instead of clean, you’re allowed to change the key-center of your tune to better make use of the (usually constant-pitched) open strings as a drone voice, when ur bowing quickly it’s alright if the resulting rhythm is a little wonky, etc.), classical violin tends to try to eliminate these idiosyncrasies. When violinists chat, they don’t talk about melodies or the emotional impact of the music or really anything that could be understood by non-violinists, they talk about just indescribably minute details. “The angle of the last joint of your right-hand pinky seemed a bit flat, there. I mean… you know Bach was Baroque-era, right??” (I could be mixing up the jargon here; it’s been a long time.) Maybe this is evidence in favor of “violin calls to people who are already neurotic”? hm.
Misleading headline; it was a survey of 100 “child prodigies” the study author could find, and one former prodigy who teaches violin claimed the “1 in 10″ stat. Eh, might point to something. I know a violinist who attempted suicide, and that was for pre-existing reasons. ¯\(ツ)/¯
I lean towards “✨something ✨about violin attracts neurotic people, which led to the repertoire and shibbolethry becoming absurdly difficult and abstruse, respectively”, but the causality probably goes the opposite way too, to some degree.