‘Historically-informed performance’. It’s a mouthful. It’s one way to describe what I study with the help of my baroque violin. And it’s something that musicians and scholars have been working on for half a century.
A few years ago I experimented with putting my baroque violin low, holding it as directed by Geminiani in his famous treatise: ‘The Violin must be rested just below the Collar-bone’. This position is fairly unusual even amongst baroque violinists. (It’s not so unusual in the folk world). I’ve since returned to a more usual semi-chin-off on-the-shoulder position, but the time I spent playing in a different way was useful, fun, and illuminating.
I play violins, and other on-the-arm bowed stringed instruments, and I sing.
