“I have never believed in a quartet getting together and ‘reading’ a new work as a preparation for study.  As first violin I have always made it my business to first study the work in score, myself, to study it until I knew the whole composition absolutely, until I had a mental picture of its meaning, and of the interrelation of its four voices in detail.  Thirty-two years of experience have justified my theory.  Once the first violin knows the work the practicing may begin; for he is in a position gradually and tactfully to guide the working-out of the interpretation without losing time in the struggle to correct faults in balance which are developed in an unprepared ‘reading’ of the work.  There is always one important melody, and it is easier to find it studying the score, to trace it with eye and mind in its contrapuntal web, than by making voyages of discovery in actual playing.

“Every player has his own qualities, every instrument its own advantages.  Certain passages in a second violin or viola part may be technically better suited to the hand of the player, to the nature of the instrument, and—­they will sound better than others.  Yet from the standpoint of the composition the passages that ‘lie well’ are often not the more important.  This is hard for the player—­what is easy for him he unconsciously is inclined to stress, and he must be on his guard against it.  This is another strong argument in favor of a thorough preliminary study on the part of the leading violin of the construction of the work.”

               THE FIRST VIOLIN IN CHAMBER MUSIC VERSUS
                        THE ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR

The comparison which I asked Mr. Kneisel to make is one which he could establish with authority.  Aside from his experience as director of his quartet, he has been the concert-meister of such famous foreign orchestras as Bilse’s and that of the Hofburg Theater in Vienna and, for eighteen years, of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in this country.  He has also conducted over one hundred concerts of the Boston Symphony, and was director of the Worcester Music Festivals.

“Nikisch once said to me, after he had heard us play the Schumann A minor quartet in Boston:  ’Kneisel, it was beautiful, and I felt that you had more difficulty in developing it than I have with an orchestral score!’ And I think he was right.  First of all the symphonic conductor is an autocrat.  There is no appeal from the commands of his baton.  But the first violin of a quartet is, in a sense, only the ’first among peers.’  The velvet glove is an absolute necessity in his case.  He must gain his art ends by diplomacy and tact, he must always remember that his fellow artists are solo players.  If he is arbitrary, no matter how right he may be, he disturbs that fine feeling of artistic fellowship, that delicate balance of individual temperaments harmonized for and by a single purpose.  In this connection I do not mind confessing that though I